Most of us want to raise children who are ethical and caring. Indeed, when surveyed 96 percent of us say that this is a "very important, if not essential" parenting goal. I've not seen the numbers for teachers, but I would assume that a super majority of us feel likewise. If nothing else, we want the future to be populated with adults of character and we believe it begins with us, the adults responsible for the rearing and education of children. Unfortunately, a full 80 percent of youth surveyed say that they are more concerned with "achievement" or "happiness" than with caring ..read more

The three girls were in a sort of irritable stew. They were bickering with one another like it was a stereotypical family holiday dinner, moping, whining, and fussing. Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not . . . Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully, to look round cheerfully, and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. If s ..read more

A while back, I was chatting with an artist, a painter, at her studio and gallery, discussing her process. I always ask artists about their process because I'm forever trying to steal their ideas and figure out how to convert them into preschool art explorations. When I told her I'm a preschool teacher, I added, "All our art is process art. It's really just science." And she replied, 'That's how every artist approaches their work. We're all scientists." Whether an educator, parent, or just, you know, a human being, it pays to be curious about process. For instance, some time ago, I ..read more

Paleontologists now think that animal life first evolved on our planet 789 million years ago, although as the research continues it's likely that this oddly specific number will be supplanted. As most of us are aware, it was some time later than animals began to appear on land in the form of ancient "millipede." We currently believe that those early pioneers dragged themselves from their watery home more than 420 million years ago and there has been life on land ever since. I like to think about the first animal to brave the land. What was it doing? Was it looking for food? Maybe ..read more

Like many modern parents, I'd not spent a lot of time around young children, as an adult, until our daughter was born. When she was two, we enrolled in a cooperative preschool, which for those who don't know, is a model in which parents attend alongside their children and serve as assistant teachers. This was my introduction, or re-introduction, to early childhood. Of course, I had memories of my own childhood, but precious few, if any, from before I was four or five. So, when I remembered childhood, it was from the perspective of an older child, and many of those memories involved r ..read more

A friend who works with young children recently texted me with questions about why I thought kids today seem more anxious than in the past. There are a lot of theories. Some blame screen-based technology, especially smartphones. Some blame the media. Some blame bad parenting. Some environmental toxins. Some blame a society that has gone off the rails. One of the most credible theories, however, is that our children are suffering from a deficit of good, old-fashioned play, and anxiousness is a symptom. Most of the leading thinkers on play (e.g., Peter Gray, Jonathan Haight ..read more

Charlotte was one of those kids who had been coming to Woodland Park since before she was born, arriving first in our classroom in utero to drop off and pick up her older brother, then continuing on her own behalf until she was five. If I've ever known a student, it would be Charlotte, and among the many things I know is that she is not conflict averse: she will stand up for herself, and for righteousness in general, like few people I've ever known, whatever their age. To say she knew her way around the place would be an understatement. When we began making our cl ..read more

"Your wish is my command." It's a phrase that originates in the Arabic folk tale Aladdin and the Magic Lamp. It's what the genii said to the boy who conjured him. It is meant as a declaration of gratitude for having been released from the prison of the lamp, one that the genii makes in earnest. He will, up to the limit of three wishes, obey the boy.  Today, more often than not, when we use the phrase we mean it sarcastically, as a way of indicating that someone has us over a barrel. As autonomous modern humans, most of us have learned to be uncomfortable with ceding our behavio ..read more

We were making a rocket ship to use as a prop for a play the older kids had decided they wanted to stage for the last day of school. I'd procured a long cardboard box that the kids agreed would punch the ticket, but before we started, we needed to discuss exactly what kind of rocket ship this was going to be. "Black!" "No, purple!" "Yellow and green!" I was writing their nominations on a sheet of butcher paper. By the time we'd completed the list, there was no overlap. Each of the dozen or so kids had suggested a unique color or color combination. I read the list to them ..read more

In science journalist David Toomey's new book Kingdom of Play, he writes about an animal geneticist and ethologist named David Wood-Gush who established the "Edinburgh Pig Park," a place where domesticated animals were allowed to roam freely. The idea was that they could live as closely to their natural state as possible, yet still be easily studied by scientists. It was known at the time that pigs that played more tended to healthier, so Wood-Gush and his colleague Ruth Newberry decided that understanding more about pig play would lead to more humane treatment of pigs. Like many mamm ..read more