The work of childhood!!
Imagine you go into work in the morning and the boss says you can
work freely on whatever you want, you find a project that interests you and you
get into it, but before you are finished, you are called to a team meeting.
This meeting may be about something that is of interest or importance to you,
and it may not be, but you will have to sit and pay attention for the whole
meeting because this is important to your boss. Let's say the meeting
lasted 30 minutes and then the boss says you are free to work on any project
you want as long as it is one of the prechosen projects. Some of these
projects are ones that can be completed in minutes, and some are ones you can
really get into and keep at for hours. It doesn’t matter what task you choose;
you must stay at it for the next 20 minutes. When those 20 minutes are up, you
must move on to another prearranged task and again, stay at it for 20 minutes
which might be too long or might not be long enough to complete the task to
your liking.
Finally, you get a break, but you have to take your break in the
area decided by your boss. As with the inside tasks, the area for your
break is limited and there are strict rules to follow. After you have had
20 minutes to enjoy this break, you are sent to lunch. Your lunch is chosen
for you and consists of highly processed foods and is very carb heavy.
After lunch you get to take a nap, but you have to nap in a room where people
are going in and out and talking the whole time. You finally fall asleep
after an hour and just as you fall into a deep sleep, the lights are turned on,
you are woken up and told to get up right away.
You are still groggy from your nap being cut short, but it is time
to eat a snack, this snack may or may not be something you like, and you only
get one serving either way. After snack, there is another meeting. At
this meeting the boss tells you she wants you to learn about time
management. You might not have a problem with time management but that
doesn't matter. For the next 45 minutes you will be doing activities to
teach you about time management. Some of these might be of interest to
you, some might not but you have to do them all. During one of the tasks, you
and a co-worker have a disagreement, as you are trying to work it out, the
boss
comes over and takes charge, they tell you and your co-worker how
to proceed, neither of you feel satisfied with this outcome but you have no
choice but to do what you are told. After you have finished all the time
management tasks, you get another break and decide to embark on a project of
your own choosing during this break but unfortunately, your break is not long
enough for you to finish the project and it will not be saved for you to come
back to.
When you get back to the office, you are told you will need to
work in another room with another group of co-workers. Once in the new
space you are assigned a project and must keep that project in the proper spot
and cannot collaborate with anyone else unless they were specifically assigned
the same project. This is how you spend the rest of your day, unless the boss
decides to bring in more people and have you all watch a video that is
unrelated to the work you are doing.
Imagine that you do that same thing day in and day out. Some
of you may enjoy the predictability of these days but I'm sure most would feel
frustrated at the lack of control you are given to finish your job to your
standards. There is a good chance that you would not look forward to going to
work or feel pride in what you are doing.
Now imagine you go to work and are allowed long periods of time to
work on what you want to work on. If you have to stop for any reason, you
get to save your work and come back to it later. When you take a break,
you get to decide how to spend that time and are given many options of
activities and the only rule is to not hurt anyone and not break
anything.
After your break, you get a lunch that is made mostly of whole
fruits and vegetables along with protein. After lunch you go to a quiet,
dim room to nap. Before you fall asleep there is a relaxing story and then
calming music helps to drift off. When you wake up the room is still
dark, there may be a window open, but you can lay and relax until you are ready
to get up.
Once you are ready, you get to have an afternoon snack. The snacks
are plentiful, and you get to have as much or as little as you want.
Then you get to spend the rest of the day working on the project
of your choice. If you and a co-worker have a disagreement, your boss
tells you to talk it out and come up with a solution you are both happy
with. You are free to go back and forth from project to project and to
work with whoever you want.
When you leave in the afternoon, there is a good chance you feel
fulfilled and happy to have been able to do your job to your standard.
Now replace the word boss with teacher and you see the difference
between your typical early childhood education model and a true play-based
model. Play is the work of children; it is how they learn and how they
gain the skills needed to function in life. When we interrupt play to
“teach” we are actually robbing children of the opportunity to learn.
The Birdsall House way believes that given time and the proper
environment, children will learn everything they need to be ready for academic
learning. We don’t create lessons, we don’t tell the children what we think
they need to learn, we trust them to explore and create their own
lessons.
