Beautiful Questions

Ashley and I just read an intriguing book, A More Beautiful Question, by Warren Berger. We first heard about this book through our work in inquiry-based learning with Oregon Episcopal School.  We have always been struck by the thoughtful and powerful questions that drive the work at Opal School of the Portland Children's Museum.  The images in this blog post are all from Opal. In his book, Berger quotes some staggering statistics.  On average, children between the ages of 3 and 5 ask  300 questions a day! And what happens? Then, they stop. Because of lots of reasons including this one: school and teachers are usually looking for answers from children not questions.

Berger's main message is that framing questions and wondering why? what if ?and how? are among the critical skills of our time.  We need to cultivate the natural curiosity and questioning disposition that children have in schools.

I always think of Pedagogical Consultant to Reggio Children, Carlina Rinaldi's, advice to parents.  When your child asks, "Why is there a moon?" Instead of giving her some kind of answer, ask her what she thinks and imagines.  What theories does she have? In this way, you start a wondering conversation with your child where you are investigating together and enjoying the pleasure of that search.  This is a good idea for teachers, too.  Children are full of theories if we ask them and wonder with them.  It is the search and the questions that are the most important part of life, not answers, that for the young child, may not stick or make sense in any case.

This is the heart of inquiry-based learning: learning that comes from real curiosity and a desire to uncover meaning and knowledge that can all hang together and last inside of us so that it changes our perspective and our way of understanding the world.

This is real learning, the kind we would like to see in schools.

Did you know that our brain does not really like answers? We much prefer puzzles and unsolved mysteries.  Just try to watch your brain sometime and you will see.

We highly recommend this book, especially Chapter Two, which is all about children and schools.  If you read it, tell us what you think and what new questions you have.

You can watch this trailer about the book to get a taste.

Winter

Wow.  I am looking out at a true blizzard, snow blowing and whirling in the wind, wildly waving trees, the sound of fierce wind turning the corners of our house and whipping over the stone walls.  Inside it is warm, the fire flickers, the one we usually do not light during the day. Today is the day to do whatever makes the house warm and cozy.

Friends have been giving me winter inspiration now for a few weeks.  Our  illustrator friend, Penny Dullaghan (who designed our new website), wrote a blog post about about the Danish concept and word Hygge (pronounced ‘hooga’ or ‘hyooga’).  She says…”it is hard to translate but basically means…coziness, togetherness, well-being, warm tucked under blankets, candles lit, good conversation, snuggled up and happy” all in the middle of winter.  I love that idea!  Looking for and creating the wonderful things that are available during this time of year.

Speaking of that, we have been in Vermont for a few weeks and have been spellbound by the winter wonderland on walks and cross country ski expeditions.  The soft snow perfectly balanced on tree branches and twigs, the intense blue sky, the crunch of dry snow underfoot.

I have been taking another oil painting class this month and how delightful to immerse myself in color surrounded by young, enthusiastic college student painters whose boldness has rubbed off on me.

And then, I want to go after color and compose it and smell it and taste it inside while outside is all white, brown and gray.

Lastly for this post, another dear friend gave me a Mary Oliver poem all about snow that seems perfect for today.

May your winter be filled with Hygge and your shoulders covered with stars.

"Walking Home from Oak-Head" by Mary Oliver

There is something about the snow-laden sky in winter in the late afternoon

that brings to the heart elation and the lovely meaninglessness of time. Whenever I get home - whenever -

somebody loves me there. Meanwhile I stand in the same dark peace as any pine tree,

or wander on slowly like the still unhurried wind, waiting, as for a gift,

for the snow to begin which it does at first casually, then, irrepressibly.

Wherever else I live - in music, in words, in the fires of the heart, I abide just as deeply

in this nameless, indivisible place, this world, which is falling apart now, which is white and wild,

which is faithful beyond all our expressions of faith, our deepest prayers. Don’t worry, sooner or later I’ll be home. Red-cheeked from the roused wind,

I’ll stand in the doorway stamping my boots and slapping my hands, my shoulders covered with stars.

Storytelling and Classrooms

Here is a poem from the January 6, 2015, Writers’ Almanac, a favorite daily web newsletter.  Stephen Dunn gives us pause in our digital (formerly analogue) age, to remember the power of oral story telling, both for the teller and the listener. Stories by Stephen Dunn

It was back when we used to listen to stories, our minds developing pictures as we were taken into the elsewhere

of our experience or to the forbidden or under the sea. Television was wrestling, Milton Berle,

Believe It Or Not. We knelt before it like natives in front of something sent by parachute,

but when grandfather said “I’ll tell you a story,” we stopped with pleasure, sat crosslegged next to the fireplace, waited.

He’d sip gin and hold us, his voice the extra truth beyond what we believed without question.

When grandfather died and changed what an evening meant, it was 1954. After supper we went

to the television, innocents in a magic land getting more innocent, a thousand years away from Oswald and the shock,

the end of our enormous childhood. We sat still for anything, laughed when anyone slipped

or lisped or got hit with a pie. We said to our friends “What the hey?” and punched them in the arms.

The television had arrived, and was coming. Throughout the country all the grandfathers were dying,

giving their reluctant permission, like Indians.

"Stories" by Stephen Dunn from Local Time. © Quill Press, 1986.

For Grandfather, to tell a story was to embrace an act of imagination that transcended reality…with the help of some gin.  Through his story he expanded his universe and probably, to some extent, escaped the pressures of his reality.  On a deeply intra-personal level he connected with his best beloved grandchildren.

For the children, grandfather’s stories became the extra truth beyond what we believed without question.  Grandfather transported the children into an imaginative world that invited questions and wonder; that suspended the reality of facts to be believed; our minds developing pictures     as we were taken into the elsewhere     of our experience or to the forbidden     or under the sea.

Some of my fondest childhood memories are sitting on the couch with a couple or three brothers asking Grammy to put the picture book down, and tell us another rabbit story.  With a twinkle in her eye, she would; and off we’d go into the woods and fields, into vast networks of homes in tree trunks and burrows; confronting unlimited joys and terrors.  She’d anticipated Watership Down by forty years.

Dunn holds this marvelous creative environment in stark contrast to the television, something sent by a parachute.  Somehow the moving pictures of the worlds of Milton Berle, Believe It Or Not, and certainly, Oswald, left little to the imagination.  The humor invited mindless mimicry and the news was simply shocking.

The purveyors of the world of creativity and imagination, grandfathers, the wise ones, didn’t give up...but, they did die.  And with their deaths came “reluctant permission” to dwell entirely within the reality of television.  The grandfathers, the older generation, were “like indians” surrendering to the inevitable domination of the other, in this case, television.

As teachers, we can revive the world of grandfathers and grandmothers, the world of imagination.  We can create environments in our classrooms that embrace storytelling.  This is not to say that reality is to be avoided; much is to be learned in the hundred languages we need to understand in order to survive in this world.  However, it is to say that there is much to be discovered in the extra truth beyond what we believed without question so that we can thrive and continue to imagine and to create a world where we all want to live.

Leaves

When it rains it pours, or it least that is the way it seems to me.  I am referring both to creativity and the connections that have started to fire all of a sudden and all over the place in my brain and memory as well as the real rain that is now pelting down in Boston.  Last week we were in Indianapolis where I was inspired by my lovely friend and colleague, Penny Dullaghan who was all about leaves! Leaf photos, leaf prints, leaf sculptures hiding her family, even leaf constellations made from sweet gum leaves...you can see most of these on instagram. Take a look! Penny's creativity and the fun she was having rubbed off on me.

Now, I am drinking tea, staying warm inside while looking out the back kitchen windows of our city condo at the yellow maple leaves that are muted in gray mist, now falling in the steady wind.  During the last few days I have played with leaves too...collected them, lined them up, made leaf boats, photographed them, even made leaf portraits inspired by my friend and colleague, Sarah Hassing atelierista at The College School, who does this kind of work often with children.

Today, Ashley and I went to the De Cordova Museum in Lincoln, MA to join the Hawkins Centers of Learning group for a morning of messing about with water and other materials all centered around pond water and a current exhibition at the De Cordova, Walden revisited.  The Hawkins Gathering was was made up of teachers of young children, artists, botanists, engineers, museum educators, professors...such a diverse group! We had been given readings to think upon, excerpts from Thoreau's Walden, excerpts from David Hawkin's thoughts on Pond Studies and an article on learning to see.  So many perspectives to consider, so much to learn about, so much fun messing about.  We were also fortunate to visit the classrooms of  Lincoln Nursery School which is housed in the former artist studios at the museum. What a wonderful place to consider Reggio-inspired environments, provocations and student work.

One more leaf connection.  While in Indianapolis, working with IPS/Butler Lab School, I worked alongside studio teacher, Rachel Kesling to encourage a small group of kindergarten and first grade students to study some maple, tulip and oak leaves collected from around the school grounds.  What did they notice? What colors? shapes, features, textures? Could they draw contours slowly as if following a small insect crawling around the edges of the leaf and inside the structure?

Journi noticed, "There are lots of different yellows and browns, not just one...like there is a light brown, a dark brown and a medium brown."

Benjamin said, "Look at this leaf!" (a smallish, skinny oak leaf), "There is barely room for this leaf to have a middle!"

Encouraging children to look closely and describe what they see, and listening closely to what they have to say, and noting it, is a fundamental tenet for the educators in Reggio Emilia that inspires many of us.  Likewise, asking children to draw what they see with the time and the proper tools is also critical to understanding how the world works and how to really see.  By the way, have you rediscovered the third edition of The Hundred Languages of Children?  Such a rich, newly updated resource.  The last chapter by Edwards, Gandini and Forman lists 21 points about the work in Reggio Emilia for us to consider.  All of the points are provocative and worthy of much dialogue around our practice.  Among them, of course, are drawing (1), wondering (14) and group dialogue (19).  We highly recommend reading the entire new edition!

So...what are my themes in all this? Messing about, making connections, finding patterns, seeing, wondering, learning, playing, having fun, together, making beautiful work.  What could be more important?

Behind the Scenes

In the last blog post we promised that we would be ready to be back in school in September and we are, in fact, already there with video conference and coaching sessions...in Buffalo School 33,  Indianapolis School 60, and Buckingham Browne and Nichols in Cambridge, MA.  And, we are about to depart Vermont for a six week period of work in Boston, Buffalo, St. Louis, Memphis and Indianapolis. But first, indulge us and let us tell you how the wedding went.  Oh my, did we say that Ashley was the officiant? And that we were holding our breath about the weather and the state of the barn...would it be comfortable? Would it be too cold, too hot, too small, too, well, like a barn?

In the end, it all seemed perfect and magical and everything unfolded on a gray, misty, gentle rain kind of day.  Something about the weather and the century-old barn made the whole affair seem timeless.  Games on the lawn, umbrellas, soft clouds, a delicious meal, glowing candle light.  We were transported, the bride and groom, exuberant, the guests, thrilled.  It was a grand party.

Now, we are almost back to normal life, full of gratitude for our family and for celebrations, for the beauty of Vermont in the autumn and for the chance to work with hard working, visionary educators.   Happy fall to all of you.

Louise and Ashley