Inventing Us

The opposite of play isn't work, it's rote. ~Edward HallowellThis might sound like an odd thing for a teacher to write, but I sometimes get the idea that knowing stuff is the enemy of education. There is little gratification in it for me when I've envisioned how children will do something, then they proceed to do it in just the way I've imagined. Certainly, I could claim it as some evidence of experience on my side, but it also makes me worry that it's also evidence of rote on the children's side. I'll leave it to future teachers to worry about teaching the kids to follow instructions if that's what they feel they need them to do. Much better things are happening in our school, it seems, when instructions are minimal and I'm constantly proven wrong in my expectations. Fortunately, when working with young children in a play-based environment, that's more the norm than the exception. Our classroom, every day, should be one big experiment, a place where things are not known by either the…

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