No Homework And Recess All Day

Jerry Mintz

Bravura Books

ISBN: 9780974525204

Year: 2003

Pages: 139

This slim book serves as a great introduction to the Democratic School Movement, and it is a movement. There are democratic schools of various kinds all over the world. There is no simple definition but all schools that claim to be democratic have meetings. Depending upon the school members may, or may not be required to attend. Likewise, what the meeting has power over varies from school to school. At Sudbury Valley the community has control over every aspect of school life. On the other hand, at Summerhill, the oldest democratic school in the world, the children have no control over the appointment of staff or whether a child should be kicked out. The school belongs to Zoe Neill Readhead, the daughter of the founder A. S. Neill. She controls the purse strings which is not democratic, but Zoe maintains that if the school had been run by a board of governors it would have caved in and collapsed when the British Government threatened it with closure in 1999.

From the histories of other schools described by Jerry, it does seem that to be successful schools need strong, charismatic leaders. But this is probably true of any kind of organisation that operates outside conventional norms. One essential point is that whatever kind of choices are given to children, they must be real. Children are not fools and won’t lend their energies to being conned. So, when setting something up it is important to be clear what power is available and then do nothing to undermine or circumvent it.

For Jerry, the heart of any democratic school is the school meeting. He is distrustful of meetings that rely on consensus and favours a method used by the Iroquois Confederacy. A whole chapter of the book is devoted to Iroquois Democracy. The Iroquois used a system of majority voting, but after a vote those in the minority would be invited to talk about why they had made their choice. Anyone would then be able to make another proposal and the process would continue until no-one had anything more to say. In this way a minority would not be sidelined or excluded by a vote going against them. The process is more communal and not adversarial. As Jerry says in the penultimate chapter :

The meeting process, and democracy itself, is not a science it’s an art.

Anyway, here’s a did you know to finish my first entry of the year. Did you know that the British planned to use exploding rats in World War Two as weapons of mass destruction? Neither did I until to day, but it’s true!

Trick or Treat, trick or treat Halloween’s here, move those feet! Run Away!

When I was a child Halloween was little more than bobbing an apple or two in a bowl of water or dangling one from a piece of string. At that time in England Plot Night on November 5th was much bigger than All Hallow’s Eve. Now, I hear my nephew and niece go out Trick-Or-Treating and Halloween is all the rage. I guess with all its sights and smells there is something to be said for what could well be the oldest European festival though personally I still feel trick or treat is a form of extortion. But beyond that, it is just bloody, hard work! Preparing and running Halloween parties is tough! Here’s what we did at Wise Hat English this year. I write we, though Hideko, my wife, did the lion’s share of the work, as well as the witches’ and the elves’. I just got the bloody knees.

So far, we’ve done a school Halloween Party three times and each time we’ve used our school, which is a trailer home. The children expect us to have a tunnel in the loft of the trailer and this year was no exception. Because the trailer has white walls creating a dark tunnel is a challenge, especially if one wants to avoid using pins. Having a child skewer themselves on a lose drawing pin while crawling in a black tunnel doesn’t bare thinking about. We settle for taping bin bags to the walls and ceiling and also over the shelves that we use for storage. We probably spend as long taking the tunnel down as we do sticking it up in an effort to keep the bags, still the un-environmental nature of black plastic haunts me. Paper just doesn’t hang right. For decorations we use laminated clip art, which is reusable. To give an idea of what the tunnel is like here is a version of the video we made to show the children at the party before they went up:

Being in a trailer the space we have is limited. We need to make sure children only move around in small groups. The best way to do that seems to give them name badges with different Halloween symbols on them. This year we made groups of 2-3 and prepared them in advance. When it’s time for children to go trick-or-treating or up the tunnel we just create the running order randomly by drawing a duplicate sticker from a bag or the like.

When I do parties I like the games to create a story or at least go with the theme. So this year after our opening toast (always done mainly as a photo opportunity) a drink and a muffin we had a silhouette guessing game. The aim was to get six hanging jack-o-lanterns to our "pumpkin drop" chute. The story was simply to go into the tunnel, get a pumpkin from the pumpkin king and roll it down the chute to be caught in a basket below. I never said it clearly but the idea of the first game was to "activate" the chute. After this the next game was Halloween Escape. By winning the game everyone got the right to do trick-or-treat. Wise Hat trick-or-treat is a trick-or-treat in miniature. In groups children would go to the door of the room, knock and chant. Meanwhile, I was in the corridor changing costumes. My favourite this year was the butcher who open the door and tried to give away a severed head (actually an Einstein mask) by mistake. "Sorry, sorry, just doing some cooking" I was happy that some children got the joke.

Following trick-or-treat it was tunnel time. This year it was introduced by Mrs Witch, a character quite similar to the mouse from "Bear and The Big Blue House". The drawback with the tunnel is that children are kept waiting for their turn and their turns are necessarily short. This year the solution was to put a video camera in the "Pumpkin King room" and connect it to a large TV downstairs in the party room. Most children got an extra kick out of leering into the camera and both the TV and the task of catching dropping pumpkins gave the waiting children something to do.

After the tunnel the party would end. We’d gather everyone for a group photo and take two or three photos featuring different expressions. "On a count of three everyone be scared. Three, two, one, Ooeh!"

The bloody knees, I mentioned at the beginning? A couple of hours crawling with bare knees will do it every time. Here they are after a few days recuperation. Next year, I think I might dress up as a roller bladder.

We are probably in for a lot more killing in the near future. It seems only a trickle away before the United States orchestrates an attack on Iran. Will you look from the side?. It seems almost impossible not to, which is, of course, the kind of impotence Blair and Bush and Co are happy with. Surely, if we believe in the notion of war crimes then we should all be making citizen’s arrests now!

Anyway, here is a quote to leave you with:

I’m sure though, that Churchill was under no illusions what would have happened to him if Britain had lost the war while he was prime-minister. There would have been a vapid hide trial and an execution.

A hide trial? Well let’s face it. A show trial has more to do with hiding the truth than establishing it. As with watching a master magician, what you don’t see is far more important than what you do.

Take the trial of Saddam Houssein. What a soulless piece of flimflam. And what contempt to finally have him hanged on a holy day associated with sacrifice. I think the Iraq Freedom Congress has a concise summary, though I think the opening sentence reads a little strangely.

I got the link to the Iraq Freedom Congress from a post to the IATEFL Global Issue’s Special Interest Group. I find the Congress interesting because of its organisational structure. This has what it calls People’s Houses “where local people gather, organise, decide and exercise their sovereignty”. This sounds good to me though I am less certain about the following:

IFC offices are all elected except for the initial start up period or where elections can not be held due to security considerations. In such circumstances, the upper tier offices will appoint relevant officers.

One can understand the caution about holding elections in areas where death squads are operating. But I wonder why upper tier offices are required at all. If an organisation has a clear philosophy and a clear manifesto what need for top tier decisions? Why have such a hierarchy?

Without hierarchy, there would be no dictators. How much hierarchy does democracy really need?

The DJ, Michita Kimura, changed this. He departed from the prepared script. He actually listened to what was said. He threw some questions to me and even got me juggling. I’d taken three balls with me - I always like to juggle before doing a presentation as I find it calming. I’ve no idea what juggling sounds like on the radio but getting me to juggle was a great idea.

Better than playing Sting(!)

The program has a musical interlude in the middle and originally the idea was to play a Sting song. Hideko had said she liked Sting. When I was asked the answer that popped into my head was The Doors. However, we had brought a selection of Wise Hat Songs with us and after listening to them before the show the director decided to go with The Weather Song - better than playing Sting he commented.

While the song was the DJ chatted to us and found out that we made our own games and then got us talking about that in the second half. I mentioned Fugitive Games, a business I’d started with some friends long, long ago. Actually, Fugitive Games was one reason I first got to Japan, but that’s another story.

I think language teachers would do well to emulate DJ Kimura. It’s fine to have a plan but in many senses a plan is only as useful as you are able to depart from it. Teachers who manage to stick to their plan for the whole lesson probably aren’t being aware enough. The more teachers can be aware of what is actually happening and interact with awareness the more students will respond and become involved. Put down those plans and fly!

“Personally, I don’t think competition is fun.”

I use a fair number of competitive games in my kids’ classes and have also incorporated some of the principles of cooperation and non- competition you have been talking about on this list and on your website. As others have mentioned, adding an element of competition can spice things up and generate a high level of anticipation and emotional involvement that may or may not improve actual learning. Recently, however, the behavior of several of my students has been prompting me to question the wisdom of using competitive games at all. Two of my students in particular, one 5 years old and one 9, both boys, break down into tears and even throw tantrums at even the slightest indication that they will lose a game. They will resort to lying, cheating, or giving up completely to avoid losing a game. Even simple games such as a Card Track race (commonly used in FO) or the wildly popular (but competitive) Switchit game created by David Lisgo, can prompt strong reactions in these two boys. If they are winning they LOVE playing, but ONLY if they are winning. Just a few weeks ago, the 9-year old sensed that he might come in second. He grabbed his piece, pulled it off the table and burst into tears, “Aaaa, yaruki nakunatta.” He spent the entire remainder of the lesson sulking in his chair. I was at a loss as to what to tell him. Despite efforts by myself and classmates to bring him back into the fold, he stubbornly refused. Not exactly a healthy learning experience. Disturbing, in fact. These aren’t antisocial kids. When playing cooperative games or doing other activities, songs, pairwork, etc. that involve helping other students or participating as a group, they are fine.

So… my question, or call for advice to you as an educator is, what strategies would you recommend in dealing with examples like the above, AFTER the fact. Besides not introducing the element of competition in the first place, I would be interested in hearing from you and learning how to help these kids get beyond the unhealthy and counterproductive “Winning at all costs” outlook.

Kaj Schwermer
Osaka

Note: The following discussion originally took place on the ETJ Owners list. I thought it would be good to bring it to a wider audience. I’ve added it to this blog section so that additional comments can be posted. I’ve arranged the posts in the order in which they came in. This is an amalgamation of several threads, though not all posts are here. Permission was sought before reposting and some authors preferred that their posts not be used. I’ve edited the timestamp so that it shows the original date of each post. My thanks to everyone involved.

Chris (Hunt)
21 February 2006

Doing a demonstration workshop with children you never know what to expect. The number, ages and experience of the children are generally unknowable. Even the room can be an unknown. How big is it, how much furniture does it have, is there a whiteboard or blackboard, is the board magnetic?

The last point is crucial. Furniture and chairs can usually be moved, as part of a game if necessary, activities can be altered to take into account a slippery floor but if one is expecting a magnetic board and does get one – it can throw a wobbly difficult to recover from. It’s so easy to forget to check but so crucial to do so.

The space was fine, a large central area surrounded by a perimeter of tables. An audience could sit and rest and take notes. The blackboard was large and as magnetic as a skunk’s behind. A small magnetic whiteboard had been placed on an easel and was certainly usable in a crisis though not with the games that I had in mind. No room for football. No place for Super Snail to try his paces. Fortunately I had remembered to ask about the board and had blue-tack to hand (at least I did once I had recovered it from the bottom of the bag it somehow fell into).

There were seventeen children altogether. I made a point of counting them, several times. Counting is familiar and easy to grasp. While counting one can begin to grasp the nature, mood and capabilities of the children. Counting gives one time to think and by including oneself in the count it is possible to start making connections.

I am a solid believer in focus, especially from the middle (actually my middle is soft and fatty but I digress). Where children given focus is where they will learn actively from. A focused child can learn more in five minutes than an unfocused one can in an hour. Of course, getting a group of children to focus on the same thing is no easy task. Even if the children all end up participating in a game one cannot be certain that they are all focusing on what you would like them to focusing on or even focusing on the same thing. Many books on teaching language advise teachers to change activities quickly. This is a kind of food fight effect. Splatter them with lots of different comestibles and hopefully some may stick, they might even eat something and get some nourishment. However I think the alternative of offering genuine choice is much better in the long term. The lesson can become a buffet of learning. The difficulty is that this requires trust and it also requires both children and teacher to take on different roles from the norm. How to achieve this in one demonstration class? Please let me know!

Now I’ve laid some background I better get on with the show. Sometimes that is all a demonstration class is, a show. However, I think this time there was a little more.

When the lesson was due to start I found a group of children sitting nonchalantly around a table at the back of a room. I had no idea whether they were supposed to be joining me or not or whether they wanted to. I just knew I had about 80 minutes. So I busied myself setting a timer. There was no clock in the room but I would have done it anyway. The timer gave me a hook to catch onto the children’ curiosity. It had a big numbers and required a lot of button pushes to set completely. By having difficulty counting I began to engage the children so when I finally invited them out into the middle of the room they were willing to come. I put the timer on the whiteboard.

I began as I usually begin by leaving the room. The first phrase I get children to use after saying hello is, “Come here!” Usually it is straightforward to get children to say this in context, but this group were different. There were some young ones who either couldn’t work out what I was saying or were too shy to speak out. A group of older boys surely did understand the phrase but for a long time decided not to use it. I tried various ways using a parrot flag, exiting and re-entering the room again and again, everything short of talking to a puppet or soft toy which I have done successfully with three year olds. One or two of the boys said “Goodbye!” and I tried to get them to say “Go away!” instead but that didn’t really get across. It probably took over ten minutes and if it hadn’t been for the attitude of the boys I would have switched to something else, but I felt there was an unspoken game going on, not so much a clash of wills as an unspoken negotiation over terms of participation. At the time I thought the process was important and as I write this now I do so still.

I did eventually get one or two ‘come here’s’ enough to move into a variation of King For A bit. Using a second timer (it pays to have two) I set it for twenty seconds and gave a string of imperative commands which the children obeyed. I then gave them 20 seconds to give me commands. They were quick to catch on. Sometimes I’ve had groups who take two or three rounds before working out they can order the teacher around. This group soon had been working hard. They were especially keen on getting me to do spin jumps.

After this I told them all to leave the room which after the come here performance they had no trouble with. I donned a policeman’s helmet and went into Find the Penny I had brought a real British one pound coin with me. Using genuine realia where possible makes games much more interesting. The game is very simple but deeper than it looks. The policeman searches for the penny by ordering the other players to show their hands, which they must do immediately upon command. The players try to prevent the policeman finding the penny by passing it from hand to hand.

I began the game with the children sitting down in a line. One of the boys put the coin in his sandal which provided an excellent opportunity to go over the rules. I told them that shoes and pockets were out. The coin has to stay in a hand at all times. They got this quickly and were willing to accept the rule without cheating which I feel the process of unspoken negotiation I mentioned contributed to. I then got the children to stand up and told them they could move around. Unsurprisingly this happened slowly. Children can be very cautious. I decided to make the oldest-looking boy a policeman. He agreed to have a go but refused to wear the helmet and this set a trend that the rest followed (with the first ever group I did the game with wearing the helmet was a key attraction). With the boy as policeman this left me free to encourage the children to move around but they still had the mobility of treeless sloths. I began to think the game wasn’t interesting (especially since the helmet was a dud) but when I asked them if they wanted to keep playing the game or do something else they were keen to keep playing. I had misread the group. We ended playing the game for over twenty minutes. They became better and better at playing. At one point I even had to ask the teachers watching for help because the coin had become so elusive. The only way I could get them to agree to stop playing the game was eventually by setting a timer.

After Find the Penny I decided to do a co-operative quiz using football (soccer) as a theme. I used the blackboard for this. We settled on Japan vs England and played five minutes each half. The children divided into three groups and one at time I asked each group a series of yes no questions. I used Britain as the theme. A correct answer moved the ball towards the English goal by the throw of one dice. An incorrect answer and the ball moved towards the Japanese goal. When the ball reached the goal I used a goal-keeper question. This was giving the American equivalent of a British English word, for example, candy and sweets. If the children listened carefully they could hear me give the answer. This was done “accidentally on purpose”. The final score was 1-0 to Japan. Some of the sentence forms were tough for many of the children, for example, “It rains more in Britain than Japan,” and “The English queen is 162.5 cm’s tall.” However, learning to accept that one cannot understand everything when dealing with a foreign language is something I think it is important for children to get used to. One reason to use non-competitive games is that it becomes easier to do this. Competition can be more inhibitive.

After the quiz I decided a change of pace was required so I fished out the crocodile. If you don’t have an itai wani then get one! Available at all (well most) Japanese toy shops. It is a variant of pop-up-pirate. Players take turns pushing a tooth. Push the wrong one and the jaws slam shut. It is a natural for pronouns. I start with “You or me?” and go on from there. The group were very quick to work out that if they kept saying you they could force me to push the tooth that would get me bitten. Typically, though, some children interfered with this plan because they wanted a turn themselves.

The group got the concept of you and me so quickly that I decided to introduce he and she. This is somewhat unnatural compared with “You me, him, her?” but having tried using him and her I think it is easier for children to grasp he and she than him and her and he and she are more useful.. I used single words rather than complete sentences. I think this is important. I’ve seen children learn sentence chunks and be unable to break them down into component parts. I favour a jigsaw approach. I aim to give children components that they can manipulate to create their own meanings. I think of language as an act of creation.

I used the timer to move from the crocodile onto something else. That something was Snake, and this was the one moment I found I needed to be careful. Snake is a flashcard game and I like to use a box or tray for cards that are identified correctly. But the box I pulled out had things in it, this was unplanned and naturally the things were much more interesting than flashcards. I also noticed that some children had moved behind me so that they were under the blackboard. and unable to see the snake I had drawn for the game.

To have pushed to do the game at that point would have been a mistake. Flexibility is key. I stopped the game and gave full attention to emptying the box and showing the contents which weren’t actually that exciting. Once the box was empty I shooed the children under the blackboard back into a position where they could see the snake and we proceeded without incident. They were familiar with the vocabulary (feelings) and the game was a bit too easy.

The reason I had used feelings was that I wanted to play One Step Forward. Given the space I decided it was best to split them into girls and boys and take turns. We had a riot, and suddenly time was up and the lesson was over.

As the teachers who had been observing filed out of the room one of them commented that I must be knackered, but I wasn’t . I think the amount of energy one has left at the end of a class is reasonable indication of how it went (assuming one has been spending any). I’m not thinking of physical energy but mental. It’s very possible to get energy from a class when it goes well.

I felt the demonstration had gone well, though I wondered what the observers made of it. There is always a trade off between giving genuine choice and getting through material. Counting up the activities done I noticed I had done no more than I would do in a class half the length. But I feel giving genuine choice is important. as a teacher my goal is to encourage children to learn for themselves. As a human being I think children have a bellyful of being told what to do and lack of choice is damaging.

One problem I have with demonstration classes is that inevitably the teacher must take the lead and introduce games and activities. There is little room for the children to take initiative. This is something that can only take place over time, but I felt there were flashes of this potential in the class. I think I made connections beyond the teacher student level, though I have no way of knowing for sure.

Anyway, I guess this is a bit long for a blog entry. Being a novice blogger I don’t know, but I suspect it is so. Yo!

Oh! I forgot to mention that I did the entire workshop in English and that I finished by pointing this out to the children. 80 odd minutes without Japanese! I think it is important to point out and appreciate such achievements though I wonder if I should have used Japanese to do so. All of the children would then have got the point. As it was some of them were pleasantly and genuinely surprised.

OK! I’ll stop now.

Thursday, 13th January 2005 - Midori

There’s no business like shoe business! I finally did Whose Shoe in a large class and it went down wonders.

I hadn’t planned to do so. It was one of those spontaneous events that just occur naturally and beautifully if one gives them the space to do so.

There are two classes at Midori. The first class is with the 3-4 year olds and done in their room with the children sitting down at their desks. The space is definitely a little inhibiting. At one point point it would have been natural to do hokey-cokey with them but there wasn’t the room.

Having said this the children have developed their own game which is to grab hold of my hand as I move past them. I then have to say “Let go!” several times before being released. I always thank them very politely for letting me go which perhaps one reason why it has become a game.

Some children say, “Let go!” when they want me to go near them. Others will use the phrase correctly to those children restraining me. Some say “Come here!” and some say, “Shake!” and offer their hands

Sometimes it can be difficult to move onto something else.

One thing I’ve noticed is that some children have their favourite objects that they like to see every class. I this class eggs and gorillas are popular. I think it is important to respond to children’s requests. To ignore a child is to invite that child to ignore you.

Anyway, back to the shoes.

In the next class for some reason one of the children said “Shoe!”

Sometimes at kindergartens I go around a group point and half-say half-sing shoe, sock or foot, depending upon what each child is wearing (or not wearing). Possibly the child remembered this. At the time I was doing plurals and stressing the zz sound that comes at the end. I find if I ham up the ending of plurals it helps children to notice the difference, otherwise they can never realise that the ending changes depending upon the number of items.

I was doing hand/hands by keeping my hands behind my back until needed and ear/ears by turning sideways to the group to show ear and facing them to show ears. When I heard the cry of “Shoe” it was the work of a moment to slip off my indoor shoes and use them.

For flexibility I definitely recommend deck shoes over trainers (did someone say sneakers?). Shoes are useful props if one can take them off quickly. It’s possible to walk out of deck shoes but not if the shoes have laces.

(I’m having a déjà vu attack - have I written this before?)

After using my shoes I suddenly realised that here was a chance to experiment. I had a basket and began collecting shoes, one from each child. I ended up with going on forty shoes. One or two children didn’t want to part with a shoe and a couple managed to give me both! The basket I had wasn’t really big enough. I put it to one side and we did a bit of hopping. I then got them to hop to one end of the room and the business of returning the shoes began.

At first I took one shoe and offered it with the question “Your shoe?” I realise this isn’t a full sentence or question but my focus was getting across the concept of yours and mine. With young children a concept should take priority over full sentences every time.

I quickly realised that returning one shoe at a time was going to take far too long. I quickly moved onto one shoe in each hand and by the end I had shoes dangling from each finger. It was great to hear some children say “My show!” (there were some “Me shoes!” as well). It was also great to see children identify a friend’s shoe and help return it.

We’d built up a lot of energy and so I decided to use Verbmania. Two plus minutes of dancing, spinning, hopping and jumping. We had a riot, albeit a joyful one. After that we finished with Eric Carle and Bill Martin Junior’s Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? We’d done it before but it was good to do it again.

It had been a great morning. I figured I’d repeat the class twice more the following week. Alas, none of the children were wearing shoes. It was bare feet all round and I had to resort to something else.

Many young children go through a period of mirror writing. They write some letters backwards. A backwards c or s is instantly recognisable to an adult but a backwards b looks like a d and vice-versa. A child may have much more difficulty noticing. A child might have the sound and shape in their brain but somehow it doesn’t come out quite right.

I guess one reason for mirror writing is lack of muscle memory. Too much brain processing is going on while the hand is writing? If you want to experience this then try writing the alphabet out in mirror image. Not something I can do automatically though I can write with either hand.

Writing out the same letter many times in a row can help develop muscle memory. I think the way a child learns to write the letters help too. There are no fixed rules for writing the alphabet as there are for writing kana and kanji in Japanese. However when writing b it helps to start at the top and when writing d it helps to start by writing a c and turning it into a d.

With children under the age of 6 I’m not strict about writing letters. Actually I don’t really do writing with them unless they request it. I do various writing games with older children - d, f, i, j, p, t, x, y use two strokes, k uses three.

Some great suggestions came up on the list including doing a disco dance and using a thumbs up gesture with both hands as an aid to remember which letter is which. There was also discusssion about making a mobile and a phonics bed.

I’ve put together a few graphics on this which you are welcome to download if they could be of any use. If you have questions or comments please contact me. I’ll be happy to make changes to the graphics if people can think of any improvements.