The Rookery

As many of you know, this year the teachers are devoting a portion of their professional development to the theory and science of play.  We are reading numerous books on play and brain development as well as taking a look at woods play specifically.  Our work includes a lot of reflection and discussion as a staff including a fascinating "agree/disagree" session where we considered how much we should intervene in the woods play.

A case in point:  some children have figured out how to make bows — bows that work surprisingly well.

 They were created to shoot at targets and that is all that students were using them for.  The day that it happened, we came together as a staff.  What should we do?  Were these weapons and therefore prohibited in Prairie Creek play?  How could we manage the significant safety concerns?  What message did we send the students if we shut it down unilaterally?  These were older kids — what would happen to the play when younger kids saw what they were doing and attempted to copy?

Needless to say, we can't just flip to page 21, section 14 of the Progressive Educator's Handbook to read what should be done in the case of peaceful bow making.  We wouldn't want to do that, anyway, because it is through struggling with the ideas we really get to understand how the woods play and our students' development interact.

What happened?  We asked the students to put the bows up for a day as we considered the options.  As a staff, we decided we would be O.K with trying an archery range but that it would have to be outside of the woods area and with clearly defined rules.  But how to work with the bow makers?  Should we just tell them our decision?

In the end, a few teachers met with the key archery players and we expressed our concerns:  we didn't want anyone to get hit by an "arrow" and we wanted to make sure little kids who were seeing the bows and arrows didn't think it was O.K. to use weapons in the woods.

"Well, what if we only did archery on, like, an archery range?  Maybe it could like an archery school.  We could be the teachers,"  shared one student.  I brought up that little kids might still get confused if they were in the woods. And the archers agreed that they wanted to be out of the woods.  We scouted for locations and the kids were excited by the strip of woods to the south of the school.  "There's tons of stuff for arrows!"  "Can we get some hay bales so we don't lose our arrows?"

We assured them that we could (in fact, we had already worked on procuring bales) and, when the bales arrived the next day, the archers and I unloaded them and carried them across the little field to the new archery school.

As teachers, we're under no illusions that our work is done.  Just today, students expressed interest in blow darts being allowed in archery school.  But by responding to situations as they occur instead of enforcing a rigid set of prescribed rules, we are helping the students to develop the skills they need to navigate their social/play world more independently, safely and competently.

Cathy has written a lovely entry on the workshop we had today with Nancy Gregerson about children's self awareness, self esteem and social issues.  It touches on some of these same themes.

I filmed a little of our archery range, a new corn husk animal/doll business and a snippet of a multi-age football game.