Hard Work And Suffering A Kids

Teaching preschool is hard work. It is physically and emotionally demanding. At the end of a day in the classroom I'm done.

This is not a complaint, but rather a statement of fact. In almost any other job there are times, even entire days or weeks, when it's possible to just phone it in, but that's not an option for preschool teachers. The routine physical demands of up and down, of playing, of lifting and carrying, being on your knees all day, day-after-day, take their toll. I don't know any teacher who has been at this for any length of time who doesn't experience back and joint pain. And it's even more taxing emotionally. At any given moments we're listening with our entire selves, consoling, counseling, coaching, or otherwise supporting highly emotional people through what for them is a crisis. We pour ourselves into these children because it is our job, but also because we love them. More often than not, I finish a classroom day buoyed and proud by the work I've done, but I'm also wrung out in a way that nothing else wrings me out.

I love the work. We love our work. It's hard work.

Earlier this week, I wrote about people who worry about the children we teach. They worry that if we leave them to educate themselves by asking and answering their own questions through their play that  they will never learn about hard work. This is BS of the highest order, of course. Indeed, I've never seen a playing child who was not working hard. They show us they are working hard in the intensity of their concentration as they try to add one more block to the top of their tower. They show us their work ethic as they fully engage in the intense back-and-forth of negotiations over who is really going to be the queen. No one works harder than a child who is struggling with a puzzle or with balancing along a curb or trying to summon up the courage to take a leap. They are always working hard to process the confusing world around them through their dramatic play, their storytelling, and the strong emotions they wear on their sleeves.

No, children who play show they know everything they will ever need to know about hard work. What they may not know about it arbitrary suffering. It occurs to me that this is really what people are saying when they "worry" about play-based education. Life is hard, the reasoning goes, it is full of all sorts of things you don't want to do, but you must do them nevertheless so, in the name of teaching this lesson, we must require young children to suffer at least a little by commanding them to do things they don't want to do. What's missing in this argument is that children, just like all humans, are already doing plenty of things they don't want to do. We don't need to go out of our way to create arbitrary, even punitive, suffering, like say (for many of us at least) algebra, in order to "teach" this hard lesson. Our first communications are cries of pain or hunger, of suffering, of experiencing life as suffering. It's such a self-evident lesson that even infants know it. Manufacturing lessons in suffering strike me as unnecessarily cruel. 

As a preschool teacher of a certain age, I don't necessarily want to squat and lift. It hurts my knees, but of course I do it because some amount of suffering is required to do this thing I love to do. Hard work and suffering are built into life no matter what. The answer is not to "get used to it" as the worriers would have it, but rather to play, to spend life doing things you choose, things you love, because that's the only thing that stands against the suffering.

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A Wander Or A Quest Your Journey Recomended

Last week, I hiked along the Kerikeri River in Northland New Zealand. My destination was Waianijwaniwa, or Rainbow Falls. I'd been warned that it wouldn't be as spectacular as other times of the year due to mid-summer drought conditions, but that wasn't for me the point. I had a free day in this paradise and it was the hike that mattered.

I started out at a saunter. Fellow trail users passed me at a jog or brisk walk, clearly out for the exercise. I was not in it for physical fitness, even as I was aware that I needed to move my body as I was in the midst of a stretch of 11 airplanes over a seven day span. No, I'd undertaken this hike for the pure recreation of it, the forest bathing, the deep breathing, and, of course, the scenery. I had Eric Carle's sloth in mind, "Slowly, slowly," but my mind wandered as it tends to do on solitary walks: I've written before about my walking habit, which it really a wandering habit. This is when I do a substantial amount of my writing, which is to say my reflecting, which is to say my life's work. Plato tells us that Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living," and there is nothing like a good, solitary wander for making that happen.

The signpost told me that my destination was some four kilometers distant and would take approximately an hour. I fully intended for it to take all morning. At intervals, I paused to listen, to the tumbling water, to the cacophony of insects, to the rustle of breezes in the canopy. I took a few photos, but not many: I told myself that I was not going to live this day through a viewfinder. It was a warm day, even as the trail was in shade. I began to sweat. It was an easy path, even as there were ups and downs. I began to breath deeply. Soon I noticed that I was no longer sauntering, but rather chugging along. Slowly, slowly, I said to myself, but soon I was chugging again. I wasn't being driven by the peer pressure of my fellow trail users. It wasn't that I was pressed for time. I wasn't trying to beat bad weather. I came to realize that it was my destination that pulled me.

I wasn't wandering after all, but rather getting somewhere. There was a waterfall ahead and the longer I walked, the more I found myself anticipating it, listening for it, expecting it around the next bend or over the next rise. And it was that that was driving me.

It occurred to me that I've hiked to many waterfalls in my life, on three continents, and in at least a dozen countries. Waterfalls are worthy destinations and before long I simply gave myself over to the quest, to heavy breathing and sweat. I knew to expect smaller falls along the way: I paused to take them in, but soon moved on toward the big one. Then there they were, around a bend and without announcing themselves in the roar I typically associate with such natural phenomena due to the relative trickle of water in the river this time of year. I was here! That was the point. I stood before them for quite some time, but before cooling down, I marched to the top of the falls, which, after all, I told myself, was my real destination. There I sat for a long time. I then hunted for a tea house that I'd read was nearby, but it was closed for the day due to the death of a family pet.

After a time, I decided it was time to return for no other reason than that I'd decided it was time. My limbs were loose and my breathing easy. I'd seen all this before, which is the nature of a return trip. I wasn't headed home, but it was back toward the place I was staying in the Kerikeri Basin. I wasn't hungry, but knew I would be after another hour on the trail. As I descended back down into the forest, everything was different. Now I really could saunter. Now I really could wander. Now I really could reflect. It wasn't the sloth that was on my mind now, but rather Maurice Sendak's Max on the return from his wild rumpus amongst the wild things. I took my time, stopping often, anticipating the lunch that awaited me, but not with the urgency of the waterfall, but rather with the knowledge that I'd acquired a kind of mastery. It was the difference between the familiar and unfamiliar, the old and the new. This trail was now known to me whereas only moments before I had passed through it as unknown on my way to an unknown.

This is the story of learning, of living. It's often told as a circle, always returning to the same place, but it's a coming and going as well. Or perhaps it's a story better told as a kind of spiral, because even as we return to the same place, it's different because the outward journey changes us and we, in turn, upon our return, change the place we call "home," which is the ultimate purpose of any journey, be it a wander or quest: to go somewhere else and bring something back. And our world will never be the same.

I've just published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!