Notes on What I Learned by Chaperoning Third Graders on an Overnight Last Week June 1, 2023

   No matter how good the adults try to make it, a school will always have an institutional, alienating quality--having taught a class in an actual prison once, I would say that by comparison schools for children often manage to mute, but not extinguish this entirely, through the ongoing determination of teachers and administrators who are in the school because they care about the well being of children and tap into a feeling of selfless and protective love for them. Despite this, there is always a tension between the soul's longing for freedom and the rules, the schedule and the safety protocols that generate the need to clamp down on those who would clown through a lesson, talk during a fire drill, distract one's friends from working, light mattresses on fire, or take hostages. It might sound glib to say that schools differs from prisons only in the degree of oppressiveness they engender, but a conversation with just about any K-12 school adjustment counselor could quickly dispel that notion, I'm sure.

    It was an identification with the plight of the institutionalized student that brought me to teaching. I don't say that casually. I suffered and wondered at alternatives for a good part of my A-/B+ academic career. I know what it's like to be told to do something that my own soul seemed to be rebelling against for years at a time, for reasons that were clearly for someone else's benefit, not mine. Can I say that? I liked reading and writing, and discussion and sometimes math, or at least the artificial strain of school task math that allows you to demonstrate you know how to do it,  though you need to be reminded of why you would ever need it. I was frequently suspicious of the school game, even while I could play it well and felt completely at home on its turf of thinking, reading and writing, probably as a result of subconsciously mirorring the language patterns and life strategies modeled by my father and his parents, who had all been lawyers. They liked to use words.

    Other examples of despair inducing, soul crushing, buried alive for unimaginable endless time in school you ask? We all have them: Rows of seats, a textbook to get through, calendars of days on and days off. Assignments. Tests and quizzes. The grovelling for grades. Even in college, courses turned out to have assumptions behind them that you would absorb information and succeed by restating it in your own words, with footnotes as if this qualified you to lead other institutions, or be entrusted with some degree of managerial or professional authority in some real high class racket and be rewarded with the possibility of not having to live paycheck to paycheck but take trips and stay in hotels and golf and ski and dock a sailboat in a marina and maybe drive only new or newish cars.

    Instead of such tawdry and mercenary goals, schools instead could be gateways to collective human transformation and self-actualization. A school experience, for example, could be constructed of choices. Say: "We expect you to learn new things through your own effort. We can show you how to teach yourself through practicing with these materials. We think you're ready for this or for this, which would you like to try?" This is the experience of students in a Montessori classroom, which is a workshop set up for students to learn and practice by an adult guide offering suggestions and invitations for children to maintain their own initiative and dignity to choose what appeals to and motivates them. This is the kind of childhood that can lead to a life wherein people are able to do more than respond to directions but consider the value, purpose, and possible consequences of choices they make for themselves from a foundation of self- knowledge and a natural and confident sense of relatedness to others and to the natural world and the cosmos itself, so that they might become fascinated with some useful or beautiful discipline or combination of disciplines, that drives them to make a contribution to the world.

     What's more, schools could be residential, and nature-based, featuring choices and offering children the natural responsibility to navigate outside the learned helplessness of being protected and controlled at all times by schools and parents danger-proofing their lives and in so doing, denying them the opportunity to navigate the stresses of uncertainty, discomfort, boredom and the development of self-reliance.

    What do I mean? I mean when children go from homes where their parents house, feed, shelter, and keep children entertained or stimulated (with the help of televisions) and largely removed from the negotiations of community life it is easy for children to become like hot house flowers. Very successful at certain things like test taking, or direction following, skateboarding, or various obsessional activity (social media use? Hanging out with friends?), but lacking equanimity in the face of unexpected change, bored, easily frustrated, anxious, needy and easily fixated on dopamine producing experiences--excitement, stimulation, video games, entertainment, (and all too easily, including intoxicants when old enough to have access to them). The path to a more enlightened and resilient species runs through neither the over-extended nuclear family, even if affluent, or traditional institutions but somewhere else--maybe somewhere like Nature's Classroom.

    Nature's Classroom is "a residential environmental education program" that lasts for one to 5 days. Our Montessori School offers third graders the chance to stay for approximately one day (including an overnight), while fourth and fifth graders stay for two nights and one half day. Even in this short time, children transform. Here are some moments of transformation I noticed:

     Students pack for this trip. They bring bug spray to protect themselves from ticks and mosquitos, and sunscreen, hats, sunglasses and water bottles, a toothbrush and a raincoat and a sleeping bag. They several changes of clothes. The bring books and flashlights and cameras. Younger children bring stuffed animals. Some vastly overpack and lug zippered bags big enough to go on a one week Disneyland Cruise. For a day, they are removed from without whatever it was they couldn't bring with them that they have grown accustomed to helping them live under a roof with parents and siblings. For many of the younger ones, it's their first time going to sleep apart from their parents or grandparents.

     One of the biggest challenges for me as a chaperone was determining how I could foster a routine where the six third grade boys bunking in two rooms would go to sleep at a reasonable hour. When we first unpacked, I overheard and fretted over several talking about their plans to have a pillow fight, or a "caterpillar fight", where they crawl into one sleeping bag and wrestle. What could I do besides say no? What could I do to respect their need for adventure and freedom, and keep things from going off the rails?

    My strategy was to declare a ten minute lights on talking time, then a ten minute low lights time, then I laid a flat mattress on the floor for them to prop themselves on their elbows and bellies on and I turned all the lights out and read them two mildly scary ghost stories by the light of a flashlight. Then I declared it time to go to bed, reading on their own if they want, but having the rooms be silent. That all worked pretty well. I remember K. earnestly describing his theory of what happened in the second story--the girl on the train was actually a ghost. I remember the moderately scary story giving them just enough edge to feel they were not being coddled, but challenged, and how when I urged them to be part of the effort to go to sleep because tomorrow was going to be a day that would call on us all to be well rested, that spoke to them and off they went after some tooth brushing and peeing on the seat, and complaining about there being pee on said seat.

    It was 10:15 when it finally got quiet, which was actually fine, even though most of them were up at 5 am, and breakfast wouldn't be until 8. After it got quiet and I fell asleep, I woke at 2 to the tossing and turning of a restless kid on a squeaky metal bunk. I walked over in the dark, asked if he was o.k. did he want to sleep on a bunk in the other room? He didn't. Some kids who do not fall asleep or stay asleep easily at home, probably and understandably find it even harder to do this in some strange bunk room. 

    Once 5 of the 6 of them realized that they were awake and had a super majority, they began to raise their voices and run around and wrestle and throw socks at each other and generally whoop it up even as the last straggler appeared to be sleeping. I would have rather they lowered their voices, but I was o.k. with letting the preponderance of the group decide when the day was going to start. As in many moments of chaperoning, it was somewhat complicated to decide what was o.k. and what wasn't as children test limits. You can't always rely on rules, because rules don't always incorporate wisdom even if they make things temporarily less chaotic. I thought about how puppies wrestle and play to learn how to negotiate competition and aggressive vitality to be better and more confident members of the pack. This seems to me to be essential mammal boy activity, so total prohibition of wrestling and shouting is counterproductive. Still, navigating and negotiating what is safe without having things be absolutely safe was something I thought to be the fundamental right of these boys. In miniature, this is the ongoing challenge of the chaperone, and of the Montessori guide in general. You never want to inhibit legitimate forms of activity, but you don't want them to learn limits by getting injured or injuring someone either. At 6:30 I suggested that once everyone had packed and placed their sleeping bags and luggage at the foot of their bunks that we could go out to the playground (where we ended up being a good hour earlier than anyone else).  Four of them started a soccer game. They asked me to make fair teams. I told them I trusted them to make fair teams. They were still struggling, so I said, "Who is the oldest one of you, and who is youngest? Line up by age." Once they did, I suggested that the youngest pick one of the remaining players, and the oldest pick the the other. They said, never mind we know what the fair teams are, it can't be B. and M. because they're too good, so it has to be J and B and M and me. They had the answer themselves.  I threw a football with the other two, building up their confidence that they could catch and throw accurately, until they started to play with each other and I could back out.

    One of the traditions of the camp is to have a "Quiet Sing" before going to sleep. A "DJ" puts transparencies of lyrics and chords on a screen and a musician or group of councilor-musicians leads the singing. They do radio hits and "remixes" of songs that kids would think were too corny if they weren't reworded in silly ways, which they were. "Take Me Home Country Roads" became "Take Me Home Hairy Gnomes." Councilor Steve played the cajon and ukelele, Councilor John played the baritone sax, which was impressive. Even if it wasn't a sing-along instrument, it added depth to have a horn section. I sat on a 5 gallon bucket and played the guitar and sang as needed. It was fun to be a camp celebrity. There were 70 campers counting the older kids. In the morning, one of the campers in my cabin said, "I really liked the Quiet Sing last night," then he turned and looked at me and declared "Michael, that was you! I didn't know you played guitar!" Ah, fame.

    In the cafeteria there is a magnificent system by which children serve as "waitrons" and announcements and facts and jokes and games are offered, through a series of call and response rituals. There are lessons which give kids a sense of how long it takes for glass, plastic, aluminium,  styrofoam, and compost to break down (1000 years, a million years, 450 years, forever and 8 weeks). They also clean the tables in 8 designated waves, plates and bowls, trash, glasses and silverware, compost,  uneaten food, and ragged down the table. At the conclusion, the meal host announces the "ORT Report" with a syncopated chant

Oooh, ahh, the ort report

oooh, ahh, ort report (shakey shakey shakey)

Oooh, ahh,  the ort report

oooh, ahh, ort report

(yeah, baby!)

And the total liquid volume of left over food waste gets announced, usually some number from 6 to 20 quarts in a five gallon bucket.

     There is a lot of consciousness the Nature's Classroom puts into not shaming children into eating more than they want to, or trying to take food off site to make the conservation number look better. The lesson is a balanced one of awareness of one's effect on the earth and community and authentic personal choice. I can imagine that for some, this is the beginning of a new way of thinking about being a responsible genuine, free and conscious human being.

     I had the thought that these few days have a profound effect on children's lives. In a very short time, they learn that they can take responsibility for themselves, and that can and do have a responsibility to the community and to the earth that makes them feel competent and contributing in ways their lives at home may have never asked of them. There is only so much that even Montessori education can do to create the conditions for a more evolved society. Authentic choice and respect for students can go a long way, but so much more is possible when students experience life outside their own family structure and are expected to carry their own bags, serve and clean up their own meals, and learn and support each other. After just one day, you can see for many children, a transformation in maturity, confidence and enthusiasm for learning and experiencing things. This raises the question for me, "And what would a longer period of time accomplish--like a school year?" Could we accelerate the necessary evolution of humanity so that it might advance significantly for tens or hundreds of millions of American children in the space of just one school year? Shakey-shakey-shakey ooh-ahh the Ort Report, yeah, baby!