Prepping for the first day of Pre-school!!

Having taught toddlers for almost 5 years now, I look back at the humorous situations I have put my 2 sons through in order to hopefully avoid that dreaded moment where you take your kid to his first day of pre-school and he pulls a fit.

My good friend, Otto Delgado,
from Venezuela holding newborn Owen Jazz

Our first born, Owen Jazz, must have been hours old when our friends from all over the world came to see him up in the mountains of Cartago, Costa Rica. I remember quite vividly the excitement of the moment being squelched by a silly despair to see him in everyone's hands....becoming social. As he grew up to be a whopping 1 year old, I decided it was time for him to start preparing for pre-school and so I tagged him on to the back of my bicycle down to the studio where I was helping mentor teens. A marvelous plan I believed to have conjured up, 2 or more birds fed with the same seed. His presence allowed for more than one of my adolescents to get their hands on some poopy diapers for the first time and also build up collective tolerance for the hungry/sleepy baby shrilling that new parents think they will never adjust to but, by the time the second one comes around, strangely miss and secretly beg for as a chance to prove they are still fit to snooze under cacophonic conditions.

I don't regret the comedy my kids have grown up in. My wife and I, just like everyone else out there, have had to mostly guess our way through parenting as well. Nonetheless, there are a few things to keep in mind as you prepare your toddlers for that big day:

First and foremost, don't stress about the cognitive, focus on the social.

For most kids pre-school is the first serious socially diverse environment that will co-exist in after the family nest: new adult figures to tend to, vast amounts of kids to share space and attention with. Here are a few quick ideas that help get the train on track:

At the playground:

a. Take your kids frequently to public play areas, once they are comfortably feeling their nitch, carefully observe them from afar, especially watching out for their interaction with other kids and adults.

b. If conflict arises check if you really must intervene. Find time to talk in the heat of the moment but more importantly afterwards, in a self reflective manner.   

c. Feel lucky if another caring adult speaks to your child. Encourage your child to listen to other adults. The old: "Don't talk to strangers", might need a balance check.
d. How about you showing up the parents in the park by hosting a group game for the pre-schoolers? Surely they are all in need of some prepping for group games. Pre-school is full of them, and it is always clear which kids seemed to have never shared in a round of musical chairs, let alone lost!

At home:

a. Nothing better than the 2 for one deal of a babysitter: Mom and Dad get some alone time out on the town and your kids begin their process of socialization, falling asleep to another voice, stretching out their trusting beaks to our birds.
b. Board games make it so easy and fun to develop patience in your child: Wait your turn!!
c. Plan activities that foster perseverance. For example choose a puzzle your child can finish and see him/her through to the end. He will love the feeling of accomplishment and the following challenge of doing it again without mommy's help or trying a bigger puzzle.

d. Make sure that there is always ample time for your child to develop his/her own routines: time to get dressed, to finish the food, time to clean up....especially cleaning up!

Now, I am sure many of you experienced parents out there have many stories and ideas of your own to share as well. I look forward to hearing from all of you!!

Spotlight Band: Jam #1

For the past few months I have been swarmed by toddlers bustling in their dream time hive which oozes with the inebriating nectar of the honey that keeps my pooh belly full and my grizzly beard sticky. Midst their buzzing I have heard their tiny human hearts ticking much faster than my own lethargic muscle and it seems to resemble the rate of change I see in their development. Like beekeepers of a healthy hive, us pre-school parents and mentors, are blessed to see our little bees week to week growth: scissor cutting skills, pencil grip, clean up routines, their first words in their second and third language........ad infinitum.

But as the tick-tock of the heart slows down it seems that so does our rate of change. I look back at the 4 years that I spent in Esparza working with teenagers and although their transformation is now clear, there were months where it felt like nothing was happening. With teens one has to trust much more in the seeds being sown, one has to have much more patience to see the first sprouts. Studio lingo often tickled our ears with the simile of teens and bamboo:  For 5 years bamboo grows its root work before cracking through the soil in search of sunlight.

Last week, my boss asked me to sit in on a few of the older kids' classes to get a feel for the dynamic of the environment. As to be expected I walked into a sheepish sea of eye-contact-avoiding adolescents. I love those first encounters. 4 years of mentoring grants me the confidence that I will win them over sooner or later. With this hand-fold of geniuses it happened much quicker than I thought.

It started off with a little chat with the girl next to me, "Do you like music?". She glared at me with the inflated eyeballs of a toddler under his first firework lit sky on a cloudless fourth of July, before turning away in a giggle to ask her friend in Chinese what the hell I was saying. I insisted a bit and got an answer from the braver one in the pack. Little by little the rest of the group started drawing into our ESL chit chat and after about 5 minutes we had a band: 4 clapping hands, 2 stomping feet, 2 dizi's, 1 erhu, 1 pipa, my piano, and 9 -angelic voices.

Our first scheduled rehearsal was for 8am this morning. I was blessed to spend 15 minutes with a group of teens that have hearts that still beat at the 175bpm that newborn babies do. I hope my heart can sync up with theirs and stay on beat forever.

Click on the video to see what we jammed out!!

(If trouble loading WATCH IT HERE)

  

DRAGONS - Part 1: Language and Culture are one.

Snack time Dragon Story time!

A second tongue should never compromise the culture and stories behind one's first language.

Far too often, ESL programs around the globe cash in on the all-pennies-in-one-piggy parents, looking to secure their child's future by guaranteeing a world language. They are not to blame. This is the demand of participation in a global market. The words of Sir Ken Robinson come to mind in his viral talk: "Changing Educational Paradigms":

"People are trying to work out, how do we educate our children to take their place in the economies of the 21st century? How do we do that? Even though we can’t anticipate what the economy will look like at the end of next week."

Dragon Art.

Now, don't get me wrong, as a bilingual native language speaker of English and Spanish (and some introductory work on a few indigenous/ endangered languages), I have traveled half way around the world to immerse myself and family into a 3rd language environment. Clearly, I am an advocate of language acquisition, but, contrary to many of the approaches of educators, not at the expense of all of the other multifaceted learning and stimuli our kids need in their prime time: motor skill development, story, art, music, dialogue, discipline, a connection to nature, science, spirit, mathematics and so much more.

Today, however I will address specifically the great opportunity that is spread out before us for children to grow up with a strong sense of cultural identity using the ESL environment as a tool for recovery rather than butchery. 

Dragon Story.

It should be no surprise that our children are growing up without story. Those days of the family gathered around the fire at the end of a labor intensive day are long since gone. On a good night, we get a 10 minute sprint to a fast-food joint or take-out around the dinner table? No, more likely the couch in front of the TV. All the time interrupted by androids that beg for a 3rd hand. In the monumental exchange between Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell, the idea that our youth are growing up without Myth, and therefore creating their own, is vastly discussed and feared. Since the beginning of time, story has guided our ancestors towards realization and evolution. What light guideth our storyless children? 

At Originateve we believe that STORY should be at the core of all young learner curriculum. ESL environments are a great opportunity to engage in this front for cultural recovery. Vast amounts of time are allocated to the acquisition of English as a second language. Why not at the same time empower the mother tongue’s story? 

This is precisely what unfolded this week at Caillou home where we have started yet a new project: DRAGONS. Granted one can see how easily we could've slipped into the mistake of teaching a unit on the American Buffalo or the Extinct Buffalo, but thankfully we do not work with culturally non-sensitive textbooks designed for the non-thinkative way of the busy, bogged down uninspired ESL instructor. The training Originateve Mentors receive is one that: prepares a facilitator of learning to understand the humans with whom we are working, imparts a desire to resurrect the culture in which they are growing up, and fosters use of creative imagination along side the intuition to carry it out. The Dragon being the unquestioned icon of China seemed like a most fitting Unit to embark on with the little toddlers.

Oh what a week we have had! Stay tuned as the story unfolds!!

Prep work for our 6ft Dragon-

Folding Dragons. 

Messy dragon spinal work. 

     

WORMS - Part 1: The quizzical hunt

After 4 years of creating a Perma-culture environment along side my Amerikanoestudios community in Esparza, Costa Rica, my arrival in Jinan has been an unhealthy stupefying dose of eco-culture shock. It has taken some time to observe and develop a strategy coherent with the area I now reside in and so begin the regenerative process.

My beloved Xibalba garden. Amerikanoestudios
Esparza, Costa

For those unfamiliar with Permaculture, Bill Mollison puts it like this:

"Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labor; and of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single product system." 

(Wiki Permaculture article)

For me, this philosophy began to click as soon as I understood that the task at hand was much simpler than I thought; I merely needed to slow down my thinking and start observing much more. Time to confront my own part in our species' hubris: believing that our sub-microbic consciousness can resolve what nature's consciousness has been doing marvelously since the dawn of time.

Typical Jinan soil

That approach had worked all nice and dandy back in rural, dry yet lush forest of western Costa Rica. But what about when there is little left of the natural world to observe? Jinan is just another Oriental bustling town, where progress is measured by the height and numbers of the buildings rising and the color green is a legally regulated distraction to grayscaling as far as the eye can see.

Nonetheless, no matter where you live you can always learn a bit of eco-conciousness from what I call the eco-unconscious (not to be confused with the eco-indifferent); those who out of need or practicality have found ways to live more in harmony with the environment than those of us who mostly just get in the way of what is natural. So, following good perma-culture principles and Marco's dad from Mulberry Street I set off "to see what I could see".

Lunch time in Caillou. 

My first snack time in Caillou, was about as shocking as seeing my homeland, Costa Rica, in the quarter finals of this years' soccer World Cup. Watching the kids learn to throw their seeds and organic waste into the trash can was something I did not want to be a part of. The question however was where could we take such sacred decay. Our school is entirely indoors and the surrounding outdoor spaces are either covered in cement or tarpaulined by grass.

Out worm hunting!

Having no yard to call home, composting was out of the question, next in line, an Originateve favorite: WORMS IN THE CLASSROOM, the perfect way to get eco-skeptic anti-kids-having-a-ball teachers off your supervised shoulder and get the kids between your legs and under your nose, all goeeyed up in a mess of beauty. Nonetheless, since I have long since moved away from "eco-friendly" behaviors that seem to tie you up into the "I NEED TO BUY" scheme quicker than a baby boomer in a bull market, I decided to "keep my eyelids up" for a non-consuming solution to a worm bin.

Styrofoam gardens

After about a 20-minute walk towards nowhere-Jinan, I saw her, the answer to all my problems; here in Jinan all home gardening happens in big styro-foam boxes used initially for fruit only then to be discarded, unless saved by the eco-unconscious who based on practicality not awareness (a prime perma-culture principle afterall) use them for their home-gardening projects.

Back in the classroom Monday morning we were ready to go. Styrofoam boxes were poked in order for the "compost juices" to seep through to the box below. Moist newspaper shreds were placed as bedding and some old freezer burnt lettuce was tossed in for when we came back with the worms. Time for the worm hunt!! This is precisely what I love about doing it versus hearing of others that did it. You stumble upon epiphany, after epiphany, revealing how messed up we are. From my 8th floor window my neighborhood is green, but once on ground level, the wormless earth reveals her thirst. I never would have thought it would be so hard to find worms. The soil all around our apartments is landfill, packed down by heavy machinery. After a 2 hour hunt we stumbled upon 4 little earthworms which we took back and gave an official beginning to Caillou's first Vermiculture box.


We will keep you posted of her evolution.

Instructional on where to put fruit seeds when finished!

Making our worm bin.