Nothing Without Joy: The Role of Play, Curiosity, and Wonder in the Classroom.

You only need to spend five minutes with a group of five-year-olds to realize that they are natural explorers, questioners (look up the statistics for how many questions a day a child that age asks!), and storytellers with an innate sense of wonder. 

The world is big, and they are eager to find out more and make sense of it. In an article I recently read about asking beautiful questions (link at the end), it quotes Neil Postman as saying, “Children enter school as question marks and leave schools as periods.”

This is perhaps one of the saddest statements I’ve read about education in awhile.

There have been countless studies conducted about the role of play, wonder, and questions in education. In spite of the research support, however, so much of education falls into the “one size” fits all trap of standardization. Although there is a shift towards critical, creative thinking, it is not complete or fully embraced yet within the structure of education as a whole or reflected in the policies being created on a systematic level.

However, I realized that if I want students who are creative, problem solvers, critical thinkers and lifelong learners, I have to give them opportunities to engage in activities and learning that will support those goals. We have to teach students to ask questions that we ourselves don’t know the answers to.

It's often mistaken that academics and play/creativity are mutually exclusive. This is a false dichotomy. I still have standards and curriculum that I follow. When we provide a safe space for curiosity, questions, and explorations, learning happens. A different, deep, authentic learning.

Although I am a teacher, I am also a learner, and I by no means have any of this all figured out. I struggle with finding the time to truly listen to and gather information about the interests of my students to guide our learning. The list of the things to do/complete is never ending. I laugh at my pre-teacher self who wondered why teachers had to stay so late after school. What could they possibly be doing in that time? Answer: Everything you could think of and more.

However, if I believe in honoring kids’ thinking as an urgent priority, making time for this is critical, even when it’s messy. You can’t “script” what a child will be curious about or their play. You can guide, provoke, and encourage, but there’s not a manual, and that can feel overwhelming or scary.

Integrating play, literacy, wonder, and social-emotional learning.

Last year, as autumn crept in, I had these grand ideas about launching a fall investigation related to how leaves change colors. I tried everything in my power to “guide” my students to being interested in this top, slightly oblivious to the fact that this defeats the purpose of inciting a child’s natural sense of wonder. However, when we talked about fall, my students’ questions were far removed from leaves, and, instead, focused on how animals survived in the winter.

I relinquished control, and it was hard. I had no idea exactly where this investigation would go, but the kids were more than happy to help lead it, and the learning was so much richer and more authentic than it would’ve been if I’d forced it.

We not only researched the ways that animals survived in the cold, but we also represented our learning by creating a cave (hibernation), a migration scene, and a snowy wonderland (adaptation).

The cave (hibernation)...it looks a bit messy, but it was completely student designed, planned, and created

Adaptation...there are lots of animals hidden in the snow

Migration

The students were engaged and collaborative. When I had the privilege of listening to author Ellin Oliver Keene speak at the Opal School last year, she spoke about how compliance is often mistaken for engagement. Kids can complete a task without any real learning or engagement taking place. With this in mind, I am constantly seeking ways to not only capture the feeling of wonder and curiosity, but to nurture it and give it room to develop, to grow.

Early childhood educator Loris Malaguzzi (and also the founder of my favorite early childhood educational philosophy, Reggio Emilia!) coined the phrase, “Nothing without joy,” in relation to teaching. When we look for joy in the ordinary, it so often becomes the extraordinary. Let joy in learning become the expectation rather than the exception.

Let’s encourage children to continue to become question marks, to view learning as something that’s not isolated to a classroom but instead extends and is woven into every aspect of their life. We don’t need more people who can recite rote answers; we need more people who can ask the big questions and approach problems with critical thinking, empathy, and creativity. That is how world changing happens.

“The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers…of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success as we have defined it.” David Orr.

 

Resources:

Books:

A Place for Wonder by Georgia Heard

The Curious Classroom by Harvey “Smokey” Daniels

Beautiful Stuff: Learning with Found Materials by Cathy Weisman Topal and Lella Gaindini

Articles/Websites:

How to Bring More Beautiful Questions Back to School:

https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2016/02/09/how-to-bring-more-beautiful-questions-back-to-school/ 

Inquiry Learning:

http://mrsmyerskindergarten.blogspot.com/

Play-Based Teaching and Learning

https://fairydustteaching.com/

Giving Student’s a Voice in the Curriculum:

http://neatoday.org/2012/02/24/reggio-emilia-approach-gives-students-a-voice-in-the-curriculum-2/

Playful Inquiry for Students (Based on the Opal School…if you ever have the chance to visit there, I highly recommend it!):

https://www.edutopia.org/article/playful-inquiry-elementary-students