"It feels like the ocean over here."

The November workshop was designed to interact with light.  Light tables, projectors, translucent and transparent materials, and reflective materials, were available for messing about.  During the square phase (discussion phase) of the workshop we discovered we were talking about sound:  We wondered why a workshop about light would lead us to a conversation about sound. One participant offered:

"It felt so quiet this time." "I noticed that when I started to do something a little louder, I felt almost bad that I would disturb people." "In my classroom I notice that I am so careful to honor the children who need quiet." "Can we think about shaping the environment to honor the children who need loud as well?"

"As I was driving over, I was pondering light and that it is made of waves. 
Sound is waves as well - different lengths of waves."

How can we explore this connection between waves of light and waves and sound as teachers? In the classroom? What other types of waves can we explore? How can we use light waves and sound waves to transport energy in the classroom?

One teacher began the evening with a big burst of gross motor - she invited the participants to play hide-and-seek. Once she’d explored the room this way, she crawled inside a box and drew representations of the evening. We wondered whether children have this same need - to own the space physically before settling in.

One teacher found interactive games to create in the cardboard. She worked on different pieces and saw the possibilities for engaging her work with others.  One teacher engaged with the cardboard in a fluid kinetic-sculpture type of way while traveling around the room to dialogue with other teachers. Her cardboard changed shapes and configurations as she moved.

We wondered at the individual projects we encountered. Was there a necessary piece to the parallel play that we engaged in? What would it have taken for us to engage in collaborative play? Was it safer to be engaged separately with the same material while we are still getting to know each other?


We wondered how the children would engage with the cardboard the following day?

The following day we discovered the Imagination Foundation's Global Cardboard Challenge. In collaboration with Boulder Journey School, we are hosting our own #cardboardchallenge to celebrate every day as a day for play! Click here to visit our challenge page. Follow us on twitter (@hawkinscol) to keep track of our adventures as well!

Each workshop allowed us time to participate in all three phases of messing about...  And time to collaborate, find shared interests, and develop an It for our I's and Thou's.... And as we grew and learned as teachers, we laughed together, and sometimes cried together. We challenged each other and complemented each other.

Each workshop offered us time to explore the resources around us - materials and interests (eolithism).... And when the workshops were all done we realized we missed each other.

So we decided to do it again...

"There was one kind of development I must mention, a subjective one, which took place in parallel with the technical work of weapon development.... Everyone's life was being changed, changed radically I think, and irreversibly.... We all did know we were involved in something which would alter the nature of the world." 
David Hawkins, qtd in Inventing Los Alamos: The Growth of an Atomic Community, Jon Hunner

“Children can’t be educated until they are 
engrossed in subject matter and 
teachers can’t well create conditions for engrossment without sharing in it.”