The infamous and endearing Teacher Tom Hobson released a podcast: Teacher Tom’s Podcast! This episode focuses on what matters most to Teacher Tom - that “Community is absolutely essential. Learning to get your own needs met while also creating space and opportunities for others to get their needs met. That is one of the greatest skills any of us can have.”
Listeners will be inspired by Tom’s early childhood beliefs and practices, and thankfully, Tom reminds us of that with his words, “The secret to success in life is working well with others and being self-motivated. And those are the two things that play teaches without us doing anything at all.”
Episode Mentions:
Connect and Learn with Tom:
#teachertom #teachertomhobson #tomhobson #teachertomsworld #teachertomspodcast #teachertomsplaysummit #takingplayseriously #earlychildhood #earlychildhoodeducation #preschool #earlylearning #education #learningthroughplay #kindergarten #childcare #earlyyears #parenting #kids #playbasedlearning #children #learning #toddler #preschoolactivities #kidsactivities #playmatters #montessori #childdevelopment #earlychildhoodeducator #play #toddlerlife #school #sensoryplay #toddlers #prek
Get solutions from Schoolutions!
#solutionsfromschoolutions #schoolutionsinspires #schoolutionspodcast
The infamous and endearing Teacher Tom Hobson released a podcast: Teacher Tom’s Podcast! This episode focuses on what matters most to Teacher Tom - that “Community is absolutely essential. Learning to get your own needs met while also creating space and opportunities for others to get their needs met. That is one of the greatest skills any of us can have.”
Listeners will be inspired by Tom’s early childhood beliefs and practices, and thankfully, Tom reminds us of that with his words, “The secret to success in life is working well with others and being self-motivated. And those are the two things that play teaches without us doing anything at all.”
Episode Mentions:
Connect and Learn with Tom:
#teachertom #teachertomhobson #tomhobson #teachertomsworld #teachertomspodcast #teachertomsplaysummit #takingplayseriously #earlychildhood #earlychildhoodeducation #preschool #earlylearning #education #learningthroughplay #kindergarten #childcare #earlyyears #parenting #kids #playbasedlearning #children #learning #toddler #preschoolactivities #kidsactivities #playmatters #montessori #childdevelopment #earlychildhoodeducator #play #toddlerlife #school #sensoryplay #toddlers #prek
Get solutions from Schoolutions!
#solutionsfromschoolutions #schoolutionsinspires #schoolutionspodcast
[00:00:00] Olivia: Welcome to Schoolutions, where listening will leave you inspired by solutions to issues you or others you know may be struggling with in the public education system today. I am Olivia Wahl, and I am excited to welcome my guest today, the infamous Teacher Tom Hobson. Let me tell you a little bit about Tom.
[00:00:22] Olivia: Teacher Tom, as his followers know and love him, is a preschool teacher, blogger, speaker, and artist and is the author of both Teacher Tom's First (Book)and (Teacher Tom’s) Second Books. Tom has served for nearly twenty years as the preschool teacher at the Woodland Park Cooperative School, teaching children from ages two through five. He is now working with businesses and other institutions to help make high-quality, play-based preschool education a possibility for children everywhere. I am honored to welcome you as a guest on Schoolutions, Tom. Thank you so much for connecting today.
[00:00:58] Tom: Oh, I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me. I'm so,
[00:01:00] Olivia: I’m so, yeah, I'm so excited. And, you know, I've reached out countless times to just connect. And I saw that you are launching a podcast and I have followed your blog since 2009. Um, you bring sense to the world of early childhood education and just a core belief system that I vibe so strongly with. So I'm, I'm honored to be in conversation with you. Um, I love to kick off every episode by asking guests who an inspiring educator is from their life. Would you share with us?
[00:01:36] Tom: Oh, well, I mean, the two, the single most inspiring educator in my life was my daughter's preschool teacher, Chris David. Uh, she was the one who, uh, so. I teach your your listeners might not know about cooperative preschools, but my school was a cooperative school, which meant that the parents went to school with their kids.
[00:01:55] Tom: And so I spent three years going to Chris David's classroom with my daughter, and uh, she is a master teacher. She's still teaching. She's a master teacher. She's, she's a brilliant woman. She understands children. She understands play-based pedagogy. She, and I, you know, I just basically started imitating her, uh, from day one.
[00:02:16] Tom: I, I took all of her songs. I took all of her, you know, hand, you know, felt felt board games. I took everything with me. I even - the stations in my classroom were all based on what she did. So yeah, Chris David was absolutely the most inspirational. She's the one who said to me, uh, when I was, I hadn't even thought about being a teacher; she said to me when my daughter was five years old, and we were talking about kindergarten and what was next for her, Chris said, have you ever thought about being a teacher?
[00:02:42] Tom: She said, what are you going to do when she can't go to school with her anymore? And I said I don't know. And she said I think you should be a teacher. And I had never thought of it before. And she basically then recruited me into the profession. Um, and I, I've never looked back, never, never been inspired by anybody more than Chris.
[00:03:00] Olivia: Oh, that's beautiful. And you know, I think it's so important that as teachers, that we clearly have our beliefs and practices aligned and that that's what folks would see it when they walk into our classroom. So, I have followed you for many, many years, and you so clearly articulate what matters most to you. I would love for the Schoolutions audience to hear from you directly. What matters most to you when it comes to play-based early childhood education, Tom?
[00:03:32] Tom: I guess the first thing is just understanding what play actually is. I think there's a, there's a, there, there's some, there's some questions. I mean, I think most of us intuitively, it's like, well, we've heard of love before, um, but really try to define it, right?
[00:03:46] Tom: And I think play is almost as challenging to define as things like love and art, and there's some other complicated, high-level things I think most of us would agree are pure goods, um, but maybe we don't really know what it is. I've been thinking about this lately, that humans have a really hard time not gilding the lily, right?
[00:04:04] Tom: We come across something really beautiful, and then we think we can improve it. And childhood play falls into that category. Childhood play is best when we just appreciate the lily for what it is. The second we start making it play with a purpose, or they're learning even though they don't know it. Uh, whenever we do this, we, and we think we can outsmart Mother Nature and we could somehow do it better by saying, you know, well, they're learning this, so let's just make a game out of it and let's have them all run a relay race with fall leaves and they can identify leaves.
[00:04:36] Tom: We always ruin it. Um, so for me, play is a self-selected activity. Um, it's true for adults. It's true for children. And I think that's number one on my list of things I want people to…the second one though, and I think this is a, like, goes hand in hand, is respecting children, is understanding that children, we are not their bosses.
[00:04:58] Tom: I mean, I just want to emphasize that we are not in; we are not the bosses of them. We are colleagues in a process of growing up. We have a responsibility. Our responsibility is their safety. We have a responsibility to keep them food, you know, fed and clothed. Um, you know, I think about that Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, right?
[00:05:18] Olivia: Yes, yes.
[00:05:19] Tom: Our job is to fulfill basically the bottom four levels so they can get up here to the self-actualization Um, you know, yes this the the the the self-esteem and all that which is that second to the top level; they they have a lot more say in that. Um, and we that's again a place where we tend to gild that lily, you know with lots of good jobs and things like that. But the truth is is that other than our responsibilities, we have responsibilities and we have responsibilities to help them with things like understanding schedules and understanding, um, you know, safety and understanding courtesy and some basic things that maybe they're not, you know, that they'll need to learn at some point.
[00:05:56] Tom: But other than that, our job is to be there as co-learners with them. And I see my job not as I, you know, I go by Teacher Tom and the longer I've gone by that, the more I think, well, gosh, I got this great alliteration going and people know me as Teacher Tom, but I wish I'd chosen some other word. Uh, because what people think of when they think of teaching is somebody lecturing to somebody else, somebody telling somebody what to learn and when to learn it and how to learn it. And really what I've come to understand is my job is to be a researcher. And I think that's what I really want people to understand about play-based learning. It's my job is to understand the child, um, to understand what they're doing, where they're going, uh, what they might be practicing, um, and then to deeply think about that, and without gilding the lily, how can I support them in what they're trying to do without channeling them and taking control of their own learning?
[00:06:48] Olivia: So you so beautifully just articulated an issue that I see just over and over and over, especially when it comes to early childhood education, but it also is even at middle and high school. It's that, that notion of control and adults as vessels or as bestowers or holders of knowledge and that children are vessels. And I love that in your mind, in your beliefs that children are co-learners on this journey, and it's a reciprocity that we benefit. I also know that adults and teachers that I respect the most are right down at children's level during play, and they're engaged, they're curious.
[00:07:35] Olivia: And so Tom, maybe it's Curious Tom. You know, that teacher, I think we can redefine teacher, um, and what it means. And so it's just so beautiful. But that issue of the need for control and spoiling the authenticity of play, um, I think that that's something I'm so excited to have you speak to today. And it's also an issue around growing your audience and meeting the demands of connection in today's modern world.
[00:08:07] Olivia: You've had your blog since 2009 and your audience is demanding more. They, they want to hear you when they're doing laundry in their ears. They want to hear you on the treadmill. They want to hear you on their commutes. Um, Tom, what I would love to speak to is, uh, you are launching a podcast and everyone is going to be very excited to hear about that.
[00:08:30] Olivia: Um, but I also know that you have your Play-based Summit and that is a critical piece in what, kind of, your foundational beliefs. So I want you to take us back to your very first Play Summit. You interviewed Ojibwe educator, Hopi Martin, and Hopi gifted you this metaphor of the campfire. And I'd love for listeners to hear what, what does that metaphor mean and how does that also serve as part of your foundational beliefs?
[00:09:07] Tom: Well, what Hopi said to me, and I, I, I just, it really has stuck with me. He said, you know, his people, the Ojibwes, That, when they look at a campfire, right? And they say, you know, tell me about the campfire you're looking at and I can, you know, so I'm going to tell them what it looks like, what, what is burning, uh, how hot it is.
[00:09:25] Tom: I'm going to tell them about the emotions I'm feeling from it. You know, everything I can from my perspective to describe this campfire. Um, but he said, but if I really want to understand that campfire, I have to talk to the person next to you and get their perspective on that campfire. Then I have to get the next person and the next person, the next person.
[00:09:42] Tom: I have to get the perspective of everybody sitting around the campfire before I really get a picture of the campfire. And then he said, and I love this, he goes, he goes, then what we have to do is start asking the birds up in the trees. And the trees themselves and the worms under the ground. And what you come to understand is that no one will ever fully see that campfire and that each time you add a new perspective, instead of looking at it as a competitive, you know idea the way we do in our world right now, when somebody disagrees with us, we tend to feel like, oh, well, we have to fight against him.
[00:10:15] Tom: He says, each time you get a new perspective, your own perspective grows bigger, your own knowledge grows bigger. Even if sometimes that's the beauty of it is that the perspectives conflict with each other, so you'll have to figure out we're still looking at the same campfire. So the idea, so somehow that conflict exists within that campfire.
[00:10:35] Tom: And I just think that is so beautiful. And I think, especially as an adult, as I'm getting older, the more I, you know, there's a tendency to calcify as we get older, to sort of think that our way is the best way and that, you know, these kids today, they're ruining everything and that type of thing. And I don't want to be that kind of old man. I want to be the kind of old man who just keeps growing and keeps expanding and keeps adding perspectives to my own, even if originally I don't think they sound right.
[00:11:02] Olivia: Yeah, and I think that idea, that is what's going to make you a magnificent podcast host, Tom, because that's what this is. It's this filling of the bucket of a collection of perspectives and this push and pull with discourse. I, over the last two years of my life, I have never felt so fulfilled from hearing people's stories and better understanding the world around me through others’ lenses. And so I think that will be really fulfilling on this journey for you. Um, and I also know I I've read in your blog, um, that you have a morning routine. You're a morning writer and that's part of, you know, what makes you who you are. And I know part of my morning routine is getting up and doing social posts, connecting with the world, and blasting out guests’ messages. How do you see the podcast now being part of your routine as part of your day?
[00:12:11] Tom: Olivia, I have no idea. You know, right now I'm working, I'm working with people. I'm, you know, cause I'm not a technology person. We discussed before we went on air about how I'm working with a company called Mirasee and they have a producer for me. My producer happens to be in Sweden. And so that will make a big impact on, on timing and things like that.
[00:12:32] Tom: We've just finished scheduling an interview with Maggie Dent, who's in Australia, the queen of common sense. But we've got somebody in Sweden, somebody on the West Coast of the U. S., and then somebody in Australia all having to find a time that we can do it. So, I don't think this is going to be part of my daily routine type of thing.
[00:12:49] Olivia: No, it may not.
[00:12:50] Tom: This is going to be, um, it's just another adventure for me. I mean, it's, uh, uh, for me, I don't know how it's going to work out. I don't know how it's going to fit in. I do know that I'm really excited about it. I do know that, you know, that whole idea of perspectives is the goal. Is to come up with and really look for, um, you know, people like Hopi Indigenous people, uh, voices and look for, um, people who aren't, you know, middle-aged white men like me, um, to really listen.
[00:13:19] Tom: And I know another person who's really inspired me, and this is, um, somebody your listeners might really be interested in is a woman I interviewed for my most recent Play Summit, Mónica Guzmán. And she is a journalist who wrote a book called, I Never Thought of It That
Way. And her perspective is, you know, she came, you know, she, it started really kind of sadly, she said, I was, you know, I'm a, I'm a Democrat and my parents started talking about how much they supported Trump and we were having this argument and, you know, a lot of families have had this argument, right?
[00:13:50] Tom: And she said, then afterwards, my father came to me, and he was really concerned. He said, does this mean you're not going to be seeing us anymore because we, we have other family members that way. And she said it was just crushing to her suddenly to think about how something like politics, which, you know, yeah, it's important, but it's really, uh, is going to divide a loving family up. And so she started really thinking about this and what you're going to do is she realized that one of her guiding lights has become is taking her judgments and turning them into curiosity. And so taking the time to, um, to really, instead of listening to people you disagree with, with the intent to respond and to argue and to somehow think you can persuade them, which you can't persuade other people, I don't think it's possible to persuade other people.
[00:14:42] Tom: What she's realized is what she does is she says, I just ask a deeper question. And another question and another question and get radically curious. And that's sort of part of the approach I'm hoping to take too, is, you know, there's people have suggested to me, I might want to invite, you know, some people who I deeply disagree with and have those conversations, I'm not going to start there. I need to; I need to work my way up.
[00:15:04] Olivia: Warm up, Tom.
[00:15:05] Tom: I’m starting with people who I, you know, I know and have some great insights and things like that.
[00:15:10] Olivia: Yes.
[00:15:10] Tom: Um, but the truth is, is that when we do this, and I've been trying it out in my personal life and it really is amazing because when you just let people who you disagree with really talk about why they feel the way they do, how did they come to their point of view? Uh, what kind of background did they have and experience that they have that I might have, perspective that I can't possibly understand? Um, I was I'll never there's one guy I was talking to that I've known since high school and we've fallen apart because our disagreements were so extreme, but I tried this technique with him.
[00:15:40] Tom: And at one point, he was just saying he'd tell me his point of view and he'd say, well, I know what you're going to say to that. And you know, I've been thinking about that too. And then, I know what you're going to say to this. And you know, you make a good point. I wasn't saying anything. He was carrying, and I realize now, he was a much deeper thinker than I thought he was.
[00:15:59] Tom: He actually had considered the arguments. And had his own thoughts about it. And I still didn't agree with him. But the truth is, is now my perspective has gotten bigger, my understanding of a person who's in my community in my world. Can I give you an example from the classroom about this?
[00:16:15] Olivia: Please. Yeah. That would be great.
[00:16:16] Tom: Every year at around, uh, right after Easter, some kid would come into class, usually on that Monday after Easter and come into the classroom and raise, raise their hand and say, Teacher Tom, the Easter Bunny came to my house and laid eggs. Right? And, you know, a bunch of kids know better than that, so usually there's a bunch of, no! Bunnies don't lay eggs. Chickens lay eggs. And then the bunny gets them and paints them and brings them to your house. And, and, the first kid would be appalled by this. No! The bunnies lay eggs! No, the chickens lay eggs!
[00:16:50] Tom: And they would get really, um, you know, it would sound like adult debates, right? Then would, often then the other kids would join in and they'd go in back and forth and, um, you know. And, and, and then there would always be like, you know, there was one time when they were arguing about the size of the Easter Bunny, right? So, most of them thought the Easter Bunny was normal size, but a lot of them thought it must be an extra large bunny.
[00:17:11] Olivia: There's various depictions. There's the mall, Tom. There's the mall. They see all.
[00:17:15] Tom: There was this one girl who goes, she was really thoughtful. She said, you know, there's too many kids. There can't just be one Easter Bunny.There are twelve Easter Bunnies, and they're all girls. And, you know, and then, of course, that had a debate. No, Easter Bunny's a boy! And another, another boy thought the Easter Bunny must be a grown man in a bunny costume. And it was just this amazing back and forth and debate, yelling. Um, you know, and my job, I saw, is not to set them straight.
[00:17:40] Tom: And what I love about this, it's like I was saying before, is at the end of this, nobody has changed their minds. Not a single one of those children have changed their minds. In fact, many of them probably feel even more strongly about their beliefs than they did going in. But that's not the point, and I think we forget that as adults too.
[00:17:59] Tom: As we have these debates, and we think we're going to change people. We're not, we shouldn't be thinking that way. What we're trying to do, and what the children get, is that suddenly they realize, well, I believe what I believe. But my friend over there believes something else, and my other friend believes something else.
[00:18:13] Tom: That friend doesn't even believe in the Easter Bunny. And what happens is instead of changing minds, they get a bigger picture of who we are, who our community is. You know, you mentioned before about disconnected from community. This is part of the reason why, is we're not listening to each other. We think we have to persuade one another and all agree. And that's not the way traditional communities operated.
[00:18:36] Olivia: No, no, it's not and I would also say it's not the role of adults in children's lives to teach them what to think. It's to teach them how to think for themselves. And, you know, with that in mind, play is such a beautiful opportunity to have that negotiation, even without words, of a back and a forth and forth with, you know, games that they're just making in with imagination.
[00:19:03] Olivia: Um, what I'm finding as a mom and when I'm working, um, supporting schools with younger children is that we need to get out of their way. Let children be, I'm going to use the word bored. Um, it gets overused, but let them sit in that discomfort of not having a plan. And really thinking through, you know, what do I want to do with this set amount of time I have?
[00:19:29] Olivia: I see grownups that are way too eager to jump in and save kids that savior complex that teachers have. And that discomfort is where we grow. And where we actually become creative. Um, it's like, Tom, I always think about when our boys were little and a ball would roll out of their reach, in my mind that teacher activated and I would say like, don't get it for them. They need to like actually figure out how to get it. And so many adults are, they're racing over to grab things for their kids or tie the shoes. Like, I wish we could go back in time and give space and not be in such a rush to, to always, you know, go on to the next thing in our schedules and I see classrooms that are just this hamster wheel of race and time. How is it in your classroom that you preserve, you know, take us through a day, what does it feel like with kids that there's that freedom for play?
[00:20:32] Tom: Well, that's all we do. That's the main thing. It's, it's, it's, um, you know, it's interesting. I used to think, well, we just, you know, we shouldn't even have to give them permission. But, you know, in our world, we do need to create permission for the children to play. And they need to know that. Because so much of the world is not open for children's play. I mean, that's one of the sad truths about our world. Um, but so at my class and in my school, uh, typically the day started off, uh, we would start off indoors because, uh, we were a Northern tier school. And so very often in the wintertime, it was very dark and rainy in the mornings, and it was more pleasant to start off indoors. Uh, we would start off indoors and the children just, you know, and there were a variety of activities that were available to the children. Um, I don't know how much detail you want me to go into, but the children really had the freedom to choose.
[00:21:21] Tom: I mean, we called them stations. Uh, there would be, you know, there would always be an art activity of some kind, something that was art-based. Uh, there would always be some kind of sensory, um, uh, project, something to feel with your hands, or listen to, or smelling, or something like that. I always wanted to make sure there were opportunities for constructive play, um, and then we, you know, obviously dramatic play, you would make sure that there were prompts and ideas for that; costumes, and, and, you know, kitchenware, and things like that, so they could pretend that, you know, the games of the lives they saw, um, there are always books, there's always, um, you know, and always things like that, you know. Uh, opportunities to make music, opportunities to, um, to manipulate things, so, you know, usually there'd be puzzles and things like that.
[00:22:06] Tom: So, you know, just usual toys that you think about, but the difference was, is that, and I know, I, I know what you mean; there's a lot of places I've been where not only are they scheduled. Um, and that was the big thing is kids need way more than one hour of time to engage in anything.
[00:22:20] Olivia: Way more. Way more.
[00:22:21] Tom: I mean, my, my rule of 15 is that, um, is that, you know, for in any play circumstance, and you can watch this and observe it the next time you're in a classroom.
[00:22:30] Tom: Um, I found it to be almost 100% true for the first fifteen minutes or so. Um, the children tends to be pretty peaceful. The kids come in, they sort of like, oh, it's a new place, there's new stuff. They, they each individually sort of like goof around with the materials they find or the setting that they're in. And then after about 15 minutes, that's when they start bumping into each other, right? That's when they start, you know, hey, I was using that, or you knocked out my building, or you've got all the red ones that I want, you know, that kind of thing. And that's when we tend to, as adults feel like, okay, now's our time to step in, right?
[00:23:03] Tom: Let's step in. And obviously, and I always say this. If physical violence is happening, that's part of our safety responsibility, you stop the physical violence. But if there's not physical violence happening, and I guess I should say also, and you have to know the children in your room, if it's not bullying behavior, it's really rare in preschool. Uh, but sometimes if it's one child who's consistently dominating another child, you don't want to step in there too. But most of the time, you know, it's just two kids in conflict. And what I do is often maybe I'll move my body closer. But, to stay out of it verbally, to let them go for a few rounds, I had it first, no, I had it first, no, I had it first. And so often as adults we get frustrated with that, with the I had it first, because it seems like it's going nowhere.
[00:23:48] Olivia: Right.
[00:23:48] Tom: But what I invite people to do, if you can wait through a few rounds of that, often you hear it ramps up until they're both shouting. And they both suddenly kind of at the same time realize, wait a minute, I'm an immovable object and that kid's also an immovable object. And you watch them then start down and it... And then they then say, well, you put it on the floor and I didn't know you were using it. Well, I was going to pick it up again and suddenly the dialogue starts. And once the dialogue starts, and sometimes the way I support that is if there's one child who's in dialogue, but it was on the floor and I didn't know you were using it.
[00:24:24] Tom: And the other child doesn't respond, I might just echo that. He says it was on the floor, and he was going to use it again. But not to pass my judgment on it, just to make sure that the dialogue was happening. And so anyway, what you often find is that then they get to this beautiful, then, if you can give that fifteen minutes a go, you get to the next fifteen minutes and that's the beautiful part. That's when they start saying the best sentences in the world. The sentences that start with the contraction, let's. Let's put our buildings together, right? Let us. Let's pretend we're princesses together. Let's all use the green and red ones.
[00:25:03] Tom: And they start coming; and you could see the epiphanies in their eyes as they come up with this. And this is where they're learning to come to agreements with people in their community with whom they don't agree. This is how you start overcoming some of that. For me I guess, you know, you asked me in the beginning, what are my key elements. Community. Community is absolutely essential. Learning to get your own needs met while also creating space and opportunities for others to get their needs met. That is one of the greatest skills any of us can have the secret to success in life. Is not getting straight A's. The secret to success in life is working well with others and being self-motivated. And those are the two things that play teaches without us doing anything at all.
[00:25:50] Olivia: And that's, that to me is the most magnificent facet of play. It's just the opportunity to really grow incredible human beings that understand the world bigger than just themselves. And so many grownups don't believe that children have that capacity. I think these days, if I need hope, if I need to feel inspired, I go hang out with kids because they're a lot more gracious with each other often than grownups are being these days. And, you know, Tom, something else that's constantly on my mind is this push for academia or academics, phonics, phonemic awareness, where we're so worried about children learning to read these days at an early age that I am desperately concerned with time for play and language development being crushed in the public schools, especially. Is reading important? Absolutely. That is not what I'm saying. But I think a lot of language development comes from play. Phonemic awareness comes from hearing sounds and the world around you. And we can do that through bells ringing. Like I just, I don't know. I am worried about the direction of education these days. So…
[00:27:15] Tom: Oh, I am too.
[00:27:16] Tom: No, I share that with you. And I, it's, uh, you know, there's, there's, there's real solid evidence. Uh, Cambridge University, some years back, uh, was looking at this idea of um, literacy in the early years and teaching it and they, what they did is they basically just did a survey of all the research they could find all the valid research, right? Not the, you know, the real peer-based stuff, the stuff that has is testable. And they went out and they, they did a survey of all this and their number one recommendation, coming out of this survey was that formal literacy instruction should wait till at least seven years old. And that is, because that's when the window tends to open up in human beings.
[00:27:52] Tom: Now, I know, you probably know, I've known two-year-olds who were teaching themselves how to read just through their own self-directed activities. But I've also known eight and nine-year-olds who were not reading; their parents were freaking out. When they did start reading, they almost instantly started off with like Harry Potter. They started out, they were, they were learning the literacy, and I think this is the, one of the great myths about learning, is we have this idea that it's all about creating a foundation and then building slowly up on the foundation. That's never how; that's not what the science says about learning. Learning is chaotic.
[00:28:27] Tom: It goes all over the place that sometimes it's really high level. Sometimes it's got to come back and pick things up. So when it comes to literacy, um, first of all, all these interventions we've been doing over the last many decades, probably 30, 40 years, um, the literacy rate hasn't gone up. So we're failing at that. We're failing at that. And what we, what this Cambridge thing, um, research also came up with is they said, five-year-olds who get formal literacy instruction get a little head start. It has disappeared by the time they're eight. By the time the children are 15 years old, the children who received the literacy instruction early, read less for pleasure and with lower comprehension than the children who received no early instruction.
[00:29:10] Tom: So, I think what we're doing, and I think the other piece and I'm sorry, this is one of my soapboxes, um, you know, the truth is, is that what we've done in our schools is we've really impoverished educate what it means to be educated because right now in schools, most of the focus is on mathematics and literacy. Now these are important things. These are valuable things. We all use them every day in our lives. But few of us center our lives around these things. I'll say, for example, I usually ask, if I got a room, if I have a room full of people and I'm speaking, and there's 100 people in the room, if I say, raise your hand if you have recently sat down and just done some math for fun.
[00:29:50] Tom: And always there's one or two people. Always there's one or two, but that's it who did the math for fun. And good on them. They take joy in, you know, solving for X or whatever it is. Um, but everybody in the room has used math that day, probably are using it in the moment because mathematics is a tool. It's not the center of most of our lives. Same with literacy. Most of us don't sit down and diagram sentences anymore, right? But we use our literacy every single day. And what I always say is that when we put projects, which is what play does, we put projects in the center of our lives. When we need the literacy, it, now we're taking it off the tool shelf and using it in a meaningful way, in a relevant way, a way that makes sense to us. It's so much easier to learn things when it's relevant. When we need the math, we take it off the shelf. But when we need the history, we take it off. When we need, you know, the hot glue gun, we take it off the shelf. Whatever the tool is we need, that's really what project-based or play-based learning is all about.
[00:30:49] Tom: Is putting, and that's what life is about. Once you leave school, I spent most of my life sitting down with other people, with a project and saying, what are we going to do now? And the last thing I know what a last thing I need if I’m going to build a building I don't need twelve architects around the table. I need people who know how to do construction I know people who know about zoning. I need people who know about um, you know, electric electrical and plumbing and, and in in greasing the skids at city hall or whatever. I need lots of other skills. I just need one or two architects. I don't need a whole bunch.
[00:31:20] Olivia: Community. Yeah Community. Yeah. It's so true. And I think too, that, you know, in this world of teaching, we grossly underestimate the power of reading aloud to children and that mimicry. You, you said you had a station, um, around dramatic play, but I also, I would always have bin in my room of favorite books we'd read aloud. And it was such a gift to watch the kids all circle up and pull out a picture book and pretend to be, I think me. They would put on their best teacher voice. And it's not that they're reading the words necessarily, but it's that idea of we are readers. We are writers. Like we need to get our messages out there in the world.
[00:32:08] Olivia: So not only does the learning have to be relevant, but they also need to feel like there is an audience for, you know, the goods they're putting out there. And that's what I love for play because it can be a block tower that's celebrated and everyone takes a gander and here's their thinking behind that work. But I think that also adds more purpose for our children if they feel like we are watching and we're listening and we're tuned in. As adults, we have the phones in our hands. We have the screens up and I'm working really hard as a grown-up when I have time with my boys, that that is not part of it. We go for walks. We get away from the screens. And I think that's something to that adults need to pause and really take note of. How are we connecting with our children? How are we connecting with other adults and spaces away from screens? So I say that, and then we're talking podcasting, we're talking blogs, right? And so I think we can also though, um, pick up books more beyond that computer screen and model reading.
[00:33:17] Tom: I mean, what you said is absolutely true. I mean, that's absolutely right. I mean, you know, just as a personal story is when my daughter was little, I was the stay-at-home parent, and we would come home from school after I'd gone to school with her, and we'd go home, we'd have lunch. And then I would say, now it's my reading time. And I would sit down with a book and read. And I didn't tell her what to do, but guess what she spent her time doing? She would go into her room and get out her books and she would read during that time. Although she couldn't read yet. She would still get out her books, she'd look at the pictures, like you said, the stories that I had read to her. I know she knew the plot. She would go through the stories and, you know, sometimes she'd have memorized them, which is literacy.
[00:33:57] Tom: Um, and the other thing that I just want to mention too, if we're talking to people about classrooms around literacy, Uh, we would periodically, I would at least once or twice a week get out a clipboard of paper and when the kids saw me with this, they knew to come tell a story. And my job was to write it down word for word, whatever words they said, you know, no matter how complicated and difficult it was, I would write it all down.
[00:34:18] Tom: And as you said, they need to know there's an audience. They all knew that the destiny of that story was that I was going to read it in front of the whole class. And it was so delightful to watch the children, you know, sometimes they would put characters in, like they would put Elsa in or something, because they knew that would be appealing to somebody else.
[00:34:35] Tom: They were thinking of their audience as they were writing. Uh, one little girl, I'll never forget this, she was, uh, she made me laugh so hard. Um, she invented a monster called the poop monster. And the only third word in that name was poop, poop, poopy poop, poop, poop, poop. And I realized she was doing this because she was envisioning her audience. And she was absolutely right. The kids were just roaring with laughter at this story and just seeing the delight with which she, with which that happened. And I know some people, you know, um, maybe they're disgusted by that. They don't think we should, but you’ve got to be earthy, if you're in preschool, I mean, you've got to be talking about poop and pee. Bottoms and body parts and everything else.
[00:35:15] Olivia: Yeah, it all, it all is there. It is. Oh, Tom. I think that there's so much joy that comes from hearing the stories of children. Um, another facet I love that you include in your blogs are photographs of the work in action. And so, um, I'm so excited for your podcast to become a reality and for your blog almost to come off the page and to hear your voice and hear you speak about your work. And so, uh, I, I laugh, but you said, you know, you're playing with a name. What is it going to be? And your books are very; Teacher Tom's First Book, Teacher Tom's Second Book is the podcast going to be teacher Tom's Podcast? What have you settled on so far?
[00:36:01] Tom: Teacher Tom’s Podcast, and then there'll have to be some kind of subhead. Um, it’s probably like Taking Play Seriously or something like that.
[00:36:08] Olivia: Yeah, good. Then everyone will know where to find you. I
[00:36:12] Tom: I don't know if you know who Lisa Murphy is. She's the Ooey Gooey Lady. She's what she's a good friend of mine, and she's going to be one of my first guests. And when I said to her, Oh, yeah, what do you think about podcasts? And she has a podcast of her own and his has been on, you know, more podcasts than that, countless podcasts, tens of thousands, probably. And she said, it doesn't matter what you call it, Tom. Everybody's going to call it teacher Tom's blog. And so I'm calling it Teacher Tom's Podcast. So, and so she's right.
[00:36:38] Tom: And so I realized, you know, the horse is going in that direction. I've always had a very simple, uh, naming convention, you know, Teacher Tom's First Book, Teacher Tom's Second Book is Teacher Tom's blog. Um, I, I just, I didn't want to put a lot of thought and energy into that. It just seemed like a waste of my time. Um, and now I kind of, I'm kind of stuck with it. Cause that's what everybody wants. Like I said, I'm Teacher Tom, whether I like it or not.
[00:37:00] Olivia: But that's what I would have searched, right? If you're going to have a podcast, I would have searched Teacher Tom's podcast. So it works. So, you know, as you're, as you're thinking of interviews and people you want to have on, what's exciting to you about starting in the podcasting world?
[00:37:20] Tom: Selfishly and personally, I'm just excited to be talking to my colleagues. You know, to be getting, to finding these people who, and have an excuse to get in touch with Lenore Skenazy and, and Kisha Reed and, and, and Lisa Murphy and Maggie Dent and, and, uh, you know, Laleña Garcia and all these people who I really admire and respect, people whose work, uh, has blown my mind, it made me, made my heart beat louder. That have inspired blog posts, and now I have an excuse to just get, get on and have conversations with them. Um, and so that's my selfish one. I think the other piece is I just want, I really, this is what I've been doing with the, trying to do with the blog too, is, I think there's a perception in the world outside of our preschool bubble that, you know, all we're doing is wiping noses and changing diapers and singing little cutesy songs and that it's really simple and easy. It's basically babysitting. And, you know, there's some babysitting involved for sure, but it's, uh, But I wanted to see how deeply we think, how thoughtful we are in our profession, and how smart many, many of the people are in our profession. I was going to say every person in our profession, but that's probably an exaggeration.
[00:38:30] Tom: But most people I've met are deep thinkers. They have, or they have these, these profound questions because every day, every day I've worked with children, something has come up that profoundly confused me, worried me, delighted me. Um, because this is the beauty of our profession, is that the second you think you're an expert, the child will come along to prove you wrong.
[00:38:55] Tom: That's the second you think, the more arrogant you are, the more they will blow you up. And that's when you find yourself falling into, and I think that's why so many people fall into that command and control thing, is if suddenly their classroom isn't going the way they thought it should. And so, well, we have to have some rules about this and we have to, you know, we have to in my classes, the children always made their own rules.I didn't make any rules for the kids.
[00:39:17] Olivia: Yeah. Well, and that's why I think children thrive when they're with you. It's because they know that you believe that they have the agency and the autonomy to make those choices. And that, for the most part, kids don't need copious amounts of rules. That's just something for them to butt up against. They need to figure out the world around them and to establish boundaries in that way. So I am so excited. When is the podcast going to launch? Do you know yet?
[00:39:45] Tom: So the expectation is that the first, uh, batch of five or ten was going to happen in February. Um, so I'm right in the process now. I've got, I got some travel I've got to do, but I, I come back and hit the ground running in two weeks. So we're recording this in the early November. And so I start my recordings at the end of November, early December, just, I guess, just keep going. I guess that's - Olivia. You'll have to tell me how to do it. I'm so,
[00:40:09] Olivia: I’m so, I'm so excited and I am excited to be a thought partner with you and I could not agree more. It's a selfish, beautiful, fulfilling journey that you get to connect with folks that, I mean, I have a bookshelf; you can't see it. These children's books, those are children's books, but I have a whole other separate bookshelf that you can't see of professional books that have my world. Your books are on there, Tom.
[00:40:36] Olivia: Um, and yeah, I think that, you know, this connection with people that have seemed so far out of reach, and then to just be in conversation, it is absolutely the best part of the podcasting journey. And I can't wait to circle back and connect with you, uh, once the podcast launches and you receive that immediate feedback of excitement and, like this, this really matters because your work is so important and it really does matter. So thank you, Tom, for connecting today.
[00:41:08] Tom: Thank you, Olivia. This has been a great pleasure.
[00:41:11] Olivia: Yes, indeed. Take care. Schoolutions is a podcast created, produced, and edited by me, Olivia Wahl. Special thanks to my guest, Teacher Tom Hobson. Also, a big thank you to my older son, Benjamin, who created the music that's playing in the background. I would love for you to share the podcast far and wide. Leave a review, subscribe on YouTube, and follow us on TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, Threads, and Facebook @schoolutionspodcast. If you'd like to become a Schoolutions sponsor or share episode ideas, leave me a SpeakPipe voice memo at my website, www.oliviawahl.com/podcast, or connect via email at @schoolutionspodcast@gmail.com. Please keep listening. Let's continue finding inspiration together.