The best part of my day each week is walking to pick up my daughter from after school care and telling me all about her day as we walk back to my classroom. Some days are more eventful than others, even for a 5 year old in PreK. One day she’s excited about a new letter or number they learned, another it’s an adventure to the library or the gym, but my favorite stories are the ones from the playground. Those moments of pure, unencumbered free play. In other words, exploration, experience, creativity, collaboration, teamwork, learning, failure, fun...joy.
Recently a particular conversation extended well beyond our walk to my classroom, into the car ride home, and even still on the couch at home. It was all about the “Lava Game”. The short version is simply this, they would climb over various obstacles on the playground and the ground is lava; you do not want to fall into the lava. I repeat, DO NOT fall in the lava. It’s where the lava monster is after all. You wouldn’t think such a conversation needed to take place over the duration it did with her - I mean come on, who hasn’t played the floor is lava? But here is the remarkable part, once she explains the gist of the game she begins to dive into all sorts of rules, constraints, and scaffolds they built into the game. For instance, if you fall into the “lava”, or your foot even just touches the ground, you have 5 seconds to get back up safely onto one of the apparatuses. And if you don’t? Well you turn into a lava monster, naturally; but “it’s just pretend” she reminds me. “It’s only a game, you’re not a real monster”. {whew}
They also turn into various characters like puppies, kittens, moms, sisters, lava monster stopping superheroes and they form little teams and families designed to help each other if they get stuck on a tough step or climb, or heaven forbid, fall in. “I fell in just a little bit”, she tells me, “but Meghan was helpful to me so I didn’t turn into a monster. I made it out in time”. She told me all about the parts that were easy, the parts that were hard, where she had to step, where she jumped; which piece of equipment came next on the course and how that obstacle was best handled. These kids are 4-5 years old and they have created this elaborate game with rules, structure, strategy, characters, fantasy, winners, and even their own system of do-overs. There was a reason for everything they did. Now, I have no doubt this game has evolved quite a bit over the course of the year. It’s probably taken quite a bit of time to perfect the nature of the rules to match their skills, or evolve them as they improve and to add a new creative idea. They explore. They try something new. Some things work, some things don’t. Some ideas stick. Others don’t. They communicate, collaborate, debrief, gather and give feedback (in their own way).
And here’s the BEST part. None of it, and I mean none of it, had anything to do with the adults telling them what to do or how to play. There was no “setting it up” for them, no proper way to play. No technique for jumping over an obstacle or the best way to climb back up. They did it. They were proud of it. They owned it. How often do we in the classroom or in practice simply limit our kid’s chances and abilities to just play? How many reps do we stymie because we stop play or cut them off right before the learning is about to take place?
Einstein said, “Learning is experience, everything else is just information”. How much of our practice time is spent passing out information and not spent immersed in experience? When we lead with creation and questioning we create the space, the opportunity, for kids to learn and develop using more of an “environment-in” design as opposed to the more often used “technique-out” approach. The prescription of ‘here’s what should happen’ or the answer we should get and ‘here’s the best way to get there’ when we all know there’s more than one way to accomplish something, and that most often is determined by the skills of the diverse and unique individual. How can a person have the awareness and clarity of who they are if they aren’t given the necessary time and reps to explore and discover just who that person is?
What’s more, it’s competitive. The Lava Game, in essence, embodies competition in its purest, truest, most unadulterated form. We strive and win together. It’s about getting everyone across and staying out of the lava, and if we don’t, we build in a 5 second rule so we can help each other out and keep playing. It’s about us working together, iron sharpening iron, pushing to be better than we were the day before. The individuals and the environment they are immersed in act to continually sharpen each other. As they improve, so does the game. As the game improves, so do they.
This story excites me, makes me happy (especially as a dad watching his daughter learn and grow) yet it discourages and aggravates me at the same time. If 4 and 5 year olds can do it and figure it out this easily with no adults showing or telling them the way, then why don’t we allow more space and opportunity in other areas as they get older? All the skills these Pre-Kindergarteners possess in their natural habit we stifle, squash, and destroy as they age; and we do it rapidly. We box them in to a certain view of how things should be done and prescribe what success is and looks like. We discourage creativity in favor of compliance. Even worse, we end up spending countless amounts of time and money trying to teach, train, and develop those same skills back (yes, the ones they already had) so they can thrive in the most chaotic, unpredictable, random, and variable environment they’ve ever experienced once they leave the comfort of the nest.
So why does this occur? Is it because it’s too messy? Too unpredictable? Takes too long? Too hard to quantify for external rewards, scores, money, etc? Makes it harder for the adults in the room to justify why they are there and getting paid? What scares us about this as coaches? Are we afraid parents and fans won’t see us working hard enough or “grinding” as they do all the others? What terrifies us so much to let kids simply play? How do we get more of us in the profession to understand that “letting them play” doesn’t mean we don’t matter as teachers or coaches? In fact, it’s quite the opposite. It takes someone unbelievably talented and disciplined to craft an environment that produces learning opportunities and then skillfully interjects with the right question at the right time. It takes talent to ask the right player or student in the right way, tailored to them. How do we draw out their curiosity and push them when they don’t want to answer, or get them to participate in the first place when they don’t want to? How do we get them to dive deeper, think differently, reflect, give and receive feedback, and check for their own understanding?
Does any of this sound like a lazy-roll-the-balls-out style of teaching? Absolutely not. The reality is, doing less requires so much more. More than we are willing to do, ironically. More than we are capable of at this time in our careers perhaps. But what can we adults learn from a group of PreK kids pretending to be kittens avoiding the lava monster? We can learn to focus our energy where it needs to be, on our players and students, not on ourselves. Think of how much more energy, brain power, and time we can create for ourselves by cutting all of the other stuff and just let the kids play.
