Teacher Tom: Raising Free People

Teacher Tom: Raising Free People

Raising Free People

"What are you going to be when you grow up?"

It's a question adults asked me as a boy and one I still hear adults asking children. From quite a young age I knew that questions required answers to it so I always had one ready. "I'm going to be a cowboy." "I'm going to be an astronaut." "I'm going to be a baseball player." "I'm going to be an engineer like my dad."

My answers varied, often week to week, but I always had one at the ready. Adults expected it. None of them ever thought to ask about my current interests, my plans for the day, or about who I was right then. It was as if I, as a child, wasn't really a complete human being yet. That my real life wouldn't start until I'd become something else, and as a white boy in America becoming was naturally attached to one's profession. 

Of course, I realize that for most adults it was simply a convention to ask this question of children, a way of making conversation with the smaller humans, but it seems as if I've always known there were limits to which answers were CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: Raising Free People

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Teacher Tom: How Free and Equal Humans Are Meant to Live Together

Teacher Tom: How Free and Equal Humans Are Meant to Live Together

How Free and Equal Humans Are Meant to Live Together

Two freshly-minted three-year-olds were playing on the floor, not together, but near one another. I was lying amidst them, fiddling with whatever came to hand. The boy picked up a toy that was meant to impersonate a tiny version of the cast iron hand pump we have on our playground. After a moment, the boy said, perhaps to me, "Hey, it's a pump!"

The girl responded, "I want it."

That's what we had been encouraging kids to do for months, ask for things they want rather than just snatching them. The boy continued playing with the toy pump without saying a word. I briefly considered saying, "When you're finished with that, she wants it," but let the urge pass. The boy silently played with the toy for 30 seconds longer, then unceremoniously handed it to her. I was going to say something about that as well, some words of acknowledgement or even praise, but again thought better of it.

A five-year-old once told me, unprompted, as if it was something he'd given a lot of thought, "I don't like doing CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: How Free and Equal Humans Are Meant to Live Together