Our Children's Surroundings

The concept of surroundings has been on my mind a lot as of late. Let me explain... In the world of psychology (of which I spend a lot of my time), there is a sub-field that is called organizational psychology. In organizational psychology, nerdy adults (like myself I suppose) spend an obscene amount of time meditating on how companies can produce the greatest efficiency from their employees. This is everything from encouraging physical fitness programs, hiring company therapists, adding plants to the workspace, and changing the lighting to something more incandescent so employees can maintain production through weary times during the day. You get the idea, and believe you me, this works on our body's physiological and chemical system in unbelievable ways! Organizational psychology has revealed a number of successful transformations in companies across the globe. One example is Google, who offers one free day to their employees weekly to work on any product that they want without having any connection to a Google project (called - "20% time projects"). The results have been stunning as several programs have come from these self-initiated "work days," including "gmail." The point is, that sometimes we make minor changes in a workplace environment, and the effect can alter the productivity of the company in unexpected ways.

Well, with that introduction, I take us to the field of child development and the educational environment. Let me first start by saying that as a teacher I have had a front-row seat in seeing how simple environmental changes in a classroom can alter the entire mood and disposition of children. I have also invested some of my own time researching and rearranging my own classroom to encourage a more calm and soothing ambience. This might be getting slightly weird for some of you, but bear with me. In recent years, entire theories of classroom productivity have evolved from the research and experiences of students and teachers who have adhered to the practice of softening the muddle of the typical classroom in the U.S.

Without going into ominous detail about how this happens, I challenge the readers to take inventory of what your child's play space looks like at your home. Don't stop here... the next time you are in your child's classroom at school, take a look also. If we all take a serious look around, I bet we see that our children's spaces are inundated with bright colors, boxy structures, maybe disorganized, little representation of their own creations and work, etc. I know that the majority of the time when I step into a school classroom, I see much of what I just mentioned. At times it appears like a child factory where strict observation and compliance of teacher and school-directed guidelines are expected. I believe this to be highly indicative of what I mentioned above with the organizational psychology reference: maximum efficiency to maintain order.

Let me shake things up a bit by saying, these are outdated, militant, and non-creative techniques and standards by which to teach a young child. I challenge us to think outside the box as parents and teachers. Introduction of natural products, more subtle colors and patterns, real furniture, anything but flourescent lights (please!), less posters, and more artwork or creations from the children's hands themselves are pre-eminent ideas when helping young minds develop. I realize this just touches on a pretty in-depth and potentially paradigm-altering subject, but I will be delving into further detail in future blogs of how a more calming environment for children can produce ownership, creativity, and visionary results from our kids. I want to maintain a softness when hashing this out because I know many of us are not entirely on board with this idea of change and I totally understand that!

My wife and I have already started this at our house because we saw it as a simple, yet effective way of encouraging more child-centered ingenuity from our son. There is not much in his world to dictate what he should do and create, but rather, he has opportunity and materials to design his understanding and learning from his own senses and mind. We believe it has done a lot to encourage his inspiration and foster perceptiveness in his young life.