No Playing with your Food: Finding Solutions not Defeat in Rules

Like many other programs, each year we conduct an very thorough new staff training to orient our newbies to the ins and outs of our program.   It’s my role to orient them on everything Education/classroom related in our program: curriculum, lesson planning forms and practices, education related policies and procedures and so on.

During the Curriculum & Education training this year, I struck a nerve with a new teacher.  As I was talking about the role of food in our program I explained our policy on “no playing with food.”  I gave the history of the Perry Preschool Project (AKA as high/Scope) and how this philosophy on food came about.  The essential idea is: when there are people going hungry in your community and in the world, you do not play with food, as it is a life source and some people are going without.  Courageously, this new teacher spoke up and said “I grew up poor, we had 3-to-a-bed and never purchased new clothes or toys.  But my parents gave me rich learning experiences by letting me play with beans, rice, flower, salt, and other food items.  I will not short change children by taking away valuable experiences they can have with measuring, texture, filling, emptying, weight, and other stuff just because these kids are poor.”  

Wow, what a moment I had here!  In the past, I would have begun some sort of diatribe on the value and virtue of this philosophy.  I would have stood my ground, assertively, but also tried to win her over to my viewpoint.  But, not the Solution-focused, Olivia.  This was my time to play!

I capitalized on this moment to begin a Solutions-focused journey with the brand new staff. I started with appreciating her for speaking up and said “I have mentioned to you before I have training in using Solutions-focused techniques.  Let’s take a minute and apply them here. Instead of looking at this problem - "no playing with food," let’s look at our solutions.  To do this, I would like to begin by uncovering our objectives when we give children food to play with.  I heard you say (as I write these terms on the marker board): weight, texture, measurement.  What other concepts are children learning when they play with food items?” The three staff members in the training went on, “viscosity, 1:1 correspondence, fine motor...” and so on.  

I followed this up with “these are things that MUST be present in all good early childhood classrooms, and you clearly know this and want to provide these important experiences to children.  Now let’s envision that you have access to every non-food item you could ever want. You had all the scales, measuring cups, bowls, buckets, sieves, spoons, etc. you could ever want. Now let’s brainstorm a list of items you can use to meet these same objectives” Within 3 minutes we had a list of 25 things that could meet this.  I then asked, “is there anything on the objective list that would not meet your aims, so you would have to substitute with food items?”  The answer was no, and the response was  a genuine "thanks!" from the teaching staff.

With Solutions-focused techniques, I had an opportunity to shift the focus in the room away from the problem (the negative) to the solutions (the positive); where the mood in the room might have gone sour, instead we got to build on a real emergent learning moment together.  Had I chosen the strategy of “I’m the boss and these are the rules,” the new staff would have been in a place of defeat at only the 3rd day of work, believing they might never win.  But instead by envisioning our desired outcomes we got creative together had an extensive list to pull from and a positive and excitement that lead us to the next training agenda items with our minds and hearts open to possibilities.