Lessons from a Swing: Empathy + Teamwork

This week, there is a new swing set up in an area we call the Water Animal Classroom. The swing is just high enough that most of the children are unable to get onto it by themselves. A couple can manage to muster the arm and core strength required to hoist their legs high enough to swing over the seat, but most simply are unable to do so.

At Nature School, however, one of our rules is that teachers don’t put children’s bodies anywhere that a child’s body cannot maneuver itself. This has the practical end of keeping children out of potentially unsafe situations, along with the socioemotional end of fostering and preserving a sense of efficacy. And so, for many of the children, mounting the swing was and is a significant challenge. Fortunately, there are peers to help.

Friendship

In this photoset, we watch as JC attempts and fails to mount the swing. Eventually, MD comes to show JC the way to hop onto the swing., JC, however, is unable to replicate MD’s technique successfully. The first lesson of the swing, then, is empathy. A willingness to step outside of one’s own experience (of success in a difficult endeavor) and to teach another who has so far been unsuccessful.

Teamwork.

Another important lesson at the swing this week has been teamwork. BG, one of our smaller but older children, simply asked his friends to hold the swing so he could climb up. This opened the door wide open for everyone else to do so a s well. And thus, swing play transformed
At first, it was accessible only by learning a particular way of doing a thing--of climbing up.

Now, however, anyone could sit on the swing, with help from peers. And, what’s more, part and parcel of the culture of interaction around the swings was now the cooperative act of boosting or being boosted by friends upon it.