City Blocks

Every October, chaos happens in my classroom. Wooden blocks are strewn all over, no organization, no purpose. Children scramble here and there talking loudly and sometimes even yelling across the room.

You might hear the crash and thump of wooden blocks against wooden blocks, the noise of kids working things out. Imagine a small classroom with fifteen desks, five book cases, four computers, three stools, twenty large pillows, fifteen second graders, one amiable teacher and two hundred wooden blocks, and you will have a picture of my classroom.

Teachers in adjoining rooms shake their heads and raise their eyebrows. Prospective parents visiting this private school look through the window of the door with puzzled faces.

The chaos is "Roxaboxen" a part of my curriculum for the past ten years and part of the fabric of my class. No one wants to miss it. Children from other classrooms come to watch and anticipate or remember a great time.

The two-week project grew out of a book called Roxaboxen by Alice McLerran, in which children find stones and rocks on a hillside and set up a city. After reading the book, I thought, we can do the same thing here in our classroom.

Using blocks instead of stones, we started building the city. I didn't know what was going to happen, but the children were excited. In truth, I thought of the project as research: What would happen if children were left alone to build a city?

My only goal at first was providing time for unstructured imaginative play, too often missing from the lives of my students. The lessons that emerged in the first and subsequent years were unpredictable and varied annually.

The largest lesson, constant throughout the project, was building community. Community depends upon the respect for each individual, cooperation and tolerance for each other's needs, interests and style. Community and tolerance depend on skills learned and practiced: listening; discussing or debating; putting your own needs aside to provide for the needs of another or of the group.

The tolerance that developed was a result of the interaction between individuals, between a child and a group, and between groups with overlapping and often conflicting interests and goals.

A Neighborhood is Born
The Roxaboxen community was crowded into one small classroom with limited resources. Members learned to share, cooperate and interact. I stayed out of conflicts and discussions, unless it seemed as if something needed outside help to resolve.

I did set aside time at the end of each Roxaboxen session for everyone to talk about what was going on and to see if there were any problems. One of the problems was that some children got more blocks than others and some spaces were bigger than others.

When we talked this over we decided that it was okay, except on the rare occasion when somebody really seemed to have a lot more than his or her share. At those times, the child was usually persuaded by peers or an occasional raised eyebrow from me to give some blocks to other children who didn't have a lot.

In any given year, children's passions determine the nature of stores built in the city. Jackie, who loved animals, collected all the stuffed animals from the classroom, moved them into her house and started selling them.

One year George, who loved to read, set up shop in front of our bookshelves and started selling books. Another year, Joe had made his house in front of these same shelves and started issuing library cards. This past year, Joan and Emily, who loved dogs, opened a dog shop. They spent their time making dogs out of paper and selling them.

Restaurants such as pizza and ice cream parlors and food shops are usually the first to be built in Roxaboxen. The children in these shops make pizzas or cones out of paper and try to sell them door-to-door. One year Grace set up a vegetable stand and made beautiful colored paper broccoli, carrots and tomatoes.

The writers in my class thrived in Roxaboxen. Emily sold her poetry and Isabel spent an enormous amount of time writing articles for the Roxaboxen Times. She would go home and write about what had gone on that day: John's house had been knocked over; there was a new shop in town selling stuffed animals; the bank's hours were nine to one. She distributed the paper every morning.

Artists often open galleries selling pictures that they have created with crayons or paint. Some enterprising children will take all the art supplies from the shelves where they are stored and start to sell them.

Stephanie one year took all the pencils, erasers, rulers, Scotch tape, masking tape, magic makers and extra folders into her house and opened a stationery store.

James, who had an eye for business opportunities, set up his house in front of the door that we used to go outdoors for recess. He then charged a toll to go through his house. I let this go on for some days before the children complained.

We then had a class discussion about what was part of the room and therefore not part of anyone's house or business. The children thought that our computers and desks, for example, were for everyone and that the door was also. They persuaded James to give back some of the blocks that he had extracted for tolls.

After the initial set-up of the town with its houses, shops and restaurants, the need for money inevitably arises. Every year a bank or two usually opens. As I remember it, the first bank used some colored sheep knuckles that we had in the room.

Danny, who was in charge of the bank, laid them all out and discovered that we had more red, with the green and blue ones coming next in order. The five purple ones became the most valuable.

This last year, three different banks issued money. Intrigued by the big numbers, the children asked for large amounts. The bankers made bills out of paper for large denominations: $10,000 bills and $100,000 bills and even a million. In this economy, pizza was $10,000 — pretty inflationary!

In addition to these monetary systems, subsystems of barter and trading have always existed. The blocks that the children build with lend themselves to this. They range from 4 by 4 inches to 20 by 4 inches.

Having worked with Cuisinaire Rods in math, the children make a quick leap to assigning value to blocks. Value is also influenced by whether a child wants to trade and how badly one child needs a block. In Roxaboxen, anything — from pattern blocks to rubber tips for pencils — can have value.

Government and rules emerge about this time. Someone decides to be queen or king or run for office. The first year, a girl who was quite self-assured, declared herself queen and no one objected.

Another year, a boy declared himself king, and then a girl wanted to be queen. Were they married? By second grade standards (or standards at any age), marriage is a big thing, so the two rulers decided that they would alternate every other day.

As you might expect, some elections turn into popularity contests. Three children decided to run for mayor one year — two boys and a girl. In second grade, gender, except in rare occasions, is the separating factor. So when all three decided to run, the boys split their vote, and the girl won.

Intervention is Sometimes Necessary
During the ten years of Roxaboxen, some disturbing things have happened. I either intervened or sat by hoping that the outcome would be good. Every year someone is out sick on the day we start Roxaboxen. What will happen when he gets back? How will he be included?

Some years, children lose their blocks by either trading or giving all of them away. How are the homeless helped? Sometimes everyone gives them a block to start their own house or they are invited to join an existing house.

A year or two ago, the only African American child in my class was jailed for the minor infraction of knocking over a house by accident. I stepped in and wouldn't allow this punishment. The students knew that I was angry. My tone of voice and possibly my reddening face told them that something was up. I regret now that I couldn't explain myself then.

As a teacher I am trying to make a better world and part of that is to create a classroom free from the negative aspects of our world, such as racism. In this instance, a child had been sent to jail for a common mistake that was usually handled in a better way. We had already talked over what to do when some one accidentally knocks a wall down — you say you are sorry and then offer to help fix it. Jail was an inappropriate consequence.

In our school, race is talked about in faculty workshops with an emphasis on the positive aspects of diversity. In the classroom we make a genuine effort to show children the beauty of our multiracial and multicultural world and to celebrate it. But children's play can reflect attitudes of society that continue to exist, such as prejudice and elitism.

It is not hard to read into the children's play echoes of modern life. For example, Patricia had been sitting around for the greater part of two days; when I asked her what she was doing in Roxaboxen, she replied that she was ordering from catalogues. One year Michael introduced Three Card Monty. Gambling has continued with lotteries and raffles that the children came up with this year.

In the beginning Roxaboxen had a post office and a letter carrier; two years ago cell phones came into the city. If you are wondering what cell phone communication looks like in a wooden block city, it consists of one child holding a wooden block to his ear and eyeballing a friend across the room. The friend also has a wooden block held to his ear, and they shout to each other.

Where am I? Hovering. Making sure children are comfortable and safe. Gently pushing here. Letting go there. Asking children questions. Keeping a lid on activities that are too loud.

For example, when a pizza shop or a raffle needs to be advertised, children become instantaneous town criers, shouting out ads. This causes such a commotion that I stop it. I'm sure that I'm the only one in the room who is disturbed, since children have a wonderful way of filtering out noise and focusing when they are playing. I'm also aware of the impact of noise on my neighbors, and I try to schedule Roxaboxen times when adjacent classrooms are empty.

If you visited my room during Roxaboxen, you might find it chaotic. To me that chaos represents creativity and community-building. The children are building something together, interacting and problem solving and exploring how a real society works.

Once in a workshop, I heard Mel Levine from the University of North Carolina describe a study that tried to find a correlation between adult success and childhood experiences. The researchers didn't find it in the schools the adults attended or the backgrounds from which they came.

Instead the researchers determined this: successful people had spent time in fantasy free play when they were children. They had free time in their childhood to think and ponder and wonder, time to problem-solve with friends, time to play. Providing such an opportunity for my students is my goal in Roxaboxen.

Terry Shaneyfelt teaches second grade at Nashoba Brooks School, an independent school in Concord MA.