My prepared environment was my outdoor
world. It was perfectly prepared each and every
day, it was prepared with me in mind, and it was
prepared to challenge me, to inspire me to totally
immerse myself in what I was doing.
peer than trust the advice of someone your
own age. I found many things in common
with those who were my age, I gathered
wisdom from those who were older, and gave
advice and solace to those who were younger.
Intimate Relationship
Between Adults and Children
In our adult world of getting to and from work,
going through our daily routines, making sure
that our bills were paid, the birthday cards
sent out on time, our car oil changed, and
that four seats were booked on the family vacation
instead of three by mistake, we often
forget the importance of the mentor role we
have with our children. What may seem to be
an insignificant event in our lives may end up
being one of the most important moments in
the direction of a child. We do things in our
classrooms and in our interactions with children
that seem routine and mundane to us,
but they have powerful and far-reaching consequences
for the little ones who watch us.
There have been a couple of very powerful
compasses directing my life and, in thinking
back, they came from interactions with adults
who never really understood the impact that
they would have on me.
Some of my earliest memories of my mother
are of her standing in the garden admiring
the beauty and life she had brought into our
harsh landscape. My mother was a traditional
English gardener, taking direction from traditional
landscape designers such as Capability
Brown and Edna Walling. I would spend
hours with her, weeding and digging in the
garden, and to this day, my connection to the
earth is one of the strongest forces of my life.
When I have my hands in the soil and I smell
the flowers—that is when I am content. That
was a gift my mother gave me.
The second gift is a little more abstract, yet
it had an equally powerful and long-lasting
influence on me. One of the chores that I
had as a child was to bring the sheep shearers
their “smoko” in the morning and afternoon.
Smoko was the name for tea and cake
in the morning and tea and pikelets (a kind
of crumpet) in the afternoon. This job meant
loading the tray with my mother in the farmhouse
kitchen and walking it up to the shearing
shed, a distance of about 200 yards. We all
had jobs on the farm, and this was mine. Once
the tray had been delivered and set out on a
bale of wool, I would ready the wash basin
for the shearers to wash up. Walking into the
shed with the sound of the shears going full
tilt, I would catch the smell of wool and lanolin
mixed with the strong smell of fresh tobacco,
a smell unlike any other. I could curl up in
a pile of wool and fall asleep with the sound in
the background. But going to sleep in a shearing
shed was not an option as the roustabout
and wool hands moved wool from the shearing
floor onto the skirting tables then into the
sorting bins and into the press. All this was
rapid fire; movement was quick, and all hands
were busy. When the horn sounded for the
shearers to stop for smoko, the engines would
run low, the sound of shoes deadened by the
lanolin-waxed floor, and a quiet would come
over the shed. Even the sheep seemed to know
it was smoko; they too stopped their bleating
and dozed a little.
As the shearers settled with their tea mugs
filled and sweet pikelets eaten, tobacco smoke
would filter through the air. Then—I remember
it as if it was yesterday—one of the
shearers asked me to clean his shears. I was
in heaven. With this one gesture, an adult job
was given to me. I remember he showed me
how it was done and then I practiced. I practiced
all afternoon, and ended the day with
the shears clean, oiled, and shining. That the
shearer had allowed me to do a task that was
an adult task gave me the confidence that I
could do anything.
Prepared Environment
My prepared environment was my outdoor
world. It was perfectly prepared each
and every day, it was prepared with me in
mind, and it was prepared to challenge me,
to inspire me to totally immerse myself in
what I was doing. This prepared environment
was Nature. It was not adapted with
fences to keep me in or to keep others out;
it was not prepared with special pathways
for me to explore or manicured grass for me
to lay on; it was not prepared with swings
for me to swing on or slides for me to slide
down on, or little pools for me to play in.
It was Nature, in its raw form, with its
broken stumps I could climb on as king of
the world, its dandelion and thistle flowers
I could pick for my mother, its creek banks
I could catch frogs in, its overgrown hedges
I could climb into to make my fort. Nature
need not design for children, nor engineer
to create playscapes or boundaries; it has
everything a child could possibly want, and
it will inspire their imaginations to soar.
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