Edge Note: What Did We Forget After Kindergarten?

Notes from the Edge

In this episode of Notes from the Edge, host Lisa Lacey interviews kindergarten educator Tiffany Dennison about the wisdom children possess

Key takeaways

• Children naturally embody presence, imagination, and emotional honesty—qualities adults often lose through societal conditioning.
• Uninterrupted playtime allows children to develop communication, empathy, and collaborative problem-solving skills organically.

Main topics

• The value of unstructured play in early education
• Emotional safety as a foundation for learning

Notable quotes

"They're not jaded. The magic is still in their world."

Conclusion

Tiffany Dennison reminds us that the lessons of childhood—play, presence,

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:04) Welcome to Notes from the Edge, where we have the conversations we should have been having all along. We talk about the things that we're not talking about. I'm your host, Lisa Lacey, writer, trauma educator, executive advisor, and author of the upcoming memoir, Notes from a Certified Madwoman. Welcome to the Edge. Speaker 1 (0:33) Hey, hey, my friends, welcome back to another episode of Notes from the Edge. I am your host, Lisa Lacey, and this is the place we have the conversations we should have been having all along. Guess what? You're not talking about it, so we're gonna. And today, we're going back before the resumes, before the career. before the curated identity, before we learned to pretend to not be scared or lonely or curious, we are going back to kindergarten. Today's guest is Tiffany Dennison, and she is a passionate kindergarten teacher with 22 years of experience teaching kindergarten and first grade. And for the past 18, she has taught at the same rural school in a small town in Vermont's Green Mountains. Her teaching philosophy centers on. place-based learning, social emotional development. Boy, didn't we need a lot more of that when we grew up. Authentic interaction, play, and belonging. And she believes that children learn as much from one another as they do from adults and that they understand sometimes more emotionally. than maybe some of us do. She is taught in public schools as well as private schools. Her classroom is largely screenless with play, children's interests, relationships, and community at its core. After more than two decades in education, some of her greatest lessons have come from these children, and she's going to be sharing them with us today. Tiffany, welcome to Notes from the Edge. How are you today, my friend? I'm doing wonderful. Thank you for having me, Lisa. Yeah, it's so exciting. I love this topic for us because there's no doubt that as adults, we forget play, pleasure, joy, all the things that I was telling you earlier when my daughter was five. I just, I so adored that age. So what do you feel that kindergartners know about being human? that adults seem to forget after watching them for 22 years? Speaker 2 (2:54) I believe that kindergarteners really learn how to delve closely into like what they're looking at and they slow down and they're not concerned with the procedure of getting things done. Like we as adults are always making a checklist and checking it off. They're not jaded. Speaker 2 (3:18) the magic is still in their world and they're still very much in this ethereal, imaginative way of thinking. And so I think they are really... really grounded on this earth yet. They haven't really taken the societal restraints that we all learn how to act by in this world, in the United States at this point. And they're still very much learning who they are. And they are still very much playing with each other and learning about each other. And it's... It is, it's pretty, a pretty magical experience if you have the opportunity to stand back and watch. Speaker 1 (4:03) Yeah. I love that. Still figuring out who they are without all the societal conditions that eventually get placed on us. So. Speaker 2 (4:17) And I live in a rural area. Maybe it's different somewhere in a city where maybe there's the restraints and what's expected of you is very different. But where I am teaching from, it's rural and not as urban as, you know, some people live. And I think that also creates the opportunity for kids to, you know, be outside more deep, steeped deeply in nature. which Speaker 1 (4:45) I think is very important. Yeah. And I love that friends notice. She said that five-year-olds are more grounded than some of us adults. So there is something to be learned from them and talk to me about imagination and creativity in that groundedness. Speaker 2 (5:11) Well, I think if you give kids the opportunity to slow down and play, and I don't mean play for five minutes, I mean play for 45 minutes, whether we're outside or inside, it gives them an opportunity not only to grow their imaginative minds, but to use each other to grow. their game or what they're thinking about. And maybe it's a unicorn or an alicorn or, you know, a bunch of kids running after each other, you know, playing some lion or tiger game, or maybe it's family. There's sometimes there's mom and dad and or mom and mom or however, however it goes. And they can, they support each other and grow and grow their imagination that way. Speaker 1 (6:01) And so Speaker 2 (6:02) that's when they can like lean on each other and do that. And are there are there disagreements? Sure. Does, you know, a student say, no, I want to be the mom and, you know, I don't want to be the baby. I want to be the dad, you know. So, you know, you're you're teaching those those skills as well. But for the most part, they are playing with each other. And really, if they're given the time and they know they have the time, it's different if they are given an hour one, you know. once a week that's very different than knowing they have 40 minutes to play before we go inside and start the day and they can really grow the you know their communication skills with each other and grow their ideas which is pretty awesome Speaker 1 (6:44) off of each other off Speaker 2 (6:46) of each other and as a teacher you stand back you might ask a question here or there but you're not directly going at kids and saying trying to change their games or trying to see if they know something you know um that you're trying to find out you maybe ask a question that might shift their play a little bit but not to end it or to create any sort of rift between kids yeah Speaker 1 (7:10) i love that yeah Speaker 2 (7:12) when Speaker 1 (7:13) do so kindergartners can be remarkably unapologetic about who they are um until they start receiving the messages about who they're supposed to be so at that age Do you see that happening at all yet? I mean, what do we as an adult unintentionally teach kids about fitting in or people pleasing or hiding parts of themselves? Is that an age where you start to see this what we become in adulthood happening? Well, I think it depends on Speaker 2 (7:48) the Speaker 1 (7:49) parenting and Speaker 2 (7:50) who they're exposed to. I think if... you are part of a group of parents who's always trying to one-up each other, or if you are part of, you know, a group of people, because they learn by watching. They learn by watching each other. They learn by watching adults. They learn how to act. Sometimes I get a five-year-old in here who acts like she's 30 because she spent all this time with her mom or her dad. And that's the way, that's the way she rolls because that's all she's been really been exposed to. Speaker 1 (8:19) You know, and so or then you have kids who have siblings Speaker 2 (8:22) and they their imagination is really deep and connected to each other because they've spent hours and hours playing a set of twins. You know, I'm not saying that a kid who's only with their parent doesn't form an imagination. I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying you are a product of your surroundings. Speaker 1 (8:40) Yeah. And Speaker 2 (8:41) so I think that it depends on what your surroundings are are like growing up that. and what the atmosphere is will determine whether a kid is still very much in their imagination or if they've started already learning about the societal restraints that we put on kids and adults yeah Speaker 1 (8:59) yeah so it it would it would absolutely depend on what's being conditioned at home and modeled around them