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MIKE MULLIGAN REVISITED Barbara U. Streeter At 9:00 a.m. on one relatively sunny day, the Hanna Perkins Nursery and Kindergarten children trudged up the steps to the school with their moms, deposited their jackets and backpacks in their cubbies, and went about the important business of being nursery and kindergarten boys and girls. Though in most respects this was an ordinary day, there was one thing that was slightly different; the blinds in the front windows were pulled down. The blinds were pulled down for a reason, a reason that was dramatically evident as the children left school that afternoon. As they descended the front steps of the building to go to their parents’ cars, there was a major gap in the horizon. The wood clapboard house that had always stood serenely on the other side of the street was no longer there. In its place was a bit of rubble and lots of dirt. How can a house disappear so quickly? Why did they do that? Can my Daddy do that? Can I do that? Will it happen to me? The teachers had prepared the children for this event, explaining that workmen were going to knock the building down. The building was old and they wanted to build a new building there. This was the best explanation the teachers could think of, but they weren’t at all comfortable with it. How do you explain why someone would choose to get rid of an intact, attractive house just because it is old? The teachers had deliberated over whether or not to leave the blinds up so that the children could see the actual demolition. This, they decided, would be too much. They had seen too many times already how the children’s tenuous control of their own aggression and excitement is so easily threatened by any show of physical force, how quickly they become anxious and out-of-control. They had seen, as well, how destruction not only threatens the children’s sense of safety and intactness, but also becomes confused with hurting excitements. They felt that the children would be much better able to understand the reality of the event when protected from the impact of the feelings that would be stimulated in the process of actually seeing it. Staff in the Hanna Perkins building had seen quite a number of changes since it was built in 1961, a time when Cornell was a quiet residential street, a block away from Cleveland’s University Hospitals. The biggest changes, however, had occurred in the previous three years. The parking lot which was once to the right of the building was replaced by the temporary main entrance to the hospital; the garage on the other side of the lot was knocked down and rebuilt on the other side of the street; buildings behind the school were knocked down and replaced with the huge twin towers. The many changes were fascinating for the casual observers who walked by every day on their way to work; it was much like entering a Richard Scarry book in 3-D. Doctors stopped to watch the cranes move huge steel girders through the sky; visitors to the hospital peered through the glass elevators of the parking garage onto the bulldozers digging the foundation of the twin towers; office workers watched workmen negotiate scaffolding and wield blow torches three stories up in the air. The process was just as fascinating to the Hanna Perkins children, but neither as easily comprehended, nor neutrally experienced. There were days when the noise of the machinery invaded the classrooms, a period of time when the kindergartners had to give up 15 feet of their playground, and the phase when everyone had to travel a narrow pathway from their cars to the building while their parking lot was being torn up. There were times when the pull to believe that the workmen were superheroes who blow up buildings, wield fire-breathing weapons, and steal children’s playgrounds was just too great. Assisting the children with all this was an ongoing challenge for the Hanna Perkins staff. By keeping in close touch with the hospital administrators and the project directors of the constructions crews, the Hanna Perkins building administrator, and Mrs. Steininger, the Educational Director at the time, kept apprised of the imminent events and carefully thought through how they would be managed. Each development necessitated practical arrangements and decisions as to what could be mastered by the children and what they needed protection from. The manner in which the parents and children were informed of the changes needed to be carefully thought out, as did the follow up explanations and clarifications. It was important not to minimize the impact the changes might have on the children, but it was also important not to make more of them than necessary. All was geared toward assisting the children in understanding and mastering their experiences of the events. On the nursery level, it became evident that the children were still so busy learning to manage their feelings about everyday occurrences in the classroom that explanations about the activity outside needed to be kept to a minimum. Kindergarten children, however, were more able to attend to the outside world. In the kindergarten, the children studied construction, built their own buildings, and spoke with the actual project directors of the construction crews. They went on carefully planned field trips to the construction sites and drew pictures of their experiences afterwards. Over several years there were three different project directors, and each was most understanding and respectful of the Hanna Perkins children. This might have been due to the fact that each had young children of his own. One of the project directors brought a model crane for the kindergarten children to see. The children, in turn, gave him their own set of drawings. When the kindergarten playground was cut into, the construction crews refrained from using the blow torch during the time the children were outside. When the construction crew noticed the children’s pleasure in painting the boards which were erected as a temporary fence, they generously preserved the painted boards and replaced them with clean ones so that the children had the opportunity to create several different murals. When the crew heard that Mrs. Steininger wanted the slide coming from the roof of the garage removed because the children could not use it safely, they generously removed it free of charge. When offensive language was heard and Mrs. Steininger mentioned it to the project director, it was never heard again. The good relationships formed between the project directors and Mrs. Steininger enabled the children to form relationships with the construction crews. Because they were able to experience the construction workers as real people doing meaningful jobs who also cared about them, the kindergarten children were more able to integrate their experience of the activity around them in a realistic manner. The fantasy elements, along with the accompanying excitement and aggression, were mitigated by the thoughtfully introduced reality. The superheroes were actually kind, considerate men, doing honest and skillful work. |
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