[Applause]
[Music]
if you built a river in a classroom you
could have a cloud and you could have
rain and you could have Rapids and you
could have more Rapids and you could
have a boat design studio where children
could design and experiment with boats
and they could have passengers on their
boats and they could send their boats up
and down the river and if he had a river
if you built a river in a classroom you
could plan out what you’re going to
build along the river by each child
getting a chunk of real estate and and
doing drawings at a half scale before
they build and you could grow plants in
your in your territory or your plot to
grow grass in your plot and you could
watch it grow every day in fact the
grass we use in the morning is
significantly taller in the afternoon
and so each child could have this
territory next to the water which would
give them the security of building what
they want to build or collaborating with
their neighbors and you could populate
your plot with creatures and characters
that you would invent
but writing stories on your River
journals and you could cut up tiny
figures and recombine them with animals
and put wings on them that are made from
milk bottles and paint them silver just
for the heck of it
and if you built a river in a classroom
you could build bridges that as an
academic engineering exercise but
bridges that bridges that go from
nowhere to nowhere
but bridges that go from that link
different lands and different realms
bridges that have mythic or narrative
meaning and your classroom would become
your classroom will be driven by tiny
feats of engineering if he builds River
in a classroom you can have all kinds of
different materials available and
different tools and you could have a
lumber yard full of miniature lumber
appropriated from the coffee and
culinary industries and you could have
special materials available that are
recycled bits that that are special and
that are maybe not in quantities big
enough to give to everybody that you get
from all different sources and those
could exist in the store and the store
could be run by children and then they
would set the hours and they would price
things and they would sell these objects
that the kids could use to enhance their
architecture
and if you had 75 gallons of water
surging around inside the classroom you
would you would have a constant kinetic
prompt foreplay but you might also have
something else which we don’t really
usually think of having in a classroom
and that’s just the edge of danger
there’s a flood somebody yells the water
is overflowing somebody eles and four
kids come running to the scene with mops
and they have jobs so they know that
they’re on the job on the mop duty that
day and if you built a river in a
classroom you might think that you’re
teaching carpentry and design but then
you would find that you’re also teaching
civics because working along this 35
foot object requires negotiation for
people to figure out how they’re going
to blend their architecture and their
work together
in one instance there were three girls
who got plots along the river that were
spaced far apart along the river along
the 35 feet of the river in it you know
River otherwise completely occupied by
boys and kind of overwhelmed by the boy
energy and feeling isolated from each
other the three girls decided to build a
skyline down the entire length of the
river using string and little cups and
in order to do so they would have to go
over the airspace controlled by the boys
so that was kind of a cool thing kind of
a cool idea because it was showing that
there that they were empowering
themselves but to make it work they had
to devise beautiful towers to hold up
the skyline and that kind of gave them
credibility in the context of the whole
group when they labor it over these
towers and they built them and they had
to plant them not only in their own
plots but they had to get variances from
other kids to put them in other people’s
plots Civics so some kids like to go
really big and other kids like to get to
zero in on small details like interior
architecture and furniture this these
are buttons and these handles on the
refrigerator are three-quarter inch
nails are about this long and these
burners are made from wire and this this
was made by a ten year old girl who I
used to call Edward Scissorhands because
she would just go away and go like this
and then this kind of stuff would emerge
and this boy who got in this groove of
making fruit for his tree house and he
got in this zone making fruit and you
got to understand the scale of this
these loops these this is about a half
an inch these bowls are actually those
metal things on the bottom of chairs
they were they were a surplus product
though that he turned into bowls look at
these are his finger prints
these these grooves here look at these
peppers back here so in a sense in a
conventional sense he hadn’t really
accomplished anything because we hadn’t
assigned fruit making and look at this
incredible composition by two
eight-year-old girls who work together
and ice was in the water and I thought
it was beautiful and amazing until and
then if I didn’t really understand what
I was until they explained to me that
the center square is a waiting room and
it’s a sea animal hospital and each of
the each of the rectangles is an exam
room where the animals are being treated
so this was an ephemeral work the creek
near my childhood home was my first
classroom what did I learn there I
learned currents currents eddies
buoyancy inertia gravity insects birds
trees when my friend came to visit we
would walk down the river and we would
go down a couple of bends farther each
time you know what we would get our
nerve up and we’d go a little farther
down the river and we really thought we
were gonna find a foreign country around
the next bend so we were seeing
searching for a secret see I remember we
thought we would find an inland see if
we went down there Creek and I say River
the creek a little farther everything
actions had consequences in the river
there are places where we couldn’t
proceed because it was a sunken creek
without jumping from rock to rock and
that always didn’t work exactly the way
we expected so part of the experience
was walking home in the discomfort of
wet shoes so we’re building this big
river in the classroom and when things
are going really well we achieve what I
am my co-teacher call the hum the home
and the hum is the sound of 20 children
each working at their own pace and their
attention is shifting from making to
playing to thinking to making to talking
and back to making and my co-teacher and
I sometimes just look at each other
because we know we’re in the hum and the
hum is why we do all this work without
the hum some people are not that
productive many of us are just not wired
to be consistently inspired and creative
when we’re when we’re I saluted from the
creativity of others the powerful
archetype of the visual artist alone in
their studio may have limited the way we
teach visual arts to children in
classrooms each with their own desk each
with their own piece of paper each with
their own set of paints and their own
brush we would hardly tolerate this in
sports or music or theater this
isolation from each other this dividing
the world into disconnected parts so the
performing arts music theater and and
and filmmaking our models for the kind
of in Samba wijl arched that we’re
trying to achieve in the river appleís
studio and we bring rivers to schools
the classroom of the 19th century may
have provided a refuge for children from
the crudeness and danger of the factory
and the farm but maybe the classroom of
the 21st century used to go in the other
direction and embrace the actual things
wood water tools nails hammers plants
soil a garden of heavy things a refuge
not from the farmer the factory but from
the ever-present internet social media
and entertainment
these these virtual things are amazing
and important but they are not the world
and I want today’s children to know and
love the world thank you
[Applause]
you
[Music]
if you built a river in a classroom you
could have a cloud and you could have
rain and you could have Rapids and you
could have more Rapids and you could
have a boat design studio where children
could design and experiment with boats
and they could have passengers on their
boats and they could send their boats up
and down the river and if he had a river
if you built a river in a classroom you
could plan out what you’re going to
build along the river by each child
getting a chunk of real estate and and
doing drawings at a half scale before
they build and you could grow plants in
your in your territory or your plot to
grow grass in your plot and you could
watch it grow every day in fact the
grass we use in the morning is
significantly taller in the afternoon
and so each child could have this
territory next to the water which would
give them the security of building what
they want to build or collaborating with
their neighbors and you could populate
your plot with creatures and characters
that you would invent
but writing stories on your River
journals and you could cut up tiny
figures and recombine them with animals
and put wings on them that are made from
milk bottles and paint them silver just
for the heck of it
and if you built a river in a classroom
you could build bridges that as an
academic engineering exercise but
bridges that bridges that go from
nowhere to nowhere
but bridges that go from that link
different lands and different realms
bridges that have mythic or narrative
meaning and your classroom would become
your classroom will be driven by tiny
feats of engineering if he builds River
in a classroom you can have all kinds of
different materials available and
different tools and you could have a
lumber yard full of miniature lumber
appropriated from the coffee and
culinary industries and you could have
special materials available that are
recycled bits that that are special and
that are maybe not in quantities big
enough to give to everybody that you get
from all different sources and those
could exist in the store and the store
could be run by children and then they
would set the hours and they would price
things and they would sell these objects
that the kids could use to enhance their
architecture
and if you had 75 gallons of water
surging around inside the classroom you
would you would have a constant kinetic
prompt foreplay but you might also have
something else which we don’t really
usually think of having in a classroom
and that’s just the edge of danger
there’s a flood somebody yells the water
is overflowing somebody eles and four
kids come running to the scene with mops
and they have jobs so they know that
they’re on the job on the mop duty that
day and if you built a river in a
classroom you might think that you’re
teaching carpentry and design but then
you would find that you’re also teaching
civics because working along this 35
foot object requires negotiation for
people to figure out how they’re going
to blend their architecture and their
work together
in one instance there were three girls
who got plots along the river that were
spaced far apart along the river along
the 35 feet of the river in it you know
River otherwise completely occupied by
boys and kind of overwhelmed by the boy
energy and feeling isolated from each
other the three girls decided to build a
skyline down the entire length of the
river using string and little cups and
in order to do so they would have to go
over the airspace controlled by the boys
so that was kind of a cool thing kind of
a cool idea because it was showing that
there that they were empowering
themselves but to make it work they had
to devise beautiful towers to hold up
the skyline and that kind of gave them
credibility in the context of the whole
group when they labor it over these
towers and they built them and they had
to plant them not only in their own
plots but they had to get variances from
other kids to put them in other people’s
plots Civics so some kids like to go
really big and other kids like to get to
zero in on small details like interior
architecture and furniture this these
are buttons and these handles on the
refrigerator are three-quarter inch
nails are about this long and these
burners are made from wire and this this
was made by a ten year old girl who I
used to call Edward Scissorhands because
she would just go away and go like this
and then this kind of stuff would emerge
and this boy who got in this groove of
making fruit for his tree house and he
got in this zone making fruit and you
got to understand the scale of this
these loops these this is about a half
an inch these bowls are actually those
metal things on the bottom of chairs
they were they were a surplus product
though that he turned into bowls look at
these are his finger prints
these these grooves here look at these
peppers back here so in a sense in a
conventional sense he hadn’t really
accomplished anything because we hadn’t
assigned fruit making and look at this
incredible composition by two
eight-year-old girls who work together
and ice was in the water and I thought
it was beautiful and amazing until and
then if I didn’t really understand what
I was until they explained to me that
the center square is a waiting room and
it’s a sea animal hospital and each of
the each of the rectangles is an exam
room where the animals are being treated
so this was an ephemeral work the creek
near my childhood home was my first
classroom what did I learn there I
learned currents currents eddies
buoyancy inertia gravity insects birds
trees when my friend came to visit we
would walk down the river and we would
go down a couple of bends farther each
time you know what we would get our
nerve up and we’d go a little farther
down the river and we really thought we
were gonna find a foreign country around
the next bend so we were seeing
searching for a secret see I remember we
thought we would find an inland see if
we went down there Creek and I say River
the creek a little farther everything
actions had consequences in the river
there are places where we couldn’t
proceed because it was a sunken creek
without jumping from rock to rock and
that always didn’t work exactly the way
we expected so part of the experience
was walking home in the discomfort of
wet shoes so we’re building this big
river in the classroom and when things
are going really well we achieve what I
am my co-teacher call the hum the home
and the hum is the sound of 20 children
each working at their own pace and their
attention is shifting from making to
playing to thinking to making to talking
and back to making and my co-teacher and
I sometimes just look at each other
because we know we’re in the hum and the
hum is why we do all this work without
the hum some people are not that
productive many of us are just not wired
to be consistently inspired and creative
when we’re when we’re I saluted from the
creativity of others the powerful
archetype of the visual artist alone in
their studio may have limited the way we
teach visual arts to children in
classrooms each with their own desk each
with their own piece of paper each with
their own set of paints and their own
brush we would hardly tolerate this in
sports or music or theater this
isolation from each other this dividing
the world into disconnected parts so the
performing arts music theater and and
and filmmaking our models for the kind
of in Samba wijl arched that we’re
trying to achieve in the river appleís
studio and we bring rivers to schools
the classroom of the 19th century may
have provided a refuge for children from
the crudeness and danger of the factory
and the farm but maybe the classroom of
the 21st century used to go in the other
direction and embrace the actual things
wood water tools nails hammers plants
soil a garden of heavy things a refuge
not from the farmer the factory but from
the ever-present internet social media
and entertainment
these these virtual things are amazing
and important but they are not the world
and I want today’s children to know and
love the world thank you
[Applause]
you
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