Charlestown Playhouse still thrives after 67 years

http://www.dailylocal.com/articles/2003/01/23/frontpage/6788137.txt

By Pamela Batzel

Other 3-year-olds pushed coats into cubbyholes before taking up plastic dinosaurs living in a desert of boxed-in sand or a Fisher Price playhouse.

As the children strolled in and picked their pleasure, Fiona Behrman, already deep into her work, was multitasking.

The curly-haired tike costumed in a tutu for Wednesday, had already laid a stuffed giraffe a third her size on a table and covered it with a blanket.

With the sick -- or perhaps resting -- giraffe beside her, Fiona aimed a colorful camera toward the classroom’s miniature kitchen and rack of costumes that included a yellow firefighter’s coat and glamorous dresses.

"In the house corner, the children are not just dressing up, pouring tea, putting the doll to bed -- they are learning to identify with adult roles and are involved in group play of ideas and communications," reads a paragraph of the philosophy at the Charlestown Playhouse, a 67-year-old, time-untouched preschool nestled on a small rise off Charlestown Road.

"They learn through play," said Carol Neskie, a retired teacher who now helps the school’s 96-year-old founder, Betty Stonorov, run the cooperative school.

"Play is children’s work as a matter of fact," said Neskie.

Parents who send their children to the preschool program, which includes a certified kindergarten class that operates under the same philosophy, said that the Charlestown Playhouse is unique.

"If they want to get the paint and paint (their) hands, go ahead," said mom Andrea Fiorillo, who helps out in the 3’s Room on Thursdays. One day her 4-year-old daughter came home painted like a rainbow snake. "At another preschool they would have told her to put that down."

These days, some parents, consumed with the notion of sending their children to top-notch universities, compete to send their preschoolers to exclusive programs that will launch them into their academic careers early.

But at Playhouse, a cooperative school where parents must assist teachers in the classrooms one day a week, you will not find children in rows of seats, bodies bent over lesson books with pencils in hand.

"We don’t have workbooks if you’ve noticed. These are our notebooks," said Neskie as she gestured toward the handful of picture "letters" several children delivered to Stonorov’s office as part of their post-office play. The letters were collages of stamps of Snoopy’s Woodstock and "Paid," and a handmade, yellow-and-black orb with tentacles reaching out like the legs of an octopus.

Parents said that they like the philosophy because it respects children’s natural developmental process.

"At this age I don’t think they’re really ready for academic preschool," said Leslie Hoffman, Chase’s mom. "They need the time to play and learn the socialization skills."

Stonorov, who still greets the children at the school’s Dutch door every morning, started the school informally in the 1930s. She invited youngsters from the community into her home, before she and her husband, Oscar, an architect, had the first of their four children.

She said that she and her sister, Edith Krause, moved into the two-story school, formerly a church, in 1936.

"Playing was always the thing," said Stonorov, who still engenders great respect from parents and teachers, some of whom were Miss Betty’s students years ago. "That’s how they’re learning."

In keeping with the school’s philosophy, the school has changed little in look over the years.

"A lot of the play structures are still there from when I was a kid," said Ann Dyer, a mother who attended the school in the mid- through late 1960s.

"It’s fairly low-tech," Dyer said. "You won’t see Superman figures and Batman figures here. You won’t see any toy guns or toy weapons."

Coloring books with prescribed drawings are not part of the picture either, she said.

Rooms are filled with paint and blank paper, building blocks of every sort, costumes, books, puppets, board games and puzzles, sand- and water-dish tables and mirrors.

Climbers, sometimes covered with blankets, become homes or covered wagons.

In Fiona’s and Chase’s room a driver’s wheel hangs out of reach until a tot should wish to take a cruise down a long and windy road, perhaps Charlestown Road. "They are reproducing real-life situations and learning to understand them," states the philosophy Stonorov wrote too many years ago for her to recall exactly when.

In main areas and anterooms of the school are more books, the typical tools of a wood shop and a kitchen.

A firefighter’s pole and a sliding board join the second story to the first. Outside, swings hang from wood beams resting between tree branches, and a shed stores bicycles.

Nick Margay, sitting on the floor in the kindergarten classroom, was hammering nails into cardboard name-brand food cans. "I’m making a solar car," Nick said.

"It really thrives on their imagination," Dyer said.

Upstairs, in the 3’s Room, where a section of wall was painted in moody blues and greens by little fingers, Cathy Bodo -- Miss Cathy -- was moving from group to child, inquiring about their play.

She sat with a group of children circling a table that held a playhouse they shared, and at another moment helped prepare bath water for Fiona, who wanted to wash two baby dolls.

"What I really like is it’s totally focused on what the children want to do, not what the teacher wants to do," said Bodo. "Today children are tested to the gills ..It’s at least nice to let them have their preschool years free of that."

The self-directed play allows the children to develop critical thinking skills rather than focus on rote memorization, and to learn how to interact with other children and adults, "which is what’s going to help them in life more than knowing their ABCs when they’re 2 or 3," Bodo said.

Gean Lacy, earlier that recent morning, was watching Fiona, who stepped around the giraffe-bearing table in little girl’s lady shoes to photograph the kitchen-and-costume row.

"I don’t think people realize what children this age can do," said Lacy, referring to the multitasking Fiona.

Lacy, 75, who taught in the school for 20 years and now assists Bodo, said there are important reasons why teachers of preschool-age children should follow the child’s lead.

"I think the school also allows children to develop self-respect ... because we respect them, we respect their ideas," said Lacy. "And in that way they learn to respect other children, and I think that we aim for that also."

Marilou Hyson, associate executive director for the National Association for the Education of Young Children, and a former Playhouse teacher, said that studies show that helping children to value their ability to think pays off.

Hyson, whose grandson now attends the school, said that children who learn to think of themselves "as smart little people" enter kindergarten more likely to score better on math and reading skills than children who do not, Hyson said.

She also said that Playhouse is different from many schools because Stonorov has long embraced children with special needs.

"People talk about inclusion," Hyson said. "Playschool did that before anyone knew what the word meant."

The school’s founder has also long valued teacher training, she said. Stonorov was affiliated with the National Association of Nursery Education before it became the National Association for the Education of Young Children, a 100,000-member professional association, she said. Today all of the teachers are certified, Neskie said.

Hyson, whose expertise is in early childhood development, is one of at least a few former Playhouse teachers for whom the school became the launching pad for their careers.

Former teacher Nadine Himes is now with the Delaware Valley Association for the Education of the Young Child, and Joan Hasselquist was a professor of early education at West Chester University before she retired, Neskie said.

Of course some have stayed or returned. Neskie, 76, and Lacy have known Stonorov since they were teenagers.

Dyer said that the school and its certified teachers also play an important role in the education of parents. It is "tremendously" helpful to watch the teachers in action, she said.

"I can’t tell you how many times with my kids ..I sit down and think how would Miss Faith deal with this," Dyer said, and that it could be any teacher she thinks of.

Hoffman, Chase’s mother, said that she learned about the school from her pediatrician, Brad Dyer, Ann Dyer’s husband.

The pediatrician "said how magical and wonderful it was," Hoffman said. Now that she has moved Chase into the school, where she can successfully discuss her son’s shyness with his teachers, she "can’t imagine him going anywhere else."