White S P A C E
When you look at a page, white space is the empty space that surrounds the text.
White space is very important. The amount of white space can make the text more legible. It can highlight a poem. It can set things off, emphasize them.
When there isn’t enough white space, the text can be hard to read, hard to understand. The page is cluttered; the brain has a hard time sorting out what’s there.
When we talk about overscheduled kids, I think about white space.
When we talk about project learning, I think about white space.
When we cram too many experiences into a child’s day/week/life, we don’t leave time for them to think about what they’ve experienced — they just move on to the next thing, letting the previous thing drop away.
(This is true for ourselves, too, of course.)
What is white space in a project? Doing something else for awhile … turning your attention to a different problem … relaxing … reading … being bored … maybe simply slowing the pace for awhile.
Refilling the well, being inspired, making connections, reflecting … these aren’t things that are easily acknowledged and checked off a list. They need time — empty, unfilled, unscheduled time. White space.
Without the white space, there’s no balance.
Rather than thinking about quantity — of ideas, of experiences, of work produced — we need to think about quality. Spending more time doing less, so we can do better and appreciate more. A single experience, really and truly had and understood, is more valuable than weeks and weeks of rushed, unconnected, random experiences.
