Ken Brautigam's fellow teachers at The Grammar School in Putney refer to him as their Pied Piper. Since 1995, when he was hired as their first pre-school teacher, he has engaged with the lives of pre-schoolers at the school he calls his “happy place.” “I felt fortunate to land there, to work there, to teach children. It's a vibrant place, and feels like one big family. Every morning, once my 15 or so children arrived, I called out “Yoo Whooooo!”
“My teaching with pre-schoolers was, as much as possible, nature-based. In a very real sense, I spent a great deal of my 28 school-years in the woods with them. We were in the classroom, of course, but when we were inside we talked about what we had done outside. Pretty much every day – rain or snow, sun or clouds – we hiked and talked and sang up into our woods – 65**acres of forest, stream, fields and barn the Richardson family had donated in 1966 so the school could get started. We’d follow a trail to an old broken down shed we called "The Witches Cabin." We’d sit in a circle and I might ask the kids, “Can you tell me an animal that lives in the Vermont Woods?" Or, “What kind of homes might those animals build or live in?” They’d clamor with answers. Then we'd name animals that might live in Africa. Or we’d walk along by the little stream and I’d ask, “Where does the water come from?**Where does it go?” We’d make whole "meals" out of mud, grass, and stones**and one of the children would say the pies were like the pottery her mother made.
“With all of us circled around the fire, I’d pick up two sticks and ask the children, “What’s the difference between these two?*" *That would lead to a conversation about comparisons: bigger and smaller, longer and shorter, smooth and rough….. Or one of the children might have seen a rabbit in the woods and I’d ask them, “What's another word for a rabbit?" “Bunny” they’d call out and we’d play with other rabbitnames and then I’d ask: “What rhymes with Bunny?”
Ken Brautigam was born in 1956 and grew up in a small rural town in southeast Wisconsin, the second eldest of five children. His father taught graduate school courses in Madison; his mother was an early childhood education teacher. “My social life was with my brothers and sisters. We spent so much time in the woods, in nature.
“My family moved to Lexington, Kentucky where I attended high school. In 1974 I went back to Wisconsin to my roots when I entered Beloit College. I pursued American Studies, ceramics, and ran on the track and cross-country teams – I guess I’d do anything to get into the woods. After graduation, I worked at Beloit College as a track and field coach and served as the Assistant Director of Residential Life. In 1984 I met Libby Holmes, the daughter of close friends of my parents, when both our families gathered for a Father’s Day brunch. We stayed in touch – and exactly 10 years later, on Father's Day, we married." “In 1985, I left Wisconsin and for three years worked as a Peace Corps volunteer. I lived in Niger, West Africa, working in remote villages teaching people how to improve their traditional cooking stoves using locally available materials: clay, straw, sand, manure, rocks…. During that time Libby and I stayed in touch. She was finishing at SIT – The School for International Training in Brattleboro – where she earned her MAT in teaching English as a second language.
“In 1988 I left Africa and went straight to visit Libby in Brattleboro. We soon married and we’ve been here in southeast Vermont ever since with our two children,**Carrie and Miles. Brattleboro and Putney are so welcoming, so lively, so wooded. In the late 80’s when we started our lives together here, both towns had a younger population moving into this community of farmers, hard-working people and long-standing families. Established conservatives and new-comer liberals lived side by side: social creativity, communes, progressive attitudes shoulder-to-shoulder with**more traditional*, *conservative Vermonters.**That friendly and respectful combination resonated with me quite powerfully.
"I worked at the Putney Co-op and taught pottery at The Putney School’s Summer Arts Program, but everything changed in the summer of 1995 when I learned The Grammar School wanted to start a pre-school. Nancy Callichio, then Head of School, hired me. I stayed for 28 years, retiring in 2023. Having parents who were teachers, and my having coached and taught, I was very much aware of the national conversation regarding the value of early childhood education, and Vermont was proudly at the center of that conversation. Vermont teachers, together with support from the State Legislature, were
embracing important social, financial, and environmental solutions to the challenges of educating young children.
“The Grammar School wanted to create a nature-based curriculum, one that would dovetail with the progress borne of that national conversation. We wanted to provide children with opportunities to build strong social connections*, *play with numbers, language, and concepts, and engage their imaginations in creative**and sometimes challenging ways. I'd try to include concepts like social justice, environmental stewardship, and the importance of basic kindness in my teaching content and strategies.
"For me, one key to this kind of teaching was to step back and allow children to experience their world in an unrestrained yet safe way. The teacher is more a**guide than a director. I took my cues from the children, and borrowed heavily from Reggio-Emilio, the Italian early childhood education approach*. *Give children space, opportunities, and materials and let them experience and explore their world. That way**children feel empowered, recognized, enlivened, engaged.
"Throughout my career as a pre-school teacher, I've witnessed the evolution of Early Childhood Education towards a richer, more intentional profession beyond the outdated concept of mere daycare. Thanks to visionary leaders like Chloe Learey at The Winston Prouty Center in Brattleboro and Nancy Calicchio, today's childcare centers, like Katy Emond's /Putney Place /teach pre-schoolers in new ways.//Ken adds:/"/I'm humbled knowing that I'm a man in a profession that's been driven and nurtured predominantly by women, and my successes have only been possible due to the efforts of so many women throughout the years."//
One more thing about Ken: He drives a maroon**1983 Mercedes station-wagon which he has**modified**to run on waste**vegetable oil (WVO) collected at local restaurants. And that’s the vehicle he and Libby drive around Vermont in as new members of the "Vermont**251 Club," Libby’s present to Ken when he retired**in 2022. It’s a loosely-organized club whose purpose is to encourage exploration of Vermont by visiting the 251 towns around the state. **On one rural drive recently, they rounded a corner of a dirt road in central Vermont and came upon a Zebra grazing side by side in a farmer’s field.
And one last story: Last summer, Ken and Libby drove to The Culvert, a swimming hole on Hickory Ridge Road in Putney – quite near The Grammar School – to have a swim. One of his young**students happened to be there as well, and called out, “Ken, Ken, how did you know I was here!?”