Wonder love

Keeping Time

This post was originally written for the Opal School Blog, but as a personal reflection, it made sense to post it here as well.

My desk these days is filled with calendars, lists, agendas, new files and binders. Somehow attempting to give form to the enthusiasm and the anticipation of all a new school year will bring.Trying to contain it. Organize it.

On Fresh Air last night, Terry Gross interviewed neuroscientist David Eagleman about his book Incognito. "All of our lives — our cognition, our thoughts, our beliefs — all of these are underpinned by these massive lightning storms of [electrical] activity [in our brains,] and yet we don't have any awareness of it," Eagleman says. "What we find is that our brains have colossal things happening in them all the time."

One of the most interesting snippets had to do with the relationship between time and memory. He described research that has been done on thousands of subjects willing to encounter a free fall of 150 feet, backwards into a net. What goes on in their minds while they are falling? Time slows. The brain floods with memories, moments, and the participants consistently marveled over how a second-long fall could feel like minutes.

Waiting for the school year to begin is a free fall of sorts. Memories, experiences, hopes and dreams all causing colossal action in our brains, and how we move to start just the tip of the conscious iceberg. 

But what happens for children? Children experience time like the numbers on a digital clock-- out of context with the winding hands of the analog. How do we support them with a sense of belonging to our adult world that can see the relationships of past to future? How do we develop enough wisdom ourselves to recognize the experience that has framed our cognition, our beliefs, our thoughts -- that the lightning storms firing in our brains are not the same that fire in our children's? How do we learn to value the wisdom in their experience while keeping them safe, keeping them engaged, keeping them on time?

This summer, my family worked with a wonderful specialist named Mary Dee Sklar, who has written a course called, Seeing What I Need To Do. She helped us learn to make abstract concepts of time visible and even tangible so that all of us can see and feel together what it means to move cooperatively through time.

Hours and minutes and days are the blocks we use to build our lives together. Tools such as analog clocks, wall calendars, visual schedules, and timers can become ways that we hold those blocks in our hands to play with our children so that they can learn to build with us and understand how to fit their needs and the needs of the lives of others together with beauty and mastery. In coming weeks, we'll share some of the strategies we are using. And we hope you will share as well the tools and routines you use.

When we pave this pathway of belonging for our children towards the world of adulthood, we alter the patterns of those lightning storms in their brains forever. And we leave a lasting trace on the hours and minutes and days that continue to build the lives of our loved ones long after we are gone.

How to Teach Reading and Writing (and a little math and science, too)

Stella loves to lay in the hammock. I'd say it is her favorite summer pastime this year. I spent about an hour laying in it with her one morning this week, and I taught her to read and write. Here's how:

1. As we were swinging gently back and forth, I looked up into the tree and saw that a spider had made a web and the sun was catching it just so we could see every line. Having finished reading Charlotte's Web the night before, I asked Stella if she imagined that Charlotte's webs looked that way? Could she see the orb lines and the radial lines? 
2. I reached for the drawing paper and pens that were available in our little outdoor studio space and invited Stella to draw the web she saw. This is a difficult task, but she gave it a try. 
3. When she finished, she wanted to write, "From Stella" on the bottom of the paper. She asked me how to write "From". So I told her the letters and she wrote them down.
4. Then she wanted to write "I love you". So we started with "I". She wanted more letters so I explained to her that was the whole word. 
5. She asked if she could write a heart and I said yes but that wouldn't be the word. She would need letters to make the word "love". So she asked for the letters.
6. This time, I made the sound /l/ because I knew it was a sound she had in her name. I told her it was the sound in Ste -- ll --and she blurted out happily, "l"! And then she was tired out, so she decided to stop the writing.
7. We laid back in the hammock for a little more snuggling and swinging. A squirrel hopped along the top of the fence but got startled when it saw us and ran away.
8. We checked on the web again and Stella noticed a tiny moth flying around it. She wondered if it would get caught and the spider would eat it. We considered the patience it takes to be a spider. 
9. I looked up on the tree and noticed a bit of sap running from a knot hole. I remembered that Stella had asked about making syrup very recently, and took a moment to make the connection for her.
10. She hopped up and cleaned the raspberry bushes of berries, then hopped back in.
11. We noticed that the spider's web had broken. And we took a little more time to consider the patience and feelings of spiders. Stella spent a few moments trying to talk to the spider in spider language, which I, like Fern's mother, could not understand.
12. Stella decided to add the spider to her drawing. She asked me how many legs it had and I told her. Stella's spider got 8 legs counted carefully -- on each side of the spider's body.
13. We noticed a second spider building a web behind the first, and we were reminded of Charlotte's babies.

Okay, so Stella doesn't yet read and write independently. But an hour spent like this, in the context of good books and materials at hand and making conversation in the wide world -- an hour spent snuggling and connecting and considering the feelings of spiders and squirrels -- an hour spent noticing and wondering and making meaningful marks on the page -- this is how she will learn. Experience offers her a chance to find her place in the family of things. She, like all human beings, wants a way to participate.

And it is oh, so much more fun than flashcards.

Slow Down

It has been a long winter. Lots and lots of working overtime and Sophie in a (semi-)professional theater production which means she gets paid and I drive and a new puppy and soccer practices and various lessons and all the usual (laundry and such) and the sophisticated mathematical problem solving that allowed us around the family dinner table at least once in a while complicated by picky eaters and school and homework and applying to high school (!) and middle school (!!). And now it is Spring.

Almost 5 year old Stella has become more than a handful. And all this grand thinking about competent children and being mindful of our relationships with them can feel a little suspect when parenting a handful. Sometimes the choices these competent little ones make just are not okay. Their behavior just needs to STOP. Like when you are riding in the car, for instance. When a child makes the exciting transition to a booster seat, the child simply has got to SIT STILL in the car. She cannot twirl around and upside down and explore the variety of ways she can weave her limbs through the belt while turning around to reach what's behind her and taking off her jacket. And putting it back on. She simply can't.

And so I warned her. I warned her that she was going to lose her right to sit in the big kids' car seat. And she blew it, so I told her she was going to have to sit in the old car seat for another day. Oh, and she cried then. She sobbed.

I've been reading Brene Brown's book about shame recently. And as Stella cried, I wondered, what have I done recently to let this not quite 5-year-old girl know how worthy she is? As I manage the world around her moving at mach speed, what have I done to support her to understand that she is not to be ashamed of her 4-year-oldness. The world tilted on me and I realized it was me that needed to STOP -- right about the time we parked, finally at home for the day.

Stella and I sat down together later that afternoon and we created a list: The Rules for Riding in Big Kid Car Seats. It turns out that Stella knew them all. I drew a picture (critiqued by 11-year-old Max) of what she should look like while riding, and wrote the words we created together. Then Stella asked for the pen. And she added her own rule. One I hadn't considered at all.

 

Don't let your ponytails touch the ceiling.

Brilliant. Competent. Not quite 5.

At not quite 45, I have a lot of catching up to do. Clearly, I will need to slow down in order to do it.

Here she is this morning, riding to school, reading the list we made -- which she chose to carry with her in the car. Look at her expert form! About half-way to school she said, "Hey, Mommy! I'm doing all the things!" Worthy of my time and love and attention. More powerful than shame any day. 

A peek into Opal School

There is, actually, an official Opal School blog. Someday soon I hope to make it public -- but for now, I have to settle for sharing a post here and there, slurped from that blog over to this one -- just to give you a peek into the incredible work those children and teachers do together. This one is from our classroom of 8 - 10 year olds and their new teacher, Avery Hill. (Her blog is a public one: http://rootedingrowth.blogspot.com/.) It is Avery's first year teaching at Opal School and her first year teaching. She spent last year as Opal's apprentice teacher, studying the ways we work together. And this year she is supported by a part time mentor teacher, an experienced Opal teacher -- later referred to as MG.

In this classroom, as they were getting to know one another this year, some tinkering workshops gave way to some interest in bridges, and the metaphors spilled over as ways to describe and think about the learning community. The concrete bridge images provided tangible, visible, playful opportunities to hold the concept of community. And so what follows makes perfect, if magical, sense. And they are a starting place for the rest that will unfold over the year.

Post by Avery Hill:

Opal 3's work to compose and adopt agreements for our community has continued these past weeks. After brainstorming and refining, the children came to agreement on five ideas to guide the way we will strive to be together this school year. But it felt strange to call them "agreements" after all the discussion about and comparison of our community as a kind of bridge that we are building. How could we envision our agreements in the context of our work with bridges?

The children wrote this letter to our friend, occasional special guest, and founder of Opal School Judy Graves, to tell her about the work we had done:

Dear Judy,

We expect you know about the Opal agreements.  Well, they just took a trip to the trash can and they’re NOT coming back.  So, say goodbye!  We replaced them with guiding pillars… big GINORMOUS guiding pillars. 

Between the time when you last visited us and now, we came up with these guiding pillars.  When we were done with our bridge work with Steve, we started thinking about our community as a bridge.  The pillars are our agreements that guide us.  Our guiding pillars are:

·        Be safe.

·        Respect everyone.

·        Support everyone in our community.

·        Treat materials and surroundings like treasures.

·        Think before acting.

MG had an idea to create the pillars in the classroom.  So on the playground side of the classroom you can see five painted pillars that represent our guiding pillars. 

We’re using our guiding pillars to help us figure out what role we play in our community. 

We want to share this with you and hear the end of your story tomorrow.

Love,

Opal 3

   

  

    

    

    

As we continue working and learning together in the New Year, these pillars will provide constant guidance to our thinking and acting. Certainly, they will inspire questions and continue to spark our thinking about what it means to be a community together this school year.

Wishing everyone a lovely and restful Winter Break - see you in 2012!

 

 

Thanks

As I was driving today my eye caught the briefest glimpse of a bird poking around in the yellow leaves piled at the edge of the road. And I wondered just for the briefest second about how many birds there might be under those leaves, poking around for bugs and worms -- at tremendous risk of being run down by speeding tires, any of the hundreds whizzing past. And yet there they were. A quick shift of focus and there they were.

Sophie's class took a field trip to the city's waste water treatment facility today. It was a sensory experience that will remain ripe in her imagination, invisible to most of us. Maybe happily so. But it made me think, for another brief moment, about on how much we rely that we don't see. There is a magic in that shift in focus.

I woke up so tired today. There is a new personality to attend to in this household:

Her name is Lucy.

When Stella woke up with a sore throat and wanting to stay home, it was easy to say yes. But I had a headache and I had a meeting that couldn't be missed, and Sophie and Max still had to go to school, and oh! the driving! I am sure I drove the equivalent of a trip to Idaho and back today. And the rain. A mudpit of a backyard and a puppy. oh! the laundry! and the mopping...does muddy laundry water count as waste water? I kind of hope so.

Those little birds just refused to stay out of sight to me today, though. I'm not sure why. It may have been the confidence I picked up in the few paragraphs I read of Madeline Levine's The Price of Privilege -- where she assured me that being a working mother wasn't damaging my children. Or this quote I'd read, quite early in the morning, from Edith Cobb's The Ecology of Imagination in Childhood:

...wonder permits a response of the nervous system to the universe that incites the mind to organize novelty of pattern and form out of incoming information.

And so it was the absurdity of Max and Sophie pretending to be my sister's dogs invited by Stella to the family tea party that made me laugh. And the fact that they played their parts for her with mostly straight faces and cooperative barks.

And it was Stella's determination to prepare and clean the lettuce for dinner's salad that made me so proud. And the fact that she noticed how much everyone enjoyed eating it.

And it was Max's enthusiasm for sharing his careful work putting together and painting his tiny army guy models and watching him lost in his play with them not long after that filled me with love and awe for this big little boy. 

And it was reading picture books with three children crowded so close we could barely breathe to read and Stella giving voice to the silly parts while Bob and I reached for each other with our toes that I felt so happy. 

And it was Sophie's face, crushed with disappointment over having halved all but the milk in the soup recipe she made for dinner and her relief in finding that it tasted delicious anyway that made me feel thankful.

Thankful that all those little birds are there to find in every moment. Thankful for my own sweet little birds and their dad and those that came before us. Thankful that I can choose the form that I make of the incoming information I encounter in any moment. Thankful for all these moments.

And those to come. Always at risk of being run over by the speeding tires that can't perceive them. But there nonetheless. Visible to me when I choose to see.

Faces for Six Pumpkins

It is a good idea, it turns out, to plan the faces for your extra pumpkins while you are waiting patiently for the seeds... those endless seeds all tangled up in orange goo... to find their way out of the way of the carving knife.

I began my day having stumbled upon this lovely post over on Let's Explore. It caused me to stop and wonder about the way I would choose to take my time on this precious sunny Saturday. What agenda was I harboring? How much space did I have to follow the desires of my children? How open was I going to be to listening? 

Stella and I had our first fallout of the day over Shrinky-Dinks. It was a classic breakdown between adult and young child trying to negotiate the constraints of a craft kit. In the realm of consciousness it was a battle between her lantern and my spotlight. She could see more possibilities than I could and I didn't want her to get burned on hot cookie sheet or melted plastic. She soon tired of me being so uptight and went to find someone or something to do that was more interesting.

By 9 am, we knew that it would be pumpkin patch day. It was this day or not at all, of course, this close to Halloween. 11-year-old Max, having heard that there are corn mazes around town in which you can be chased by people holding real chain saws, thought the G-rated version where we had arrived was lame. But after being convinced that visiting an actual scary maze was not something we were going to follow his lead on, he grabbed Stella's hand and they enjoyed themselves anyway.

I was really terrible with the pumpkins. Why is it that the pumpkins are all already picked, lying around in the muddy field? Why is it that they cost the same, those muddy pumpkins in the muddy field, and the clean ones in the bins at the farm stand? There was just no romance in it for me today-- the pumpkins in the mud. Stella wanted to pick one from the field and the good news, I guess, is that we let her. I do wish that having gone through all that mud, though, she would have at least had some sense of how those pumpkins actually grow. When did picking pumpkins come to mean only selecting?

She found a few she liked. 

And we took them home.

The annual ritual of the carving, the seed toasting, the face-making was something we all could gather around together. It's Stella's fourth time now, and she knows how to play. Finally there was a lead she could take that we all could contentedly follow. She brought the pumpkins to life.

And I will be thinking some more tomorrow about how much I lead, how much I follow, how much I whine, and working on developing a deeper sensitivity for the moments when we are really connected and together. 

Family Dinner

Sophie (she's 14 now!) had me call her when I was just a very precise number of blocks from home last night so she could time the slicing of these peaches just so. So when they arrived on the table, they would be still glistening and bright yellow. So enticing that Stella (she's 4 now!) just couldn't wait a moment to dive in.

We have been enjoying the beginnings of a little friendly competition over here. It is a family dinner competition that, as you can see, only a couple of weeks in, has inspired the best. 

And I think it may inspire the energy in my voice, ready to do some writing again. 

More on the dinners... and the family that makes them, to come...

The Power of Oops

"I punch-ded Ruby today. It was an accident - ly. But it was an oopsie moment. I had an oopsie moment. Acause in my classroom we don't punch. We had to solve the problem. So I had to sit on the bench and my brain did something magical. I just thought 'there can be two mommies!' It just popped right in my brain. And everything just snapped together."

Stella, 4.1 years

This is the story I got to hear after school today, as Stella and I took a walk to the park. Her teacher had told me a little bit of what had happened and so when I asked Stella about it, this all tumbled out. A proud storyteller, all puffed up with her accomplishment. Beaming.

I had to laugh a little as I tried to imagine or remember how my own old stories of punching my friends in preschool might have gone.  I don't, in fact, have any memories I can trace to preschool. But if the trouble I got into for slugging my little sister is any indication, I think it's safe to say that no one ever helped me to see my actions as "oopsies". Or helped me to understand that my brain had the capacity to "magic" another way.

What a gift to learn to see these mistakes as opportunities. To develop the confidence to know you can think of another way. To learn that you are responsible to do so.

Ellen Galinsky published this article in the Huffington Post today. It was written in response to this article published in the New York Times several days ago. As Galinsky points out, we've got the debate all wrong. We need a new framing of what could be, grounded in possibilities like those that Opal School preschoolers make visible every day. And as adults, we could stand to trust that our brains might have "magical" capacities as well. 

 

Sweetness

This photograph of Max hangs in the Water Works exhibit at the Portland Children's Museum. Most days, I walk by it, and it just makes me smile, thinking about the wild almost 10 year old thing he's grown in to.

Last night we went for a long night walk. Just Stella, Max and me. Max talked to me about things like the power of the sun and superstitions. He wondered aloud about why it gets so cold in Alaska and what antidotes might cure the curse cast by a black cat having crossed his path. He told me about how much he loved to see the stars in the sky. I mostly listened. And he held my hand the whole way home.

Caring

The Opal 2 (children ages 7 - 9 years) classroom has been working on a project in collaboration with the City of Portland's office of sustainability and planning. They have designed a neighborhood for the future of Portland that would be sustainable and caring. In fact, because of their work with Opal School students, the crafters of the Portland Plan (the City's road map for what might be possible in the next 25 years) revised their language to include the word, "caring". Opal students wonder, "How could the adults have forgotten that?" 

The neighborhood looks a bit like this:

You can see more on the Portland Plan website.

This past Monday morning, Mayor Sam Adams himself arrived to cut the ribbon, officially opening the Neighborhood "exhibit" to share with the school community. 

 

Questions from Mayor Adams included: How was it to work together to make these pieces and decisions? What did you learn from having to collaborate and use consensus? How do you know when the neighborhood is working the way you want it to? What do you expect your city to be like in 25 years?

The students and adults in Opal 2 noticed a shift as the Mayor spent time with the students. The visit began as an inquisitive, friendly show and tell and moved towards an encounter with deepening interest and curiosity on the part of the adults from the Mayor's office and the Mayor himself. The Mayor recognized the profound level of thinking the children had done together and he began to really listen. The children said that their nervous tummies quickly became more comfortable with the Mayor's easy going and kind manner. He told them to call him "Sam" and they feel pretty special now to be on a first name basis with the Mayor! The visit ended with lots of laughter, joy, autographs and knowledge that the Mayor and the students had both been touched and changed by what they had experienced and shared together.

In the end, Mayor Adams commented to another adult, "Wow. These kids are really smart." That is a confusion typical of adults who don't regularly have the opportunity to interact with children who are used to being asked to think and share and think again within a community of learners. No, Mayor Adams. These kids aren't especially or uniquely "smart". All kids are smart. But rarely are they asked to be.

You can visit the Neighborhood exhibit by registering for and attending the Opal School Summer Symposium, or by coming to play at the Portland Children's Museum's "Kids Build" exhibit this summer.