February is still here, hanging on as it does, but the light has changed.
February comes from a word meaning “the purging”, and was long the last month for the Romans, occasionally followed by Mercedonius, a month (of sorts) tucked into the calendar to get the calendar back in sync with the seasons.
While we mark our time in chunks set by people who lived a long time ago, people who knew nothing of this side of the Atlantic Ocean, the ancient souls in our ancient brains know the light has changed.
So does the life around us.
The geese are back, the crocus spear through the frozen earth, and the squash from last summer are getting soft.
Last summer’s fruit, this spring’s seeds.
I keep planting, I keep brewing, I keep playing my guitar badly, and I keep getting older. Something has to give.
And it will, but that’s all right. My molecules are vibrating as I breathe, and they will keep vibrating when I die, in one form or another.
(That’s not a metaphor, it’s how the universe works.)
My uke, not my guitar–I’m even worse on the uke.
I just came back from visiting my almost 3 month old grand-daughter. She laughs because that’s what humans do. And eventually I need to get out of her way. And I will.
In the meantime I will continue to sow, to harvest, to cull, to peel, to cut, to cook, to eat.
If you cannot teach someone with no more than a napkin and a pen, or less, you should not teach.
A few reasons why the napkin and pen (or beach and a stick) method is superior to anything that requires electricity:
The nature of napkin ed requires one to one teaching. Both the teacher and the student are exposed, limits of knowledge tested. As uncomfortable as this may be, it’s the heart of education–the ledge of ignorance for both the student and the teacher is an integral part of the process.
It’s cheaper. I like cheap. I’m not blowing off mountaintops, damming rivers, or splitting atoms.
Any drawing used requires intimate knowledge by the teacher. Hand-made drawings matter more than any fancy illustration you can toss up on a Smartboard. The value of the process of etching a drawing live, with the student watching, cannot be overstated. It’s not an easy thing to do without an exquisite knowledge of the point you are making. Electric palettes cover a lot of ignorance. (Darwin’s On the Origin of Species had one illustration, a crude, hand-drawn picture of a branching “Tree of Life.”)
Most of us doing this gig for any length of time can wow our young charges with flashing lights. We are performers, entertainers, dragging bored children through curricula they see as pointless.
So long as our job is to instill a common cultural litany, well, high tech pizazz works just dandy.
If you want to teach a child how to think, though, be careful with the new tools. If you are letting an electronic third party make a point in your classroom, and it does a better job than you can, well, draw your own conclusion.
You can do better. It might take time, it might require more work, it might even cause you to burst out in tears now and again.
This is a totally reactive piece dashed off without much thought early on a Sunday morning triggered by yet another piece telling us what in blazes we can do to help kids in the future.
OK, I wasn’t triggered by the piece–I didn’t get past the title: “10 things teachers can do today to prepare students for the future.”
So reactionary (and mortal) as I am, I came up with an off-the-cuff list to prepare kids for the now, for the immediate, for the tenth of a second our brain needs to process the moment. This moment. And always and only this moment.
A bean created from the collective breaths of the classroom.
Let a child plant a seed and watch it grow–each day provide enough time for the child to take care of her plant.
Let her water it, let her decide how much light it needs, let her put some pieces of her inside of it as she talks and breathes on it.
My pinkie ball.
Let a child roam a bit your classroom space; if your space cannot hold the interest of a roaming child, change your space.
History teachers could have fort and awful toy versions of tools of war. Science teachers could have magnets and lenses and springs and live critters. English teachers could have poems strewn on the floor, tiny libraries on the walls, physical education teachers could have Frisbees and spaldeen pinkies and a full-sized parachute. Music teachers could have kazoos and harmonicas and cheap drums.
Let a child read what she wants to read when she wants to read.
Reading is one of the greatest gifts we can give a child (and one of the primary aims of public schooling)–why is this so fookin’ hard to grasp?
Remind a child, daily, that she is mortal, but not in ways that are frightening.
We spend too much time telling children not to do things because bad things will happen without sharing the larger context that, well, death is going to happen anyway.
I have spent a lot of time with children who were dying, and who knew that they were dying. And everybody around us pretended otherwise.
Spine of a dead horseshoe crab, just another reminder.
Let a child roam outside, alone or with other children, but with no adults, for long periods of time.
Sitting inside shaves far more years off our lives than the very occasional meteor that falls from the sky and strikes our children dead. At any rate, the adults in their lives cannot stop the meteors. (Yes, the meteor is metaphorical, but so are so many other fears we feed our children.)
Let children make joyful noise.
Share your joyful noise. Know that mot of the time we have no more to say than the grackles chuttering just outside the window.
While you’re at it, if a child sees two birds “fighting” during the March madness of increasing light and fertility, please explain that they’re not fighting, but rather sharing their joy. No more need to be said.
And yes, farting sounds are joyful noises–I have no idea why, but you only have to toot once in a class to see how much the young folk love the sound.
Let them stand instead of sit, let them slouch, let them put their hands wherever is socially acceptable in this culture in this year.
The whole “If you can control their hands, their minds/spirits/souls will acquiesce” mentality in schools is damaging.
“Baby Sees The iPad Magic” by Steven Paine, CC
Let them disconnect.
Kids are not plugged in to the alternate universe because it gives them joy. They are (mostly) in that world to avoid the one we have mandated for them.
I do not know what it will take for parents and teachers and administrators to realize just how damaging prolonged screen-time is, both emotionally and physically. The evidence is out there.
Hey, did you even her what I just said? HELLO?! [Those fookin’ airpods again…]
Stop with the fookin’ lists.
Who needs lists in the moment? Lists mean nothing when a child is immersed deeply in a moment.
