I'm reading a book right now (taking a break from both novels and beautiful birthing stories) about our sense of time called Receiving the Day by Dorothy Bass. She has twins and is a theologian and writer who was first recommended to me when I was in div school. Five years later I am finding why she was recommended! One of the many gleanings I've had from her book is to think about our days as places of meeting -- how we meet the sun, wind, rain; how we meet our family members, our neighbors; how we meet the tasks we have to do and wish we didn't as well as those we would enjoy doing; and how we meet God in the midst of all those other meetings.
Something she another mother ask her kids before going to bed was, "how did you meet God today?" We have always ended nighttime prayers with thanksgivings, "what do you give God thanks for today?" Lately we've had a lot of gibberish and silliness after the question. Maybe it is having a new question, or maybe it is how this question is different. What does it mean to "meet" anyway? But as we've been asking it, I've been surprised to hear the answers. There are still responses of, "I'm too tired," but more often than not we get a glimpse at what it means to them to "meet" God in their day to day.
Tonight Elliott answered right away, "I met God today when I came out of school and saw you and greeted you in the hallway!" That is an answer I will tuck close by and one that will keep me looking for "meetings" tomorrow.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Monday, September 13, 2010
Crowded classroom
Just as the summer was winding down, the boys and I began making trips to the nearby school yard to play baseball and climb on the new, challenging, play-structure made for the 3rd-5th graders who go to school there. Elliott climbs, Dietrich has batting and base-running practice. On our last day there before school started the building was bustling with janitors making repairs, teachers setting up classrooms, and everyone catching up on their summer adventures. We could hear the chatter from the playground and peek into the classrooms. I was trying to focus on my pitching, but between baby resting on my tail bone and keeping half an eye on Elliott going down the slide without edges, I was distracted from the game, and drawn to watching what was going up on the walls in the classroom.
I first noticed this at our visit to our local elementary school last winter. Stacks and stacks of books, paper, materials, flip-boards, and laminated you-name-it line the walls of the classrooms. Does anyone ever sort through these stacks? Over the course of a year are all these materials actually used in some way? Or have they been there so long they have become part of the room, as unnoticed as the colors on the walls or the placement of the light fixtures? In the class I watched from the playground, the walls were covered with posters. One was a set of 12, the months of the year. They hung quietly next to the clock. Brightly colored scenes depicted children frolicking in the snow, digging up a garden, splashing in a pool, raking up leaves. The kids were colored appropriately to reflect the diversity of the kids attending the school, the faces all smiling. I pictured the teacher putting in the work order to have the months laminated, then carefully cutting them out and masking-taping them to the wall.
Maybe the children feel comfort seeing the same posters day after day and maybe the teacher uses them to mark the time as the year goes by, using a long pointer to reach up to each new month. Likely the stacks of materials lining the walls and files of materials stacked on the tables have no ill effect on how children learn. I know that our boys have created elaborate scenes of space travel and fire rescue despite the tall shelves of art supplies, games, and toys that mostly stand idle in their play area. But the effect it had on me was a question: what if all these materials are what make a crowded classroom? What if it isn't as much about class size as it is about class composition? How many materials do we really need to learn as is appropriate to a child's age? What if children created their own materials and took ownership in the contents of their room because it is their work? What if we took a break from the images handed to us from scholastic and instead let children create their own images of the months and seasons changing? What if we took a break from the flood of primary colors and smiling faces and laminated posters? Would a classroom freed of unused materials foster more creativity with the materials that are used?
In yesterday's NYT week-in-review Thomas Friedman suggested that American children lag behind children of other industrialized nations not because their teachers are inadequate or their schools lack funding but because students do not take charge of their education. He sighted large numbers of students who feel unmotivated and teachers frustrated with the lack of student motivation. He took our culture of instant gratification to task along with its fuel -- media, video, and computers. But in a crowded classroom, thick with materials, technology, and manufactured images can we be surprised that there is little energy for students to be innovative, creative, and responsible with their education?
Yet I know how hard it is to weed out what is needed, and what can be let go. Those shelves in our basement were part of an ongoing effort to free up some space to rearrange and make an office. I physically went back and forth on what to throw, what to keep. And I do not expect our load of recycled paper and cardboard that we let go of will make a difference in the next effort at recreating space travel. But it has already helped make space for new art on the walls.
I first noticed this at our visit to our local elementary school last winter. Stacks and stacks of books, paper, materials, flip-boards, and laminated you-name-it line the walls of the classrooms. Does anyone ever sort through these stacks? Over the course of a year are all these materials actually used in some way? Or have they been there so long they have become part of the room, as unnoticed as the colors on the walls or the placement of the light fixtures? In the class I watched from the playground, the walls were covered with posters. One was a set of 12, the months of the year. They hung quietly next to the clock. Brightly colored scenes depicted children frolicking in the snow, digging up a garden, splashing in a pool, raking up leaves. The kids were colored appropriately to reflect the diversity of the kids attending the school, the faces all smiling. I pictured the teacher putting in the work order to have the months laminated, then carefully cutting them out and masking-taping them to the wall.
Maybe the children feel comfort seeing the same posters day after day and maybe the teacher uses them to mark the time as the year goes by, using a long pointer to reach up to each new month. Likely the stacks of materials lining the walls and files of materials stacked on the tables have no ill effect on how children learn. I know that our boys have created elaborate scenes of space travel and fire rescue despite the tall shelves of art supplies, games, and toys that mostly stand idle in their play area. But the effect it had on me was a question: what if all these materials are what make a crowded classroom? What if it isn't as much about class size as it is about class composition? How many materials do we really need to learn as is appropriate to a child's age? What if children created their own materials and took ownership in the contents of their room because it is their work? What if we took a break from the images handed to us from scholastic and instead let children create their own images of the months and seasons changing? What if we took a break from the flood of primary colors and smiling faces and laminated posters? Would a classroom freed of unused materials foster more creativity with the materials that are used?
In yesterday's NYT week-in-review Thomas Friedman suggested that American children lag behind children of other industrialized nations not because their teachers are inadequate or their schools lack funding but because students do not take charge of their education. He sighted large numbers of students who feel unmotivated and teachers frustrated with the lack of student motivation. He took our culture of instant gratification to task along with its fuel -- media, video, and computers. But in a crowded classroom, thick with materials, technology, and manufactured images can we be surprised that there is little energy for students to be innovative, creative, and responsible with their education?
Yet I know how hard it is to weed out what is needed, and what can be let go. Those shelves in our basement were part of an ongoing effort to free up some space to rearrange and make an office. I physically went back and forth on what to throw, what to keep. And I do not expect our load of recycled paper and cardboard that we let go of will make a difference in the next effort at recreating space travel. But it has already helped make space for new art on the walls.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Was that this morning?
I know it has been a long day when, despite my husband's attestation that indeed it was today I was in the dining room sipping tea and reading the NYT magazine at 4 in the morning, I do not believe him. Maybe it was the restorative sleep that mercifully took place between 5:30 and 7 a.m. when, after a brief screech about something-or-other, Elliott and Dietrich bounded into our bed. But somehow I had completely forgotten being awake at such an hour, reading about Deepak Chopra's latest book, the advice column, and starting an article that was way too long for the hour, probably something about education. It is just as well. Here's to not repeating the tea, reading, forgetting, cycle tonight. Though I have a new Christian Century that just arrived, so it wouldn't be the worst thing.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Winds of Change
My first autumn in Thailand I heard time after time that the heat and humidity would soon be over. We just had to wait for the day for it all to change. There would be a steady wind, dark clouds, and a hint of cool that day, and by the next day, winter would be here. Everyone told me this, but how could I believe such a drastic prediction (even though I had been there all of 3 weeks and they had lived their entire lives there)? But when I walked out of class one day and the wind had picked up, the clouds had accumulated, and there was a distinct breath of cool air somewhere out there, I waited to see if it would really happen.
Now, winter in Thailand is hardly "winter" in the Midwest sense, or even the North Carolina sense. But the change in the air is such a relief from the heat (and, I would learn after my first rainy season, rain) that it hit me as hard as the first dumping of snow, the green grass not to be seen again for months. And that it comes in a rush of a day or maybe two makes the contrast all the more stark. I was basking in the cool relief, and baffled that it had somehow arrived with such little notice.
When I experienced my second autumn, I was more prepared and less skeptical. It was later than the previous year, well into November, but it arrived in the same way. That year the arrival of winter coincided with the realization that I would be living my first years as an adult away from home, family, and many friends. Friends back home would be easing into jobs with health benefits, grad programs, relationships with potential of marriage, apartments and even houses they would fund by themselves. This may no longer be the case (see last week's NYT magazine article) but at the time I felt isolated and longed for the comfort of a paycheck, a syllabus, a box of furniture to assemble.
As the fall unfolded and I began to know more students, neighbors, workers at the market, and my lifeline of friends who were also volunteering post-college-graduation, the changes that seemed insurmountable when the wind was rushing through the rambatan trees outside my house held less emotional and spiritual space for me. The life I left behind held less of my imagination than the experiences I was in the midst of living. I began to trust that the relationships that held together while I was away would be those that held together through my adult life. Hindsight has proved just that.
This year our September has has a Thai feeling to it. Just a week ago I took the boys to the outdoor pool and I sank my ever-expanding belly into the cool water with a breath of relief. It had been sticky all day and the pool, once again, offered relief that lasted beyond our swim. The boys went down the slide, Elliott even jumped off the board, and they made their rounds of water play -- in the shallow end, in the deep, and then off to the sand box (repeat). A cold front moved through at the end of the week as Elliott and Dietrich exchanged their swimsuits for rain gear and their t-shirts for sweatshirts.
Today the wind blew small branches off trees and the streets are littered with leaves and acorns. The clouds hung as if they were from November. The windows in our house are open and the air is crisp and clean, but we had to close one during lunch as the wind gave us goose bumps. It seems only fitting that the world seems to be changing around us even as our day-to-day world is changing in our household. The boys are off to Kindergarten each morning, and in a few short weeks we will welcome another family member. Somehow, the seasons changing with us has encouraged me, and opened me to the wonder of change. Something in the crisp air and powerful breeze has given me strength to watch my little boys venture out on their own a few hours a day and given me even more excitement about welcoming another child into our lives. Not that I wouldn't mind a few more days of summer...
Now, winter in Thailand is hardly "winter" in the Midwest sense, or even the North Carolina sense. But the change in the air is such a relief from the heat (and, I would learn after my first rainy season, rain) that it hit me as hard as the first dumping of snow, the green grass not to be seen again for months. And that it comes in a rush of a day or maybe two makes the contrast all the more stark. I was basking in the cool relief, and baffled that it had somehow arrived with such little notice.
When I experienced my second autumn, I was more prepared and less skeptical. It was later than the previous year, well into November, but it arrived in the same way. That year the arrival of winter coincided with the realization that I would be living my first years as an adult away from home, family, and many friends. Friends back home would be easing into jobs with health benefits, grad programs, relationships with potential of marriage, apartments and even houses they would fund by themselves. This may no longer be the case (see last week's NYT magazine article) but at the time I felt isolated and longed for the comfort of a paycheck, a syllabus, a box of furniture to assemble.
As the fall unfolded and I began to know more students, neighbors, workers at the market, and my lifeline of friends who were also volunteering post-college-graduation, the changes that seemed insurmountable when the wind was rushing through the rambatan trees outside my house held less emotional and spiritual space for me. The life I left behind held less of my imagination than the experiences I was in the midst of living. I began to trust that the relationships that held together while I was away would be those that held together through my adult life. Hindsight has proved just that.
This year our September has has a Thai feeling to it. Just a week ago I took the boys to the outdoor pool and I sank my ever-expanding belly into the cool water with a breath of relief. It had been sticky all day and the pool, once again, offered relief that lasted beyond our swim. The boys went down the slide, Elliott even jumped off the board, and they made their rounds of water play -- in the shallow end, in the deep, and then off to the sand box (repeat). A cold front moved through at the end of the week as Elliott and Dietrich exchanged their swimsuits for rain gear and their t-shirts for sweatshirts.
Today the wind blew small branches off trees and the streets are littered with leaves and acorns. The clouds hung as if they were from November. The windows in our house are open and the air is crisp and clean, but we had to close one during lunch as the wind gave us goose bumps. It seems only fitting that the world seems to be changing around us even as our day-to-day world is changing in our household. The boys are off to Kindergarten each morning, and in a few short weeks we will welcome another family member. Somehow, the seasons changing with us has encouraged me, and opened me to the wonder of change. Something in the crisp air and powerful breeze has given me strength to watch my little boys venture out on their own a few hours a day and given me even more excitement about welcoming another child into our lives. Not that I wouldn't mind a few more days of summer...
Thursday, September 2, 2010
First Days
Justin Roberts is something of a family member in our household. His kids-themed songs set to creative rock-folk music weave their way into our collective mind daily. My mom says we should listen to more classical, and I agree, but I know that Dietrich and Elliott find comfort (and entertainment, but these days have been about comfort) in this music and its quirky rhythms. Yesterday on our way to the first day of school, the boys were silent, staring out the windows, as we made our way through Pop Fly, a CD named for a song about a kid stuck in the outfield and interested in just about everything besides playing baseball. Then Elliott asked, "Can we have track 9?"
I knew track 9 would be coming, as I knew it would from the first time I heard it last winter. Then, we were deciding whether to home-school, enroll in the local public school, or search for a half-day play-based school. The actual first day seemed far away. Track 9 is a song about a child's first day at school and how he has "giant-sized butterflies on that first day". Then the song turns to what his mom says, a turn I hadn't thought of, but that makes the experience real for parents who have years of padding between a first day of school and our lives now. We might vaguely remember what it was like to go to a new school, or start Kindergarten, and I know I still get butterflies when I've started a new job, or get up to preach, or hear the starting buzzer at a triatlhon.
But as parents what has changed our lives forever is the first day our kids, our babes-in-arms, came into the world with us. The song has the mom telling her child of his parents' butterflies on the day he was born. How they wished they could have a magic shell that would protect them as they held their new baby, how she wished he could have one for his first day of school. But the giant-sized butterflies she had on his first day in the world, and the ones he was feeling now as she opened the back seat door (and no doubt, she was feeling them, too!) are there to remind him that everything is going to be alright. They are big, strong, feelings, but they are powerful and are there to help us.
In the Moravian church there are scripture passages randomly selected for each day of the year on a three-year cycle. A second text is selected to accompany the first, usually chosen by a clergy member. Today's text are giant-sized butterflies for me, reminding me that in this small spot in the world where my life, my boys' lives, our family's life is subtly changing, God is here, in the midst of the butterflies:
The Lord is with me as a mighty, awesome one. Jeremiah 20:11 (NKJV)
John wrote: I was in the spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me
a loud voice like a trumpet saying, 'Do not be afraid; I am the first
and the last, and the living one.' Revelation 1:10,17-18
I knew track 9 would be coming, as I knew it would from the first time I heard it last winter. Then, we were deciding whether to home-school, enroll in the local public school, or search for a half-day play-based school. The actual first day seemed far away. Track 9 is a song about a child's first day at school and how he has "giant-sized butterflies on that first day". Then the song turns to what his mom says, a turn I hadn't thought of, but that makes the experience real for parents who have years of padding between a first day of school and our lives now. We might vaguely remember what it was like to go to a new school, or start Kindergarten, and I know I still get butterflies when I've started a new job, or get up to preach, or hear the starting buzzer at a triatlhon.
But as parents what has changed our lives forever is the first day our kids, our babes-in-arms, came into the world with us. The song has the mom telling her child of his parents' butterflies on the day he was born. How they wished they could have a magic shell that would protect them as they held their new baby, how she wished he could have one for his first day of school. But the giant-sized butterflies she had on his first day in the world, and the ones he was feeling now as she opened the back seat door (and no doubt, she was feeling them, too!) are there to remind him that everything is going to be alright. They are big, strong, feelings, but they are powerful and are there to help us.
In the Moravian church there are scripture passages randomly selected for each day of the year on a three-year cycle. A second text is selected to accompany the first, usually chosen by a clergy member. Today's text are giant-sized butterflies for me, reminding me that in this small spot in the world where my life, my boys' lives, our family's life is subtly changing, God is here, in the midst of the butterflies:
The Lord is with me as a mighty, awesome one. Jeremiah 20:11 (NKJV)
John wrote: I was in the spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me
a loud voice like a trumpet saying, 'Do not be afraid; I am the first
and the last, and the living one.' Revelation 1:10,17-18
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