A Classroom Community, A Caterpillar, And A Lesson In Love

Lessons Learned

A Lesson About Love

Becky brought in a large jar containing grass, a couple of sticks, and a furry, fat caterpillar. The lid of the jar had many small holes so “Fuzzy” could feel a little breeze. Right then, Fuzzy, with Becky’s approval, became our class pet. Very attentive babysitters kept an eye on Fuzzy from eight to three, Monday through Friday.  Evenings and weekends, although Fuzzy was on his own, he was never out of any of our thoughts. He was the recipient of pictures, poems, a song, and various decorations for him to look at just outside his jar. We loved him. One ordinary Monday morning everything had changed. He had disappeared into his own homemade chrysalis. So still. Kind of like a sleeping bag. How did he know how to do that? Is he lonely? We watched. And watched. We missed him. We waited. Before long, though, everything changed again. We arrived at school and Fuzzy was out of the chrysalis. He was a little bit wet and crumpled, but he was really trying to stretch and exercise in his new body. He couldn’t move very well in Becky’s jar. We had some very big decisions to make; we needed a class meeting outside with Fuzzy. What should we do? We sat in a circle in the grass with Becky holding Fuzzy in his jar. Keep him because he’s our pet, said someone. The jar is too small, said someone else. We can get a bigger jar. But he needs to fly. He can fly in a bigger jar if it’s a lot bigger. Fuzzy needs to fly in the trees and sky and play with his friends in the flowers, said Becky, that’s what he needs to do. Audible gasp, you mean let him out of the jar; let him go? He needs to go, continued Becky, he needs to be free. Becky was right, we all ultimately agreed. So right there in that circle on the grass, we each offered Fuzzy our best wishes, and thanked him for being an awesome pet. Then Becky opened the jar, set it on its side in the grass, and out Fuzzy crawled. We watched with silent smiles as he stretched and exercised his new wings. Within just a few minutes, Fuzzy jumped aboard a soft, sweet breeze and flew into an exciting new adventure. We waved goodbye. And we smiled. We loved him. We raised him. We set him free.

Compassion Is Learned In Community

Lessons Learned

Reaching Beyond Ourselves Into A Friend's Pain

They were the sixth graders. They were the top of the school. Top dogs. Big cheeses. Willing helpers. Proud leaders.  Many of the sixth graders had started at our school in Kindergarten and for years had watched the parade of awesome sixth graders  traverse the hallways with a tiny bit of an air of nobility swirling around them; a nobility swirl established within the delicate balance between privilege and responsibility. They had now arrived and honestly wore the mantel of “big deal” very well. They gently served the younger students, provided confident leadership at all-school gatherings, behaved respectfully, most of the time, and rightly earned the position of positive role-models. They worked hard, played hard, held one another accountable, and left no sixth grader out. Then came the test. Unexpectedly, Mike’s father died.  Loss and grief and anguish and questions flooded their broken hearts and cast a deep dark sadness over the sixth grade.  Mike stayed home for a few days. The rest of the sixth graders, his school family, prayed for Mike and his family and grappled with a suitable loving, compassionate response for Mike when he returned. “Why?” remained the tormenting though unanswered question which held their hearts in a vise-grip of hurt. How do you mend a broken heart, how do you stop every tear? Then came the phone call and the request.  Mike’s mother, in making funeral preparations, asked the sixth grade teachers if the students might be willing to sing their benediction at the funeral.  How do you say no? Notes went home. Each sixth grader was to discuss this with his or her family and decide independently of the other students whether or not to participate. Funerals are hard. Many students had had no experience with funerals, and the thought was more than a bit frightening and overwhelmingly sad. There would be no judgment or shame or guilt if anyone chose not to participate, as the choice was fully up to each family. Notes from families came back the very next day. A unanimous yes was the response.  Mike’s mother was called. Plans were made.  The sixth graders, in their best clothes, arrived at the funeral, and Mike smiled to see them.  This school family, this community of friends, wrapped the gift of their tender hearts and beautiful singing around their pain-filled friend and in the glances exchanged, said without words, in the most perfect compassionate response, “We love you.”

Music Builds Community

Lessons Learned

Music Builds Community

Six languages in one first grade classroom.  Swedish. Greek. Japanese. Afganistan. Spanish. English.  Our hope was to teach them all to read.  Our priority was to build a community, to communicate, but the first few days of school made that priority seem quite remote and that hope nearly impossible.  We had no means by which to connect and our only apparent common ground right then was that we shared a classroom, a cold, lonely one at that. After lunch each day, we had a twenty minute window of time during which we played acoustic instrumental music, and the students were encouraged to either look at a picture book, quietly draw a picture, or simply relax and listen to the music. Surprisingly, most students opted to listen to the music. It was calm, soothing, peaceful, and biased toward no one language. Each mind processes music in its own language.  Perhaps music held a key. We wrote a song about counting to ten. We asked each student to count to ten in his or her primary language, which we phonetically wrote down.  We all learned how to count to ten in each of our class languages with great and enthusiastic help from each other. It was a spectacular song, made exponentially better by the robust participation and growing  esprit de corps of our classroom community.  By sharing a little piece of each other’s language, we were able to share a little piece of each other’s heart.  Our community grew. Our trust grew. Our learning grew. We became readers.  We became friends. We shared a song.

In Community, We Serve And We Care

Lessons Learned

A Neighborly Act Begins With Me Reaching Beyond Myself

The notice on the bulletin board at the apartment said blind-deaf student needing assistance with textbook transcription and basic daily life skill help, and on the bottom of the notice were several tear-off phone numbers. None had been taken. Someone out there needed help, but who was I to volunteer? I didn’t know anything about blindness, or deafness, much less both. What could I do? How could I possibly offer any help? I didn’t tear off a phone number either and proceeded to go about my day. It troubled me, though. A student needed some help, and I was hoping to be a teacher. I did have some time. I could probably learn.  I went back, took a phone number, and called. We met, I learned how to help, we became good friends, and my life was richly blessed from this great opportunity to serve. It is well known that those who serve are doubly blessed. A willing heart is all it takes to serve, and a willing heart can be of any age.  My elementary age students understand well about giving, sharing, and serving; it is built into our curriculum. Service leads to compassion. For our world to heal, our cities to heal, our families to heal, and our hearts to heal, we must deny the selfish eyes-on-me mentality and look outward recognizing the need all around, for in lifting another up our own heart is blessed. What can I do; I am just a mom, just a teacher, just a worker, just an ordinary neighbor, just a student. What can I do; I am just a kid. One person with a willing heart can do a lot. One person with a willing heart can change the world for another person.  Why is teaching and modeling this not a higher priority? Will higher test scores or greater compassion be more beneficial to the world?

Urban Community To Rural Community; The Need Remains.

Lessons Learned

Moving To The Country

We were city kids. We lived about twenty blocks from Lambeau Field, to be exact. We walked to school, biked around the block on  straight flat sidewalks, played kick-the-can with all of the tons of neighbor kids rambunctiously and delightfully swarming the area, regularly ran very profitable lemonade stands, and trick or treated and Christmas caroled door to door at a hundred very welcoming, close-at-hand doors. Then we moved. Twenty-five acres of rolling hills, wildlife-filled ravines, rows and rows of planted oats, alfalfa, and corn, endless sky with endless stars at night, and the sounds of farm animals going about their days. From paradise to paradise.  Urban to rural. Crowded, noisy and energized to spacious, still and free. Loved both worlds, but especially loved the new one. The gentle farmer across the road became our unknowing teacher of textbook-transcending lessons. In his faithful living, working, caring, patience, he shared the pure beauty of simplicity and selflessness. He never said much, but his living said it all. He and his dear wife never really officially invited us city-slicker kids to serve as slightly incompetent but ever so enthusiastically willing farmhands, yet every day in the summer to his farm we would race to offer our hands. And every day, his nod and his big smile said come on in. During those precious summers we learned about life and death, the passing of seasons, planting and reaping, making do, improvising, waiting expectantly, and countless life-impacting lessons as deep and rich as the good soil itself. Farming is a life of tremendous faith and unshakable optimism; the sun will return to warm and light the earth each morning, and spring, at the appointed time, will always awaken and emerge from under the silent blanket of winter. Under the wise farmer’s tutelage, these city kids became country kids.

The Need For Community.

Lessons Learned

Time To Check In On The Neighbors

Life is fast. Activities are many. Involvements and commitments fill our calendars. Squeeze it in, pack it in, as much and as quickly as humanly possible. Often times far from families. Faster. Faster. Faster. Until in exhaustion from all of our running we realize that we have forgotten to breathe. Breathe. What are we running for? What are we running from? Can we really ever keep up with or catch up to the Jonses? What happened to chatting over the garden fence with the neighbors? Life happens in a neighborhood.  From walks around the block with strollers to training-wheel bicycles wobbily being ridden on the sidewalks, from trick or treating to selling wrapping for school, from borrowing a cup of sugar to sharing a bag full of tomatoes, from watching the house next door until the family returns from vacation to bringing over a meal when a tragedy has struck, from searching together for a lost dog to working together to drag out a fallen branch, from borrowing a cool sports car for prom to giving someone a ride to the hospital, life happens in a neighborhood. We need each other. We need to be connected. We need to belong. Children need this, we all need this. We can set a head-spinning pace and race with all we are worth to keep up with ourselves, but at the end of the day does the spoil outweigh the fatigue? What would it mean, what would it look like to occasionally jump off the merry-go-round and instead linger over the garden fence to catch up with the neighbors, to make a connection, to engage friendship?  The human heart was made to be in relationship and yet we run disengaged keeping our empty distance. Not so in our neighborhood. We made a different choice here.   Our neighborhood, although a hodge-podge collection of individuals in every way,  is modest and connected, generous and attentive, and together we laugh and share and grow up. Together we are stronger. Together we are better. Together we are blessed. Perhaps it is time to stop running and check on the neighbors.

Twenty-four Hours...

Lessons Learned

Twenty-four Hours

Twenty-four hours in each day is all we have to accomplish all that needs to be accomplished. With our multitudinous lists of busy-ness, we stuff our days from beginning to end in a manner that might resemble an attempt to stuff nine pounds of potatoes into an eight pound sack. So we run instead of walk from thing to thing and find ourselves exhausted when the clock ticks bedtime and our list has not been fully accomplished. Never mind, though, for there’s always tomorrow, and the “unfinisheds” can be added to tomorrow’s list. Tomorrow’s list simply grows and grows in parallel with the frustration due to ever-growing lists. And so it goes, but the truth remains, that each day still has twenty-four hours. Additional hours cannot be bought, borrowed, or traded, despite any gallant attempts to do so.  For instance, standing eight or nine deep in a local checkout line pushing a full cart of  necessary bargains, I turned to the waiting customer behind me and asked if she had noticed which aisle contained “time;” a box or a can, it didn’t matter to me. With a facial response that began as annoyance, then turned to perplexity, and ultimately to a cunning smile, the neighboring customer asserted that she had been unable to locate the time aisle as well regardless of the fact that she was fairly certain that she had heard that they had been running a special on it today. That explained it. Time was all gone, and we were simply too late to have cashed in on the special. After a shared and knowing chuckle, we resumed our silent, pensive waiting. Time. There is never, ever, ever enough, and that is precisely why time is priceless. Time is a priceless gift. Exactly how one spends his or her time speaks volumes concerning one’s truest priorities.  All excuses aside, the picture painted by one’s time expenditures will be the mirror of what one values most dearly. I would contest that relational time invested is far more meaningful and satisfying than “things accomplished” time.  Yet, we lose ourselves in our busy-ness, and sometimes go days without engaging in deep, significant, meaningful relationship building conversations, for there quite simply is just not enough time. This is ridiculous, tragic and completely twisted around. The human heart craves relationship, and yet, this is among the first things cut when the tomorrow’s list is drawn.  Why have we continually sacrificed what our hearts need, to chase an illusion that society seems to demand? In families, what is the picture of our time? In classrooms, what is the picture of our time? Today, what is the picture of your time? I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that those whom you love would see more of your time as a treasure beyond compare. Give them you. Your list can wait.