The Apple and the Tree

“What I do is me, for that I came…”    - Gerard Manley Hopkins

I’ve said it before and it’s worth saying again. The purpose of school is to reveal character, to discover destiny, to help children find out what they’re here for by passing through the disciplines of human achievement and promise. They will read to see themselves in stories, to understand that they’re not alone and that others have thought similar thoughts and struggled similar struggles. And that others who have lived such different lives are strangers that soon can become friends. They sing and dance and act and play music and make art to find out what they have to say and how they can say it in ways that no one else can and to fly freely into the borderless imagination with each act of creation. They wrestle with numbers and scientific systems to reveal and strengthen the elegance of the thinking mind, to partner the flights of fancy with down-to-earth facts and figures. They train their animal body through sport and exercise, tuning it as an instrument of intelligence that sings in harmony with head and heart. They come into history to find out the full measure of human foible and ignorance, triumph and courage, so they might emerge with determination to move the moral arc of the universe one step closer to justice.

Amidst all the mechanics of learning, all the challenges, all the details of moving from Dick and Jane to King Lear and Cordelia, from spelling cat and bat to Yeats and Mary Oliver, from counting to 10 to differential calculus, from Twinkle Little Star to Bach’s Mass in B Minor and Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, is the fragile, wondrous, curious child searching for their genius as it comes face to face with the full measure of knowledge to be passed on. But never a faceless, generic child. Always Julian or Jessica or Kamaila or Felipe, each with their own rendezvous with their destiny, their own blueprint to be the person that no one else has ever been.

And the key player in the search for how and why each is here is a teacher who cares. A teacher who arrived at teaching through that same process of search, was called to it, not as a job or a profession, but as a quest. And that is my daughter Talia.

How I admire her! I’ve done a reasonable job at the community aspect of tying the threads of individual character into a vibrant school culture, rich with rituals that help reveal and celebrate, abounding with joyful music and dance to sing and move those praises and blessings that words alone cannot reach. That is my “for that I came.”

But being a forest person more than a tree person, I suffer slightly from failing to have that intimate knowledge of each tree, the kind where particular kids and I hang out and wink at each other knowing that we know each other so well and enjoy each other so much. I can praise children publicly and will at graduation tomorrow, but it’s always at a distance, like an admiring fan in the background.

But Talia is a different story. The fact that she designed a new 5^th grade graduation ceremony is the apple that fell close to this tree, but the fact that she knows so intimately each of the 20 kids she’s worked with for two years straight is something I have never known. Partly it’s the difference between a music teacher and a classroom teacher and partly it’s her particular genius as a teacher.

Near the end of her gathering today, she read a piece (excerpts below):

I have had the great privilege and honor of teaching the majority of you for two years, which is a really long time. I know you all so, so well.

When I was going through some lost and found items on the camping trip, I could just smell the sweatshirt and know whose it was. I know your pet’s names and where your grandparents live, I know who your friends are outside of school, what belt level you are in tae kwon do, and what book your dad is reading to you..

I am confident that I will have a long career of teaching various amazing groups of children, but I will never know a class as well as I know you guys. Having two years in a row has been a transformative experience for me as a teacher and allowed me to go places in my teaching that I don’t think I would’ve been able to do with any other class. Thank-you for trusting me.

Thank-you for inspiring me to be the best version of myself.  Thank-you for letting me teach what I love. For letting me share my passions with you. For caring. ‘I will never forget you” can be a cliché, but trust me, it’s the truest truth for me. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

And then proceeded to talk for a minute about each kid (with their parents there) and give them a gift related to their particular slice of character. That’s a lot of love realized in hard, relentless work, not only two years of observing and noticing and remembering, but the time to write and shop and wrap and hold each in her heart while doing all that. Being a memorable teacher is not a casual thing based on mere charm— you gotta put in the hours far beyond your job description and that Talia did.

The apple may not fall far from the tree, but it came from a grafting and watering and care that created something new that the old tree never could have produced in quite the same way. And that’s how the beauty grows and is passed on. And I can testify that it’s crisp, juicy and delicious.

The Water Is Wide

After 42 years, some 375 months, 1500 weeks, 7000 days and 28,000 classes, tomorrow is the last day of teaching children at The San Francisco School.  For my wife Karen, that is. 41 of them side-by-side with me, 20 with our children and some more with our nephews and neighbors and friends.

That’s epic. That’s Shakespearean. And I’m feeling it down to my bones.

There have been many layers of goodbyes and recognition of her immense contribution as the school’s first “official” art teacher. An art show of her work, a speech at the school’s 50^th Anniversary Party and a song beautifully sung by an alum, a book for people to sign. Yesterday, we had a special Elementary Singing Time dedicated to her and as the kids came in, they joined in on the song The Water is Wide.

The water is wide, I cannot cross over. But neither have I wings to fly.

Give me a boat, that will carry two.  And both shall row, my love and I.

And there I was up front with her at my side playing guitar and the tears were streaming down my face in front of the 100 kids and 25 teachers. I’m used to this and always tell people “Never apologize for tears.” But still, it’s not easy to cry heartily in front of people. And play the guitar and try to sing at the same time. And lead the ceremony.

But when the song was over, I soldiered on and said this to the kids:

Karen has been listening to this song at home and I knew she would enjoy hearing you all sing it. But I was wondering why she chose this moment to listen to it and why she liked it so much. Well, we don’t have to know why, we can just like the things we like and love the things we love and that’s enough. We don’t have to explain it to anyone or even ourselves. But hearing these words, it suddenly meant something very special to me.

42 years is a long ocean to cross. That water is wide indeed. When Karen started out, I’m sure she had no idea how long she would travel on it or any sense that she had to get to another shore. She knew she couldn’t swim that far and had no wings to fly. But a boat would help. And it would be more fun and she could go further with another person in the boat with her.

Well, it turns out that this school was the boat. And I was the love that took the journey with her. Day after day, month after month, year after year, we rowed together, one stroke at a time and suddenly, here we are on the other shore. She is getting out to explore a marvelous new land. And I’m getting back in the boat to row alone, for my other shore has not called me yet.

What a ride it has been! Scary storms, calm seas, circling sharks, playful dolphins. But I know what kept her rowing was the pleasure of traveling with you kids and the kids before you and loving seeing how you think with pictures, clay, cloth. You’ve kept her company with your fresh way of seeing the world and vibrant imaginations.

“Love grows old and waxes cold, and fades away like the morning dew,” says another verse in the song and I think her love of staff meetings and report cards and lunch duty may have waxed a little cold. But not her love of you all and the work you do. I know she’ll miss that. And I know she’ll miss you. So let’s send her off with one more time through the song.

And we did. Tomorrow Karen and I will leave the house, get in the car and drive for the last time to this school that has been our life, our home, our haven, our little piece of heaven.

On the Sidelines

Well, that was a first. Watching the faculty-8^th grade basketball game from the sidelines. Last time I played, I spent my first day of summer at Kaiser and hobbled around for three weeks. So in a rare moment of mature wisdom, I weighed the pleasure of playing against the pain of injury and came to grips with the gospel truth— I’m old. At least old enough that I shouldn’t be running up and down the court with 14-year olds.

I considered trying to play basketball light, just relax and play gently, but every muscle in my body has been programmed since I myself was in 8^th grade to play with every fiber of its being. You can’t sidestep that. It’s play hard or don’t play at all. So I chose number two and the good news is I’m walking around in one whole piece.

I could be thinking, “It’s just a game of basketball. No need to turn it into a big symbolic shift in the mythic arc of my life. “ But hey, it’s as hard for me to resist that as it is to play lightly. So of course I feel it as the entry into the next phase of life, more on the sidelines than in the heat of the game. And I am not going gently into that good night.

It’s been happening for a while, starting with the occasional trip to a bar and noticing that the young women on the prowl pass me by as if I’m the invisible man. Not that I’m on the prowl, mind you, but still I am a man and that flirtatious energy is part of the deal. According to the movies, I could revive it with better clothes and flashing a wallet full of money, but not quite my style. But the point is that sense of being edged out to make room for the next generation. As natural as sunrise and sunset, but damn, hard to accept!

So far I’m still pretty much in the thick of the music ed game, to my knowledge no one yet meeting a proposal to invite me to give a workshop with, “Are you kidding? That old tired man?” But it will happen. Just the other day a colleague wanting to volunteer at a school in Bhutan was turned down because he was too old. He’s five years older than me.

Anyway, I’m not complaining. Part of me has always been on the sidelines—the writer who puts a wall of words between life and reflection, the Zen meditator participating by sitting still, the piano player alone in the living room. And another part right in the thick of the crowd, muscling my way toward the hoop, jumping into the fray of argument, stepping toward the conflict, just throwing myself helter-skelter into the whole catastrophe—the disappointments and betrayals and moonlit magical nights, catching the wave that may set me flying free or slam me down into the sand.  For some reason, I signed up for it all by taking on this body and plan to keep playing until the last moment.

Meanwhile, I’m going to suggest that next year we have the Faculty-8^th grade ping-pong game—and hope I don’t hurt my wrist.

Magnetic Molten Magna Monsters

The scientist Rachel Carson spoke of preserving the child’s “sense of wonder.” I think that’s pretty important for teachers too. Apparently my capacity to be astounded by what children say and do is alive and well.

Take today for example. In a farewell class with 2^nd graders, we played one of our all-time music/movement game called “Stations.” I learned this (and adapted it) from a P.E. teacher named Rudy Benton back in 1975, my first year of teaching, and still enjoy it all these years later. The details can be found in my book Intery Mintery, but the basic game involves groups of 2 or 3 kids, each at a stool with a card with a letter (a “station”). They have to talk with their team and brainstorm a word or words that begin with that letter and then act it out/ dance it out silently while music plays. The goal is to come up with interesting words, find an interesting way to show them and move in ways that fit the music.

This is an adaptable game playable with almost any age. The 4 and 5 year olds gathered at the letter S will invariably “slither like snakes” whereas the 8^th graders (who played this with me yesterday) might come up with something more intriguing like “Tina Turner teaching Tai-Chi to turtles.”

So today I played it with 2^nd graders and noticed two boys—both 8 years old— had fairly long and sophisticated lists. Finally I had the presence of mind to ask them to repeat it later while I wrote it down. (And again, to my wondrous amazement, they remembered them!) Here’s the first one I wrote down:

 “Magnetic molten magna monsters making money from the molecule of a mockingbird.”

Pretty sophisticated. And pretty interesting to figure out how to dance out that scene!

And then the next:

“Titanium-tinted Tasmanian tigers terrorizing toddlers telling tales to turtles on the Titanic.”

8-years old, people.

I’m sure had we kept playing, they would have come up with something like:

“Proletarian Presbyterian plumbers participating in a Pilates program in Paraguay while purposefully pandering to Pavlovian passenger pigeons.”

But time ran out. 

National Smile Month

It’s June. And for this fellow who has spent 17 years as a school student and 43 as a teacher, that means one thing: SUMMER VACATION! In my childhood, it deserved those capital letters, as school was mostly a slow confined torture and summer a liberation into freedom to follow my fancy. I remember watching the clock so slowly edging its way to 3:00 and then bursting out the doors of Harrison School straight into the arms of the waiting summer.

These days, the edge between school and summer is not so sharp, as I mostly continue to teach throughout the summer and both my school and the classes I teach during the year are a kind of perpetual summer freedom. But yesterday some 8^th graders were rudely talking to each other about the Warrrior’s game while I was trying to tell them a story I had meticulously prepared and the same two preschool kids who often burst out into tears at the slightest provocation did so once again. And I thought: “It’s time for a break.”

So June. I was ready to invoke the basic background of Juno, goddess of Marriage and Jupter’s partner (Roman equivalents of Hera and Zeus), the impulse behind so many June weddings. And then remind us of Father’s Day and Summer Solstice and such. But while fact-checking on Wikipedia, came across a pretty remarkable list of June holidays celebrated worldwide. I guess there is a day or week or month set aside for just about every corner of the human experience. So just in case you didn’t know, here’s a short list of memorable holidays that should keep you busy in June.

• National Smile Month (England)

• Tourette Syndrome Awareness Month.

• Great Outdoors Month

• National Oceans Month

• Caribbean-American Month

• Bicycling Month

And mark your calendar for:

• International Yoga Day

• International Surfing Day

• Go Skateboarding Day

• World Milk Day

• Global Wind Day

• Coronation of King Jigma Singye Wangchuck Day

• National Dairy Goat Awareness Week

• Inventor’s Day

• Pixie Day

• Take Your Dog to Work Day

• National Doughnut Day

• UN Russian Language Day

• World Brain Tumor Day

• Autistic Pride Day

• Mixed Race Day

And my three personal favorites:

• National Catfish Day

• International Whores Days

• National Sauntering Day

Happy June! And don't forget to smile while sauntering slowly with your catfish to the doughnut shop.