Ah, yes… the death I believe May 2, 2012

As shared with me by Rev. Mark Wilson during Easter Services at the UCC in Phippsburg, 2012.  The lines best speak to the way I have always thought of death… no place in heaven required because there will always be a place on this earth for me. 

From Whitman’s poem Song of Myself, part of section 6

 

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and

                women,

And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken

                soon out of their laps.

 

What do you think has become of the young and old men?

And what do you think has become of the women and children?

 

They are alive and well somewhere.

The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,

And if ever there was it led forward to life, and does not wait at

                the end to arrest it,

And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.

 

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,

And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

 

 

From Whitman’s poem Song of Myself, part of section 52

 

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,

I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

 

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

 

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,

But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,

And filter and fibre your blood.

 

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,

Missing me one place search another,

I stop somewhere waiting for you.

 

 

 

… and, to mine own, I love you. KAT

Teacher Training February 9, 2012

The other day while walking my chocolate lab Maggie, I found that she did not ‘heel’ in the proper ‘nose to my knee’ position. In all fairness she hadn’t walked with me in a while and I hadn’t asked this level of attention from her in weeks.  So I restated the command of “heel,” however she still lagged behind.

“Heel,” I commanded again.    I looked back at her and started to slow my stride while I repeated the command.  She looked up at me with those sweet puppy dog eyes, but she plodded along at her same flagging pace.  And then it hit me.  I picked up my pace to a light jog, repeated the command, and she happily fell in to line – her nose to my knee – and kept up with me.  When I stopped, she stopped.  I changed my pace a few more times as we moved ahead and she kept right up with me.

Then it really hit me – how much teaching is like dog training.  Sorry, but it is.  When I first went to puppy classes, the instructor reminded me that it isn’t really the dog that needs the training. It is the owner.  In our own pride and ignorance we call it dog training, but really our dogs (and our students) train us.  To slow down, to let them sit in ways and places they ought not to, to eat with selfish abandon.  You know.  You’ve seen it from your students and your dogs.

So, I made the case in faculty meeting  that teachers should keep in mind the cautionary tale of Maggie:  Beware our tendency to slow down when our students begin to flag and falter.

However, when dealing with students, the cure for slowing down isn’t simply speeding up.  In Maggie’s case, she is a dog and it is in her nature to run, so speed is the motivator.   But what is in our students’ nature? 

What does “speeding up” mean for students? If  a short leash, some verbal reminders and a pocket full of bacon works for Maggie, then what support structures and reinforcements  make a difference for students?   These are the big questions of teaching.  What have you got?

Two lines in San Francisco April 13, 2011

 My recent visit to San Francisco’s tourist trade neighborhoods offered me a powerful visual of the social and economic divisions that exist within so many communities within just a few blocks.     

 

 Each day I took about fifteen minutes to walk the six blocks from the Nob Hill neighborhood to the Moscone Conference Center, and I passed the Apple Store a few minutes before it opened at 8 am.  The line of customers, hungry for a first taste of the G5 Iphone or the Ipad 2, stretched half way up Stockton Street. 

 

 A few hours later, about an hour before lunch, a very different kind of line began to form on a sidewalk just a few blocks away.  The hungry, the jobless, and the tattered stretched halfway down the block outside the local food pantry and resource center.   

 

 I must note that these two lines, wrestling with very different hungers and wants, formed within four blocks of each other.  Intellectually I understand that this disparity of wealth and opportunity exists within any community including my own small city of Bath, ME.  However, San Francisco’s urban setting puts the difficult truth out for all to see.  All I could say was, “oh, wow” and thank God that I had the good fortune to have no need or desire to stand in either line.

Resistance November 2, 2010

My husband Rich is training a bird dog.  This beautiful, sweet tempered lab serves as little sister to our daughters, so I balked at the idea of using a training method that might ruin her disposition.  My husband, the dog man, assured me, the novice, that the vigorous training acts as a crucible that refines and adds rigor to the dog’s natural instinct.  “OK,” I said, “just don’t cause too much discomfort and resistance in our angelic chocolate pup.”

In his preparation for training, Rich read books and watched video by the experts.  These experts articulated a fundamental dynamic in training:  Without resistance, there is no learning.  In fact, trainers cautioned that a perfectly compliant dog in session after session of training indicates the dog is not internalizing the lessons you hope to teach. 

Then, as we are both teachers and parents, we made the strategically crass comparison between bird dog training and raising children.

 A dilemma exists in comparing dog training to child rearing.  Most of the aims are not the same.  We want our children to think and to reason (and eventually to move out on their own).  We do not want the dog to think, but to act by rote (and to stay home where they belong).  However, in a strange paradox, in both child and dog, we strive to cultivate the natural instincts of each.  In a dog, the instinct might be to retrieve.  In a child, the deepest instinct is to do the right thing.  

We do not want our children thinking too long or hard about acting on this natural moral instinct.

As teachers and parents, we can mistakenly strive for compliant, grinning children who do not challenge us.  Resistance takes many forms in adolescents and can lead to anger, despair, and general discomfort. Of greater concern, perhaps, is blind obedience.  With resistance comes learning and transformation.

If we (parents and teachers) understand that resistance often predicates learning, then we can prepare ourselves for the challenge of teaching.  We must not only be knowledgeable in our subject areas – we must be gutsy.  We must be able to embrace conflict and stand solid in the face of derision.  We must simultaneously have the humility to examine ourselves in the face of criticism, while holding the line that is causing resistance in a child. 

 If we see resistance as the sign deeper learning is happening, we do not fear discomfort and resistance in our children… and certainly not in our dogs.  

5 Questions for Life October 30, 2010

In 1993 I haunted the corridors of the Rockland, Maine based Hurricane Island Outward Bound School hoping to land a job as an instructor.  I happened upon the ‘real’ secret of the adventure educator.  A scrap of paper pinned to a bulletin board read:

 The following answers will suffice for 95% of all student questions 

1. No.
2. What do you think?
3. Drink more water.
4. Ask your navigator.
5. What does that tell you about yourself?

 The remaining 5% of questions will require actual thought.

 

In the summer of 1994, I had to choose between a position with the Florida Outward Bound program and Hyde School.  The rest is history, but I still refer back to the five simple answers that create challenges that deepen student understanding.  I share the wisdom each summer as the faculty embarks on the great educational adventure that is Hyde School Summer Challenge. 

 However, these answers are not just for our students.  I too must remember to drink more water.  I must remember to ask my children and my students “What do you think?” before I tell them what I think.  I must remember to push the students in my classes to seek direction from student leaders.  Asking the question, “What does that tell you about yourself?” is probably a greater gift for a loved one or friend than the best advice.  As for “No”… well that answer can help all of us in so many ways if it is the truth.

Bible stories October 26, 2010

I am a “cradle Catholic” who has struggled with a relationship to the church my entire life.  Though disillusioned with the public school, I resisted the idea of enrolling my daughters in a religious school because I imagined a world of rigid doctrine.  In the end though, I chose the supportive and deliberate community fostered at St. John’s Catholic School.  In the summer of 2009, when I travelled with my two young daughters to Spain, I discovered one of the many wonderful gifts of an education founded in faith and in the stories of the Bible. 

 My daughters and I stood in the rooms full of Italian paintings (1300-1800), and my youngest noticed a scene depicted in a painting.  My first grader whispered, “There is Simon helping Jesus carry the crucifix.”  Amazed, I turned to read the oil’s label.  She was right.

 Then out in the main hall of Spanish masters (1550-1850), my daughters recognized the main characters of nearly every painting in the bunch – Spain is a predominately Catholic country after all.  They commented on the Virgin Mary, Adam and Eve, Mary Magdalene, and Jesus.  They blew my mind as we stood in front of a large mural busy with colors, people, and activity.  My oldest daughter, having just finished third grade, informed me this was the birthday celebration of Herod’s daughter and someone was holding the head of John the Baptist on a platter since she had asked for it as a birthday present.  I caught my breath in amazement and it hit me.

 My daughters’ religious education had blessed them with the gift of access to the larger world.  There we stood in Madrid’s famous Museo del Prado and while they accessed and comprehended, on some level, the works of classical master painters from the ages.  Without their St. John’s School experience, I fear they would have missed a great deal of the substance and mood of those beautiful illuminate works.  I am thankful for the gift of their education and their understanding. 

This I Believe October 24, 2010

 This I believe – the truth has a will of its own.  I have believed, at times, that the truth exists as an intangible idea – one of those conceptual nouns like ‘love’ or ‘peace’.  But no.  The truth can move you; I mean physically move you. 

 I have a physiological reaction to the truth.  When I sit in a room listening to others speak, the truth listens through me and looks for an opportunity.  The truth’s own need to be spoken audibly propels me forward.  Literally.  I lean my body forward in the seat and support myself with elbows on knees.  Pink heat rises on my face and my breath quickens.  People who have known me for years recognize this corporal shift and know that I will speak before long.  I bend forward so that I may focus on the speaker, but also that I may straighten my spine and de-kink my throat.  I do not carry out these actions intentionally.  I believe the truth pushes me, molds me, moves me to action. 

 I recognize a converse physiological response to the truth in those who lie.  These folks lean back while their eyes glaze over.  Muffled, half-formed ideas spew out from the mouths of those who hope to drown the truth swimming within.  You see, we all must reckon with the truth; it comes either from us or to us.  Those who lie move obliquely to obscure reality while truth simultaneously pushes against the breastbone or the lips.

 When difficult truths seek to emerge from me, I feel a quiver or knot in my gut.  The feeling is akin to three rodents wresting for a piece of meat somewhere above my stomach but behind my lungs.  I have felt the ‘flutter of butterflies,’ but I feel positively ill when difficult truths urge me to speak – my voice the agent that can bring them to light. 

 I believe each person is the conduit for a collection of truth and that these truths choose us; we do not choose them.  Truth, you see, has a mind all its own.

“Character” Education October 22, 2010

As a seventeen year Hyde School veteran, I hold strong opinions about the how and why of character education, but in Texas, at the annual conference for the Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), I enjoyed the opportunity to see what other folks mean when they tout “character” education. 

 For starters, I spent some time cruising around the booths in the exhibit hall.  I stumbled upon two men selling a spiral bound character curriculum book.  The ‘easy to follow’ curriculum guide offered 16 months of lessons for sixteen character words including responsibility, fairness and honesty.  “Sixteen weeks of easy lessons,” chirped the sales representative.  Easy lessons in character?  

 Then I attended a regular session in which the presenter promoted literacy and reading with a thematic purpose.  In this case, the theme was “character.”  The presenter matched quality children’s literature to six “foundational” themes of character education: identity awareness, perspective taking, conflict resolution, social awareness, love and friendship, and freedom and democracy (Selmon and Walker).  I connected to the idea of identity awareness since a Hyde School education begins with three essential questions: who am I?, where am I going?, and what will it take to get there?  However, the six foundational themes seemed flat to me.  They exist on a single plane, and seemed to lack a unifying purpose.

 Finally, I attended a session offered by the folks representing, and selling materials for, a trademarked version of character education that organizes itself around the memorable visual of six pillars.  The group submits the character values of trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizenship.  After the session, I attempted to begin some animated debate with presenter and sales representatives, but I could not engage them.  I suggested that a film clip from Lair, Lair and a follow-up discussion were often not enough to teach lessons on trustworthiness.  It seems to me that the students’ own truth telling, or struggle with it, makes better curriculum material for character lessons. 

 So, I struggled to match my understanding of character with the information I was hearing.  There is nothing easy about effective character education because character must be unearthed rather than poured in.  Character development only matters if it serves some greater purpose – such as destiny.  Finally, students’ lives are the curriculum material of character education.  Teachers can be educated to capture and harness the material that is the lessons of life.  

The Sixth Principle October 20, 2010

My young daughter reminded me about the power of Hyde’s 6th (unwritten) principle.  Deans, coaches and dorm parents concur that after Conscience, Brother’s Keeper, Destiny, Humility and Truth, there exists an unwritten, yet infinitely important, principle – suck it up. 

 My little girl sat in the big dentist’s chair calmly as the hygienist began shoving the even larger plastic dental guard into Logan’s small mouth.  I could see her lips begin to quiver and her eyes begin to well up.  This procedure was causing her discomfort and maybe even pain.  Part way through the procedure, the mama bear in me roared to life.

 “We are done,” I said in my controlled authoritative voice.  The hygienist pleaded that stopping would make matters worse for my daughter’s teeth.  I insisted that she pause in her work while I stepped out for a moment.  I surreptitiously phoned a dentist in the next town in the hopes I could magically secure an appointment within the next three hours, thereby saving my daughter the suffering.  Even as I dialed, I could feel the reality of my situation sink in.  To whisk my daughter out of the office now… well, that kind of drama only happens in the movies.  They could not accommodate us, or my protective attitude. 

 I returned to the room to find a tolerant hygienist, a composed patient, and a capable older sister.  I curtly informed everyone that it was time to finish the job.  I instructed my oldest daughter, the responsible big sister, to sit in the chair next to her sister.  I turned to walk out and sit in the waiting room.  My presence only provoked tears, and my oldest daughter could hold her little sister’s hand.

 No more than ten minutes later, the troupe – hygienist, patient, and big sister – strolled down the hall to the waiting room in good spirits.  “She was great.  No more tears.  We finished the whole job – both teeth,” chirped the hygienist. 

 I apologized for my gruff and disruptive manner and thanked her for doing her job.  Then I turned my attention to Logan and asked, “What was different after I left?  How come you finished up with no tears?”

 “I just had to suck it up.” 

 At seven, she gets it:  sometimes it’s not fair, sometimes it stinks, and sometimes it even hurts; that’s life – suck it up.

English-isms for Life October 18, 2010

1.  Whenever possible, categorize information, ideas or actions in groups of 1, 3 or 5.  It helps create form and discipline.  When in a pinch, 9 categories are also acceptable. There are nine supreme courts justices, five words and principles, three little pigs and one authentic self.

 2.  Always read with a pen / pencil in your hand so that your body can write all the brilliant little thoughts that your conscience whispers.  You are but a conduit.  The only exceptions to this principle: when reading romance, sci-fi or mystery novels for pleasure while on the beach. In the end, great literature is great if it helps us see the universal truths in our world and in ourselves. 

 3.  Discover your writing process.  Find the prewriting, drafting, revision and editing techniques that work best for you.  Allow others to read your work and you.  Allow others to help you see the weaknesses and strengths of your writing and your character.  If you do it all out loud, then others can see and learn from your lessons.

 4.  “to be” verbs are like white bread.  When overused or overeaten, each will weaken your writing or your body.  Feed your mind active verbs and your body whole grains.

 5.  “Being yourself.  Telling the truth. Taking a closer look.  Those are the things a writer cannot live without” (Spandel, 125*).  So, “Bet on the truth; still in doubt, bet on more truth” (Hyde School).   

Best Wishes,    Mrs. Truluck

 * Spandel, Vicki; The 9 Rights of Every Writer.  Heinemann Books.