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I’m sorry. I haven’t been as attentive to journaling this journey as I normally am. I’ve literally been sick for two months. Not sure what is up, just got behind on one cold and the next came after me and then another. I’ll find my way out eventually. Soon the fog of snot and hacking with lift and the sun will shine and we’ll be off to more energizing adventures in class and within these pages.
I’ve also been ruminating on the evolution of our classroom. How we’ve come form there to here. How our families, or world has changed. How many of our new families may not know about all of those wonderful pieces that made up the beginnings of this classroom and the beginnings of the teacher who learns along with the kids each day.
The other day, a current preschool parent/prospective Mystery Bay Classroom parent, stopped outside the classroom to read an article I had written for publication just as I was starting the K-2 program. She stood and stood and read and read as I cleaned up after class. She then came over and hugged me and said, “Michelle, that is beautiful, it just made my day better.” And you know what, it is beautiful. It is all about the building blocks of this very classroom. How we came to be, what we truly believe, how we try to learn and grow each and every day.
So, if you are new, or sort of new, may be new next year or just never got the chance to read through our first days as well as my first days, I’m re-posting the article. Maybe it will answer some questions you may have, maybe it will bring up some questions that you are more than encouraged to ask and maybe it will make your day better.
Peace, Love and Chicken Soup.
Once upon a time, a tender, new mom and her nine-month-old daughter stumbled upon The Community School of West Seattle. The school was just about to open in the coming months and this not only new mom, but idealistic, new Graduate of Education student, was in need of a job so this young family could buy banana’s, socks and other junk.
This mom packed her baby girl around on her back as she got ready for the new opening of this, once in a lifetime position, at literally (really no exaggeration here) the school of her dreams – the only place in the entire city she wanted to work and have her own child attend.
In this fairly recently married woman’s life, she had written her wedding vows that centered around a giant tree that was a metaphor of all of the strength of her and her husband’s lives together and the life of the new baby tucked secretly (really not so secretly because they told everyone they met) under her wedding dress (the couple had been together for six years already so no need to fret about the shot gun wedding part).
A few days before the beginning of the first days of school, the mom, the baby and the baby-daddy all gathered some paint and headed to the school. They had a plan. A tree to encircle the new classroom and the new family. As the mom and dad painted, the baby lolled on the floor, eating beads, wood chips, what-have-you.
As they began painting the woman stood against the wall and he began the outline of the tree around her body. Her torso became the trunk, her arms became the branches, her hair became the leaves. As they painted, the tree exploded to life, so much so that every time the woman walked into the room it literally (seriously did) took her very breath away. The tree became the symbol of the school, part of the school website and even on the very first business cards.
The tree even had it’s own song that the woman and the students sang to it each morning. “Here we sit under the circle tree, the circle tree, the circle tree. Here we sit under the circle tree so early in the morning, Jackson sits under the circle tree, Talin sits under the circle tree, Brigit sits under the circle tree so early in the morning” and on until everyone’s name was called – every single morning of the trees life.
The woman, her child and her students spent so many days under the tree, learning how to care for each other, how to fight for what they believe in and how to find the letters in their names. All of the children’s names and the photos of their families hung from the tree. The class of students became a family under the tree, one day at a time, one month at a time, one year at a time.
Two years later.
The woman becomes so enamored with her students that she plans to never ever leave the school but her students are growing and also not wanting to leave, so she sadly packs up her room but happily continues her journey moving into a new room with the promise that the tree will always stand. And happily the lovely and wonderful dance teacher takes over the room so that the children get to visit the tree whenever they return to dance class.
Two years later.
The lovely and wonderful dance teacher wants to create a classroom of her very own – the same privilage that every other teacher is allowed (including this one) and she wants desperately to paint her own classroom as she would like. She does not hold the same thoughts and feelings toward the tree as the woman who helped create it and doesn’t know the history that it has held for many of the students in the school.
The woman who helped create the tree is so sad but she understands (mostly) and tells her students the tree will come down and that they could write a note of goodbye to give to the tree if they wanted. But the students riot. The woman told them to do what they needed to do for themselves but that she could not help out of respect to the other teacher. Jackson, who loves the tree with all his heart because he holds all those same memories as the woman does, (shoots sparks out of his eyes,) rather says flatly, “no she’s not” and then precedes to state his case to the director and helps to initiate a class meeting with the dance teacher to explain how they feel about the tree.
The understanding dance teacher hears their cries, they also hear her ideas and are torn but ultimately they think the tree should live. Jackson said, “I could sing the circle tree song right now!” Zavier was torn and thought the dance teacher’s ideas were exciting but ultimately thought the tree too important to paint over. Anya saw the tree outside the window and thought the reflection of the tree inside to be magical. Asher said, I don’t know my left from my right but I know the difference between the tree and the windows when I’m dancing. Amalie cried.
The dance teacher, although really wanting to create her own space concedes to keep the tree up for one more year until the kids graduate from the school and move on. She tells them the news but they still are not okay with the idea of the tree coming down – ever. She is upset because she really wanted understanding with this compromise.
Then the dance teacher says if we feel so strongly we can have our room back if we want and without hesitation, the woman who helped create the tree and all the kids nearly scream with happiness, “OH YES PLEASE!” And the tree is saved. Never underestimate the power of five, six and seven year-olds. The woman is very happy. Not only because her beloved tree is saved but also because she has gotten to see first hand the power her students have and the role she has played in their lives. She helped to give them the tree and the strength to keep it standing. Her heart swells to bursting with pride.
Today.
The tree has been lovingly retouched to its original beauty and seems to have stretched its branches in anticipation of the coming home of its loved ones.
Tuesday, September 9th, the circle tree will be ready to greet you with love and the circle tree song.
Thank you Jackson. This woman, teacher, mama, friend, lover of art, history and trees is forever grateful for your courage and dedication to the preservation of our beloved tree.
The Totem Pole Dance and The Circle Tree
I know, I know, I said I would be in and out of here BUT I had this freshly five-year-old lovely to hang out with and our days were just packed. I’m going to try to get this one, heartache post out that I wanted to leave you with before I left but didn’t quite make it.
See everyone tomorrow. I missed you, really I did.
Today while I was hula hooping in the big yard, Amalie said, “Not only are you my beloved teacher, but you’re my rockin’ teacher too!”
…are now on my new external hard drive. I haven’t been able to download any photos, which makes it awfully hard to post photos. I filled one external hard drive already since I’ve been taking photos everyday of your lovely children for over four years now.
And to think, I always thought I would be a Luddite.
Renee is back for the summer and everyone is so excited – this makes our student/teacher ratio nearly 1 to 5! We will be doing some special one on one tutoring in the afternoons during open classroom.
Trisha came in with this great idea to make public art. She has a friend who put an art piece up on a pole on her block so that she could see it out her window. The piece quickly disappeared but she found out that some girls in the neighborhood had taken it and put it up in their bedroom. The girls then decided to also make some art and put it up around the neighborhood. Isn’t it amazing how fast something, anything can spread. So in the spirit of spreading art, joy and love, we jumped on board and became guerilla artists.
Everyone made something. Even the teachers.
Then we were off to share our work in the most public of forums – the street.
White Center – Enjoy!
We’ll be doing this once-a-month, in random places, so keep a look-out for our public art installations.
Last windy Thursday we hopped a bus to Fire Station No. 32.
We were so excited. Only Jacob knew what the “watch office” was called where the calls come in.
We learned the difference between a fire engine (with water.)
And a fire truck with the ladder.
We learned about wearing air when fighting fires.
Jorge was VERY popular – everyone wanted to take a ride down the pole.
Isabel puts out a fire.
Justin licks it.
Jackson tells his harrowing story of transferring from Swedish to Children’s via ambulance.
A perfect day. So totally fun. Thank you Jeff, Kathleen and especially Krista for helping us out.
Salom Boys and Girls,
I’m writing this from Esfahan, Iran, and I want you to know I been passing out pictures you sent me. I’ve taken picures of the children they’ve been given to, to share with you when I return.
However, I am going to start this first e-mail with boarding Northwest/KLM for Amsterdam, about a ten hour flight. Whew! I started on Monday afternoon, and arrived in Amsterdam on Tuesday morning. I have purchased some homeopathic jet lag pills, and even though it was somewhere around 1:00 a.m. in Seattle, but 8:00 or thereabouts in Amsterdam, I didn’t feel jetlagged (groggy and as if I was in morning sunshine at the wrong time.)
Holland is a very small country, and totally flat. You can drive from one end of Holland to the other in two hours! Two hours won’t even get you from Seattle to Portland!
The airport was so quiet and people moved at a leisurely pace. There were no constantly repeating loud speaker announcements like we find in American airports. I don’t know about you, but I usually quite listening to being told to watch my bags, what I can and can’t take on the plane, and whatever they talk about in our airports. And it was very nice to find things so peaceful and quiet.
That is one of interesting things about travel, you get to find out first hand how people live and do things in other parts of the world first hand.
We had ten hours in Amsterdam, so we took the train into what is called Amsterdam Central. When we left the train station, after figuring out how to change American dollars into Euros, we were facing a canal. We took a streetcar type train to go the Rijks Museum and crossed over canal after canal. It was very pretty. The Dutch people ride bicycles, not the mountain bikes and fancy long distance bikes we ride and see in Seattle, but bikes with large wheels (not balloon tires), mostly old and beat up, and hardly ever locked up! The bikes were lined up all over the place for this is how most people get around in Amsterdam. How clever, no fumes, no smog, and bicycles take up much less space to park.
(I know Isabel, this is probably pretty boring, Grandma going on, but I can’t show you pictures yet, so bear with me!) It was 48 years since I had been to the Rijks Museum and I had two paintings I wanted to see, A Woman with a Pitcher by Vermeer and Night Watch by Rembrandt. I’ve got postcard pictures to show you when I return. And yes, my favorites were still there, this time in much more elegant and appropriate framing, and cleaned of hundreds of years of dirt. In the case of the Night Watch, what I saw 48 years ago was a big big very dark and boring painting with only a couple faces showing. In the 70s they had cleaned this famous painting, and now it was filled with people all doing something interesting with Rembrandt’s unique way of have light seem to come out of a person’s face!
It was Tuesday, after lunch, and the museum and nearby park was filled with Dutch people leisurely enjoying their city! Marci, the friend I’m traveling with and I couldn’t get over how crowded the public places were. In Seattle, the museums and parks are empty of people until Saturday when folks are off work! This is what I mean, you learn how other people live differently than you do back home.
Back on the plane, more homeopathic jet lag medicine, and around almost 2:00 a.m., Iranian time, the lights came on, the plane landed, and I donned the blue coat (I had dyed it a darker blue because we were told dark colors were more acceptable), and tied on my scarf along with all the other women. Turns out I didn’t have to cover my bangs all up after all, the rules in Iran are not as strict as they were.
There is a fascinating story about getting through customs, being fingerprinted, waiting a long time, but I will wait to tell you that story when I see you in person.
At last we got to our hotel, figured out the unusual system of getting lights to turn on in the hotel room. You have to put your plastic “key” card in a slot, and then when you push the light switches, the lights come on. If you take out the key card, in a very short time, the lights all go off! One way to conserve electricity.
Tehran has I believe 10 million people. Gas here is very cheap, 10 cents a liter. After all, this is an oil producing country. So everyone has cars, the roads are very crowded, and Tehran, which sits in a valley, is pretty much covered in smog. However, on the day of our first outing, we drove up into the mountains surrounding Tehran and had a lovely clear rare view across the valley over Tehran.
On Iranian weekends, Friday is like our Sunday, and the weekend extends over roughly three days, these totally barren mountains, no trees, will be filled with people, men and women and children climbing into the mountains. On the other side of the mountains (which we couldn’t see) people come up in the winter and go skiing. This winter was particularly hard in Iran. Our guide couldn’t get out of his house for two days because of the snow that was piled up outside his door! The winters are quite cold here, spring, the season we’re in now a comfortable warm/cool, and summers and falls very hot. We are in a desert climate.
By now, my blue coat was feeling very hot, the scarf I had worn to your classes was quite warm, and none of us women looked like what we look like without our scarves! The men in our group were in shirts, some short sleeved and looking cool and comfortable! Many Iranian women were wearing long black chadors, like a loooong scarf that covers you from head to feet. Others in a manteau, a coat that comes in all kinds of stylish looks, some even of light colors, and scarves of fabrics like silk. Today as I write this, wearing the scarf feels more “natural” and seeing women in the covers like I just described seems much more natural and normal.
I’m going to stop here as my group is gathering to go out today. There are many more adventures to share.
Khoda hafez, Traveling Grandma
(Goodbye, or Allah go with you)
Dear Girls and Boys,
I enjoyed visiting your classes very much, and seeing how much you’ve
grown since I started out last fall as Galapagos Grandmother. Your
pictures and writings about yourself are just awesome. I look forward
to sharing them with people in Iran.
Tomorrow morning between 6:00 a.m. and 8:00 a.m. I am supposed to get
my passport and Iranian visa delivered. They better get there then
because I leave for the airport at 10:30. I’m supposed to hear the
story of what happened that it took so long to get them through
Iran’s process when we get there. Whew!
I reread about the need to wear dark colors in Iran, so the light
blue coat you saw me in, along with the scarf, have died a darker
blue. I’m curious to see what it will be like to wear a buttoned coat
and scarf all the while I am there.
I am taking your questions to ask people. I hear the weather is quite
nice. And, the adventure is about to start!
Travelin’ Grandma Diane
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