Seeing With the Eyes of a Child

It is my great good fortune that many mornings a charming young lady named Maggie  bestows upon me -with her unique energy and enthusiasm- a warm and welcome, spontaneous hug. This exchange for me is a sacramental moment - a milestone moment in which you catch a glimpse of the almost unbearable preciousness and mystery of life -chock full of meaning about openness, connection and hope which children uniquely provide.

I began my teaching career as a substitute teacher in the public school in Maine.  One fall day, I was called to substitute for a fourth grade teacher in a small mid coast town.  Among the twenty four students was a special needs child named Chris.  I was instructed to not worry overly about his engagement or performance and just focus on the lessons left to me with the whole class.  I did my best to include Chris but to also not bring any pressure to bear.  Just prior to recess at lunch time it was time for me to read aloud.  So, I sat in a chair and began reading aloud to the class.  Suddenly, Chris stood up and walked up to me, climbed in my lap and put his head on my chest.  I could tell from the faces of the children that this was unusual and endeavored to convey a keep calm attitude to all as I continued reading aloud.  Inwardly, I was of course confused and most uncertain how to proceed.  As I concluded the story, I asked the children to line up for recess and asked the line leader to seek an adult.  Eventually, the school nurse arrived and with some effort cajoled Chris away from me and on to his lunch.  He later went home.

At the end of the day, the school social worker came to speak with me and offered explanations of the experience most of which did not resonate with me.  As I drove home from my day, I finally had a chance to explore from my perspective both what had happened and how I felt about it.

Even now as I recall this, I am filled with energy and emotion.  I remain in awe of what Chris taught me in that sacramental moment that we shared.  He gave me the gift of awareness, an understanding of connection and the many levels on which it unfolds for teachers and their students, and he helped me know that my students would endlessly offer me so much more than I offer them.  These sacramental moments are the true experience and understanding of education as love and of the vitality that flows out of simply being present to one another.

Now, I am a mom to two children – a son and a daughter – and they look at me seeing me with the eyes of a child and through some sacramental grace of life love me. 

In the winter season we are invited once again to be as open and transparent as children in practicing and embracing the utter simplicity of love – giving and receiving it in our lives. At heart, our spirit and spirituality perpetuates the truth that every child is a unique light and well nurtured will self-actualize and share his or her many gifts.  This belief elevates the process of education from a simple intellectual pursuit to the shaping of individuals who will lead lives of consequence. Children grow not just in knowledge but in wisdom, not just in critical thought but in compassion. We want each child to realize his or her richest potential for learning and become an independent, self-motivated and contributing member of the world community and to engage in service to others. “The aim of such an education indicates the desire to contribute to the good of all, to share in this cosmic goodness.” Maria Montessori

Embracing Our Imperfection

“Nothing that lives is, or can be, rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent. All admit irregularity as they imply change; and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality.”  John Ruskin

I aim in my life and work toward a humble acceptance and personal embrace of ‘imperfectability’;  I try to remember that it is not efficiency nor precision, nor an unflawed performance that characterizes a human self, but rather the stops and starts, imperfection and flaws in performance that humanize each of us. We are a multifarious group -thank goodness- for this informs our human dignity and magnificence – our unique potential. ‘ It is the soul’s business to strive toward expression, and maybe the soul’s greatest expression comes through imperfection nobly embraced, and through valuing in others what is imperfectly beautiful, what is beautifully imperfect—in a word, what is human.’

Each of us has our own unique flaws.  It is the imperfections and flaws we each have that make our lives together significant and rich. Self-acceptance of imperfection allows us to look for the good in others.

A Parable
A water bearer in China had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole which he carried across his neck. One of the pots had a crack in it, while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water. At the end of the long walk from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full. For a full two years this went on daily, with the bearer delivering only one and a half pots full of water to his house. Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments, perfect for which it was made. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it was able to accomplish only half of what it had been made to do. After 2 years of what it perceived to be a bitter failure, it spoke to the water bearer one day by the stream. "I am ashamed of myself because this crack in my side causes water to leak all the way back to your house."
The bearer said to the pot, "Did you notice that there were flowers only on your side of the path, but not on the other pot's side? That's because I have always known about your flaw, and I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you've watered them. For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table. Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house".

Blessings to all cracked pots

Chinese parable

What a Difference We Make

As a parent, securing my children's future through a commitment to personal financial planning – by drawing up a will, buying life insurance, educating them well, and hopefully, investing wisely – is a top priority. Lately I recognize that those efforts are less meaningful if I am not also ensuring that they end up in a world worth living in. So I try to teach my children about the decisions we make individually and collectively so that my grandchildren will have a world worth inheriting. Understanding that modeling is an effective way to teach, I look for ways, with colleagues, to model what a sustainable school and world would look like.

As Anthony Robbins observes, “Life is a gift, and it offers us the privilege, opportunity, and responsibility to give something back by becoming more.”  We have a broad and ambitious vision for students. Our goal is to develop in learners their full potential - social/emotional, intellectual, creative and physical. This reflects our commitment to the development of the whole child. Learning is cumulative, an integrated process, rather than fragmented.  We are forging frontiers that will sustain and perpetuate this shared vision

As children reach a fuller understanding of the world around them, they begin to recognize the needs of others and want to help when the occasion arises. Each classroom community nurtures an ethic of caring. Generosity becomes unconscious—it is the connection that exists between all members of the group. It’s not a set of rules, but of everyday living. All are encouraged to notice who needs help and to deliver it in a supportive and humble manner. S/he does not need nor ask for praise or thanks—his/her internal satisfaction is clear; s/he is confident that s/he is capable of helping another person  We are committed to enlightening our students to their responsibility to the planet and its inhabitants. Our work calls for children to help children, for families to help families. This altruism is an important part of what school teaches and how we all live in the community.  Author, educator and psychologist Alfie Kohn writes in Altruism and Empathy in Everyday Life that "one learns more from personal involvement with pro-social action than from either hearing about it or watching someone else." He continues that "what we believe to be true about ourselves and others affects how we behave, which in turn affects our assumptions about human nature."

It is reassuring, then, that at the heart of our educational philosophy is a simple, but powerful notion engendering sustainability, compassion, empathy, and learning:  I take and I give back.  In this balance we find the great value and benefit – to ourselves and to our world, to our present and to our future – of our individual nurtured and nurturing lives.

Process or Be Processed

I recently listened to Douglas Rushkoff  speaking about his new book Program or Be Programmed and identified facets of his main ideas that profoundly resonate for me with the power of student centered, self-directed education.  Just as he weighs in on how technology as a tool can do for us but left un-tempered might reduce our personal empowerment, so I wonder how an over focus on benchmarking and data driven decision making diminishes the fundamental nature of education – learning how to learn as a process. “As one who once extolled the virtues of the digital to the uninitiated, I can’t help but look back and wonder if we adopted certain systems too rapidly and unthinkingly. Or even irreversibly. But those of us cheering for humanity also get unsettled a bit too easily, ourselves. We are drawn into obsessing over the disconnecting possibilities of technology, serving as little more than an equal and opposite force to those techno-libertarians celebrating the Darwinian wisdom of hive economics. Both extremes of thought and prediction are a symptom of thinking too little rather than too much about all this. They are artifacts of thinking machines that force digital, yes or no, true or false reconciliation of ideas and paradoxes that could formerly be sustained in a less deterministic fashion. Contemplation itself is devalued. The sustained thought required now is the sort of real reflection that happens inside a human brain thinking alone or relating to others in small self-selecting groups, however elitist that may sound to the techno-mob. Freedom—even in a digital age—means freedom to choose how and with whom you do your reflection, and not everything needs to be posted for the entire world with “comments on” and “copyright off.” In fact, it’s the inability to draw these boundaries and distinctions—or the political incorrectness of suggesting the possibility—that paints us into corners, and prevents meaningful, ongoing, open-ended discussion. And I believe it’s this meaning we are most in danger of losing. No matter the breadth of its capabilities, the net will not bestow upon humans the fuel or space we need to wrestle with its implications and their meaning.” Rushkoff

The value added of self-directed education and learning is that students internalize, develop and understand how to maximize their intrinsic learning potential; integrating self-management (contextual control), self-monitoring (cognitive responsibility), and motivational (approach a task in different ways using different strategies) dimensions.  In this way the learner harnesses the natural desire to help achieve a meaningful learning experience that will last through adulthood. The highly motivated, self-directed learner with skills in self-reflection can approach the broader ‘real world’ as a continual classroom from which to learn. Self-directed learning becomes even more powerful when it's systematic, that is, when the learner participates in identifying:

•  What areas of knowledge and skills we need to gain in order to get something done (learning needs and goals)

•  How we will gain the areas of knowledge and skills ( learning objectives and activities)

•  How we will know that we've gained the areas of knowledge and skills (learning evaluation)

• What are the criteria and means of validating

Listening to Rushkoff  re-ignited and renewed my educator’s passion for distilling and cherishing the power of education as a tool that can be wielded to understand how with intention and forethought to learn from everything we do; to take advantage of every experience as a learning experience;  to see systems and the people  we work with as resources - a lifelong process.

“Just as we think and behave differently in different settings, we think and behave differently when operating different technology. Only by understanding the biases of the media through which we engage with the world can we differentiate between what we intend, and what the machines we’re using intend for us—whether they or their programmers even know it.” Rushkoff