Teach a Man to Fish

Though my spring break doesn't occur for nearly another month, my kids are already taking theirs. This is because different schools in different districts of Prague have different holidays to prevent the entire country fleeing to the mountains at once. None of my kids are vacationing in the Mediterranean for spring break. They all go to the mountains. One of those little things about living in a post communist country is seeing how the limits imposed by the government became somehow natural. But that's a post for another day.

My kids are off on holiday because their older siblings in other schools have holidays. This means that instead of my class of eight little princesses, we've been topping out at five. While it's frustrating because my kids will be at such different levels after this next month, it has given me a chance to get to know them better as individuals.

And there are those moments when I just happen to be listening to the right kid at the right moment that make my whole life make sense...

We've been putting up a bulletin board with fruit on it to show how some fruit grows on bushes and other fruit grows on trees. I was hanging a cloud up with rain coming down over one of the bushes and one of my girls asked why it was raining.

"Well, you need to drink water and tea, right?"

"Mhmm."

"The bush needs to drink, too. It drinks the rain water."

A few hours later, my girls were sitting below the bulletin board.

"You know why is cloudy here?" I heard. "The bush need drink rain water so it get big."

A few minutes later:

"I am rain and you are bush. I come and make you big, okay?"

Most teachers I know think of circle time as their most important lesson time. I'm learning that the time I give to individual children is just as important if not more important than our class lessons. If I teach the whole class something they don't particularly care about, it's lost about five minutes later. But if I spur the curiosity of a child and that child spurs the curiosity of another child, two sentences can lead to an elaborate role-play in which my children figure out how the world around them works.

My kids are always playing nurturing games. "I'm Mommy and you're Baby!" Or "I am the kitten and you're my daddy!" They've managed to discover a new nurturing game as rain nurtures plants. Spring is coming and I'm so excited to see it through their eyes.

Snowdrops

The first Snowdrops of the year appeared this week! There's still a bit of icy snow left about but the Snowdrops, like the crocuses at home, are persistent. When Jana brought in one from the garden on Monday, I told her my Snowdrop story which I've heard from many Waldorf sources. I could write it out, but it's better told in person. I then told it to Ruza and the kids, who adored it.

I spend a lot of time thinking about storytelling. How is it different to tell stories to adults versus children? How can we learn to tell stories better to both audiences? How can we become better listeners so that we can enjoy a "nice" story? I talked with a friend about it this weekend who said that we, as the audience, want to feel included in the story, feel like we are part of the drama. That's why, she said, "I went to the grocery store and got some yogurt, and it was good," isn't a good story. But I sit in circle every day with children who say things like, "Yesterday, I went swimming and today I am going to grandma's house." The other children are enthralled, they appreciate these stories. They don't need to be part of the drama. How can we recapture that?

I tell stories all the time. I tell nice stories. And another important thing is learning to accept the audience's silence. You need to give them a moment to absorb and not expect something that sounds cliché like, "That's nice." Just let the story fall. And be okay with it.

As the Snowdrops poke their drooping heads through the frozen ground, we are looking everywhere for signs of Spring. Yesterday, we found worms in a pile of old leaves. "It is alive! It is life!" shouted Ruza. How accurate? When everything around us feels dead, it is so good to see life. We moved them carefully to the compost pile and explained how they would be our little helpers, making us magical compost which will bring new life.

Another thing about spring with young children is this:

We as adults have come to understand from many years of experience that though winter can be dreary, spring will follow. We know what to expect. My kids are 2-5. They have had so few winters and springs, and even fewer that they actually remember. So, every winter to them, it must feel like the earth is simply dying--that this is the end of the world! Imagine the wonder of finding a worm living in the dead leaf, his wriggling pink body so vibrant against the darkness of decaying plant matter. It must really feel like Ruza said, but it's the Earth that's alive! The little Snowdrop reminds us of this.

Simply Seeds

This past summer, I spent a few weeks at my father's house for the first time since I was fourteen. It was late August and we were struggling to keep up with the harvest of tomatoes and peppers. My whole childhood, I enjoyed the bounty of our backyard. Being the sixth generation of my family to live on the street meant that our backyard was a paradise of fruits and vegetables. We had rhubarb for pies. Gooseberries and currants were for making jelly. Our pears were really canning pears, but as children, we ate them off the tree and enjoyed their crisp texture and tartness. Red and black raspberries never made it to the kitchen before our pudgy hands would stuff them into our stained mouths. There were plum trees in our yard while next door there was an apple tree that we were welcome to pick from. We also enjoyed our neighbor's blueberry bushes and occasionally picked the June berries from near the road. While all of these plants gave us their delicious fruit year after year, we had little understanding, nor interest, in our father's gardening. Who cares about tomatoes when you have raspberries?

But in 2009, as something of an adult, I had much more respect for the two gardens my father had been keeping. It was difficult not to feel a sense of awe when looking at them. The tomato garden was overflowing--and certainly not just with beefsteaks! "Did you see the yellow plum tomatoes?" my father would greet me as he came in from the backyard. The day that we found what appeared to be a purple heirloom was a day of wonder and delight. I had chopped so many tomatoes and peppers (and not just bell peppers either--"I think this is an orange Scotch Bonnet!") for salsa, roasted tomatoes, and my own bean chili. I felt like we would never keep up. The fruit drawer in the fridge became the tomato drawer, while our windowsill was covered with vegetables awaiting the chopping block. As we looked at the purple heirloom, we debated what to do with it. "I think I'll save it for seeds," my father said. I began to notice the little yellow seed envelopes on the counter--most unlabeled. Of course! This garden, while magical, didn't just appear one day! My father was saving seeds and planting them year after year. The tomatoes and peppers that we eat provide more than just delicious sustenance--they also provide for the future. They are full of possibility! Inside of each one is dozens of possible plants for the future. Our garden was full of surprises not because these things just appeared but because my father has no interest in labeling envelopes. But this is part of the magic of our garden!

My father's crown jewel this summer was the watermelon plant that managed to make its way into the pepper garden. Had a watermelon seed somehow gotten mixed in with the pepper seeds? Had someone at a barbecue spit a seed in the direction of the garden and it managed to germinate there? The watermelon was gorgeous and huge, though I didn't eat it so I'm not sure how it tasted.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how I can bring the magic of our backyard to my school. I'm planning out a garden in my head, which is a completely foreign concept for me. I decided to buy a book from my favorite press (Hawthorn) called Gardening with Small Children. I hope it comes soon! I desperately need some guidance on this subject. But at snack today, I was cutting up apples and noticed the seeds. I put them aside and after snack showed them to the children. We put them in one section of an egg carton and labeled it "green apple." I doubt that we'll have any sort of orchard in our small backyard, but if just one of these seeds becomes a tree sometime in the future, imagine having snack time from our own tree in our own backyard! I marveled at the simply beauty of seeds in an egg carton, hoping my students felt my sense of wonder at the magic of the world. These little brown things, that we spit out with a "p-tooey" of annoyance, have the possibility to become trees which will produce more apples for us to eat and more seeds for more trees with branches to climb and leaves to collect! And what more beautiful sorting and storage container than a recycled egg carton? Look how much the earth has provided us with and how it continues to provide!

So, this afternoon, I went to the fruit shop and, using my little and bad Czech, got a few peppers. I cut them open and again felt joy in seeing the magic of nature. All of those seeds, which usually stick to my knife and drive me crazy while I cook, were the start of this summer's vegetable garden. Unlike my father, I carefully kept and sorted them.



I cannot wait to plant them this spring and to enjoy my own pepper harvest this August. Working with children is like observing the evolution of humanity. They make new discoveries every day which our species took thousands of years to come to. So far, my children have been living in the hunter-gatherer stage of human evolution. Agricultural revolution, here we come!

All the Lies They Told Along the Way

Sometime in my childhood, it was decided that I cannot draw or paint. It was also decided that my handwriting was atrocious. Thus, I hated drawing, painting, or turning in written work. I would never do it unless absolutely necessary. But in the past few years, I've discovered that, as it turns out, I actually like to do these things, as long as no one is judging me. In my non-language classes in college, I was wont to fill entire pages with doodles of little things that make me happy like starfish and hot air balloons. Yet, when my boss' husband asked me in my first few days at school if I drew, my answer was a definitive, "No." The next day, he found me in one of our miniature chairs at our short table drawing elaborately bizarre sketches for stationary. My boss, later on, requested that I paint a dinosaur on the wall of our science corner. While I recognize that it is a caricature of a dinosaur, it's still distinctly dinosaur-y. His name is Steve.

Steve looked lonely, so I painted little Tommy here.


And then I went for the tree. Granted, my branching patterns leave a lot to be desired and my owl might also be a penguin, you can at least tell what I'm going for. And does it matter that my silly paintings aren't perfect? Does it matter that I cannot for the life of me make a face, human or otherwise? If I love painting and drawing, why do I let memories from early childhood still haunt me, still tell me that I shouldn't?

I know it couldn't have been my mother who discouraged my (in)artistic abilities. So, I have to assume it was a teacher in school. It could have been either my second or third grade teacher, both of whom treated my poor handwriting as a sign of my willful disregard for their eyes rather than a sign of delayed development of fine motor skills. Why was I made to feel so guilty for my poor handwriting and my unclear illustrations?

I try to keep these questions and memories in mind as I shape the futures of my own students. It's easy for a teacher to say they encourage every child, but somewhere along the way, children become seriously discouraged. Whatever is going on in my life outside of school, once I enter that door, those kids are the only thing that matter.

By Day/By Night

My life by day: mild mannered preschool teacher, prone to saying "goodness gracious!"

By night: after the mosh pit at a concert not fit to be written about here in any way.

This weekend, I went to Prague to visit my friend Nicole. It's amazing to have someone I have known for seven years so close by. She's one $4/45 minute train ride away, which is significantly closer than she was when we were both on Long Island many years ago. We went dancing on Friday night, got one expensive sushi lunch on Saturday afternoon, then spent Saturday night at a show. It's good to know that I don't have to do all the touristy Prague things in one go. Nevertheless, I wish I had taken a few more pictures. I kept thinking all weekend about normalization. How quickly does anything in your life become normal? In Korea, the garlic truck that woke me up every morning with it's dulcet cry through a loud speaker of what I can only assume was "garlic, garlic, get'cher garlic here!" became a party of my daily ritual in a matter of days. Here, it's things like crossing a river and following a winding path through a park as being part of my morning commute. In Prague, it was running to catch street cars. If you do things regularly, you stop thinking about them. I am determined to keep at least a slightly objective eye for these kinds of things, though I know I won't be able to keep the same level of novelty and amusement.

School started on Monday with three children--two girls (the Czech teacher's daughters) and one boy. This is important to note because the boy is not only really the only male in the school, he's also such an outsider because we're all so involved in the creation of the school. I feel bad for the little one but we are doing a good job of including him. Hopefully, we will get more and more children soon. As far as teaching goes, I'm still hesitant because they know so little English and are prone to running away when I speak. I think that as I get more confident and they become adjusted to me, it might be like an average preschool teaching job. I got sent home by my boss yesterday for having a cold and woke up today still running a fever, so I've missed two days in the first week! But again, the school is still a work in progress so it's better to be sick now than later.



I'm learning to balance the two major extremes of my personality and this version of "Daisy Bell" pretty accurately represents it. I want to sing nursery rhymes but also continue to feel comfortable in a mosh pit. But I did learn one thing this weekend, when someone you're dancing with asks you what you do and you reply, "I teach preschool" the reaction of shock and amusement is pretty much universal.