life and write

Education is not black and white, but more sketches of charcoal and gray…

“We cannot know the consequences of suppressing a child’s spontaneity when he is just beginning to be active. We may even suffocate life itself. That humanity which is revealed in all its intellectual splendor during the sweet and tender age of childhood should be respected with a kind of religious veneration. It is like the sun which appears at dawn or a flower just beginning to bloom. Education cannot be effective unless it helps a child to open up himself to life.”—Maria Montessori

“Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with the reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.”—Paulo Freire

This week is Montessori Education Week, and to my regular followers, you know I write quite a bit about how Montessori education philosophy impacts my family. Some of you have asked, so this week I hope to write and share a bit more about Montessori, but more importantly, as Montessori is not the cure, I want to explore writings, images, quotes on education broadly. From pre-K through college, Education is in crisis in the U.S. Schools are influx and resources are nonexistent. One of the most imperative, demanding, and complex questions this country will explore in the 21st century is how to educate our children.

February 24-March 2 is Montessori Education Week

Is it Sunday already? This week’s posts, slightly rewritten, remixed, and republished… Hope you’re having a good day.

Recipe. Poetry. Slow Simmered Cabbage.

If You Build, It Might Topple Over

Out of “The Big Box”

“I’m building a castle,” said my three-year-old. There he was, holding one bottle with one hand trying to stack them as they continued to fall repeatedly. I could see his wonder. He had seen many other things stack so easily: Legos, boxes, cups. But in his repetitive efforts, I watched as he contemplated why the science was failing him. Why did those plastic bottles refuse to stack and stay? Why did they crumble so quickly, so easily try after try? Why did his outstretched arms seem just short of reach, not able to corral those bottles into submission? I watched and did not have the answers, but also did not intervene in his playful matters. I watched as he kept trying…

That moment made me wonder how young children know when to keep trying and at what point in their lives does that persistence, that resilience slip away? Failure is a graceful, and inevitable thing. Yet, I work regularly with students who have become more and more afraid of that failing grace, afraid to let go, do something wrong, redo, or revise.

Failure is a part of the learning process I remind students, but I have to often remind myself that so much of Education lacks that process. To take Education as it stands, there are series of tasks students are asked to complete at the same time, in the same way, in pursuit of the same result. All that sameness doesn’t allow much room for process: curiosity, questions, trial and error, mistakes, wonder, thinking.

Process seems far too messy for Education (as it stands now) to entertain. But it is in that messy, unpredictable process where questions are asked, methods are explored, and resolution may or may not present itself as an outcome. Education in its search for new methods must explore failure, and the varied and appropriate responses to not “getting it right” the first time. What if we all failed and just couldn’t bring ourselves to “try, try again”? What would that look like? If Education and schools are reinforcing a culture where kids fear anything less than perfection, how will young people learn to think, problem solve with resilience, strategy, patience, critically and creatively. If Education trades “thinking” (critical and creative) for task-based learning, students will never learn to build and keep building on their ideas, create jobs, new technologies, a kinder gentler world, a future for us all. Education is a “big work” (Montessori).

Now back to the play of my three-year-old. After many tries, I’m not sure how many, I lost count. He finally figured out how to wrap his hands around those bottles, bend and steady his arms to encourage balance, build until those bottles stood steady, towering over him. “A castle,” he said, as he did it without my help, but with the full weight of my hope. “Yes honey, a castle.”

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When you reach for your keys and unexpectedly find the tiniest of socks in your pocket…

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Writing in school should encourage students to set words free, not bound them by lead filled bubble and exhausted prompt.

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To travel (by plane) with a seven-year-old, a three-year-old, and a five-month-old we employed a few suitcases (four to be exact), three car seats, a stroller, a diaper bag, checked bags at the counter and the gate, plenty of snacks, books, tech devices of all shapes and sizes (and the chargers), and a handful of patience and calm…

After that whirlwind experience at Thanksgiving, this Christmas and New Year’s we nest. Happy Holidays!!!

“Eat lunch with your child day”—My six-month-old isn’t “eating” much other than a bottle and a few bland purees, but hanging out with him in the middle of the work day had little to do with food and more to do with precious time.

This fox hat was far too cute to leave at the store. My seven-year-old seems to think the baby looks like a Pokemon character. My three-year-old wishes this hat were his. My husband and I keep thinking this time with the baby is going by much too fast.

While walking to work I couldn’t help but notice the campus grounds empty. This morning the skies were gray, but the temperature felt warm for an Ohio winter. It would be easy to just dig my head into my walk and not pay attention to the calm of campus, the bare trees; the quiet lonely hum. On any given day it might be easy to ignore the laughter I heard rumbling across the street. But today, it wasn’t that easy.

In the distance, there were children, the echoing laughter, a small bubbling crowd of puffy purple, pink, orange, and blue coats, the bounce and awkward sway of tiny legs and feet wandering through tunnels and buildings, in and around the tall trees. I stopped for a moment to listen, as the tears in my eyes began to form and fall at the sound of those children, their joy, laughter, and excitement. I grabbed a tissue to wipe the corners of my eyes, and imagined the floods of sadness still pooling in Newtown, Connecticut. In the depth of this tragedy, such pain, I was so pleased to hear this morning sound like children, like hope.

What do you get when you mix a strip of tape, a plastic USC cup, and a mini basketball? According to my three-year-old, ice cream of course! This morning on the end table I found remnants of my three-year-old’s imagination—a hand-made, re-purposed ice cream cone with just one colorful swirl (notice the single strip of tape). It’s a good thing this delectable treat didn’t melt, or maybe fall over, I might have missed yet another time to celebrate the creative things kids do with random stuff around the house.

Yesterday, while in the kitchen, I overheard my son playing with the cup and the ball, but I had no idea he saved his simple creation, and added a piece of tape to it. Or maybe he left it out on display for us to see. Either way, finding this continues to remind me that the ordinary shapes and objects we have around the house open up an imaginative world we busy adults don’t always have access to.

Imagination does not become great until human beings, given the courage and the strength, use it to create.
—Maria Montessori

Good morning Sunday, we are curled in cough and congestion, in wrinkled folded mounds. His tiny bare feet buried in my hip, burn from heel to toe. The tiniest chest rises and falls beside me. I am happy he slept. I worried he might stir the night away, whimper, tear, toss and turn his warm body away from dreams, sweet little things like lions, giraffes, and bears.

There might be something better than his tiny fingers wrapped around mine. But at this very moment, I can’t think of anything.

“Language as a found object” -Susan Sontag

Right there on the shelf sitting with the leaning stripes and folded solids, stitched between the graphic tees and dark denim, the word “hope” spelled soundly or soundless in black background and white text, in block letters and in a size 3T. “Hope” was an unexpected opening, an abstract idea I could concretely wonder about, a welcome distraction while shopping, a word to jot down in my journal, an unfolding notion on a cotton tee, instantly inspiring (and on sale).

Words: Find them, collect them, share them, they belong to all of us.

Write because it’s Sunday (or at least it was yesterday when I wrote this).

Write because the baby just delivered an inevitable (and disgusting) teething trilogy of carrots, milk, and who knows what else all over my husband’s sleeve. “Better him than me,” I thought to myself because secretly I’m maneuvering, trying to carve out a few minutes to sit down to write soon.

Write because the sprawl of wooden Jenga pieces will not put themselves away and picking them up from the floor at this very moment will not matter even if for a few minutes while I finish this sentence.

Write because Sunday evening the family finds itself tired of each other in this small space and scatters in wiggly bodies and exhaustion throughout the house to the various crevices of play and solitude.

Take this brief yet brilliant time to scribble, type, or think about the next line, fumble through an idea, pretend not to hear the baby stirring in his crib upstairs. But even after the dishwasher is loaded for the night, clothes set out for the morning, and the lunches are nearly made, that corner in the living room where I want to curl up with my journal or laptop may just have to wait. Finish the sentence, the final thought, then put it away, the baby is still stirring upstairs and would rather fall asleep in my arms.

And even after the kids are asleep and I softly step from their room back downstairs, I remember to write because while the laundry won’t fold itself, the next sentence or page or idea I’m working on is far more interesting than a stack of folded towels. Write because even if for the next few minutes, the laundry can wait.

Why do you write?

Leave a comment below or on Twitter @lifeandwrite #Writebecause

Somewhere in the bended wrinkle of your boots, beside the tangled laces, the notes of your service, your experiences lie stitched in cloth and suede. In the bottom grooves of those boots, memories of the desert, the water, the hills and fields crowd in dark corners between heel and sole. Our little boys have all tried on your camel step, their small bare feet searching for the rhythm of their father, your narrative of love, courage, and hopefulness, your call of duty. I’ve watched you march in circles; sing your soldier’s song in call and response with our smiling children trying to keep cadence. I thank you for sharing your stories, your travels, your language, your life with us. As you serve, we serve with you, and we love you. Thank you Major Edwards for your service and duty sealed with your life in honor and commitment to the best for all of our lives.

Today, on Veteran’s Day, I thank you husband, father, brother, son…sing along with you today (and everyday) your solder’s song.

…Funnel Love

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Text in the City…

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Confetti Word Frenzy

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Vote by Ballot, by Crayon, by Pen

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…One Vote between Us

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I’ve been engaged in myriad conversations over the past few weeks about creativity. This subject keeps coming up. Where does creativity come from? How can we encourage it in children, in ourselves as adults? Why is there a battle in education, in our homes, in the workplace between critical and creative thinking? Why do those spaces want to choose between the two—which is more rigorous, beneficial, salient? Why can’t we (as humans) young and older practice both in learning and in the wider part of our lives? Why does education (and often other aspects of our lives) strip us of our ability to see our creative selves, think creatively? I keep coming back to some of the same sensibilities. We have to undo what it is that blocks us from wonder, play: stress, excuses about time, space, money, fear.

I work with young people on how to “undo” some of that fear of creativity before they reach adulthood and can’t find that sense of wonder anymore. I work with adults (other educators/parents), to encourage, give “permission” to allow room in their lives, their student’s lives, their children’s lives to think creatively, to wonder. I watch my own children access their creative selves everyday. They remind me how it’s is done…

I typically use the funnel in the kitchen pouring liquid, grains, from one container into the next. But when my three-year-old gets a hold of the funnel he is much more imaginative. That sputtering sound I heard the other day was no trumpet but rather my three-year-old composing his best kid rendition of some unknown tune on his newly imagined funnel horn. And while I thought that horn might be the only trick he had up his sleeve that trumpet quickly became a birthday hat for his younger brother (not sure if the younger brother was thrilled about that). But you can’t have a birthday hat without birthday cake, so my three-year-old ran to the other room and brought back the small plastic containers I use to organize stuff around the house, for his pretend birthday cake, when the funnel had one more magical use, as the candle on top.

Now I will have to go back to using my funnels in that same old boring and practical way. But next time I use that funnel I’ll remember metaphor, and how even kitchen utensils have creatively secret and interesting lives of their own.

What toys? Kids find play in anything, everything.

Happy Friday!

His vote may not move the electorate, but his voice is part of a future generation engaged.

There are so few times that I can grab the hand of my seven-year-old and hold on. He is getting older, wiser, and more independent. He is engaged in the world in ways that encourages him to peel away from me, stand on his own, challenge me gently with his blooming ideas.

I can however, often count on the vulnerable space between his long arms around my waist after a long day, around my shoulders, around my heart. I hope hugs will always be allowed between mothers and sons.

And no matter how old he gets, I hope we can continue to share in those precious, important moments, to hang out. This morning was exactly that kind of opportunity. I wanted to take him with me to vote. So as my oldest crawled out of bed and found his way through the earliest parts of his day, I invited him to join me. He smiled widely, then reminded me, “Mom, I’m not 18, I can’t vote.” I smiled, then said, “that’s o.k., you can help me.” He agreed.

So this morning, as I stood in line to cast my ballot, instead of offering my dangling arm for my son to cross, slide his fingers in the cusp of my grip, follow me towards the future—I found myself looking for the pale of his open hand, the sort of his swinging arm, the uncertainty of his stride, his head held high. We were there to vote, and engage with all that comes along with that responsibility. I walked him through the process step by step. And as we stood there waiting, I searched for thoughts of my son’s future, his rambling dreams, what I wish for him, what he doesn’t yet know to wish for himself.

Today when I voted, I was reminded that I spoke not only for myself but for my sons, with my sons, with the sons and daughters I’ve never met, the ones I’ll never meet, the narrative of their lives unfolding and uncertain.

Then finally inside the open wings of that voting machine, my son and I stood together, as we read each of the choices, and I carefully pressed my finger against the touch screen. We listened to the tapping ticker of the ballot box, watched the stitched mark across the curling tally, held hands without saying a word–voted.

My three-year-old isn’t writing just yet, but his eye for language led him to some remote corner in the house inside the black bin where we keep our shredded text, including bills, junk mail, and other bits of random paper. And as a writer I was so proud to see my three-year-old trying to “write” (sort of) standing in the middle of a blizzard of black ink and broken typeset, a storm of fonts, letters, broken and bending words.

The rambling shreds spread all over the floor were remnants of our identity ripped and twisted by child’s play. I imagine he was drawn to the pool of white slivers, until he discovered those peculiar little paper strips appear even more magical piled on the hardwood floor, like snow flurries indoors or pollen in the spring. I do love his graceful lettering, sculpting far beyond his vocabulary into a land of faceless characters, unknown “found” poems, and accidental, nonsensical lines of language. Instead of digging for a ready-made story, today he wrote one himself, building on jagged little shapes, crooked strands of paper, a pile of interesting mess. There are some things that are simply better in shred, and I guess today, “play” was one of them.

“A piece of creative writing, like a day-dream, is a continuation of, and a substitute for, what was once the play of childhood.” —Sigmund Freud

For more thoughts on word play read: Freud on creative writing and daydreaming by Maria Popova

Somewhere between one too many pieces of candy in the house and our collective family sweet tooth, while the kids sleep soundly after an intense, rainy, cold, and exciting adventure in full costume and the door to door collecting of random goodies, my husband found himself picking through those colorful heaps of cavity causing goodness. Get your toothbrushes ready, it’s going to be a sweet ride (only one piece per day) in our house for the next few days, until the loads of candy (which never gets eaten anyway) will mysteriously disappear.

And…

Ok, this post wouldn’t be complete without a cute pic of our tiniest pumpkin on his first Halloween. I just couldn’t help myself.

Sunday rose burns, blurs my vision, these thorns
crooked in my eye. The baby’s eyes wet
with rapid blinks and bruised petals along
his cheeks. Salt pastes the narrow groove beside
his eye, like mine, they sting, tighten, dry. We
are the same with our swollen nodes and sore
throats, our slippery symptoms and clean hands.
Blood vessels, like swollen roads in the white
of our eyes, the pulse, the tightening, tears.
At home we are contagious together,
waiting for the time to pass. Tomorrow,
when we are apart, we will wish for time
without fevers, without stinging red eyes.

(First drafts are lovely, loose, and reckless. Illness is a frustrating and surprising source of inspiration. Wellness is on its way.)

We begin our goodbyes the night before,

inside The Alphabet Tree, inside branches

hanging words: “foliage”, “gale”, “peace”. The boys

rest inside the curl of us. Inside bedtime,

inside story, a bug with yellow wings

and lush green letters strung together.

On the bed, the baby, his heavy eyes

and full belly, my oldest, his glasses slip

to the tip of his nose. He reads aloud

jagged little sentences, turning pages

as his brother drifts inside a slow blink.

I miss him already. Monday seems far

away for him, for us. This is how we

say goodbye, inside stories, letters,

and green leaves. Beside each other, gathered

in words, the passing of time, and good night.

A few weeks ago, on a Saturday, my seven-year-old and I set out on an adventure together. I believe in pulling my children away from each other for one-on-one time with each of them. They all have very different personalities and one on one time allows them to be themselves fully without the sometimes awkward dance of balance and siblings.  This time not only allows me to be fully present with each of them, it also allows me to know them outside of the normal chaos of our lives, to listen to their needs, questions, confessions, to just be present.

This was Mason’s day, and science is his thing, so we headed down to Mini Maker Faire at our local science and industry museum to contemplate invention and design. We widened our eyes and minds with 3-D replication engineering, glass blowing, robotics, and couldn’t leave without stopping in to see the newest Lego exhibition. My son was cool with his hands his pockets; though I noticed his heart on his sleeve. And as we bounced around all over town that day, every now and then, as we crossed the street, I held out my hand and he easily slid his hand in mine. But before I could sigh a sense of, “he’s not too old to still hold my hand,” his fingers would slip away, swinging along his slow stride.

I was happy in this very moment with my oldest son, as we took our day slow, talking or silent, walking or standing still. It was the last day of the Bebe Miller exhibition at Urban Arts Space so my hope was to get my seven-year-old from science to art all in one swift shift, after lunch on a full belly was my strategy to slip ourselves into the galleries downtown. In front of Miller’s work, contemporary dance written in images, the history curling inside the streaming video feeds, my curious (and cool) son walked through the show slowly, stopping to read or look, sitting on the bench staring at me, at the faded color images and bodies wound in tights, in each other’s outstretched limbs. It was the end of our day, a few minutes until the close of the exhibition, and as grace (or luck) would have it, BeBe Miller in person walked by with a few friends. It was a brilliant moment, one I could not have ever planned or expected. I stopped to greet her and shared our experience in the exhibition. Miller and her friends took interest in my son, his shy eyes and sincere smile. They talked with him about dance, and honored his interests as he lit up talking about movement, hip hop., and breakdance. I just watched and let him hold his own with the elders. Inside I smiled thinking, “If we listen, the elders will teach us. And when they listen, we may speak what we have learned.”

I learned something that day, as I always do when spending time with my children. As he and I wandered through our day, between art and science, between dance and design, between he and I,  I remembered how our interests blurred that warm autumn day, and how that blur was just us— present—in love and wonder.