The Family Craftsman

My husband George recently built a table of antique year old heart pine reclaimed from the ceiling of an abandoned cotton mill in Enoree, SC. The mill was the sole employer in that small community for more than a century. A friend of ours delivered a load of rough pine boards and beams, blackened with decades of grime and tufted with cotton lint, and asked George to transform them into a coffee table for her brother. After George pulled handmade nails and spikes, planed and joined the planks, the rich red veins of the wood were exposed as clearly as the day when the trees were cut and milled at the site of construction.

George is teaching himself woodworking and intends to become a craftsman, evidenced by the growing collection of woodworking tools and machinery in our garage.

He’s made several small pieces for his students in the Family Learning GED program. These include stands for the family fish tank, a coffee table for a family room, and several small work tables sized for a child and parent to play together. His adult students dropped out of high school to marry early, have children early, and go to work early – like many of the generations who preceded them in the mill-based economy that once sustained the South.

They now hope to earn their GEDs so they can find better jobs or continue their educations, but, more than anything else, they hope to break the cycle of school failure before their own children become the newest family members to be entrapped. They bring their infants and preschool children to an early childhood classroom next door to his. Each day the parents, children, and teaching staff meet for lunch and for parent/child activities which help prepare the children and their parents to meet the challenges of the long years of schooling that lie ahead.

George’s tools at work include math textbooks and a guitar, test prep problems and play dough, resources on opening family businesses and picture books. Like teachers everywhere today, he must measure progress by student practice test scores. But he also notes with delight the child who took his first steps or spoke his first words during the day.

Recently one of his families took their two year old son to see Santa. He asked for “Georges” for Christmas.

Unanticipated

I find myself in a totally unanticipated position – I am retiring after twenty-eight years of teaching kindergarten. Despite measuring the years by the number of Halloweens and Valentines Days that remained in my active career, I never actually expected the count to get down to zero. I guess I thought it would be more like continually dividing a pizza into slices; no matter how minute the portion, there would always be some left to divide again.

I am not actually going to stop working. I won’t stay at home to read or garden or volunteer or travel. In June I will retire from the public school system where I’ve worked for most of my life. Next fall I will teach at one of the colleges in our area. During the last two years as a specialist working directly with teachers, I often thought that I would like to end my career back in the classroom. I just never anticipated that it would be with kids who can tie their own shoes, cut their own meat, and drive their own cars.

It took me over a month to make up my mind to actually do it. I don’t think it was an age issue. It’s more like it’s a RETIREMENT issue. I mean, I remember my first week of teaching and how happy I was when we were snowed in for the entire second week of my career - and again for the entire fourth week. I remember the kid (what was his name?) who brought a snake to school in his pocket and pulled it out after lunch for show and tell during that first spring. Not many people get off to a start like that.

I was stunned to find that after thirty years of a wonderful marriage, raising two great children, and a career as a really strong teacher, I was completely unprepared to make a decision that was so obviously to my advantage. My gross pay will go way up. My workload will go way down. I thought I turned the job down once, but apparently I was negotiating. Who knew you could do such a thing? I certainly did not and I bet not many of my public school colleagues know it either.

This time in my life is actually a lot like cresting the first climb of a new roller coaster. I chose to go for it. I can see some of the loops, turns, and drops ahead. I can appreciate the view. A lot of my friends and family are getting ready to go for the same ride. I have some idea of what lies ahead. I just hope it won’t be over about the time I quit screaming and open my eyes.

Two Women

Today in the lobby of the theater, I eavesdropped on two men with all the answers to the problems of public education.  For twenty minutes they went on about the way America’s children were actually being “retarded” by their teachers.  They’ve seen the research to prove that public school teachers not only don’t know how to teach, they don’t know the subjects they are supposed to teach.  I watched while I listened.  They never once looked at their own children, who began to amuse themselves as children do when  nothing else presents itself – by arguing, pushing, fighting for fun.  One of their wives followed the group of kids from water fountain to stairs to theater doors while these two men single- handedly analyzed the failures they could so clearly see.  The mother did her best to put an end to the children’s fighting, but she was always one step behind them, always reacting to situations that were already a reality while the two men were unwilling, perhaps unable, to acknowledge any of it.  I debated whether to approach the men and defend what I believe to be a more accurate picture of public education.  But, truthfully, I was more curious to know what that mother had to say, how she sees the problems that affect children and discipline and management and organization and delivery.  I wonder if she has the time to contemplate those challenges in the daily struggle to do what she can in the face of realities which other people either don’t want to see or are truly unable to see. I suppose that is the more accurate picture of the problems facing public education today.  Without some direct experience in meeting the realities which our children face, we cannot comprehend the totality and complexities of the problems.  We cannot isolate one problem as “the problem.”  We cannot rely solely on our understanding of our own school careers or those of our own children to provide either enough experience or the diversity of experience required to comprehend the ranges of abilities, needs, and possibilities schools must now meet.  And we can’t claim to have any possible answers at all without becoming involved it their application.  We can’t stand aside and speak with authority about the weight of the facts while someone else shoulders the burden.  We need to develop multiple solutions and be willing to risk using them, to test them, to evaluate their possibilities, and to assimilate whatever we’ve learned into building a dynamic system of education.  We all need to be involved, as teachers, as parents, as community members, and as Americans, but, most of all, as active learners ourselves who are willing to risk turning needs into challenges and realities into opportunities.  

To Carmen

I remember the only black child in the class on the first day we painted. The other children tried lots of colors on the paper and made all kinds of shapes and designs. Alexander went to the easel last, interested only in white paint. He held it on the brush and looked at it and never looked at the paper. He began to paint his hands, first the palms carefully, then fingers, and finally turned his hands over to coat the backs with thick while paint. I suddenly realized that he was not using the paint “correctly”, even though I had been as absorbed in what he was doing as he had been. I said, “Alexander! What are you supposed to be doing with that paint?”
The teaching assistant rushed past me to interrupt and say, “Look, Alexander, look at the way it covers your fingers and fingernails.” She talked with him, and with me, and together we helped him paint his arms up to his elbows, almost up to his shirtsleeves. I can see the concentration on his face as he pressed his white handprints on a sheet of paper. And I can feel his excitement as he washed the white paint off with lots of soap and rushing water, free again to choose the person he could be.
I left that day strengthened and reassured in my new role, a new educator in a child’s world, free again to be the teacher I choose to be.

Timothy

In the moment that I watched him,
I saw him change –
A child of a limited reality
Became a child of possibility.

The discovery was his own.

My attempts to “teach” him had little to do with it,
Except to encourage him to try again.

The moment was right for him –
He was ready
And interested
And the task fit his need.

The power of a single moment –

The power to reshape our thinking –
To organize our experience
Into the beliefs and values and knowledge
Which guide us for the rest of our lives.

Thousands of moments a day…

We live and grow
And learn
And have little time to appreciate
The impact of a single moment.