Random Education

 One of the things I appreciate most about Experiential Education is its randomness.  We were kayaking this morning, some of the kids of Station Maine and I.  We hadn’t intended to talk about philosophy or psychology.  It just came up in the course of normal conversation about what we’re reading.  I hadn’t intended to explain how important was the rock weed to the ecology of the planet.  It just came up.  The purpose of last week’s sail wasn’t to learn the difference between a sloop and a schooner and a ketch, but the captain taught us and now the kids can’t forget.  Random things that you learn in random settings often stick like that, as opposed to concentrated facts written up in a text book or a history lesson.  You might learn enough to vomit it back on a test paper, but somehow the sticking value is gone in a classroom.

I am not opposed to school.  I am not opposed to classrooms.  But, as long as we’ve got this Coronavirus to deal with, can’t we take advantage of going outside?  Can’t we walk in the woods or in the industrial complex, or even around the block?  Can we not ask our students to open their eyes and make one intelligent observation or ask one intelligent question.  Discussions of that nature, however far fetched, stay with the participants.  The learning becomes more authentic somehow.  Learning becomes a habit that lasts a lifetime.

 Station Maine went rowing this week.  I'm proud of us for that.  In the midst of a global pandemic it is very, very difficult for youth organizations to go forward.  When I ask myself the difference between Station Maine and all the other youth programs who are unable to function I come back to the nature of the program and the honor code that surrounds it.  We are a water born, outdoor program.  We have the advantage of fresh air, open ocean, and fresh ocean breezes.  But there's more.  I trust my crew of young people.  The mandate is to wear masks, on and off the water.  Nobody likes the masks, but nobody would consider disobeying that order.  We have Watch Captains in place who will enforce it in my absence, not because they want brownie points, but because it is right.  Like wearing life jackets.  Like showing lights half an hour before sunset.

Being on an open boat carries with it risk.  Real, genuine, physical risk.  This is part of its appeal.  But in order to embrace risk our rowers must embrace discipline.  Command must be obeyed if the boat is to function.  This discipline flows easily into masks.  They are just another piece of the program that keeps us safe.  Leadership and followership flow hand in hand.  We grow as a crew, as friends, and as a community.

So, forgive me if I'm proud, but Station Maine is carrying on as safely as our program can be made.  We have attracted a crew of young people who embrace discipline as part of life.  I have no doubt that, because of this, their lives will be extraordinary.

A Budding Engineer

I found an interesting link while scrolling through Facebook a while back.  This young boy has used the time that the Corona virus has given so many of us and created something complex and wonderful.  This is clearly a budding engineer who has been given the opportunity to stretch his wings and fly.  He has educated himself in that magical way that young people have.  We need to encourage this sort of freedom in education.

 https://www.facebook.com/lucasritting/videos/10157145563096957/UzpfSTYzNDYyMzMzNzoxMDE1ODkzNDk0NjU5MzMzOA/

A Red Stripe

Norumbega has a red stripe on her waterline.  This is new.  It doesn’t show up very well against the black bottom paint, but it has a story to tell that makes us all proud.

It started on an island off the coast of Maine, Hermit Island, where we were conducting our annual Watch Captain training.  The kids were on a hike up the Red Trail.  Without me.  I feel no desire to baby-sit teenagers who are perfectly capable of hiking the coast of Maine without adult supervision.  But there was work to be done as well.  The trailer needed to be painted.  We always bring a job of work to Watch Captain training because work is so much a part of being a sailor and a leader.  

So, we were agreed.  Take the lunches.  Hike, explore the island, swim, play, stay together, Nick is in charge, and be back at three to work.  Simple, agreed upon rules, standard operating procedure.  I personally held down the fort at the camp because the “training” part of that day was done and I was reading a very good book.

Comes along 3:00.  No kids arrive.  The general consequence for being late is one push-up per minute of tardiness.  They’ll show.  Three fifteen.  Three thirty.  Four o’clock.  Five o’clock.  Nothing.

I suppose I might have been worried, but I wasn’t.  Yes, there are tides, there are cliffs, accidents can happen, but these kids are also trained and they knew where to find me and where to find help beyond me.  Somebody stay with the injured party and somebody goes for help.  Standard operating procedure.  They knew that and I put a lot of faith in that knowledge, which comes down to common sense in hiking.  I wasn’t worried, but I was angry.

So, comes along six o’clock then the crew arrives, four teenagers carrying large, huge, bundles of silver driftwood for tonight’s fire.  I met them on the road.

I was angry and I should have been, but I wasn’t frightened or panicked.  There was no reason to raise my voice.  Yet, clearly, we needed to talk.

“Put it down”  I said to each of them as they struggled with their bundles.  “Meet me in the tent, now.”  Each looked at me with a bell curved mix of fear, embarrassment, and confusion.  What was about to happen?  There was no conversation when I entered the tent, a meeting place I chose for its lack of early evening mosquitoes.  Just silence.  Waiting.

I sat, I made myself comfortable, and I waited in silence.  Tension built.  “What happened?” I finally asked.

Nick spoke first and immediately.  “It wasn’t their fault.  It was mine.  Don’t blame the crew.  I just lost track of time.”

High marks for Nick.  He’s owning his mistake and protecting his crew.  And there’s more to it than this.

“We found this great tangle of driftwood and rope and net.  We wanted a good fire for tonight and we lost track of time untangling everything.”

Here I read between the lines.  Twenty minutes late is losing track of time.  Life happens and everybody is late from time to time.  Three hours late reads more like ‘we’ve found a project we want to do more than paint the trailer so we’ll just stay here and maybe paint later and this is way more fun than painting.’  I am angry, but I’m also thrilled.  These teenagers, products of the ‘computer, iPhone, Smartphone, Pokémon, never get off the couch generation’ found a project in the physical world that so engaged them that they stayed at it for hours.  Hours of physical and mental work on a wooded beach on the coast of Maine.  Still, there’s the matter of giving your word.

I was proud of Nick for owning his leadership, but he wasn’t alone.  I asked of each kid in that tent “did you at any time remind Nick that you were expected back at three?”  Each of them, though realizing they were late, chose to remain silent on that beach, engaged as they were in having fun.  “You said nothing.  Are you really ready to let Nick take the fall for this?”  Silence.  Looks of shame.

“The problem here isn’t painting the trailer.  The problem is honor.  You gave your word, each of you, that you would be back at three.  Don’t give me the lost track of time excuse.  You chose to do something else.  And you chose to not send a runner back to tell me what was going on and maybe re-write the agreement.  You thought it was easier to ask forgiveness instead of permission, and in doing so you compromised your honor  because each of you gave your word that you’d be back.

“So, you want to see me mad?”  I said quietly.  “You’ve succeeded.  Integrity above all things.  Where was the integrity in this decision?”

Silence.

“I’m not going to tell you what happens now.  I’m angry and decisions made in anger are rarely good ones.  Take the paint and brushes and go paint the trailer as you promised.  Dinner is when you get back.  When you come back you need to tell me how you are going to make this right.  Remember, this is not about punishment, this is about honor.”

They left for the trailer with paint and rags and brushes.  I stayed behind and cooked red beans and rice.  When I saw the kids again they had a plan.

“We took three hours from you”, Nick began.  “We’d like to get together next week after camp and give back those three hours painting Norumbega.  Would that be fair?”

Times like this don’t come often.  Here I was looking at the next year’s leadership of Station Maine.  They were completely embracing their mistake.  They were owning responsibility for it.  They were standing ready to make restitution for that mistake.  Times like these make me want to cry tears of pride and gratitude and joy and hope for this generation.  They have embraced honor.

With both the white topsides and black bottom of Norumbega being painted at once a masking tape strip of unpainted hull remained.  We decided to paint it red just because it would look cool.  It sort of does.  Mostly, though, I catch myself staring at it with unbridled pride.  Becoming a Watch Captain is important to these kids.  Even more important is the integrity they have displayed in earning that status.  They have chosen honor.  

This is the generation to whom we will turn over this planet.  I am not afraid.

Grades

 I came across this poem, very well performed, by a young girl who feels trapped in our current system.  I hope it speaks to you as it did to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvjSEcYbx5g&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR1szGrlxuKSobba-XY41Kj88zf2W9f4TsjM0Z1OLMgk5E-UI9whsbekJfE

Cooking

 Yesterday I was cooking in our local soup kitchen, which is a privilege I enjoy once a week.  We had thawed out beef, and I was trying to mix things up a little bit by serving it Oriental style with rice and vegetables.  We never, of course, have all the ingredients we want or need, but therein lies the challenge.  Garlic powder replaced fresh garlic, sugar replaced honey, and whole sesame seeds replaced sesame oil.  Make do, find a way, and serve 50 hungry patrons.

My supervisor watched me for a moment whipping up an improvised Husain sauce and asked “Where did you learn to do that?”  I had to think.  I guess I learned something of Chinese cooking from a string of Chinese roommates in college.  They never taught me, but I paid attention when they were in the kitchen.  I learned to improvise through the simple act of cooking for myself and my friends and realizing that we were out of something.  It sort of helped that perfection was never a viable goal in cooking.

I am no Gordon Ramsay, nor do I aspire to be.  My point is that I have invested mo formal training in this skill of cooking, yet somehow I manage to turn out many meals of perfectly acceptable quality.  I draw on the simple experience of having paid attention in life and of accepting my mistakes, learning from them, and moving on.  My entire training in cooking has been experiential.  Watch what’s going on around me, pay attention, and try.  It has made my life very rich.

Questions

An interesting thing happens when an adult does things with kids.  They ask questions.  Sometimes the questions have to do with what we’re actually doing at the time.  But sometimes, because we’re human, the conversation builds to deeper questions.  Why are Great White Sharks coming north?  Why are there only two candidates for President?  Who are you voting for?  Why?  What makes the earth turn?  Why is lead heavier than aluminum?  What makes the clouds do that?

I rejoice at these questions.  What’s important is that they asked the question and that they are genuinely listening, curious of the answer.  These are teachable moments.  I’m sure, for instance, that somewhere, sometime, in some science class in school I was taught the difference between brass and bronze.  Still, it was not until the subject came up in conversation years later  was I able to actually learn.  In my science class I was most likely day dreaming while my teacher or text book spewed important factoids at me.  In conversation this all suddenly became very interesting and relevant.

Clearly not every adult can answer every question posed by kids.  That’s not the important part.  The marvels of Google allow us to look up the answer.  If you remember to look it up.  The moment might be lost for that particular factoid, but interest is renewed where genuine curiosity is shared.  And it will be remembered.  Learning is a natural part of life.  If we blow on those little embers of curiosity they will fan out and grow into a really interesting human being who, because you valued these random questions, will not be afraid to keep learning.

Hope

 It is breaking my heart to write this quarter’s newsletter.  I’m scrolling through old photos and old newsletters remembering the vitality that filled and surrounded Station Maine only a year ago.  I know that I am in the company of thousands of teachers and coaches and youth program staff who all love our jobs, love our kids, and want it all back.

But looking into the young faces in these photographs I cannot allow myself to be discouraged.  We owe this next generation the tools and the education they will need to face the task ahead, the task of rebuilding this planet.  We ( I ) do not have the right to rest on the laurels of years of work already accomplished.  Now, amidst a virus, climate change, and a certain political unrest, the young need to look up to a calm, if slightly lined and wrinkled, face and see the resolve to keep going forward.  They deserve to live out loud, to be safe, to learn, and to prepare to take their place in their community.

I know that I am not alone when I dig deep into my imagination and draw on my waning reserves of strength and courage to provide that education.  We are all struggling.  And because what is at stake is, literally, the future, I believe we will all find a way to educate this next generation, to give them light, to give them hope.  I believe this because to sacrifice that future is too high a price to pay for our lack of imagination.

So, I am going back to write my newsletter with new courage, buoyed up with the certain knowledge that in every town and village in the world there are teachers and coaches and youth program directors facing and solving these same problems.  Failure is not an option, and so we will succeed.

Deschooling Society

My friend Bill Ebert posted this on Facebook a while back.  I find it very much on-point for today.

"In 1971, the social critic Ivan Illich published “Deschooling Society,” a critique of institutional education. He argued that the oppressive structure of the school system must be abandoned because it contributes to a type of learned helplessness. We depend on institutions so completely that many of us can’t perform basic human tasks — delivering babies, educating children, cooking our own food. The virus has exposed this helplessness, what Mr. Illich would call a form of poverty.

Deschooling’s core principles — that education should be self-directed rather than compulsory, that human growth and curiosity cannot be quantified and that children learn best in natural environments and mixed-age groups — have gained some recognition in recent years. But the idea of truly communitarian, noncompulsory, family-centered approaches to education were largely limited to the radical fringe of pedagogy. A lot has changed in six months."

Finding your inner Sherlock

It is entirely possible to wander blindly through life and see or learn almost nothing of true value.  I have taken whole classes through walks and woods teaming with learning opportunities and had them tell me they had learned nothing.  So, we to learn to evoke our inner Sherlock.

Look at something.  Anything that strikes your fancy.  The seaweed washed up around the hauled up tugboat.  Wait, that’s not the same seaweed I mulched my garden with in June.  It’s sea grass.  The sea bottom here must be different than the south end of the harbor.  Mental note to come back with buckets, and to remember it for next year’s garden.

Sand, so much fine sand around the boat.  They must have sand blasted.  Sand is good for garden soil, but not mixed with the chemicals of boat paint.  The hull can’t be wood if they sand blasted.  No, it’s steel.  Not in great shape.  It can’t belong to the yard whose name it carries.  They maintain their boats better than that.  I’ll bet they sold it to the Vietnamese men who were working on it.

I can hear my roommate coming home from work.  He didn’t have a good day.  His posture is melting and he can barely pick up his feet.

There are no bird calls on the air.  All I hear is the buzzing of grasshoppers.  They have entirely different mating cycles.  But the air is filled with fledgling seagulls and osprey.  Most of them won’t live through the winter.  It truly is the survival of the fittest on the coast.  OK, sometimes it’s survival of the luckiest.  Bad storms or mild winters tip the scales.

Sometimes my inner Sherlock tweaks me to research something I have seen.  Sometimes it encourages me to act.  Mostly, though, I go home and carry on with my day.  I don’t want to be so hyper-vigilant all the time.  My mind needs time to rest and process.  But I learned a few interesting things today that will serve me.  All I needed to do was observe and think.

Ospreys

 I walked through North End Shipyard this morning.  I’ve decided to walk every morning and observe.  I’ve decided to spend my summer learning new things as much from experience and observation as I can manage.  Which, admittedly, isn’t much different from my life as it’s always been, but this time I want to share.

I found an osprey’s nest.  It was built on a high platform, obviously man made, which dominated the surrounding area.  So why, in the middle of North End Shipyard, am I seeing a deliberate action to attract ospreys to roost?  Well, as I thought about it, I began to see it differently.  See those tall masts in the background?  There is no way to avoid ospreys.  They have been in Rockland Harbor long before any of us.  They are instinct driven to build their nests on high spots.  The clever boatyard managers decided to reframe the problem from “How can we get the ospreys out of our rigging?” to “What can we do to encourage ospreys to nest elsewhere?”  They worked with, not against nature and built the osprey pole.  They watched the ospreys.  They learned.  Just by paying attention to what was around them.

                                       

Come to Oars

 If you are interested in experiential education in all its forms may we recommend to you Come to Oars by Muriel Curtis.  Filled with ideas, dreams, and the reality of starting a youth program on the coast of Maine, Come to Oars will inspire you to see the potential in any student and in yourself.  It will make you believe that anything is possible.  Then it will show you how it's done.  Available through Amazon.

You do NOT have to go to college

 

The Art of Living

I sat with a young friend today.  He had almost lost the opportunity of a job, a good job, a job that he really wanted, because he had filled out the application badly.  Because life in a small town is often filled with second chances I was given the chance to help him.  I learned, in our brief conversation, that it was not just about carelessness and messy handwriting.  He didn’t know how to fill out the application.  He didn’t know the importance of references, three references.  He didn’t know that he was meant to get permission from references before using their name and giving out their phone number.  He told me he’d never been taught to fill out a job application.  High school taught him none of the basic life skills that would make it possible to live comfortably in the 21st century.

My question is, why not?  Why is it possible to graduate high school and college in this country and still not know the basics of living?  How to balance a checkbook.  How to shop and cook.  How to make a budget and stick to it.  How to write a resume.  How to change a tire.  What is compound interest and how does it work?

So, while we are re-thinking education for the 21st century, while we are adding experiential education to the very important lessons of arithmetic and reading, can we not take some time out to teach our children the basics of living in this increasingly complicated society that we have created?  Can we not stack the cards so that a good solid kid can get a proper job and be able to hold his head up as a contributing member of that society?  I think this next generation deserves no less.

Outdoor Classes

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/a-california-collective-makes-the-case-for-outdoor-schooling?fbclid=IwAR0m0w5nMkO-F5Ye_jtSdI4DJTHp26jDos_cK3Ps1gPSOlr47cIWyvkTAIc

I wandered on this terribly interesting news story today.  Outdoor organizations are coming together to help schools utilize their outdoor space.  This clearly expands the physical plant of the classroom making social distancing possible, making air flow possible, and in general making a safer environment for our kids.  But, beyond that, taking classes outside expands the scope of education.  Even if a young child’s mind wanders, and of course it will, it can jump to yet another aspect of learning such as the way grass sends up seeds or how that bird just interacted to that squirrel.  Weather is manageable.  Though this is obviously not a perfect solution I strongly recommend listening to this article.

Down time

I saw a troubling article in the Boston Globe this morning on the subject of Covid19.  The author noted, not unfairly, “this isn’t an emergency anymore - it’s the long term reality”.  A deadly virus has infected our population, and it’s going to be with us for a very long time.  So, facing that depressing fact squarely, can we not take a solid look at education and make a plan that centers not on the convenience of the system but on the needs of the child?

Our children may be finding themselves at home, with or without parents, with the luxury of massive amounts of time on their hands.  Remember the child development articles decrying how kids had too much of their time regulated?  Remember how they need to be bored to force their brains to create learning opportunities and foster their imaginations?  Once the “core academics” of today’s lesson, at school or at home, are learned and dealt with can the child not be encouraged to study and explore their own interests?  Can they not be left alone and “unentertained” long enough to be able to seek out those interests within themselves?

Most of us grab on to an interest by accident.  I developed a very active interest in birds as a child through a chance encounter with a cereal box.  My skill in training animals came through long, solo afternoon walks through our neighborhood meeting and greeting my neighbor’s pets.  My love of music and storytelling through rainy days in the Kelp Shed, the local community hall on the island.  My love of plants through taking seeds apart and looking, just looking, at the not quite formed seedling within.  None of these interests which have informed and enriched my life were taught to me at school.  They all sprung from chance encounters and were nurtured by free time.

Academics are important.  None of the self-directed research that has guide my life would have been possible had not patient teachers taught me to read.  We certainly cannot raise worthy citizens if they don’t know the history of this country and the world.  Nor can critical thinking be taught in a vacuum.  But as long as this virus haunts us, as long as schooling and public assemblies of any kind are riddled with an unease that forbids consistency, let us at least give our children, and ourselves, the freedom to be bored, and with it the play time, the books, the computer, the encouragement, the whatever it takes to fill that boredom with self-directed learning.  

Lobsters

I was young, maybe seven years old, when we visited the Lobster Pound.  It wasn’t a big deal.  Just a walk meant as recreation rather than study,  Interesting, isn’t it, that the more new things one is exposed to the more learning happens, whether you mean for it to or not.

There was a lobster boat unloading the morning’s catch.  The smell of the salt bait, the sea, the fog was imposing.  They used wooden crates back then, and an ancient lead weight scale that was probably older than my grandmother.  The lobsterman loaded a full crate onto the scale.  The pound manager wrote down the weight with a stubby pencil on a pocket sized pad.  They dumped the lobsters out of the crate, weighed the crate separately, and wrote those figures down.  

Why, my little seven year old mind pondered, did they need to weigh an empty crate?  I watched for a while, quiet, taking in everything.  The answer came to me in a flash.

Subtraction.

These actual grown-ups were using subtraction.  Arithmetic up until that moment was a school thing.  We added and subtracted figures on our work sheets, colored in between the figures if we happened to be done before the allotted time, turned in our sheets and were rewarded in due time with a gold star at the top of the page.  But this was different.  These big working men with their stubby pencil were doing subtraction for real.  And if they got it right then the proper amount of money was exchanged and the lobster trade would carry on.

I gained a proper respect for arithmetic on that day.  It wasn’t a grand flash or life changing experience.  It was just another piece in the puzzle of life, put in place by a simple experience.

Animals

The guidance counselor/psychologist type person at a school I worked at told me once that animals don’t have emotions the same way we do.  She said that we are simply projecting our emotions onto them.  She was an educated woman, good at her job, and sincere in this new psychological “truth” she was describing to me.  I was polite.  It’s better not to contradict people.  But I have worked with animals all my life and I knew she was dead wrong.

Maybe this is why experiential education is so important.  She had never seen the relief of the cows after milking or watched them kick up their heels when they escaped to munch on the apple tree in the front yard.  She had never returned to a dog bouncing with limitless joy at her return.  Nor had she ever been snubbed by a dog because you broke one of the “rules.  

Emotion and understanding, even sentience in general, are not things you can measure even in humans.  You need to develop an understanding within yourself that you simply can’t find in a book.  You’ve got to spend time in the field, just watching, observing, and learning.  Book study is important because it can give you a short cut to the learning and experience of those who have gone before you.  But nothing can replace personal experience.

Reopening Schools

The author makes a series of very good points about how school, as much as we want it to, cannot be the same school we left behind.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2020/07/28/reopening-schools-covid-19-wrong-conversation-coronavius-column/5520523002/?fbclid=IwAR0xa3zWp5uevkKezJS5YW7yTGxE7nOohO6ecFvSm8sTFurveu6f189QeDw

Bazooka Joe

When I was a kid I was a big fan of Bazooka Joe.  Bubble gum was a great treat in summers on the island.  Besides the obvious sugar rush and the entertainment value of countless pink bubbles big enough to tangle in my hair, there were the comic strips curled inside the wrapper.  They came with a comic, a “fun fact” and a fortune or bit of philosophy.  Not a bad return on a few pennies.

One fortune I remember that stuck with me for years was “Learn something every day.  It will amount to much in a year.” At the age of ten I wasn’t much of a philosopher, but I remember seeing the wisdom even then in that particular idea.  I began that summer to puzzle every night in bed what I had learned that day.

That summer I learned easily many things that I took delight in remembering.  Maria, my friend who spoke only French, taught me the French word for beach was la plage and that’s where she would meet me.  When I examined the sand at that beach I found that it was made predominately of quartz with tiny garnets mixed in.  Climbing the anchor in bare feet was made easier if you wiped your feet on the grass and spit on the soles first.  I read interesting books just because it was a rainy day and they happened to be there.  I learned that people from different parts of the country talk with different accents.  Blueberries grew in the places where the soil was rocky.  If you sit quietly with a peanut butter sandwich the red squirrel will come to you and eat it right out of your hand.  Pine pitch makes a poor glue for a broken balsa wood plane but it’s still better than nothing.  And seagulls are so bold that they will take not only the fish guts you throw to them but the cleaned fish as well if you don’t protect it.  I learned songs and games.  I learned skills.  These were odd facts, but exactly as Bazooka Joe predicted, they added up to a wealth of knowledge of life and the physical world.  A knowledge base from which I still draw. 

After a summer of being so invested in my education I looked forward to school with less loathing than in previous years.  I would learn.  Someone would teach me something every day and it would amount to a lot because that was the whole point of being there.  But, as much as I tried to remember to learn, as much as I wanted to make it work this year, I distinctly remember laying in bed trying to remember what I had learned that day and drawing a blank.  I knew I had learned.  I must have learned.  I had been to school that day, hadn’t I?  Yet I could draw to mind nothing of real worth that I felt I could add to my list of knowledge.

I had a proper American education.  I learned to read, I learned some modicum of math and history and geography.  But the things I really learned, the things that stuck with me, were the things I learned either on my own or with the help of someone who I had chosen to teach me.  My friends who would teach me French words, the books that taught me the names of birds and trees, the old man who played chess with me taught me at least as much in my short summer holidays as I learned cramped in a classroom taking tests through the dreary winter.

I do not damn schools or teachers or our education system.  I support them as one of the many tools important for education.  But it is as important for children to have time to learn on their own.  Children need to feel the sand in their fingers or see the clouds.  They need to be alone and bored so that they will fill in that boredom with a different kind of learning.  They need to play with other children without the constant supervision of an adult so they will learn the social skills that will guide them through life.  Children need the tools of learning, time, space, occasional guidance, and the use of a few good books or maybe, God forbid, internet access.  Children need friends.  

I don’t want to re-run Lord of the Flies here.  Of course children need guidance.  They might need to be reminded occasionally that there is a big world out there and some day they will need to find their place in it.  Children need to be exposed to hundreds of experiences from which they can discover their interests.  Then they need to be trusted to learn in their own way at their own pace of the things that interest them the most.  

Maybe, occasionally, they need a few pennies to see what they can learn from Bazooka Joe.

   

Kayaking

Station Maine went kayaking yesterday.  Nothing involving major planning.  We just got into our respective kayaks and paddled Rockland’s South End.  It was a way to be social while maintaining social distance.  it wasn’t an eventful trip, but learning piled on top of learning.

We started heading south.  The wind was blowing from the south and we figured it would be easier to come downwind at he end of the trip when we’re tired.  We made it to Seal Ledge and found out that’s where the ducks go to rest at low tide.  Dozens of them.  We didn’t dare get too close because the osprey nest was full of chicks and a very protective mother who did not look kindly on us.  We watched the sky turn from brilliant blue to a thousand shades of white, blue, and grey.  Fluffy white against angry straight purple making all of us wish we could paint.  But could any painting be as beautiful as what we were experiencing.  Thunder bumpers were rolling in.  We saw the rain pouring in straight lines from the clouds to the far islands.  

We watched the wind change.  The directly due south wind clocked around within minutes to west.  We felt more than heard the rumble in the sky that signaled us to head for home.  We hit the shore and stowed the kayaks before the rain hit.  We were very pleased with ourselves.

There was more learning here than I am able to describe.  I suppose some book or web site could explain to us the territorial habits of nesting osprey or the pressure patterns that formed a thunder sky and changed the wind.  But this was more than knowing.  We learned from primary sources in a way that we will never forget.  We learned because we lived it.

Window Shades

I really looked forward to all those little home handyman chores that come with owning a house.  They are, each of them life, affirming in their own way.  But I find as I do the simple tasks that homeowners have enjoyed, or not, for years, that there are a few things missing.

For one thing, self-respect.  In my antiquity I’m finding that simple things like getting on top of the counter involve more than just a hop.  A stepladder.  Seriously, I used a stepladder to get on my counter.  I would have thought myself clever, as I had all the tools and fastenings lined up and within reach.  Except now that I’m up here I can’t help but notice how greasy the top of the microwave is.  Now that I know I can’t simply work around all that grease as if it wasn’t there.  So, OK, climb down, soapy water, clean and beautiful.

Next I need to mark and place the brackets.  The very thorough directions in two languages fail to tell me why two screws are bigger than the other two.  The blistering heat which actually inspired me to hang these sun shading wonders in the first place requires that at least one window be left open.  I was lucky, so very lucky, that the first time I dropped the screw, when it bounced on the counter, that it stopped itself a mere inch from jumping outside to be forever lost in the pucker brush two stories down.  The directions with the list of necessary tools might have included a pair of needle nose pliers to hold the screw in this tiny corner at this ridiculous angle.  Are all home handymen ambidextrous?  I happen to be, to my great good fortune.  But I am not a contortionist, and squeezing into the right place to position these brackets is not doing my aging back any favors.

What every home worker needs is a young apprentice.  No more than three feet tall.  Long arms with two elbows each, reedy fingers at least eight inches long, with the middle finger the same length as the first and ring finger.  Cheerful of demeanor, willing to run and fetch and hold.  Tireless in the face of getting the measurements right and the brackets lined up.  Observant of mistakes, tactful at drawing attention to them.  Oh, if only.

As you have certainly noticed by now, I am kind of new to all of this.  Yet with all the above hyperbole and nonsense running through my head I managed to mount two shades in my kitchen.  They’re probably not perfect, but they will block the eastern sun.  They seem to make the kitchen cooler, because everything seemed cooler when I climbed off that counter with the sweat dripping in rivers down my forehead.  Still, for all their lack of perfection, these shades are mine.  I did this.  This is experiential education, a new skill learned by doing.  It feels really, really good.

A Small Oops

I delivered a gig and trailer to another program yesterday.  This isn't a huge deal.  The bigger deal was the unloading.  The lot where we put her was sand.  Because I should have focused more on the blocking under her the trailer and gig fell off her supports.  This is not a tragedy, merely an inconvenience.  The tragedy, in my eyes, was that there were no kids there to see.  They would have seen the blocking shift and the rig fall.  Somewhere in their minds they would have imprinted to always check the supporting ground before you unload.  They would have sensed no anger or cursing.  They would have seen myself and another program director accessing the situation, sharing ideas, laughing, supporting one another, resigned to the amount of work involved, resolved to simply enjoy the puzzle presented us in the physical world.

I often think how much learning is to be had in everyday experiences in the physical world.  I often think how selfish it might be to haul and launch and trailer these boats alone.  OK, it was certainly not worth taking a kid's entire Sunday just to see an accident that we certainly wouldn't have planned.  But how rare is it these days that youth get to see adults working together.  How rare is it that they get to see adults make collective mistakes.  How rare is it that kids get to see adults resolve these mistakes with joy and humor.  Don't get me wrong.  Adults work together and make mistakes together all the time.  But where are the kids who might profit from it?

So I wish, and will continue to wish, for opportunities for kids of any age to work with competent adults.  I wish for laws to be revised so that those younger than sixteen can participate in real work experiences.  I wish for less focus on money and more on learning.  I wish for expended apprenticeship programs where all of the above becomes a natural part of growing up.  I wish and I dream and I write that some day we will realize how much education can and must take place outside of the classroom.

Practice Art

In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write a famous author and ask for advice. Kurt Vonnegut was the only one to respond - and his response is magnificent: “Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:

I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.

What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.

Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?

Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash recepticals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

God bless you all!

Kurt Vonnegut

The Bait Shack

Stephen Betts of the VillageSoup recently published a photo of the last remaining bait shack in Rockland.  It was built by Sulo Grundros many years ago.  This tumbledown old shack was the first office of Station Maine.  It had a door then, and windows.  The char was from a fire that destroyed the old Rockland Boat, where many beautiful boats were built back in the day.

There was no heat in this little shack, and no insulation to keep the heat in once we brought in the wood stove.  We wore our coats and gloves when we stuffed envelopes for mailings.  But it came with dock space for our gig.  It came with a great deal of encouragement from our community and from the early risers at Journey’s End offices who watched us row out at sunrise.

I guess I’m showing this by way of illustration.  Station Maine had very little to start with.  A borrowed boat, a bait shack, a handful of very, very enthusiastic adolescents.  From these humble beginnings we built the program that not only built us, but built generations of kids who followed.  We were told it couldn’t be done.  No seed money.  Insufficient population.  Insufficient business training.  We persevered because we knew we had to if we wanted to build the vibrant program that we ultimately did build.  We are stronger, each of us who have pulled an oar with Station Maine.  But I think there is an added level of pride for those of us who began a program in this shack and built something worthy.

Find your dream.  Whatever it is, embrace it.  Talk about it.  Plan the work and work the plan.  Then find your bait shack.  However inadequate, it will give you a wonderful sense of moving forward towards changing the world. 

                                            

The Net

I have the great good fortune to live near a boatyard.  Several of them actually.  There is never a shortage of interesting things to see.  There is never a shortage of questions to ask.  I rarely take the time out of a man’s work day to interrupt him with questions.  The internet is really helpful in helping me both formulate questions and discover answers.

So, let’s take a look at the great black blob in the photo below.  It is a net.  A very, very big net.  Depending on the age and experience of the learner in question I can ask a hundred questions that are of genuine interest.  What is it made of?  How does it work?  How is it rigged?  How many fish can it catch?  What sort of fish?  What are the fish used for?

If the learner is not actually interested in any of these questions then maybe they have questions of their own that want to be answered.  If they are just not interested in the net, move on.  Not everybody is interested in everything.  But when you get outside and learn to look with eyes of wonder there is almost always something worth asking questions about.

CDC Guidelines

This morning I stumbled upon the Maine Center for Disease Control guidelines for opening schools.   

 https://www.maine.gov/doe/covid-19/reintegrate?fbclid=IwAR1WWU8U9nIFsbU7He3JG63fkBMG50eYU5qyYyU1AWUjeKMduRUqRbaFNgY

I’m saddened, as we all are, to see such strict and dehumanizing guidelines thrust upon us.  Yet I see the need.  We are at war, the enemy is this virus, and until we can create the weapon that will destroy it we must protect our children from it.  This is our new reality.  This is our new normal.

I did find, however, one shining beacon of hope.  Part III, Section A, Paragraph 3.  

Encourage visionary risk takers to create nontraditional models and plans.  This is a time for innovation and big thinking.

The old model of public education may have served well 150 years ago when it was created.  But the world has changed.  We have blithely accepted this model because it was already in place, warm and comfortable like an old shoe.  Maybe we haven’t noticed that the sole is so worn that we are being crippled by that shoe.  Maybe we won’t know until we try on a new shoe how crippled we have allowed our old shoe to make us.

Now, buried in Part III, comes the call for visionary thinking.  Let us answer that call.

An Open Forum for Thought

Many of us have read the Maine CDC guidelines for re-opening schools, day care centers, and summer camps.  No one here is going to blame the CDC for trying to keep us safe and prevent the spread of disease.  Still, we’re all looking at this list and thinking the same thoughts.  How can we teach our children in a classroom with other children and not allow them to socialize?  How can we even pretend we’re educating them to take their place in society if they have not learned to work together with their fellow students?  How can we talk diversity but not let “groups” mingle?

I don’t have answers to any of these questions.  But it occurs to me that a very, very large component of education must now be self-motivated Experiential Education.  Children and parents must learn to fill in the gaps of experience that schools can no longer provide.

It is my hope that for the next few weeks or months to provide and solicit ideas on how to expand our education and our children’s education.  We want to seek out and explore experiences that we can enjoy within safe guidelines that will add some meat to the formal education being offered by schools both in the classroom and on line.

I hope you will join me.