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