This morning I pulled up to Fairmont Elementary to drop the Littles off for school. There were three coach buses lined up at the door - it was 7:15. I looked over at Cooper and said, "Cooper. What day is your field trip?"
"Ummm...I don't know."
"You don't know? Is it possible that it's today?"
"Ummm...I don't know."
As he starts to get out of my car, unconcerned, I feel a panic setting in. "Cooper! What if it is today? Try to remember. Is it today? You have to have a sack lunch and money when you go on this one!"
"Mom, I said I don't know. I'll be fine."
As my mind raced to contemplate whether I could secure a lunch and some extra cash in the next 8 minutes or so, Emma chimed in helpfully from the back of the car: "Mom, his class is going to McGowan's - that's in Mankato. They probably wouldn't take a coach bus to that, it would probably be school buses." That's some great critical thinking, there, Emma, but that doesn't really calm me down.
Cooper is half out the door, still unconcerned, when I notice that he is wearing a tee shirt and jeans and nothing else. It's 47 degrees. He left the house like that and I didn't even notice...my May Parenting has really kicked in, I decided. "Cooper! You don't even have a JACKET?!" My voice might have squeaked a little on that last word.
He paused for a minute, and then calmly said to me, "Mom. I will grab a sweatshirt from the lost and found. I don't need any money, and my friends never eat all their lunch, so I'll just help them with leftovers. I will be FINE. Have a good day!" And with a cheerful wave, he walked into the building.
As he jogged inside, I dialed his teacher - ON HER CELL PHONE - at 7:20 in the morning. I'm sure she wishes she hadn't given her number out to me...I am the reason they make the block feature, I'm pretty sure. When she answered, cheerfully, without even a trace of annoyance, she assured me that the field trip is next week, and not to worry because we're all trying to survive the month of May. She could not have been kinder, though I am sure that she does not normally field phone calls from panicked parents at her HOUSE in the early morning hours. I'm not even sure how I'm going to make up for that one.
But as I related this story to some colleagues this morning, lamenting my poor May Parenting Skills and longing for the lazy days of summer, one of them remarked that Cooper sure has some great problem solving skills. And you know what? He sure does. He was faced with a last minute problem: no warm clothes, no money, no food - and the kid formulated a plan of attack in about 5 seconds.
I'm not sure what THAT says about my General Parenting Skills...but I'll try to think about that another day.
May 23, 2019
April 9, 2019
Let Them Be Bored
This past weekend I went through a spontaneous surge of spring cleaning, and began emptying closets and bins looking for items I could purge. I was going through Rubbermaid containers from the attic when I popped open one I'd brought home from my Dad's house when we were cleaning it out. It had a wide selection of my favorite childhood books inside, and at the bottom was a set of Childcraft Encyclopedias. Is anyone out there old enough to remember those? My parents bought the set for me somewhere between 1974 and 1978, because I had them already when my brother was born. On top of them was a haphazard collection of Little Golden Books, the Little Women series, The Girls of Canby Hall (which was my personal favorite alternative to the Sweet Valley High books) and a half a dozen anthologies filled with poems and short stories. I ran my hands through them looking at familiar favorites and started to put the lid back on. For some reason, I stopped. I shuffled through the books again, looking one more time at those encyclopedias. Despite being surrounded on all sides by a huge mess that needed to be badly organized, I felt compelled to pause.
I slid a book out from the stack; it stuck a little, sweaty from a few decades of storage. I ran my thumb over the numbered spine. The trim was still shiny, the words still embossed beautifully in gold, stamped on a bright pink stripe. I slid to the floor, cross-legged in a pile of old clothes and discarded winter gear, and I opened up the pages of my childhood.
There's no way for me to adequately explain how an hour of my afternoon just disappeared. As I turned the pages, it was like blowing the dust off volumes of memories from 40 years ago. Every page was familiar, from the pencil and ink drawings of nursery rhyme staples to the longer fables and myths...the pages were pristinely intact, though there were occasional blue crayon marks on some of them. The illustrations are magnificent; while I could not have pulled a one of them out of my memory a week ago, as my fingers paged past them, they became more than just pictures. It was an odd sensation, one I'm really struggling to describe. I could remember poring over them as a child, creating imaginary worlds beyond the words on the page. Some of them thrilled me, some of them scared me a little, and all of them are so deeply rooted in my long term memory that I found myself murmuring the words without looking and finishing verses that I didn't even realize I have memorized.
For a few minutes I felt like the layers of my hardened adulthood had been peeled back, and a sort of reaffirmation of my most authentic, earliest self became visible. I felt like I was glowing from the inside out, like the thread of innocence at the center of all of us was suddenly tangible and within reach. When we're five years old, we only know what we know. Once we reach 44, we are so far removed from that purity of self, it's impossible to remember what we felt, what we knew, or who we were before it got colored and influenced by who we became. But for an hour on Saturday afternoon I saw it again and this time I have four decades of wisdom to look back on it nostalgically.
Do you have any idea how many hours I spent reading these encyclopedias? Me either, but lots. Book after book, from Animal Kingdom to How Things Work, to World & Space and Make & Do, I had a tutorial for life that gave me a head start, not just on school, but on all the skills I was going to need eventually. I developed a pretty good vocabulary and became a fantastic speller, not to mention learning how to be still, thoughtful, and imaginative long before a teacher asked me to do so. I was probably a pretty weird kid; I remember my Kindergarten teacher Mrs. Hart asking us to tell about a place we would like to visit. While my classmates said things like Mt. Rushmore and Disneyland, I said "The Okefenokee Swamp! Did you know they have plants there that eat the flesh of bugs?" There was dead silence after that and a flustered Mrs. Hart said, "Oh my." I ate lunch by myself for the rest of the year, but I wished I could show them all the pages of the National Geographic book with full color photographs of Pitcher plants devouring insects in their luminous sticky green throats.
As I sat there, reminiscing about forgotten pages and pictures, it occurred to me - for me to know these pages as well as I still do, I must have spent hours upon hours reading them. I don't remember my parents making that mandatory; there was not a designated twenty minute reading time on my homework to check off. I had wide open afternoons and weekends, I had freedom to do whatever I wanted as long as I didn't leave the yard. But do you know what I didn't have? Constant entertainment. I didn't have a steady flow of friends in and out of my house, I didn't have video games or television really, except Saturday morning cartoons. I played outside, I harassed my brother at every opportunity, and I read books.
Somewhere into book four on Saturday, my teacher brain kicked back in. I love to read. I LOVE it. And how did I get this way? Because my parents made books available to me from the youngest possible age. They read to me sometimes, but mostly they just made them available and then they got out of the way. When I got bored, I read a book. They didn't sign me up for an activity, I didn't comb the neighborhood looking for someone to play with...it seemed like the easiest thing in the world was just to open a book and disappear for a little while. What a simple, simple time.
Don't get me wrong - since becoming a parent I have made time for play dates for my kids and the list of activities I sign them up to try borders on ridiculous. I love every single thing about every single one of them, so I'm not criticizing the decisions we make as parents to expose them to activity. I'm just reflecting a little on a precious commodity that I don't give myself enough credit for having. When we lived at the farm we had a very isolated, simple life, and it really served us well. We couldn't keep everything when we came to town, but I will say that we still don't have internet at our house for a reason. When we are home, my kids wander around looking for something to do, since a screen isn't readily available. One of mine reads voraciously, asking for book series after book series until I almost literally can't afford his reading habit. One is into sewing at the moment, as well as the fine art of nails and make-up. One especially prefers to paint - on canvas, on rocks - even on an old cello she scavenged from the discard pile at school and I couldn't be happier. I think they become their most creative selves when they have nothing at all to do.
I teach 10th graders now, and by the time they get to me, reading habits are pretty much locked. They read, or they don't. The best I can hope for is to expose them to great stories while I have them, and hope it catches on. But for all my friends who are just starting out on the parenting journey...if I had one thing I would make sure I did all over again, it would be to always have an endless supply of books on hand, and to have hours and hours of absolutely nothing to do.
I slid a book out from the stack; it stuck a little, sweaty from a few decades of storage. I ran my thumb over the numbered spine. The trim was still shiny, the words still embossed beautifully in gold, stamped on a bright pink stripe. I slid to the floor, cross-legged in a pile of old clothes and discarded winter gear, and I opened up the pages of my childhood.
There's no way for me to adequately explain how an hour of my afternoon just disappeared. As I turned the pages, it was like blowing the dust off volumes of memories from 40 years ago. Every page was familiar, from the pencil and ink drawings of nursery rhyme staples to the longer fables and myths...the pages were pristinely intact, though there were occasional blue crayon marks on some of them. The illustrations are magnificent; while I could not have pulled a one of them out of my memory a week ago, as my fingers paged past them, they became more than just pictures. It was an odd sensation, one I'm really struggling to describe. I could remember poring over them as a child, creating imaginary worlds beyond the words on the page. Some of them thrilled me, some of them scared me a little, and all of them are so deeply rooted in my long term memory that I found myself murmuring the words without looking and finishing verses that I didn't even realize I have memorized.
For a few minutes I felt like the layers of my hardened adulthood had been peeled back, and a sort of reaffirmation of my most authentic, earliest self became visible. I felt like I was glowing from the inside out, like the thread of innocence at the center of all of us was suddenly tangible and within reach. When we're five years old, we only know what we know. Once we reach 44, we are so far removed from that purity of self, it's impossible to remember what we felt, what we knew, or who we were before it got colored and influenced by who we became. But for an hour on Saturday afternoon I saw it again and this time I have four decades of wisdom to look back on it nostalgically.
Do you have any idea how many hours I spent reading these encyclopedias? Me either, but lots. Book after book, from Animal Kingdom to How Things Work, to World & Space and Make & Do, I had a tutorial for life that gave me a head start, not just on school, but on all the skills I was going to need eventually. I developed a pretty good vocabulary and became a fantastic speller, not to mention learning how to be still, thoughtful, and imaginative long before a teacher asked me to do so. I was probably a pretty weird kid; I remember my Kindergarten teacher Mrs. Hart asking us to tell about a place we would like to visit. While my classmates said things like Mt. Rushmore and Disneyland, I said "The Okefenokee Swamp! Did you know they have plants there that eat the flesh of bugs?" There was dead silence after that and a flustered Mrs. Hart said, "Oh my." I ate lunch by myself for the rest of the year, but I wished I could show them all the pages of the National Geographic book with full color photographs of Pitcher plants devouring insects in their luminous sticky green throats.
As I sat there, reminiscing about forgotten pages and pictures, it occurred to me - for me to know these pages as well as I still do, I must have spent hours upon hours reading them. I don't remember my parents making that mandatory; there was not a designated twenty minute reading time on my homework to check off. I had wide open afternoons and weekends, I had freedom to do whatever I wanted as long as I didn't leave the yard. But do you know what I didn't have? Constant entertainment. I didn't have a steady flow of friends in and out of my house, I didn't have video games or television really, except Saturday morning cartoons. I played outside, I harassed my brother at every opportunity, and I read books.
Somewhere into book four on Saturday, my teacher brain kicked back in. I love to read. I LOVE it. And how did I get this way? Because my parents made books available to me from the youngest possible age. They read to me sometimes, but mostly they just made them available and then they got out of the way. When I got bored, I read a book. They didn't sign me up for an activity, I didn't comb the neighborhood looking for someone to play with...it seemed like the easiest thing in the world was just to open a book and disappear for a little while. What a simple, simple time.
Don't get me wrong - since becoming a parent I have made time for play dates for my kids and the list of activities I sign them up to try borders on ridiculous. I love every single thing about every single one of them, so I'm not criticizing the decisions we make as parents to expose them to activity. I'm just reflecting a little on a precious commodity that I don't give myself enough credit for having. When we lived at the farm we had a very isolated, simple life, and it really served us well. We couldn't keep everything when we came to town, but I will say that we still don't have internet at our house for a reason. When we are home, my kids wander around looking for something to do, since a screen isn't readily available. One of mine reads voraciously, asking for book series after book series until I almost literally can't afford his reading habit. One is into sewing at the moment, as well as the fine art of nails and make-up. One especially prefers to paint - on canvas, on rocks - even on an old cello she scavenged from the discard pile at school and I couldn't be happier. I think they become their most creative selves when they have nothing at all to do.
I teach 10th graders now, and by the time they get to me, reading habits are pretty much locked. They read, or they don't. The best I can hope for is to expose them to great stories while I have them, and hope it catches on. But for all my friends who are just starting out on the parenting journey...if I had one thing I would make sure I did all over again, it would be to always have an endless supply of books on hand, and to have hours and hours of absolutely nothing to do.
January 25, 2019
On Gatsby, Snowmobiles, and a Really Good Metaphor
Back when I started teaching, I could assign projects for no reason other than the sheer pleasure of doing a project and tapping into our creativity. But as education evolves, so do the expectations for projects: they must connect to standard mastery, they must address learning styles, they should have skill scaffolding, and if administered cooperatively, they should also address accountability. I need to know where their base learning is, measure their growth, and communicate an outcome based on said project. It's a little exhausting, honestly. Important! But exhausting. I'm always checking, checking, checking for understanding - are they getting something out of this project? Can they read closely? Do they understand how characters develop? Can they identify author's purpose? Is there any VALUE to this assignment?
I started The Great Gatsby with my sophomores this week. I love this book with my whole entire self. I love my sophomores too, and I LOVE this unit. I spent a LOT of time putting together a project that meets the above guidelines. Students have options, expectations, and rubrics. I was enjoying walking around today as they got started on them, discussing their project plan and getting an idea of where they were at so far in their understanding of the novel, its themes, and its characters.
As I worked with one group, I couldn't help but overhear the group next to me, deep in discussion, flipping through magazines. As I listened, one of them said, "I can't find anything in here with a picture of carbon-fiber." What? Carbon fiber? There's nothing in The Great Gatsby that even resembles carbon fiber, so I was pretty sure they were a little off task. I decided I'd better wander over and see what was going on. I saw they had poster board, glue sticks, scissors, and a pile of magazines on their table. They had chosen a collage project on four major settings present in the novel. They had a big stack of Minnesota Snowmobiling magazines they were flipping through and talking about. So far they had labeled the four quadrants, and had cut out some pictures of snowmobiles, engine parts, and some Ski-Doo logos. I was puzzled.
I gently inserted myself into the conversation, and then asked, "What does carbon fiber have to do with Gatsby, may I ask?"
One young man looked up at me, surprised. "It's really expensive! I need a picture of it for Gatsby's mansion, he's the only one who could probably afford it."
I'm not sure if you just had a moment, but I just had a moment. A moment where I realized exactly how much I DON'T know. A moment where I realized how much he DID understand about Gatsby, and a moment where I was smacked in the face with the reminder that the crossing over of interdisciplinary worlds is a REALLY BIG DEAL. It absolutely delighted me. I laughed out loud and said, "That is so awesome, I didn't know that. Show me what else you have on there."
He said, "Well, I put a Ski-Doo in Nick Carraway's quadrant because he's poor and they're junk." One of his friends laughed, but his partner said, "Hey! I have a Ski-Doo!" and then we all giggled. Then the partner said, "Yeah, actually, they are junk. That's probably where it belongs." I told them I had a lot to learn, and they would have to help me figure their project out a little bit.
The third group member said, "Gudahl, we're doing, like, metaphors. You get it?"
Yep. I get it. Carry on.
I started The Great Gatsby with my sophomores this week. I love this book with my whole entire self. I love my sophomores too, and I LOVE this unit. I spent a LOT of time putting together a project that meets the above guidelines. Students have options, expectations, and rubrics. I was enjoying walking around today as they got started on them, discussing their project plan and getting an idea of where they were at so far in their understanding of the novel, its themes, and its characters.
As I worked with one group, I couldn't help but overhear the group next to me, deep in discussion, flipping through magazines. As I listened, one of them said, "I can't find anything in here with a picture of carbon-fiber." What? Carbon fiber? There's nothing in The Great Gatsby that even resembles carbon fiber, so I was pretty sure they were a little off task. I decided I'd better wander over and see what was going on. I saw they had poster board, glue sticks, scissors, and a pile of magazines on their table. They had chosen a collage project on four major settings present in the novel. They had a big stack of Minnesota Snowmobiling magazines they were flipping through and talking about. So far they had labeled the four quadrants, and had cut out some pictures of snowmobiles, engine parts, and some Ski-Doo logos. I was puzzled.
I gently inserted myself into the conversation, and then asked, "What does carbon fiber have to do with Gatsby, may I ask?"
One young man looked up at me, surprised. "It's really expensive! I need a picture of it for Gatsby's mansion, he's the only one who could probably afford it."
I'm not sure if you just had a moment, but I just had a moment. A moment where I realized exactly how much I DON'T know. A moment where I realized how much he DID understand about Gatsby, and a moment where I was smacked in the face with the reminder that the crossing over of interdisciplinary worlds is a REALLY BIG DEAL. It absolutely delighted me. I laughed out loud and said, "That is so awesome, I didn't know that. Show me what else you have on there."
He said, "Well, I put a Ski-Doo in Nick Carraway's quadrant because he's poor and they're junk." One of his friends laughed, but his partner said, "Hey! I have a Ski-Doo!" and then we all giggled. Then the partner said, "Yeah, actually, they are junk. That's probably where it belongs." I told them I had a lot to learn, and they would have to help me figure their project out a little bit.
The third group member said, "Gudahl, we're doing, like, metaphors. You get it?"
Yep. I get it. Carry on.
January 5, 2019
Piece By Piece
Once upon a time, a long long time ago, I had a broken heart. My parents made my house a place for mending broken things, so I holed up in my upstairs bedroom for a while and felt sorry for myself. My mom was especially good at solving problems, but this one was out of her wheelhouse. She let me wallow for a while, cooking dinners I didn't feel like eating and waiting for me to emerge. When I didn't, one evening she went rummaging around in the upstairs closet. She pulled out forgotten projects and suggested that I find something to do to take my mind off my troubles.
The bottom of the bin held a stash of vintage cotton fabric; I found remnants from a set of curtains she'd made for a much loved childhood bedroom. There was a pink calico from a set of doll clothes, a blue gingham from a familiar pillow backing and a pink candy cane stripe from a skirt she'd made for me once. Out of distraction more than anything, I gathered these pieces, cut some not very uniform squares, (I struggle a little bit with precise things like numbers and measuring) and decided to start piecing them together.
I didn't really have a plan. I don't sew, I certainly don't quilt, and Mom's sewing machine can really only accurately be described as a hostile adversary of mine. But the distraction kept me from crying too much, so I pressed onward. Over the course of 48 hours I listened to every sad song I could find in my CD/tape collection, and somehow I managed to piece together a quilt top. Most importantly, the ache in my chest was just a tiny little bit lighter than it was when I started.
Fast forward a whole bunch of years. Mom found that quilt top one day and brought it over to the house. I was so surprised - I'd forgotten it. Like memories do, though, I was sharply reminded upon seeing it of that broken heart and the bruise I carried from it. I took it to a quilter friend who helped me get it top-stitched, then all that was left to do was bind it.
And here's where another gigantic break in time happens. Binding is hard. Maybe not for a regular quilter, but for me? It's hard. I would have to sit still in one place for a LONG time. I would have to have some dexterity in my fingertips. I would have to care about things like the aforementioned numbers and measuring. Binding is not really a Sara Gudahl activity. So I boxed up the quilt top and stuffed it back in a closet.
Fast forward a whole bunch more years. Cleaning out a closet one day, I found that quilt top, and quilter friend Holly happened to be over. She said, "Seriously? You still haven't bound that quilt?" I think I maybe just grinned sheepishly. She scooped it up and took it home with her. Today she brought it back.
Somehow she found vintage cotton prints that so closely resemble the originals, they look like they belonged on it. She bound it so beautifully, and when I pulled it out of the bag, do you know what happened? I expected to feel the bite and sting of that original broken heart. I thought I would sharply remember the pain of it and the reason for making this quilt in the first place. But you know what they say about time and it's ability to soften things. Instead, I thought about my mom.
There's a big old metaphor just begging to be used here - my Mom solved problems like a Boss. She was the Master, the Queen Bee of problem solving. She was so good at it - there was almost nothing she couldn't do. But that particular winter, she knew she couldn't fix my problem; she couldn't keep my heart from breaking. But she did know that it needed to be stitched back together, and she knew I had to do it myself. So she brought me a bunch of scraps, some representatives of my childhood and reminders of things that mattered, and challenged to make something out of it. And look at that - I did.
Then she went and left me, and broke my dang heart all over again.
Holly, you know how important you are to me, friend. You said this wasn't a big deal - but it was. Thanks for finishing this for me. It's not just a binding, you know. You stitched together a few pieces of my broken heart, and for that - I can never say thank you enough.
The bottom of the bin held a stash of vintage cotton fabric; I found remnants from a set of curtains she'd made for a much loved childhood bedroom. There was a pink calico from a set of doll clothes, a blue gingham from a familiar pillow backing and a pink candy cane stripe from a skirt she'd made for me once. Out of distraction more than anything, I gathered these pieces, cut some not very uniform squares, (I struggle a little bit with precise things like numbers and measuring) and decided to start piecing them together.
I didn't really have a plan. I don't sew, I certainly don't quilt, and Mom's sewing machine can really only accurately be described as a hostile adversary of mine. But the distraction kept me from crying too much, so I pressed onward. Over the course of 48 hours I listened to every sad song I could find in my CD/tape collection, and somehow I managed to piece together a quilt top. Most importantly, the ache in my chest was just a tiny little bit lighter than it was when I started.
Fast forward a whole bunch of years. Mom found that quilt top one day and brought it over to the house. I was so surprised - I'd forgotten it. Like memories do, though, I was sharply reminded upon seeing it of that broken heart and the bruise I carried from it. I took it to a quilter friend who helped me get it top-stitched, then all that was left to do was bind it.
And here's where another gigantic break in time happens. Binding is hard. Maybe not for a regular quilter, but for me? It's hard. I would have to sit still in one place for a LONG time. I would have to have some dexterity in my fingertips. I would have to care about things like the aforementioned numbers and measuring. Binding is not really a Sara Gudahl activity. So I boxed up the quilt top and stuffed it back in a closet.
Fast forward a whole bunch more years. Cleaning out a closet one day, I found that quilt top, and quilter friend Holly happened to be over. She said, "Seriously? You still haven't bound that quilt?" I think I maybe just grinned sheepishly. She scooped it up and took it home with her. Today she brought it back.
Somehow she found vintage cotton prints that so closely resemble the originals, they look like they belonged on it. She bound it so beautifully, and when I pulled it out of the bag, do you know what happened? I expected to feel the bite and sting of that original broken heart. I thought I would sharply remember the pain of it and the reason for making this quilt in the first place. But you know what they say about time and it's ability to soften things. Instead, I thought about my mom.
There's a big old metaphor just begging to be used here - my Mom solved problems like a Boss. She was the Master, the Queen Bee of problem solving. She was so good at it - there was almost nothing she couldn't do. But that particular winter, she knew she couldn't fix my problem; she couldn't keep my heart from breaking. But she did know that it needed to be stitched back together, and she knew I had to do it myself. So she brought me a bunch of scraps, some representatives of my childhood and reminders of things that mattered, and challenged to make something out of it. And look at that - I did.
Then she went and left me, and broke my dang heart all over again.
Holly, you know how important you are to me, friend. You said this wasn't a big deal - but it was. Thanks for finishing this for me. It's not just a binding, you know. You stitched together a few pieces of my broken heart, and for that - I can never say thank you enough.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)