Settling My Mind

8/26/09
Today Tedi and I prepared our kids for Meeting. Wednesday meeting is almost an hour long and is attended by the entire school of 114 kids, 24ish staff and members of the community. The Meeting room gets packed. Preparing eight and nine year olds to sit still and silent for an hour and like it is quite a task. I think it’s my favorite thing about teaching at MFS. Today we did two different activities, both from a book called Tuning In: Mindfulness in Teaching and Learning.

Tedi brought a plastic jug and filled it a bit with dirt, and the rest with water. We shook it up and talked about all the things running through our minds when we come to school in the morning. We talked about why we have an entire hour for pre-Meeting to settle our minds. We placed the jug of muddy water on the side and moved onto another activity.

We all put a raisin in our mouths and tried to make it last three minutes. The purpose is to work on focusing ourselves on the tiny details of life. I was amazed that more than half the class still had their raisin after three minutes. Some of them had their raisin after twenty minutes and were able to articulate, in great detail, the experience of keeping a raisin in their mouth. Most of them reported that they couldn’t taste anything at all until they bit into their raisins, which is exactly what I experienced. Why are kids so cool?

We ended our session with some stretching, yoga (their idea, I don’t know any yoga) and by popping a raisin in our mouth to focus us during Meeting (don’t tell!). And this is what I’ve realized: teaching kids to settle helps me settle. I love that. I was also aware of this at CIVIC. Teaching kids about communication and empathy made me a better communicator and more empathetic.

On a less serious note, Tedi and I have the most active and accident-prone calss in the entire school. Our 21 students are the biggest in MFS history (hence the two teachers). Two days ago a third grade boy had to take a break during recess because he had blood flowing down his arm. Late in class I noticed that he must have leaned on his knee before getting cleaned up – his thigh was covered in dried blood. Today I had to get ice for two kids. A wasp stung one during Meeting and the other (the bloody one) had seriously jammed his thumb playing soccer.

I’m not sure if this is a country difference of a public vs. private school difference, but I like being able to get ice for kids. I like that kids get cut up and we have to bandage them. It feels less stiff. More real. It’s another excuse to show you care.