Where the Magic Happens...

Obviously a garden is not the wilderness but an assembly of shapes, most of them living, that owes some share of its composition, it's appearance, to human design and effort, human conventions and convenience, and the human pursuit of that elusive, indefinable harmony that we call beauty. It has a life of its own, an intricate, willful, secret life, as any gardener knows. It is only the humans in it who think of it as a garden. But a garden is a relationship, which is one of the countless reasons why it is never finished.

- W.S. Merwin (b. 1927 d. 2019)

Our children are not the only ones who walk into Blue Mountain School full of wonder and questions. We are all learners, and our curiosity is instrumental in shaping how we learn and how Blue Mountain School grows. We want to continue to create learning experiences to cultivate capable community members who possess the courage and wisdom to lead fulfilling lives.

With the end of the school year quickly approaching, now is a good time to reflect on the goals and aspirations that we started the year off with. Teachers use this time to ask students to reflect on their learning throughout the year. This is also a good time to gather feedback from parents to give our learning organization helpful information as we move into the summer break and plan on next school year.

I remember the shelf of field guides that were kept in the cabinet of books in my home as a child. Each field guide was a trove containing a great variety of treasures from the natural world around me. The more I looked inside these books, the more I wished to find, to touch, to learn by name. I am still discovering the world through them, using them to pull me deeper into my place.

 

At Blue Mountain School, the little collection of field guides that I've curated is a focal point of our classroom. We dive into them regularly with questions and curiosities and see where they lead us.  

Recently, the students wrote fictional stories in which a character exhibited the traits and behaviors of an animal the student found in a field guide. Students invented characters who had warts like a toad, who made the thuck thuck call of a duck, who had the fangs of a rattlesnake. Imagining what it is like to be another creature, other-than-human, helps us develop empathy and respect for all living things. It breaks us out of our narrow, anthropocentric concepts of intelligence and opens our understanding of an intelligent universe. Empathy enlarges our consciousness and our vision and allows us to see connections-a vital practice in a world with more and more ways to tune out from caring, to pretend that we are not vulnerable and dependent on everything else. Students strengthen their empathetic muscles using the field guides as an avenue along which the imagination runs.

 

The field guides are used as maps as the students undertake their explorations. Recently, they have used the guides to help them see the minute characteristics of wildflowers that are blooming around the school grounds-to help them see what they have already seen, again and in new ways, which is a kind of seeing for the first time. They ask questions of one another as they look: "Is the stem hairy?" "Do the leaves have fine teeth?" "Is the flower radially symmetrical?" "Are the leaves perfoliate?" "Is it a vine?"  

Each question takes them deeper into seeing. The eyes have revelations. "There are tiny hairs on the stem!... Oh wow, it's kinda sticky!" Students gain appreciation for nuance and an ability to discern. By determining the names of flowers on the school grounds-bulbous buttercups, daisy fleabane, trumpet honeysuckle-they feel a greater sense of stewardship and pride for the school. In the era of federal curriculum standards that alienate students from their own lives and places, it is a profound gift to receive a place-based education, to be able to have the world around you as teacher.

As we continue our classroom adventures, our field guides will be in our hands, as ways to help us travel outward from ourselves, to help us see, and to help us imagine the possibilities of everything we might encounter in a day of learning.

Following the trash hunt we collected some REAL treasures to create a mandala and set the intention for our day. The children collaborated mindfully in silence to create this beautiful work of art. The mandala itself was breathtaking, but even more breathtaking for me was witnessing their creative process. I saw them each find their strength in this collaboration and use it to add their own unique piece to the art. They shared, took turns, communicated with their eyes and hands, and worked together to balance, suspend, decorate and complete this beautiful artifact.

Our next endeavor was building bird nests. I loved this project because there was so much to be learned. The children had to think like birds as they worked hard to accomplish something that seems effortless for our fine, feathered friends. It wasn't an easy process, even though we have thumbs! One student said, "I think I could have done a better job with a beak."

In the afternoon we learned about our carbon footprints. We broke up into groups and worked on solutions to minimize our consumption and waste production in our lives at school and at home. We created a box poster using all recycled materials and including things we found on the playground earlier in the day. The poster communicates our ideas and invites the community to join us by adding ideas as well. Come see it hanging on the wall at the bottom of the stairs in the main building.

Into the woods and down to the creek we crept next, hoping to catch a glimpse of the garter snake family who have been sunning themselves there recently. They were not there but we did get to work on some ongoing projects that included building a dam and building a home for some small forest folk.

At the end of the day we reflected on our adventures. There was an abundance of talk and excitement about all that we had experienced and what we could do the next time we spend the whole day outside!

 

 

We hope you enjoyed reading the Indigo Messenger.

Thank you,

The folks at