66. Hidden Wholeness

 #66Challenge

This is my final piece of writing for the #66Challenge, and what a wild ride it has been.

I have thought long and hard about what to write here. After taking the time to read back through all my entries, I thought I knew what I wanted to write about. It wasn't the happiest way to end this, but it felt necessary.

And that is this: Every school year, I come in with a plan of how I am going to address things like classroom procedures, design, and environment. But beginning in 2020, that became impossible, since everything was so crazy and up in the air. I had to fly by the seat of my pants, along with all the other teachers, just trying to figure everything out.

In 2021, the summer was very short, and I took two vacations with the expressed attitude that I would make no plans since I am teaching a new program and a new curriculum, they can tell me what to do. I gave it no thought.

What I wasn't prepared for was the lack of training and materials that would be coming my way. I was caught up short having relied on others. Just like the year before, it took months to figure out the best way to go. Little by little, things fell into place. And I finished the year on a real high, feeling like I had accomplished more than ever with my learners, and came through my darkest time as a teacher.  

I never got around to writing this piece. And then on Wednesday, two things I read synchronized, and I knew I had more to add.

It began with Parker J. Palmer in his essay* "Hidden Wholeness in a Broken World." He said:

As long as we're wedded to results, we'll take on smaller and smaller tasks, the only ones that yield results. If we want to live by values like love, truth, and justice -- values that will never be fully achieved -- "faithfulness" is the only standard that will do. When I die, I won't be asking about the bottom line. I'll be asking if I was faithful to my gifts, to the needs I saw around me, and to the ways I engaged those needs with my gifts -- faithful, that is, to the value, rightness, and truth of offering the world the best I had, the best I could give.

I knew this was it! I had spent a lot of time concerned about the "numbers" and totally missing what was most important in education -- time to BE with each other.

It speaks directly to where I have aimed myself for next school year, where my learners pointed me. We knew there was value in the reading program, but the kids asked for less of it. And I knew that they had not had enough time to work together, to speak to each other, to form the bonds in the room we needed. This lack of balance of other activities had left us all wanting, and was a disservice to them. And ultimately to me as well. 

By not planning to be the teacher I knew I could be from the start, I never really was able to fully recapture it. Once you're in the throes of the school year, it's hard to see everything you need to see.

My decision is to bring my loves to the forefront immediately--music and fishbowl discussions and less talk, more action. I will need patience and clear directives as we build relational trust, but, oh, the possibilities!

I am determined to bring the "hidden wholeness" to the forefront through right action. Palmer suggests helping people find the things they really want to do, not force them to do things they don't want to do. I can do this through focusing on developing good habits, taught through clear structures and protocols, and giving the learners a lot of choices in the what we do together in the classroom. Give them plenty of interaction time. Mostly, I want to have fun over and over as I watch them learn and interact and grow as readers and writers and speakers.

Then I read a short piece from Joy Harjo, and it coincided directly with what I had just read and wrote about from Parker Palmer. I wrote a short poem from it, and that is where I will leave this. I've done enough talking about my direction. Now I'm actively working on putting things in place. And I couldn't be happier!

What was known in both worlds broke. In jazz, a break takes you to the skinned-down bones. You stop for a moment and bop through the opening, then keep playing to the other side of the dark and heavy history.

 

I keep witnessing the breaks

in the world

all the goodness which

sometimes seems to have completely

disappeared.

But then I bop through it,

knowing only I can bring

faithfulness to my reason 

for being, that I have my

role to play (and others

have theirs)

This is the music

I bring to illusion

This is the hidden wholeness

of wisdom beyond.

 

 *From page 71 his book On the Brink of Everything:Grace, Gravity & Getting Old (2018)

**From page 105 from her collection Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (2015)