"Crayola doesn't make a color for your eyes..."

"...spring-green is much too yellow
sea-green is far too pale
cornflower is way too mellow
so i'll try again and fail
there's no way i can capture
the way you make me feel
one look from you is rapture
whether blue or green or teal
no color qualifies
that crayon's telling lies
crayola doesn't make a color
for your eyes...

hey look it's periwinkle
so sure i got it now
But you wink and there's a twinkle
in your eye and still somehow...

crayola doesn't make
a color for your eyes
There is no way that
i could possibly describe you
crayola doesn't make a color
to draw my love..."
- Kristin Andreassen

My friend Susie posted this video of Kristin Adreeassen's "Crayola Doesn't Make a Color for Your Eyes," today, and I immediately knew what I wanted to write about.

Eyes. 

Mary Baker Eddy, in her "Glossary" of spiritual terms found in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, defines "Eyes" as:  "spiritual discernment, not material but mental."

How then could you choose a color for your eyes?  It would be like choosing a single color for joy, or love, or home.  Can you imagine the sadness that would descend on the world if  the word "home" was defined as "blue", even the most perfect shade of blue.   Every house, in every land, blue...or green, or yellow. 

Can you imagine if there was a crayola with the word "body" on it?  As if there was only one perfect color for a person's skin.  Oh yea, they do have that don't they...it's called "flesh"...hmmm...I wonder, do they still make a crayola with the word "flesh"  printed on that narrow strip of peach paper with black stripes and bold block lettering wrapped around a crayon? Now that I think about it, it's kind of creepy actually...

Which brings me to....well, where it brings me.  The story.

I was teaching Kindergarten in a relatively small Southern California town surrounded by Los Angeles County on three sides, and the ocean on the fourth.  I loved my class of eager students.  We were a diverse group -- five of seven continents represented by 35 students and one teacher.  I loved walking onto the playground in the morning and hearing the buzz and chatter of almost twelve languages blending as parents said "goodbye" and siblings called, "see you later" to one another in the language used at home, but usually left outside the gates at school.

One of my favorite projects each fall was to unroll large sheets of butcher paper onto the floor of our classroom and have each child (and teacher) stretch out on top of their sheet, so that another child could trace the outline of the his/her body.  Then each one would fill in the outline with a "self portrait" of how we saw ourselves.

Pencils, crayons, scraps of fabric and glue, buttons, strips of lace, and shoe laces would contribute to a fully fleshed out version of how each of us thought we looked.

It was a fun beginning-of-the school-year project and did a lot to help classmates get to know one another through the other's eyes.  After we'd finished our large paper doll selves, we'd hang them on the walls...after introducing them to the class in a series of presentations.  "Hi, this is Amy.  She is five years old.  She lives with her Nonie and Pop Pop while her mom goes to school.  Her dad is away on business for a few years...."  And later in October we would dress our paper doll selves in Halloween costumes. 

At the end of the year we would do the same project over again and see how our concept of  "self" had changed.  It was always most apparent  when we'd introduce this new self (who was now graduating from Kindergarten and was ready for first grade) to the same children we hadn't really known in September, but who were now as familiar to us as our siblings.  "Hi, I would like you to meet Arturo, as you know, he loves to read and do math.  His favorite song is "Thriller" and he can moonwalk.  He has new baby brother that he thinks is too noisy, but he is helping his mom by not telling her to take him back to the hospital."

I loved this project.  Sometimes the introductions were sweet and funny, and sometimes they were sad and full of despair.  Either way we were  going to be a class, a family and we would be there for one another.  We were all in it for the long haul.  We would learn and we would grow.  And it would be fun most of the time, and hard some of the time.

This particular year, I had a little girl in my class named Marguerite.  Her family had recently relocated from San Salvador and she was the only one who  spoke any English...at all.  She was a fragile and shy as a small fawn caught in the middle of an urban park and I could feel her heart beating wildly as I gently placed my hand on her shoulder that first morning.  In that moment, I knew that she would be my tracing partner for our whole-man self portraits that afternoon. 

Over the next few days I got to know Maggie (as she asked to be called) and we laughed about how much more tracing she had to do than anyone else (since I was the biggest kid in class), how funny her braids looked after being traced, and the odd shape of our feet.  

Soon it was time to fill in the blanks.  We drew in fingers, eyes, nose, mouth...and for some freckles, long (mostly just wished for) fingernails, and pierced ears.  It was a fun, noisy time of day...and we thoroughly enjoyed watching one another come to life as our flatter selves took on personalities.

When it was time to color in our selves, however, the mood changed (as it usually would each year).  Choosing the right color for hair, skin, hands, lips made everyone a bit tense.  I watched as Hispanic children wrestled with the right shade of brown, tan, or beige.  African-American children struggled with why they were called "black" and what did it mean that they wanted to use the same shade of brown as their Hispanic classmates.  Asian children wondered why someone had suggested yellow as a skin color and no one wanted to be "white"...except those who just didn't want to do any coloring at all.  We spent hours talking about colors and how they didn't define us accurately.  I remember "Maggie" being the last to choose her skin color.  She chose "rose,"  a soft strong pink, because she thought it was the most beautiful...and she wanted to be seen as beautiful and sweet like a flower. 

But it was the shift that came with the choosing of eye colors that astounded me that year.  Our joy returned.  Everyone felt that they could mix and match colors for their eyes.  We spent one afternoon moving from person to person, just looking deeply into eachother's eyes, trying to describe the colors we saw, to one another.  There were stripey blue-green eyes with spots of gray, deep brown eyes that sparkled with golden glitter, and gray eyes streaked with purple.  There were eyes like shards of pottery, and eyes that looked like the ocean on a summer's day, eyes as dark as a midnight sky and eyes as pale as the blue snow of the arctic. 

I will never forget, however, the color of Maggie's eyes. Once we'd finished our describing exercise, and were sent off to color in our own eyes..supplementing those one-on-one shared descriptions with visits to the long mirror in the back of the room...we were alone with our flatter selves.  I came up behind Maggie kneeling tenderly over her paper doll self in the far corner, and almost gasped.  She had painted rainbows in each of her eyes and sprinkled the paint with glitter.  Then she had drawn a big eye on her chest where her heart would have been and painted it in with a glowing, glittering sun...again, spirinkled with glitter. 

I kneeled down next to her and watched her work, her forehead crinkled in concentration until she sat back on her bottom and heaved a big sigh.  I asked her if she would tell me about her eyes...especially the one in her chest.  She said that the eye in her heart was the one that was like the sun.  It made everything she saw turn into rainbows even when it was gray and cloudy in her mind. 

I've never forgotten it.   I ask you, "who was really the teacher that day?"

What color would your eyes be?

Thanks Maggie...who introduced her end-of the-year self portrait to us as Marguerite with confidence and joy...I love the color of your eyes...

Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

"Free to be...you and me..."

"…Every boy in this land grows to be his own man
In this land, every girl grows to be her own woman
Take my hand, come with me where the children are free
Come with me, take my hand, and we'll run

To a land where the river runs free
To a land through the green country
To a land to a shining sea
To a land where the horses run free
To a land where the children are free
And you and me are free to be
And you and me are free to be
And you and me are free to be you and me"
-     The New Seekers

I was a new teacher with my very own class of 6 to 8 year old little boys who had been institutionalized for developmental disabilities.  I was hopeful and eager.  I couldn't wait to make a difference.  It didn't matter one bit to me that only one of my guys could speak in full sentences and only three were out of diapers.  I was a TEACHER!!  It was the only profession, outside of motherhood (and someday being a civil rights attorney), that I had ever aspired to. 

From the time I was 10 years old with five younger siblings I was, in my spare time, "Mrs. French" (okay, sidenote:  there was a little boy in my fifth grade class whose last name was French and I thought it meant he was French, which seemed soooo cool, so I stole his last name for my teacher-self).  Mrs. French would make all her siblings (who were young enough to think she was really a teacher just because she said she was) sit on the floor in her bedroom and learn to count and add.   Mrs. French would read "Green Eggs and Ham" out loud with Oscar-deserving expressed animation.  Mrs. French would prepare little sandwiches for her students to eat in the "lunch room".  Mrs. French was firm, but nice.  In my mind, Mrs. French was "practically perfect in every way"…or so she thought her students thought her to be.

By the time I finally became a teacher I had an arsenal of Mary Poppins-like tricks stored up my sleeves.  I had years of hopes and expectations for my "someday" students.   I had more than a life-time of dreaming about blackboards and chalk, Dr. Seuss and Curious George, practiced Palmer-method penmanship and hand-made grade books filled with A- and C+s perfectly written in little graph-paper boxes.

But my new classroom of boys weren't able to sit down long enough for even one page of the antics of a monkey named George, and they would never take home a report card filled with hard-earned letter grades and glowing narratives. These little boys (and their little girl counterparts in a neighboring building) would never leave the institution their parents had committed them to.  These children might learn to make eye-contact and eat properly with a spork, but they were not expected to ever be trusted with pencils and chalk…much less handle a book with gentle respect.

My first few days were harrowing.  I carefully edged myself along the cinderblock walls that lined our classroom, keeping everyone, and everything, in sight.  A randomly hurled chair had landed my predecessor in the hospital for months and I didn't have any desire to start collecting disability at 21 years old.   

One day into the second or third week, I suddenly realized that when I sang hymns to myself (in order to calm my own fears) they calmed down too.  And then I noticed that they really liked the soft scent of the baby powder I wore and would gather around me each morning...not to bump into me mindlessly, but because they wanted to be near me...I started to look forward to my days with them.  Yes, they were as scattered and un-focused as baby chicks in a barnyard.  But they were sweet and eager to please and there were so many things they needed to learn just in order to live in-community with one another and the staff that cared for them.  It wasn't long before I knew that I had to let go of every starry-eyed image of what I thought my life as a teacher would be like, or I would never be able to fully embrace the class that I had been given.

My professional goals for myself as a teacher, however, stayed the same.  I would be consistent, calm, persistent, joyful, and enthusiastic about the curriculum.  I would be respectful, kind, fair and honest with my colleagues.  I would be innovative, inspired, thoughtful and creative in my use of learning tools and materials.  I would be expectant, patient, understanding, honest, loving and clear with my students.  I would teach according to their learning…not expect them to learn according to my teaching.  I would participate in a student-centric learning environment…rather than a teacher driven one.   All that really changed was what I thought the outcomes had to look like. 

When I let go of academic milestones like "counting to 10, sounding out all consonants phoenetically, and completing a 10 piece puzzle in less than three minutes", and accepted new milestones like "was able to let go of anger, did not become frustrated with himself, allowed himself to be helped"…I became the kind of teacher I didn't even know I could hope to become.

I spent my early teaching career in one classroom after another within this institution working with a full range of developmentally challenged children.  In each setting my goals and expectations for myself as a teacher never changed…they evolved…but never changed.

When a cross-country move necessitated a change in schools, I left with a heavy heart.  I had learned to love teaching in a way I never imagined.  My next teaching assignment was with high functioning gifted and talents students.  But my goals and expectations for myself, as a teacher, never changed. 

"Free to Be - You and Me" (I hope this link is a fun trip down memory lane for some of you) was an album I would play every morning in those early days of teaching my little group of 6 through 8 year old boys.  I would sing and dance around the classroom like a butterfly, a bouncy "Tigger", a wood sprite, a crazy bumble bee, or a silly bear before we started our long days of repeating simple tasks hundreds of times over and over again.  It's lyrics would remind me that there isn't just one way to be…there are hundreds of thousands, millions and zillions of way to be.  My job was to help them discover the best "me" they could be that day.  It was as much the same for my little guys who were learning to hold a spoon, as it was for my gifted students who were taking college prep calculus courses in the 5th grade.  

This is still my favorite thing to do…
Kate

"Silent Night....holy child"

[mother teaching her infant the sign for "I love you"]

"Silent Night, Holy Night
All is calm, All is bright...."

I was a brand new teacher and these were the first words of sign language I was entrusted to teach my new students at the Adaptive Learning Center.  The ALC was the educational arm of a state residential facility for children with severe and profound mental disabilities.   In the small rural town that surrounded its perfectly manicured but securely gated grounds, it was referred to as the "State School."  Whatever it was called, in town or at the Governor’s mansion, it was "home" to a thousand men, women, and children who had at some point in their childhood been made a "ward of the state" and institutionalized.  These children would never know a home-cooked meal, or bed sheets that smelled like sunshine and fresh air, or the way it felt to wake up to the sound of birds on a spring morning, or the sparkle of Christmas lights in the living room down the hall.

Many of us who had devoted our lives to their education, care, and recreation were keenly aware that we were the only touch of human kindness these children would ever know, especially during the holidays.  Being a new teacher, my awareness of this reality weighed heavily.  I had a class of boys ages 4 through 6.  They were extremely active, unfocused, and perseverant.  Our days were filled with  educational activities that most mothers taught their toddlers.  Repetition and simplicity were key.   I spent many a night in restless dreaming, frustrated that I too was unable to hold a small object between my thumb and forefinger, and move it into a designated hole on a puzzle board without dropping it...again.

The institution had finally hired a music therapist earlier that summer.  She, like most of us, was a fresh recruit out of college, eager to put to the test her love for children and her desire to make a difference in their lives.  She had a rigorous schedule of working with each of our classrooms, and my little guys were her favorites.  They were cute and precocious and we believed that, if we were the "miracle workers" we hoped we could be, in emulating Helen Keller's teacher Anne Sullivan, they too could become functioning members of society.  And not only would they function, they would sing...and sign.

My guys were auditorily challenged--hearing impaired--and a big part of every day was spent in speech therapy, both in the classroom and in one-on-0ne sessions with the speech therapist.  I delivered all of my lessons in both spoken and signed language.   That fall and winter we worked hard to prepare for the annual Christmas show with a signed rendition of the first verse of "Silent Night".

Day after day I positioned hands and fingers over and over again as we sang "Silent Night, Holy Night..."  Often I would come back to their residential cottage after dinner and showers to work with them during their evening time in the “day room”.  This large empty room offered a big television suspended from a platform in the corner of the windowless, concrete encased walls and floor.  It’s where they spent all of their waking free time.  They'd pace back and forth or just sit in a corner while Archie Bunker ranted and raved about the decline of society or while Big Bird cooed on about "the neighborhood".

One evening after a long day in the classroom, I was on the verge of tears.  I had been head-butted by a 120-pound six-year-old whose anti-aggression medication hadn't yet taken effect.  Scott, my "star" pupil, was going to step forward during the concert and do a "solo" signing performance of "sleep in heavenly peace, sleep in heavenly peace".  But he had been especially non-communicative, a behavior consistent with the autism we were working so hard to break through.    Scott had been making some very flitting eye contact with me over the course of a month--we are talking no more than a second or two in a day of working together--and I was buoyed with hope.  But on this night I could not help him quiet an anxiety that we had moved beyond some weeks earlier.  I was devastated.

Since there were no chairs in the day room, I had been standing with him in the corner farthest from the endless drone and chatter of the television.  He suddenly spun into an endless spiral of movement, vocalizing and hand flicking.  I slid down the yellow, thickly-painted cinder block wall and dissolved into exhausted tears.  I was no Anne Sullivan.  I was barely me and this me still had to work a shift at my second job waitressing before I could hit the pillow and find relief from my aching body and the disappointment in myself as a teacher.

I can remember the coldness of the concrete floor and the smooth ripple of the cinder block walls against my palms as I slid to stop.  Even as I type this, I can still hear Carroll O'Connor in his best Archie Bunker voice yelling "Edith!"  My tears were still hanging from eyelashes and rolling down my temples and onto my navy blue cardigan when…I felt a calloused little finger…slide across my cheek.  I looked up and there was Scott, big brown eyes staring into my face, calm and concerned.  The moment lasted fewer than fifteen seconds....but it also lasted more than five and I was stunned.  I sat there as silent and still as I could.  All was calm and all was....yes, bright. 

As soon as it had begun, it was over.  Scott's eye began flitting around the room.  He rocked back and forth singing to himself a sing-song that was not anything even close to "Silent Night".  But when I approached him to try again with the signs for "sleep in heavenly peace", he did them without resistance or confusion.
I had learned early in my still young teaching career working with special needs children not to overwhelm them in the celebration of their accomplishments, but to quietly affirm their success and encourage them to repeat it.  Soon the residential caregivers arrived to take the boys back to their beds and I followed to join them for "tuck in" and sung lullabies.  Usually this is done by a recorded voice, but on this night I wanted to reinforce the Christmas carols we had been learning.  So I stayed and sang to them.

Throughout the next week Scott and his classmates worked hard to learn the signs for "Silent Night".  I discovered that Scott's breakthrough in making sustained eye contact and connecting emotionally was real and repeated...and not just with me.  His solo came off without a hitch and I wasn't the only mom that night weeping for joy that this little guy--his white shirt and red striped bow tie pressed, his normally unruly dirty blonde hair combed to the side like a little man--had done well.

I can't hear "Silent Night" and not feel a small calloused finger reaching out to touch his teacher's cheek.  My hands still find the signs for each word of that carol in space.  My eyes still sting with tears at the memory of that group of boys in their ill-fitting Sunday best, arms and legs all akimbo putting their forefingers to their lips and waiting for my cue to begin the sign for "silent"....

This morning my mother-in-law sent me a video card of "Silent Night".  As I opened the link and heard the first strains, I was transported back to a crowded recreation room with a makeshift stage and a little boy....who spent most of his days as a "ward of the state" rocking back and forth to confused murmurings....standing tall and scrubbed and full of human dignity as he painted "sleep in heavenly peace" through the silent air in front of him with those hands that had wiped away my tears.    I have so much to be grateful for and I wish you a silent night filled with the gifts of knowing that the world is full of holy children longing for the Christ touch....just like you and me....

"Silent night, holy night
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon Virgin Mother and Child
Holy Infant so tender and mild
Sleep in heavenly peace
Sleep in heavenly peace

Silent night, holy night
Son of God, love's pure light
Radiant beams from Thy holy face
With the dawn of redeeming grace
Jesus, Lord, at Thy birth
Jesus, Lord, at Thy birth "  

K & J

The First Day of School

As a former teacher and prinicipal....and for that matter,  student....I miss the sounds of "the first day of school"...squeals of recognition, the clatter of books falling from lockers, the roar of a hallway as students hurry to the next teacher while still connecting with friends they may not have seen since before the summer sun turned their hair blonde and their skin bronze, the unique quiet of a high school when classes are in session....and somewhere from the dark recesses of my memory is the sound (and smell) of the mimeograph machine cranking out stacks of worksheets....and the color of purple....everywhere...

Today as three of our children dressed in outfits that were carefully chosen (well, at least for our elementary school-age twin daughters) and laid out the night before on top of invisible people at end of their beds and with socks tucked into new shoes peeking out from the dark regions beneath the dust ruffle, I was reminded of all the years when I had the privilege, as principal,  of being that first handshake that greeted each student at the front door of the school at the dawn of a new year.

I think, though, that my favorite moments were as a teacher waiting just outside the classroom door for each youngster to find their room after looking on the bulletin board outside the main office for their class assignments.    "I got Miss Davis....I got Miss Parker....I got Mr. Burns"  you could hear them shout to one another as they passed in the hallways making their way to a year-long destination they would come to know as well as the route from their own front door to their bedroom at home.  I would keen my ear to hear the first "I got Miss Clark" and my heart would leap at the sound of my own name and the way it was said, by a second grader...with her parent in tow, making their way to my room. 

Anyone who thinks that the first day of school only provides a heightened sense of what to (or not to) wear on the part of students... has never been a teacher.  We are not only thinking about what skirt to put with which blouse, knowing that this is the mental photograph of "Miss Buchanan" that little Laurie will take home with her tonight and carry around for 40 or more years...just the way we have done about Mrs. Kearns from Kindergarten in 1959....but we have an entire classroom to dress up.

Where do we put the weather bulletin board?  Where will we read outloud to them for quiet time after recess each afternoon?  What will we write on the blackboard on that first morning.  Do I write my name before they arrive and have it there or do I write it as I introduce myself to the class?  Will we have Harriet the Hamster there on day one or wait for the unit on nocturnals later that week to bring her in?  Do I start out with bulletin boards on "What we did this summer" or do we head into the "Fall Harvest" right away.

These are the surface questions that have poked at me in the middle of the night for weeks by the time I am standing in that doorway waiting for my new best friends to arrive. 

On a deeper level I have been pondering how I am going to receive them mentally.  Am I going to "remember" that Johnny had a problem with anger management on the playground last Spring or am I going to greet only the sweet boy I know that His Father-Mother God (and his mommy and daddy) see him to be.  Will I anticipate the need to break up the clique of 5 little girls who only play with eachother on the playground every year or will I see, coming through the door, in-clusive, generous, open-hearted ambassadors who themselves are eager to greet a whole new group of friends and make them feel welcome.  Am I going to see myself as Miss Blake the teacher who always goes over the top for the annual art show (as if it is a reflection on her own creativity and sense of organization and style) or am I going to let myself grow more generous and flexible and see this year's art show more fully represent the breadth of creativity and individuality brought by each member of the entire faculty and student body.

We each prepare for the first day of school on so many levels.  Parents work all summer to find the courage to let another "grown up" become important in the life of their precious new Kindergartner.   Administrators pray through class assignments, teacher/assistant appointments, and budget allocations.  Teachers grapple with learning and teaching modalities that will best respond to the unique needs of the children entrusted to their wise discernment, school bus drivers get a good night's rest and yearn to feel the peace of knowing that every turn, every stop will be governed by and guided with a divine hand.  


And students....students hope.  They hope that this year they will, as one child recently said to me, "....find out I am smarter than I remembered to be last year".   They will hope, and hope, and hope.....that they will have friends, that the teacher will call on them, that they will have become stronger at kickball, that they will not be asked by the music teacher to "mouth the words" (this summer alone I heard from five grown ups that they had experienced this as a child and didn't sing outoud for decades because of it)....they will hope that their handwriting is posted on the bulletin board because it is so lovely, or that the boy with the locker next to hers will be kind and not tease her because she wears braces.  They will hope that their teacher will see how hopeful they are.


If there is one quality I think is most present in the hallways, classrooms, gyms, lunchrooms, auditoriums, and playgrounds on the first day of school it is hope. 

So today, as I cherish "the first day of school" from my office I will pray that hopes are realized.  That hope springs eternal, that hope is NOT  just the absence of apathy, but the presence and power of the Divine pointing the way towards what our all-powerful God is promising to each of us for this year. 

May every "first day of school" hope be fulfilled by the presence of goodness, grace and affection....with the gifts of intelligence, flexibility, joy, appreciation, thoughtfulness, strength and purity.

I can't wait to hear how your "first day of school" went....everyday this year!



K