In Search of Exploration

9:16 a.m. on a chilly October morning in Denver. A class of elementary school children is nervously awaiting the arrival of the city bus. The bright sunshine has them squinting on the southbound side of the street. A few attempt, without success, to get a passing truck driver to sound his horn. They hold bus tickets in their hands and on their young backs, backpacks filled with all the supplies they are going to need this day.

Today’s the day they’ve been waiting for, the grand adventure. They have been planning this for weeks. They know what is expected of them. They know their responsibilities. For they are Explorers and they are setting off into the unknown.

Back in the classroom, they have studied some of the great explorers of the past – Leif Erikson, Christopher Columbus, Henry Hudson, Ferdinand Magellan. They learned the facts but greater questions arose. What was it like for these stouthearted men and their crews? Did they know where they were going? What would happen if their supplies ran out? Why was there mutiny? Could they find their way home again? Outstanding questions from a group of eight to eleven year olds. Today they are going to find out some of the answers for themselves.

Their teacher has not told them where they are headed or how long they’re going to be. He has told them that they will be traveling to a new place, a place where they will find a different environment. They will be seeking the unfamiliar. They might stumble upon a new species of plant or animal or, if they are lucky, native peoples. They will be searching for clues, evidence that life has been there before them, and might still be there now.

The children are arranged in groups of four. They have picked names for their group – The Almighty Explorers, The Dodo Birds, The Exploring Rocks, and more. They have decided which task they are going to pursue out in the field – looking for plant, animal, or human life, or making maps. They have determined what materials they might need for their pursuit, and they have packed accordingly – home-made bug catchers, affectionately known as pooters, magnifying glasses, nets, cameras, clipboards, and all manner of recording equipment and writing tools. And lunch.

Lunch has been a big deal, a point of negotiation for some time. The teacher gave each group $9.48 and set them loose in the neighborhood grocery store. This wasn’t the time to go for the pre-packaged Lunchable. No one could afford it. This was a time for debate and dispute, for concession and compromise. Lively discussions ensued about the number of slices in a loaf, the number of ways you can split an orange, and whether the bakery department would hand out free cookies to cute kids from the school next door. (They did.)

The bus pulls up in a fit of hydraulics, a look of disbelief on the face of the driver and despair on the faces of the listless passengers. The children take up every available seat. This is a first ride for many of them. Most arrive at school each day by car.

They’re off. Some are amazed to see familiar places fly past the window from this higher vantage point. One or two easygoing commuters engage the kids in friendly banter. “Where are you all going?” They don’t understand why the children don’t know. “We’re going exploring!” and the passengers sense the excitement around them.

The bus threads its way out of the neighborhood and into new territory. Some kids are taking bets on where it will stop. Natural questions arise. “Will we have enough to eat? What will we find? Are we there yet?” Some kids nervously watch the landscape rush by. Others engage in carefree conversation about last night’s Dancing With The Stars. One or two pull out books and read.

After twenty-five minutes or so, the teacher asks one young boy to tug on the rope. This is their stop. This is a new part of town. The kids don’t recognize the place. The bus pulls up and the class piles out with shining eyes and wagging tongues. They wait for the bus to pull away with a mighty snort. They cross the street, and head down the hill for three hundred yards to their destination.

A vast array of early spring green awaits them. Trees snake along a stream awakened with fresh water from nearby melting snow. Open grass areas give way to manicured baseball fields. A jogging path winds around a children’s playground, following the stream, crossing it at a couple of points, forking into two and re-uniting far off into the distance. This is one of the larger parks in the city park system well removed from the usual stomping grounds of these children and their families. The perfect place to Explore.

The separate groups meet to strategize. Where are the best places to find animals and plants? Where is the optimal spot to begin making maps? Is our teacher really going to make us interview complete strangers?

Yes, yes he is.

A couple of groups head down to the stream. They immediately launch their nets into the shallow water. Great shouts of joy reach those on the banks. Creepy crawlies are being sucked up into pooters and scooped up into jars. Critters who live in, on, and under the water abound. “Look! Look what I caught! Wow! That’s amazing. Look at this one! Ugh! Gross!” Tennis shoes sink in the mud. Someone accidentally nudges a friend into the water above her ankles.

Another group tramps through long grass in search of bigger animals. Will they find a rodent or a nesting bird? They’re looking for new and interesting plants, species they haven’t ever found in their own backyard or playground. The small stream winding its way through this park should provide plenty of opportunity. Armed with clipboards and colored pencils, they settle in to draw what they see, to document, to create a record they can bring back to school without taking what they find.

One intrepid band sets off to talk to the natives, local people using the park for recreation. They find dog walkers, joggers, tennis players, mothers of young children at the playground. They approach and are pleasantly surprised at the natives’ friendly and open manner. They learn about the neighborhood and how frequently the park is used. They whip out measuring tools and graph paper and begin to map the area to scale. They plot exactly where the encounters occur.

After an hour or so, the teacher calls the class together. Children emerge in small clusters from the long grass, from behind the playground, from the clump of trees in the far distance. Classmates greet each other and share their adventures with passion, no one group waiting long enough to hear another without jumping in and interrupting. There is the story of the lady who has walked her twin Scottish terriers in the park every day for a decade. There is a tale of the curious black and white ducks who fled into deeper water at the approach of The Dodo Birds. There is the disbelief and debate whether the distance across the park from east to west is greater than the perimeter of the baseball field. And there is lunch.

Backpacks are opened. Provisions are divided out. Portions are controlled. “If we each have two slices of turkey in our sandwiches, there’ll be one slice left that we can split up. Let’s feed our crusts to the ducks. Hey, do you want to trade half my apple for a cookie? You didn’t even pay for that cookie, it was free!” There is even a suggestion from one of the kids to pick up trash after lunch, to leave the place even better than they found it. Motion carried.

The teacher eventually glances at his watch and calls his adventurers to gather together . He is proud of his gallant party of Explorers. Mission accomplished.

There was no mutiny. No one went hungry or abandoned ship. Throughout the day he heard the questions of scientists in search of knowledge, “Why, what if, how, what do you think, let’s try?” He heard the language of cooperation, “Come on, let’s go, do you want to try, let’s do it together!” He witnessed writing and reading and math and social studies and science and thinking and collaboration and trial and error and pushing out of the comfort zone and laughter and teamwork and success.

The band of explorers winds its way back up the hill to the bus stop. The children climb slowly aboard and flop into their seats. And they wonder, “What does tomorrow have in store?”

Speech to the Graduating Class of Stanley British Primary School

(to listen to a recording of this speech, click here)

May 27, 2011

Good morning ladies and gentlemen, a particularly great morning to the graduating class of 2011 and good morning to an enormous sea of former students and parents who are here today.

Before I start I was thinking last night how eloquently David Marais thanked all of us as 8th grade parents for helping so much with all the graduation festivities and I thought I would take the opportunity, from all of us as 8th grade parents, a round of applause, to thank David Marais and all he’s done for our 8th grade class.

Thank you for giving me this podium on this important day. A couple of years ago, when David asked me to give this speech today, there were mixed emotions in my household. I felt some joy and pride that for the first time we were going to hear from a graduation speaker who represented a section of the school other than the middle school, and who was also the parent of a graduating student. My daughter Emma, on the other hand, was mortified that I might take this opportunity to embarrass her publicly. As if I’ve ever done that before! You need not worry, Em. You have my word. And even though David knew that this would be the last day as Stanley students for Emma and her 8th grade friends, what none of us could have possibly known then was that this was the day that I would also be saying goodbye to this school.

So here we all are, at a day that perhaps many of us thought would never come. For some of you graduating, it’s only been a couple of years or so, since you started middle school at Stanley. For others, who began their Stanley careers in 345, it’s been maybe 4 or 5 years that you’ve been at the school. We learned at the Rose Ceremony on Wednesday, that for twenty of these graduating students, you’ve had nine full and happy years on our campus. And for some of us graduating from Stanley today, it’s been twenty-one years.

We’ve all seen many changes in our time here at Stanley. In the last month, we’ve broken ground on a new entrance to the school. In the last couple of years, we’ve seen Matt and Kathy’s and Katie Boston’s classes move into their own building. We’ve got a new elevator in the middle school and a bell system so that Alexandra will get you to your next class on time. We’ve started Family Groups and we’ve finally got cool new uniforms for the sports teams.

For many of us, in the last five or six years, we’ve said goodbye to a founding head of school and welcomed a new one. He’s taller and plays the banjo better than the old one. And when I say ‘old’, even though you seem to have carelessly left Carolyn behind at the Little White House in Brockenhurst, I mean ‘old’ with only affection and gratitude. We’ve got to know wonderful new teachers and we’ve said goodbye to others. Today, we say goodbye to a few more.

Back in 2002, when this class began their illustrious careers in kindergarten, important events were shaping our world. The Winter Olympics were held in Salt Lake City. The US invaded Afghanistan. The body of Hall of Fame baseball player Ted Williams was frozen cryogenically in two separate pieces and a little TV show called American Idol debuted, leading Kelly Clarkson to break a record held for 38 years by the Beatles when her smash hit A Moment Like This leapt 51 places to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Here at Stanley in 2002, Sara Stern graduated from the intern program and was hired to teach 345, the school broke ground on the construction of the gym, Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated and ESPN fame was coaching our basketball teams, and at the Holiday Program, Ted’s class performed The Grinch Who Stole Christmas - again.

Before that, in a time we used to call the nineties, some of you started at Paddington Station as two year olds here on an abandoned air force base at Lowry in what are now our K12 classrooms – when they were much smaller and not connected by a hallway. To get to the classroom at the end, you had to go through all the preceding classrooms, probably tripping over great piles of asbestos as you went.

I distinctly remember meeting several of you, kids, parents and even grandparents, at that first ice cream social for our two year old class. That was the time I distinguished myself in my naivete as a parent who clearly only had girls. The two year olds had taken a trip to the local fire station and everyone was excited to dress up and act like firefighters. I took it upon myself to provide a little realism to the make-believe, cutting up an old garden hose into four foot long strips, knowing that Addie and Jade and Lily and others would love putting out pretend fires with the mini-hoses. I hadn’t taken into account two year old boys, kids like Niall and Cole and Jack Longenecker, who proceeded to snatch the hoses and beat the living daylights out of each other. The teacher had to remove the weapons forthwith.

Those of you who are graduating your second or third child from Stanley today, and you’ve been here a decade or more, will remember the days when we had a split campus and all the challenges that that represented. Staggered start and finish times to the school day. For many staff members, much driving between the two sites. Two phone numbers, two receptionists, two places where we could lose your information, your tuition checks, and quite possibly even your children. I’m kidding, we never lost your tuition checks.

Before that, we were dealing with getting onto our Lowry campus through barbed wire fences, over parts of runways, and through plenty of mud. Tim remembers those days, sixteen years ago, when we spent a few years developing a middle school curriculum and taking out all kinds of debris that the US Air Force left behind – red velvet bar stools that we removed from the room we still call the pub, cast iron desks that weighed more than a small car, and plenty of bedroom furniture from the duplex houses that are now these classrooms.

For those of us who taught in the old building up the street at 1301 Quebec, we got excited when we built an addition which housed, three new classrooms, an extended day room and a giant multi-purpose room. That thing was massive. Compared to the gym today, that room was like, as big, as a small part of it, maybe the size of the music room if you pull Jill and all the instruments out of there. We played basketball in there. I directed my first ever play Black Ships Before Troy. Heck, we had the whole Holiday Program in that room. We were crammed in, we were hot, but we were happy. Hm, I guess some things don’t change.

Before that addition, we were four little classrooms and a basement. I taught down there, in the basement, for 2 years and mastered completely the art of pipe-dodging. The pipes down there in that basement are five feet eleven inches off the ground and I’m six feet one By the end of those two years, all my head wounds healed and I was able to teach math and give spelling tests, wandering around my classroom looking like someone out of Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks.

Back then, in 1990, when I began teaching at Stanley, fresh out of college, fresh off the plane from England, when my accent sounded more like Prince William’s and I still knew how to spell properly, leaving the “u” in words like “colour” and “flavour”, we were a tiny school. We had about 85 students, K-3, and a staff of less than 20. Everyone knew everyone else. We were just thinking about offering health insurance to full-time staff members, we offered French and a writing class we called language lab, and a third of everyone’s day was spent on choice time. Some of our current teaching staff were students back in those days. Some of them hadn’t even started kindergarten then.

And of those twenty staff members or so who were at the school when I began, half of them are still here today. I think that’s remarkable. And I’d like us to acknowledge them: Carolyn Hambidge, Chris Lewis, Betsy Lewis, Leneta Jones, Ida Daniel, Joanna Hambidge, Barbara Guynn, Mary Aandahl, and Debbie Montgomery; and several other current colleagues had already been involved in the school in significant ways: Kim Hartsen, Lynne Forstot, Mary Ammons, Jane Hile, Martha Markson, and Lloyd Slevc.

We have to acknowledge them and give them our deepest gratitude and here’s why. You see, when teachers and staff members leave, they get a canvas bag with the Stanley BPS logo, the Stanley bag. You know how many people I’ve watched over the years get that darned bag? Twenty years I’ve watched friends and colleagues score with that bag, and I never got one. Not until this year. This is mine! And here are these folks giving their blood sweat and tears to this school for a quarter of a century or more, and no bag. They deserve our thanks and our appreciation.

Because when you have people who have been around an organization for two or even three decades, you get something that you can’t buy anywhere. You get institutional memory. And that’s important. You get deep-rooted knowledge of the values and principles on which a school is founded.

It’s why these 8th graders who’ve been at the school all these years make such terrific tour guides to prospective families. You remember choice time. You remember taking apart motorbikes with Chris and building giant, potentially dangerous, playground structures out of junk. You remember singing your way around Star K Ranch with Mary Jo, (and please allow me to take a moment here to thank Mary Jo who has been a wonderful, creative, amazing teacher for my own children for six years – thank you, Mary Jo) or learning about yourselves by building life-size body dolls with Lynne. You remember fully integrated days, when in 345 we didn’t clean-up from one period to the next because we were just so absorbed in everything we were studying. Days when math and science, reading and writing, social studies and the arts, all collided and the result was giant, occasionally messy, projects, that sometimes went on for weeks because that’s what we were into and we wanted to know more. You remember getting dressed up for Colonial Day and having to pay taxes to King George in order to use a pencil or go to lunch and you remember leaping on the RTD bus with no idea where we were going and ending up across town on some grand writing adventure or scientific exploration.

And now, here we all are at the end of the road. What have we learned? So much. So much we didn’t know before. For me, in all my roles here at Stanley, as intern, teacher, mentor, theater director, scheduler, parent, division head, director of programs and of operations, and, as I was once referred to, “that gal who runs the Coffeehouse”, what have I not learned? It’s been twenty-one years. That’s the length of a childhood and more. We’ve all done a lot of growing up in that time. Especially me. I started out in a traditional English family, sent away to traditional English boarding schools. About as different from Stanley as you can imagine.

This school, and the people here, have taught us all well. It has taught us how to watch and listen to children. It has taught us what a joyful place school can be. It has shown us that the process is more important than the product. It has taught us the importance of play. It has helped us understand what it means to be a lifelong learner. It has surrounded us with color and creativity, laughter and friendships.

And I’ve got to know one other thing here.

You remember the Jack Palance character in the movie City Slickers? The grizzled wise old cowboy, Curly, who asks Billy Crystal: “Do you know what the secret of life is?” and he holds up his finger and says “This”. Billy Crystal says “Your finger?” and Curly says “One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don't mean sh…”. And Billy Crystal asks him, “But what is that one thing?” and Curly just smiles and says “That’s what you have to figure out.”

Twenty one years at Stanley, and I think I’ve finally got that one thing figured out. It’s something Carolyn told me when I first got here as a cherubic-faced twenty three year old. She recites it often, her favorite quotation from the inscription in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi in Greece, the Oracle at Delphi. I didn’t fully understand it back then, but I do now. It’s this. “Know thyself”. That’s the one thing. “Know thyself” Twenty one years at this school and I’ve got to know that one thing here.

I know myself. This school does an amazing, sensational, inspirational job of helping people know who they are. It’s worked for me and it’s worked for my students over the years and it’s worked for my own children. And I think it’s worked for you, graduates of the class of 2011. The schools I attended when I was a kid did a lousy job of helping me figure out who I was. They taught me what to think, where to stand, how to fit into the crowd. I’m thrilled that you have been given this opportunity to know yourself and take your own place in your world.

We are all scattering to different schools– you to high schools in Denver, Aurora, Highlands Ranch, Englewood, Erie, Santa Barbara, me to an elementary and pre-school in Boulder.

As we head away from Stanley, I challenge all of us to keep with us everything we’ve learned at this school. We hope that we’ve not only educated you as kids, we have helped to develop you into amazing people. I hope you’ve learned what you need to help yourselves succeed. I challenge you, when you leave this place, to be kind and stand up for yourselves and others. I challenge you to self-advocate and be great team-builders. I challenge you to be outstanding contributors to your community. I challenge you to see the beauty in our world and to use your talents and skills to add to it. Whatever your passion, whether it’s music or computers, sports or photography, theatre or painting or advanced calculus, or anything else, I challenge you to pursue it with energy and spirit and enthusiasm. Go out there and be the best that you can be. And do it with love.

So, it’s the last day. You’ve got your diplomas. And I’ve got my bag. One colleague, Joan, wrote something on it from Dr Seuss, himself a wise grizzled old cowboy in his own way. It says:

“Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.”

Thank you, graduating class of 2011 for all of your gifts you’ve shared with us at Stanley. Thank you for allowing me to be part of the journey. Be well, do good, and keep in touch.

Thank you very much.

(photo credit: Jim Thomas)

Choice Time

Sheena Iyengar is a professor at the Business School of Columbia University and the author of The Art of Choosing. I heard her speak last week and came away highly impressed by both her delivery and her topic. She spoke at length about her research on choice and about her book in which she aims to help us become better choosers. I was one of almost 4,000 people in the audience who listened to her fluid and eloquent presentation, given with no notes and in complete synchronicity to a slide show that played behind her. There is nothing remarkable about that for a gifted professional speaker who has clearly done her homework and knows her stuff. Except for the fact that Sheena Iyengar is blind.

Diagnosed as a toddler with a rare form of retinal degeneration, this superbly intelligent woman was completely blind at the age of 14. I wonder if she has a strong sense of what an audience of 4,000 might look like. That might be a plus as a public speaker. It might calm the nerves. I found it remarkable how she was able to regale us with stories, quote exact figures from her research, and show both amusing and informative examples to illustrate her point, all in perfect order with the powerpoint she had created. As a budding public speaker who still relies on cue cards highlighted by keywords, I found her talk to be an exquisite paragon of the art.

Iyengar’s talk was about the relationship between leadership and choice. Some leaders are literally born into the role. Others are simply born with bucket loads of charisma and naturally rise to the top, while most of us in leadership positions have arrived there because we have developed the ability to choose well and to enhance the power of good choices for transformative good.

Her book begins with the story of Steven Callahan who, in 1982, was shipwrecked and became one of the first people ever to survive on the high seas for more than a month. He drifted in a small raft, finding his own food and drinking water, for 76 days, ending up on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean from where he started. He says he overcame almost certain death by choosing “to pilot myself to a new life or to give up and watch myself die.” It was the power of his own choice that saved him.

I am proud that the school where I work, and where my daughters attend, teaches children how to make good choices. This is such an important part of our educational philosophy that we actually have a period of the day called “choice time”. And it is exactly what it says it is – a time of the school day when students get to choose what activities they would like to partake in. Teachers put out different types of materials, quite often art supplies, items to build with or glue together, thingamajigs where scientific discoveries can be made. And if a child does not choose to spend time doing one of the choices set out by the teacher, he or she may choose to do something else. Quite often the choices presented are connected to the current area of curriculum study, but sometimes not.

Children who have recently arrived at our school and who have not been exposed to having this much choice in the classroom sometimes struggle to pick an activity and to focus. But soon they learn how to make good choices, how to collaborate and negotiate with their classmates, and how to trust their own judgment. Some of our students come to us from traditional classrooms where they have been told where to sit, when to talk, whom to talk to, when to get up, where to go, and what to do. They are not used to making choices of their own. At our school, we have discovered that, at choice time, children actively engage in the process of defining themselves. They are given the opportunity to make decisions and think for themselves, and they shine.

Isn’t this what we want from our college graduates, from our work force for the 21st century? Don’t we seek collaborators and team players who know themselves, think for themselves, and have great ideas? That’s what I want for my own children.

Iyengar spoke of the vast differences in how certain cultures perceive choice. For example, Anglo-Americans crave individuality and feel empowered from having more choice, while Asian-Americans tend to value choice less and have deeper trust of group norms. She also warned that too much choice, as all parents can attest to, can be detrimental. Have you ever taken a small child to a good-sized grocery store and asked them to pick out a snack?

However, she highlighted one study that she had done, in which two groups of children were given anagrams to solve. One group was given the choice of several topics that the mixed-up words were about. They were also allowed to choose which pen, out of five different colored markers, they wanted to write the answers with. A second group was given no choices – they were assigned the topic and the pen. Not surprisingly, Anglo-American kids who were given the choices performed two and a half times better on the test than their peers with no choice. Interestingly, Asian-American children performed significantly better when told that their topic and pen color had been chosen by their mother. All great evidence of the power of choice.

It is clear that effective leaders today have to be dedicated practitioners of the art of choice. They have to understand the people they lead and work with them to give them the right amount of choice to empower them. Sheena Iyengar herself was dealt a rough hand in the game of life, a disease that robbed her of her eyesight. She chose to rise above it, to become an expert in her chosen field, and she chose to shine.


The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar, published by Twelve, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, 2010. A link to her website appears in the left column of this blog.

A Modern Twist on an Old Poem

Following my annual reading at Stanley BPS's Holiday Program, December 17, 2010, many people asked to see a copy of the poem. It is not mine, but something I found online and then adapted for this audience. It was originally written by Harvey Ehrlich. About 20% of it is mine. I have no idea who old Harvey is, but all credit should go to him.


‘Twas The Night Before Christmas And Santa’s A Wreck


‘Twas the night before Christmas and Santa’s a wreck.
How to live in a world that’s politically correct?
His workers no longer would answer to “Elves”
“Vertically challenged” they were calling themselves.
And labour conditions at the North Pole
Were alleged by the union to stifle the soul.

Four reindeer had vanished without much propriety,
Released to the wilds by the Humane Society.
And equal employment had made it quite clear
That Santa had better not use just reindeer.
So Dancer and Donner, Comet and Cupid,
Were replaced by four pigs, and you know that looked stupid.

The runners had been removed from his sleigh;
The ruts were termed dangerous by the E.P.A.
And people had started to call for the cops
When they heard heavy footsteps upon their rooftops.
The people at PETA were all up in arms,
His fur trimmed red suit had caused animals harm

If that wasn’t enough, to add to his woes
Rudolf was suing over unauthorized use of his nose
And had gone on The View, in front of the nation
Demanding millions in fair compensation
And as for the gifts, why, he’d never a notion
That making a choice could cause such commotion

Nothing of leather, nothing of fur
Which meant nothing for him. And nothing for her.
Nothing that might be construed to pollute.
Nothing to aim, nothing to shoot
Nothing that clamoured or made lots of noise,
Nothing gender specific, for just girls or just boys

No candy or anything bad for the tooth
Nothing that seemed to embellish the truth.
And fairy tales, while not yet forbidden,
Were like Ken and Barbie, better off hidden
No video games that could ruin the eyes,
No iPods, iPads, iPhones, nothing with ‘i’s.

No baseball, no football, where kids could get hurt
Besides, playing sports exposed them to dirt
Dolls were said to be sexist, and should be passé
Computers would just rot your whole brain away.
So Santa just stood there, disheveled, perplexed,
He just could not figure what to do next.

He tried to be merry, tried to be gay,
But you’ve got to be careful with that word today.
His sack was quite empty, limp to the ground,
Nothing acceptable was to be found.
Something special was needed, a gift that he might
Give to all without angering the left or the right.

A gift that would satisfy with no indecision,
Each group of people, every religion,
Every ethnicity, every orientation
Everyone, everywhere…the whole population.
So here is the gift, it’s priced beyond worth,
May you and your loved ones enjoy peace on earth

Whatever your thing at this season of light
Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Mary Jo’s Starry Night,
Festivus, Christmas, Solstice, Diwali
We wish you great joy at your winter party
From our Stanley teachers and all of our crew
We’re wishing great joy to your family and you.

Announcing a change...

After teaching third, fourth, and fifth graders for twenty years, I have decided to leave the classroom. On the one hand, I am very sad about this because I love teaching and I love being around children every day. On the other hand, I'm excited to be staying at Stanley in a different capacity and I am looking forward to new challenges. What follows is the letter I sent out to the parents in my class. I've also included excerpts from a letter that Tim Barrier, Head of School, sent to the parents. The most frequent question I got from the children after I told them was, of course, "Why?" I hope this helps to answer their question:

Dear Parents,

It is with very mixed feelings that I announce to you that I will not be teaching this class next year.

After twenty years as a classroom teacher, the time has come for me to turn the reins of this class over to someone new. I want you to know that I have not taken this decision lightly and it is a decision born out of a desire to take on new challenges on behalf of the school.

For two decades, I have come to school every day filled with excitement and passion for what I do. The energy of the children, the parents and my colleagues feed me daily. There has not been a day when I have not learned something new and not retired at the end of the day grateful for what I am able to do every day. I have been blessed with an incredible community of families over the years and this current class is especially dear to me.

I wrote an essay recently, titled Seven Thousand Miles which some of you may have read, in which I outlined how important teaching at this school has been not only for my professional development, but also for my personal growth. I could not imagine a better place to teach, and a more loving supportive group of children and families with which to work.

I am excited to move to a new role within the school, one that Tim discusses in his attached letter. Among other things, I will be combining two of my great loves – theater and writing – in a new position which will help support the school, particularly the arts, in a way which I hope will benefit all children, families and staff here at Stanley.

I am excited to keep my connection to the 3-4-5 team and students through weekly drama and spelling classes and by continuing to co-direct the 3-4-5 musical.

Part of me cannot believe that, once fall arrives, for the first time in a very long time, I will not be running a class, laughing with students, building with math manipulatives, putting on bandaids, helping kids navigate the choppy waters of friendship, sharing my love of writing and reading, dressing up as historical characters, planning field trips, telling jokes, meeting with parents, training an intern, giving hugs. There is a huge part of me that is sad to no longer be enjoying the daily interactions with an amazing close-knit classroom community. There is also another part of me that is anticipating the new challenges that await, knowing that I will be making a difference to the life of the school, and all our students, in another way.

We will continue this semester in the way we always have – filled with excitement for learning, great ideas and projects, and making sure this classroom is the best it can be. Now is not the time for thank yous or goodbyes. I’m sure you will be hearing a lot of those from me in the future. I am sharing this news with the children today as well.

With great love, appreciation and respect,

Steve


and this from Tim:

I am writing to add my thoughts to the letter Steve shared with you. On behalf of Stanley BPS and the many families Steve has touched, I am grateful for all that he has given to our school in twenty years of teaching.

As you certainly know, Steve is a person of many talents, and he will continue to serve Stanley BPS in a number of teaching and administrative roles. Steve will continue his role in 3,4,5 Afternoon of the Arts, including directing the spring musical, and also will continue leading a spelling group. His administrative work will add to what he currently does with scheduling, assemblies, programs, and family groups. Some of his new responsibilities will include coordinating the Performing Arts department and managing program and space needs, overseeing school Safety procedures- including carpool routines and emergency drills, coordinating and communicating the master school calendar of events, providing staff support to campus parent jobs- including the Auction, and coordinating the administrative sections of our ACIS Self- Study. Steve will also apply his writing skills in capturing some elements of our program for use in Development/PR communications for internal and external community audiences.

We have begun the process of finding a replacement for Steve. Literally and figuratively, his will be big shoes to fill. The teacher we hire won’t be just like Steve, and he or she will bring unique ideas and talents. But we will be looking for someone who shares Steve’s passion for bringing out the best in all his students, his ability to implement a dynamic curriculum, and someone who at least approaches Steve’s creative energy and good humor.

Later this spring, we will find suitable ways to recognize Steve for his service to your family. In the meantime, I know this change will be a significant one in the lives of your children. I know you join me in expressing appreciation for what Steve has done for your children and for what he will continue to contribute to our school.

Tim Barrier,
Head of School

Seven Thousand Miles

April 1975. Summer term at a traditional English boarding school. A former mansion, tucked away into the thick woodlands of the southeast. The greystone edifice perched atop a hill casting a foreboding eye on all it sees. A small and sensitive seven year old is left for the first time at the grand front portal as his parents, young and unknowing in the ways of child development, drive away. He would see them every other weekend while school was in session - for the next eleven years. He is trying hard not to let others see the fear and hurt in his eyes.

It is a school where rote learning is standard; where good study habits mean copying pages off the board verbatim; where the art teacher gets angry if the boy doesn’t do it her way; where he is told to stand facing the wall for two hours after getting caught talking after lights out; where he must wear shorts even on the most biting of winter days; where no one knows his first name, only his last; where bullying is regarded as an acceptable form of character building; where missing chapel results in a beating; where untrained teachers rely on the pedagogy of their own post-war school experiences. The small and sensitive seven year old has no opportunity to find out who he is. He simply hides himself away.

That same April 1975. Seven thousand miles away, at a small school attached to Montview Church in Denver, Colorado. A teacher, trained in that same post-war England, is watching and listening to children. They are just returning from spring break. The sun warms their faces. All around her there is joy and laughter. A few of the children are seven, small, and sensitive.

These children, however, are painting glorious pictures; they are pouring water and digging in the sand; they are reading and writing - anything they want; they are sewing, building and gluing; they are playing dress-up and make-believe; they are learning math with blocks and color; they are learning how to give and take and share; they are celebrating each other’s successes; they are hugging and being hugged. The English woman does everything in her power to help these seven year olds find out who they are. And they sparkle.

The teacher’s name is Carolyn. She has recently arrived in Colorado, from England, with a young family of her own. She is in the process, although she doesn’t know it at present, of founding a school that would later grow into a beloved institution, educating thousands of children. All of them touched personally by her strong principles, her guiding hand, and her love.

The boy’s first name is Steve. Me.

Everyone calls me that now, even my students.

Fifteen years after those humble beginnings, I stumbled upon Carolyn’s school. She hired me and I have learned. I have been a teacher and theatre director here for almost twenty years, the length of a childhood. Her school, now known as the Stanley British Primary School, has taught me well.

I invite you to walk into my classroom. I am proud of the joy to be found. Children feel safe, knowing there are clearly defined limits and high expectations. They are free to be themselves, to explore while learning, and to find success. They are encouraged to take risks and they are guided as they learn from their mistakes. We work together to find out more each day about what kind of learners they are. They learn to articulate their strengths and they work to strengthen their weaknesses. They know they can make a positive difference in numerous ways. They are supported, trusted and loved. They are on the pathway to discover who they are.

I think of John, a third grader who has been diagnosed with a severe form of dyslexia. Reading is an immense struggle, as he meets familiar words for the first time again and again and again. His writing is almost impossible to read. Letters are misshapen or reversed. He occasionally forms entire sentences in mirror image from right to left. Expressing himself on paper is the hardest thing anyone has ever asked him to do.

The class is studying pre-Revolutionary War America. One group decides to make a dramatic presentation of the events surrounding the Boston Tea Party. John is one of the kids volunteering to play the part of Sam Adams. This needs to be improvised. They have been given ten minutes to produce a skit. There is no time for further study. To my surprise, his peers pick John for the role. I am unsure of what he knows. The kids know better.

With barely any practice, John gives a fluent and knowledgeable oration, recounting all the reasons that taxation without representation is unjust, why the tea on the ships floating out in Boston Harbor represents all that the colonists found so wrong with British rule, and what steps the American militia should take to unseat the occupational forces. It is an extraordinary moment. John has since gone on to star in theater in high school. Learning lines is still hard for him, but he has figured out that if he records his part and plays it back, he can memorize without too much trouble. He knows who he is as a learner.

My classroom is a place where parents feel welcome, included and appreciated, where they are free to give opinions, ask questions and participate fully in the education of their child. Their questions are answered honestly. Knowledge about child development is dispensed freely and without judgment.

I think of Lisa, the parent of an only child, a librarian by training. She grew up in San Francisco with a deep-seated phobia of math and no confidence in her mathematic ability. She mentions to me that she is struggling to help her daughter with her homework on subtraction and borrowing. She knows how to do it, just not how to explain it. She and I spend a delightful hour, one afternoon after school, playing with base ten blocks, looking at subtraction from various conceptual angles, and talking about the differences in experience and learning style between herself and her daughter. Homework now breathes more easily in Lisa’s house.

I invite you to come to a play rehearsal or to see children performing in one of my productions. Anywhere from thirty to one hundred and thirty kids working in harmony towards a common goal. As in the classroom, I am proud of the joy dancing through the theatre. Children are encouraged to reach outside their comfort zone, to strive for something they did not know they had inside them. Humour and delight abound.

I think of Katie who, a few short years ago, squeaked out a couple of barely audible lines in Peter Pan. She later starred in a major role as Alice in Wonderland, to rave reviews. I think of Will, who in the past has lacked confidence and brought a slight awkwardness to social situations. He recently played the lead, all 400 lines of it, as Sheridan Whiteside, the outlandish curmudgeon, in The Man Who Came To Dinner, and emerged as a true leader among the cast.

There is a unique spirit at Carolyn’s school. It recently hosted a statewide meeting of independent schools heads. Administrators from some of the finest schools in Colorado entered the front lobby of the school and the reaction was universal: “There is such a feeling of warmth.” Later, they toured our campus. More comments were heard: “What a delightful place this is; how happy the children are; look how the children’s work is everywhere; there is such a relaxed atmosphere; the campus is beautiful; the students are so comfortable in their environment; there is a spirit here I haven’t experienced elsewhere.”

I am overjoyed to have been a part of growing that spirit. Yet, more importantly, I am overjoyed at how the school has been part of my growing spirit.

It has taught me how to watch and listen to children. It has taught me what a joyful place school can be. It has shown me that the process is more important than the product. It has helped me understand what it means to be a lifelong learner. It has surrounded me with color and creativity, laughter and friendships.

While my formal schooling in England taught me dates and facts, Latin and Greek, competition and one-upmanship, there was so much I did not learn. I never learned about support, justice, cooperation or trust. I never learned joy, gratitude or love. I never learned the importance of play. I have learned these things at the Stanley British Primary School. I have learned them from Carolyn, from colleagues, and from parents. But most of all, I have learned them from the children. I watch them and listen to them and they teach me. Every one of them. My first class of five year olds as an intern twenty years ago, my current class of third, fourth and fifth graders, and the middle and high schoolers, many of them former students, whom I direct in theatrical productions at the school each summer.

I now know that I did not stumble upon Carolyn’s school. I was guided here for a reason. Within this safe, warm and inviting space, I have at last experienced everything that Carolyn’s kids were participating in, and that I was missing out on, all those years ago. This school has quite simply allowed me to experience my childhood.

It has brought me out of hiding.

I have finally discovered who I am.

Theatre On My Mind

It's been a while since I've put anything new up here. I've got a few new essays in the works, but I have been working principally on my upcoming theatre productions. My mind is full of dialogue. Some scripts are complete, others are in progress.

I'm directing four plays over the summer months. All are held in the ballroom at the Stanley British Primary School in Denver. Admission is free, however participation in all the plays is sold out, with the exception of Happy Daze, the production for high schoolers. For more information on registering for the high school theater camp, please visit http://sbps.schoolfusion.us/

Alice in Wonderland Jr. for grades 3-5 Tuesday May 19 and Thursday May 21 at 9:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. (musical, co-directed with Jill Teas)

Funny Money for grades 4-9 Friday June 26 at 10:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m.

Happy Daze, Or The Short Happy Madness of Julian Thaddeus Springer for grades 9-12 Friday July 17 at 10:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m.

Beauty and the Beast for grades 3-9 Friday August 7 at 10:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m.

In addition, I will be performing at Stanley's 17th Annual Deadbeat Coffeehouse on Saturday April 25th at 7:30 p.m.

I hope you can come! Please check back here again soon for more musings on life, teaching, parenting, and finding the good in this crazy world.

What I Needed to Know I Learned In My Child’s Kindergarten

You know those quintessential kindergarten teachers you meet in picture books? They are always ready with a hug and a song, an endless supply of delightfully messy projects and deliciously nutritious snacks. They have a block area, a dress-up area, a big bucket of junk, and a welcoming lap. They have a reading corner crammed with colorful overstuffed pillows. They understand the importance of play. Mary Jo is one of those teachers, and then some. Her reading corner is a refinished antique claw foot bathtub which overflows with the comfiest pillows anyone’s ever snuggled into. That tub is where my daughters learned to love reading.

Because my girls attend a school with multi-age classrooms, their kindergarten teacher stayed with them for first and second grade as well. My daughters were born just over three years apart. Three years, three weeks, and two days to be exact. There isn’t any correct period of time between having children. Every age has its advantages and disadvantages, but the particular gap separating my daughters came with one unforeseen bonus. It allowed each of them to have the incomparable Mary Jo for three years straight. It presented me with six consecutive years to count my children’s blessings.

The result was six years of essential development in which my daughters built dynamic structures out of blocks, painted sensational pictures, created mysterious potions involving borax (mysterious because I am still not clear what borax is ever used for outside of potion-making), learned how to cooperate with others, and went on nature walks to discover the greatest joys in the simplest things. The ultimate result is that my girls love learning and, even in their relative advanced ages of twelve and nine, can’t wait to get to school every day.

Shortly after my youngest said her tearful goodbyes to Mary Jo at the end of second grade, she received a sweet letter from her teacher conveying beautiful wishes written personally for my daughter’s future, wishes which expressed knowledge of who my child is as no one else could have articulated. Truly touching sentiments which brought tears to my eyes that I will treasure forever.

Accompanying the letter was a newspaper article Mary Jo had found. It was about kids and summer time, how middle-class children today are formally scheduled for such a giant portion of their summer vacations – swim team, camps, classes on every subject under the sun. When they are home, they spend an inordinate amount of time on the internet and with video games instead of playing baseball in the sandlot. The author mourned the carefree days of her youth, playing in the street until nightfall and being allowed to get bored. This is a tricky issue.

I live in a large city but it is not just urban dwelling parents who worry about our children if we let them out of our sight. We know instinctively that they need to have the freedom to run and make their own mistakes and figure out the pecking order in the neighborhood. We also know that very real dangers may be lurking around the corner. I have a hard time allowing my children to walk the dog for more than a couple of blocks without taking a cellphone with them. That is not the world I grew up in, nor the one I want to live in.

I have rarely seen my children more happy than on a family vacation to Siesta Key, on Florida’s west coast. The beach was wide and mostly empty, of people and obstacles. We all loved time on the sands before sunset. My wife and I strolled and enjoyed the time to connect that only vacations can bring. Our girls ran wild for what seemed like miles. Naturally, or perhaps environmentally cautious, they would turn to check in once in a while, but essentially they had the freedom of the whole beach. It was a magical time and one we find hard to duplicate at home. The story serves as a good reminder to take more vacations, but also brings up an important question. How can we find a balance between protecting our kids and giving them space to grow up to become independent thinkers and adventurers?

A wise friend once told me that she thought it was important that children learn an essential lesson in life: how to be bored. The last time we moved house, while my wife and I were packing and organizing in the weeks leading up to the move, the kids got into the habit of watching more television than they were used to. From our point of view, it kept them quiet and out of the way. For them, it gave them some respite from the chaos.

After we moved to the new house, we didn’t get around to plugging in the TV for a few weeks. We were all busy creating our new spaces. Something else unexpected happened. My daughters re-discovered the joys of finding their way out of boredom without a television. They made a city out of moving boxes, they played cards together, they painted, they got to know the new kids in the neighborhood, they read books, they spent their time doing all the wholesome things we imagine kids did before the dawn of TV. When we eventually did connect the television, they were already in the habit of finding other things to do. They still don’t watch too often. They have discovered some child-friendly websites which keep their attention on the computer screen more than I would like, however they continue to create, to play, to read, and to run in the sprinklers.

In the summertime, my family tries to find a balance for the girls between camps, classes, and pure unadulterated downtime. Even I wouldn’t expect my children to entertain themselves for three whole months, time that was once set aside for them to help me bring in the harvest. However I do think they need to learn how to pull themselves up out of the well of boredom.

In the article that Mary Jo sent me, the author made a great point about how unstructured downtime allows the creative spirit to flow. Neale Donald Walsch makes the same point in his popular book Conversations with God. If we’re always busy, or spending our free time in front of a screen, how can we let the underlying seeds of our creativity begin to poke their heads into the light? Are we raising a generation devoid of poets, writers, actors and songwriters if we deny our children the space to find their way out of boredom?

As a part-time writer who has a full-time teaching job and a family, both of which require great chunks of my time, I struggle with these very questions. It’s not that I cannot make the time to write, but I find myself with very little downtime in which to simply cogitate, to let the ideas flow. If I structure my life so that I am continually busy, constantly keeping occupied by the list of things I have to do, I will never learn to find my way out of boredom. I will minimize the development of my creative abilities. The artist in me yearns for that kind of time. The responsible adult hates to give it up.

There is infinite wisdom in Robert Fulghum’s famous essay All I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. One of his recommendations goes like this: “Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.” I know Mary Jo agrees with this sentiment.

As teachers, she and I have talked about the difference between the work we are paid to do and the work done by our friends and relatives in the so-called ‘rat race’. My work was once dismissed by someone close to me who claimed that “those who can do, and those who can’t teach.” Baloney. Not only have I worked alongside incredibly talented teachers who could be outstanding artists, managers, engineers, and stockbrokers, I have personally trained former architects, lawyers, soldiers, and salespeople to become teachers. They wanted to contribute to the common good. The way Mary Jo describes it, those of us who teach may not be turning a profit, but we are affecting the future by molding young minds.

I know that Mary Jo has been instrumental in teaching my girls to live what Fulghum calls a balanced life. Under her guidance and tutelage, they learned some and thought some and drew some and painted some and sang some and danced some and played some and worked some every single day. They continue to do so. With the tragic cultural shift towards standardized testing and away from arts programs in our public schools, much of what Mary Jo teaches every day has been tossed by the wayside. It shouldn’t be. It is through the kind of learning that goes on in Mary Jo’s kindergarten, first, and second grade class that our collective future lies.

I want my children to know facts. I want them to know how to balance a checkbook, read the smallprint, speak a foreign language, and learn the lessons of history. I also want them to exist in the world as artists. I want them to create their way out of boredom, out of a problem, and out of the box. I want them to be independent thinkers and adventurers. I want them to work well with others, to find the joy in learning, and to love life.

I know that they have received an outstanding start at the hands of an unbelievably talented educator and friend. I am filled with awe and gratitude.

Science Fair

My sixth grader is beginning her first science fair project. It’s a vast undertaking, a mammoth enterprise incorporating multiple pieces and parts. There are forms to fill out and permissions to procure. Her teacher has given her a substantial heap of instructions. Rubrics abound. She feels excited and ready for the job. Not me. It brings up all my insecurities.

Science teachers scare me. At our school, we have wonderful science teachers. All women. Delightful people. They are talented and engaging teachers; they behave in public; you could even invite them out to dinner and they wouldn’t embarrass you. But there is something that sets me on edge.

It may be that they are just way smarter than I. They know the periodic table by heart, they can discuss the intricate details of oxidation and photosynthesis, they are immune to disgusting smells, they know the difference between Newton’s law of universal gravitation and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, and they are comfortable handling creepy animals.

One of the science teachers at my school keeps two tree pythons in a large glass tank in her classroom. She actually lets her students touch these insidious creatures. The kids encourage the snakes to crawl around their waists and necks and they even bring them outside at recess. There is nothing worse than minding my own business, supervising kids at play, nursing my steaming cup of coffee, and thinking about how much more fun it would be to be lying on a beach in Mexico, when some irksome middle schooler ambushes me with a deadly reptile, forked tongue inquisitively probing my outer ear. I think the science teacher puts them up to it.

I was never very successful at science at school. I think it was an early sign of my unwillingness to follow rules. I was taught that science required me to stay within the lines. It bade me adhere to strict principles, abide by specific guidelines. It forced me to acknowledge that certain laws were not negotiable. The liberal artist in me couldn’t deal. I wanted to create, to experiment without a hypothesis, to throw a whole bunch of hydrochloric acid into the beaker and see what would happen. My English and history teachers loved me. I always failed science tests.

My science teacher’s name in elementary boarding school was Mr. Parsons. He had one of those bushy mustaches which were so fetching back in the seventies. Mr. Parsons was a former policeman, a fact which clearly made him uniquely qualified to teach fourth grade chemistry. He used to hurl blackboard erasers at my head if I talked in class. The wooden kind. He was a sadistic son of a gun. Maybe this is why I didn’t learn very much science. I think Mr. Parsons was hired because the headmaster had a thing for his wife’s alabaster skin and winsome smile.

In high school, my chemistry teacher was Mr. Packard, he of the throbbingly large nose and the insipidly monotonous voice. Chemistry under his guidance only existed in formulas, never in action. I copied down pages upon pages of molecular formulas, but don’t recall touching any equipment with my hands.

Mr. Hinge taught physics. After one year, he gave it all up to become a priest. I never got the chance to ask him where he stood on evolution.

My biology teacher was Dr. Upshaw. While not a medical professional, he took it upon himself to perform exploratory examinations on all incoming freshmen. Why I am not quite sure, but one was trained not to ask such questions in English boarding schools. Dr. Upshaw was a prober and pronounced the letter “s” as “sh”. “Looshen your troushersh” is a phrase I will not readily forget.

But that is all in the past. Thirty years later, I am learning to become open-minded about science. My daughter and her lab partner are encouraged to think outside the box, to design their own experiments based on what they find interesting. They are conducting a study of whether exercise affects short-term memory. This is cool stuff. I’m hoping it will shed light on the fact that the longer I go between visits to the gym, the harder it is to find my car keys. I have been assuming that it was just age, but there may be method behind my madness.

The budding scientists are developing an excellent understanding of the scientific process which will set them in good stead as they discover the wider world. They are holding themselves accountable and having to keep excellent records, traits from which I could learn as tax day rolls around each year. They have to discuss their results and be open to the possibility that they might be wrong. Dr. Upshaw needed a strong dose of that. They also get to design a really eye-catching poster – with colorful accents, intriguing vocabulary, appealing pictures, and attractive graphs.

My daughter’s science teachers are doing amazing work. Science is teaching her to think for herself, to use her resources wisely, and to be inquisitive about her world. Where was that when I was in school?

Over The Moon - part 2

On Tuesday November 25, the Denver Post published my essay 'Painting Pottery' under several headlines - all of which are more fun than my own! - "A dad fires up his inner artist", "Inner artist wins out over party pooper", and "Dad's feet of clay lead to pottery bliss". I have learned that there are people whose job it is just to write headlines. Thanks, guys! In addition, the folks at Ceramics in the City, the pottery studio where I had my breakthrough moment, were happy to be mentioned in the paper. They have linked both the Post essay and this blog on their website. I am pleased to be able to return the favor here.

It feels good to be getting out there. I am very grateful for my two families, Laura, Emma and Leah, and my Stanley BPS family, for being so excited for the publication and for all the amazing support.

The links to my Denver Post essay and Ceramics in the City appear at the bottom of this blog. Scroll down...

Enjoy!

Do Your Ears Hang Low?

There is an annual event at my school called the Arts Festival. It is not, as one may suspect, a visual smorgasbord of paintings and sculptures, but a living, breathing mass of the variously talented and genuinely motivated. Three concurrent stages of every kind of music, drama, comedy, dance, magic tricks - even science demonstrations. It involves a roving audience of more than 700 students, teachers, parents, and grandparents and a lot of noise.

The school tried a more sophisticated version once that showcased those who took violin lessons, who actually practiced their piano regularly, and demonstrated strong potential in their chosen field. It was a pageant of true talent, a salute to the few, and a nice exhibition. It was nothing like the Arts Festival.

The Arts Festival is a teeming throng of willing participants, a deferential shrine to the attitude of “I can”. In fact, the attitude is more than “I can”; it’s “I don’t really know if I can, but I really want to, I’m as sure as heck going to give it a shot and I don’t care what anyone thinks.” I love the Arts Festival.

I used to despise it. All I could focus on was the woefully under-rehearsed and an audience given free rein to wander between performance spaces. The result was chaos. Any student, from the youngest kindergartner to the most experienced eighth grader, could perform pretty much anything they wanted as long as it passed their teacher’s approval. They were assigned a stage and a time. The audience was advised not to get up and leave mid-performance, but often did. The upshot was an impatient crowd watching a collection of either painful or enjoyable performances, possibly both.

Then, a few years ago now, I came to understand something many people in my school community had known for a while. This wasn’t chaos. This was opportunity. A chance for anyone to strut their stuff, to wave their banner and claim their place among the artists.

My daughter had just turned six and was invited by a friend to read a poem together. This is the same daughter who had been known to go through life clinging to my trouser leg, who wouldn’t answer the questions of acquaintances we met on the street, and who certainly wouldn’t volunteer to raise a hand in class. She and her friend, a lass cut from bolder cloth, were assigned a spot on the smallest of the stages. At the appointed time, they stood up, two shy smirks across their faces, and began. Barely audible at first, they proceeded through the poem, gaining confidence as they went. What the audience soon cottoned on to was the fact that this poem had no end. Written as a circle, the final line fed back into the first. As the girls swept through the third or fourth revolution, they soon burst into great grins and laughter as they realized they had the audience as putty in their hands. Two cute kids in ponytails with no end in sight. This was a memorable beginning to my daughter’s career on the stage which she has been building for several years since. A defining moment indeed.

Now I understood. The Arts Festival, this disorderly and shambolic fiesta that I used to dread, had just given my little girl a place to unfurl her wings and feel success in public. It met her with support and appreciation. If we still had the old, more sophisticated, selective version, she would have sat among the onlookers wondering how those performers ever got so good, but perhaps never knowing how to reach those heights.

Since that moment, both my girls have seized the opportunity to appear at the Arts Festival. They sing, they dance, they tell jokes, you name it. I continue to be amazed each year as brave souls steal the spotlight for a minute or two and show us what they are made of: young ones appearing on stage for the very first time; seasoned teenagers performing outrageous dances in even more outrageous costumes at the exact time of life when they are supposed to be conforming to their peers. It is a marvelous spectacle of bravery and folly, virtuosos and novices, everyone who so desires showing that they can.

My most favorite Arts Festival moment occurred just this year and didn’t feature one of my own children. On the smallest stage, in a room that can hold forty people in a squeeze, a tiny child and her friend were preparing to perform. Dressed in a pretty pink dress, the younger one, the five year old daughter of a friend, looked adorable. Cherubic face, blond hair trussed immaculately, you could tell why, when a colleague wanted to appear at the school’s annual Halloween parade as Dr. Seuss’ Grinch, it was this little one whom he asked to be Cindy Lou Who. This girl was a perfect match.

However on this memorable occasion, Cindy Lou was not sure. She and her friend had signed up for their time slot. They had practiced. They knew the words and the moves, but the pressure of the big time was clearly overwhelming. Looking embarrassed, Cindy Lou turned to her friend, the older, wiser, six year old. From three rows back in the audience, I couldn’t hear the words they exchanged, but from the shaking of the head and the falling expression on the face, it wasn’t hard to ascertain that some serious second thoughts were in process. This little girl was not going to perform, not in front of this crowd, not anywhere that wasn’t in the privacy of her own bedroom. The crowd, her parents, other adults, some classmates and a smattering of older students waited patiently. The conversation on the stage wasn’t going well. Cindy Lou was adamant.

No way.

Her teacher, the loving, encouraging sort you would expect in a kindergarten teacher, scooted up to lend a persuasive hand. She encouraged, she cajoled, she might even have bribed for all I know, but to no avail. The little girl remained turned away from the audience, too shy to perform, too embarrassed to walk away. I could see her mother in the front row, at first torn between adding to the embarrassment by going up to rescue her precious bundle and staying back to see if her daughter would find the intestinal fortitude to continue. And then, in a moment of dazzling brilliance, mom found the perfect solution.

She whispered to her friend, sitting next to her, if she knew the words. For she, mom, wasn’t sure and Lord knows we didn’t need two red faces in one family. Thankfully mom’s friend did know the words – all of them. So did the little girl’s friend up on stage, the six-year old who also had not been sure of a way out. The two women in the front row began, gently and slowly, “Do your ears hang low?” The six year old and the kindergarten teacher joined in, “Do they wobble to and fro?” Cindy Lou turned around to see what was going on. A few more kids and adults in the front entered the fray, “Can you tie them in a knot?” A corner of a smile appeared on the little girl’s face. “Can you tie them in a bow?” The rest of the audience began to pick up the refrain. At this point a tiny five year old mouth may have started moving. “Can you throw them o'er your shoulder like a continental soldier?” Even the middle schoolers, kids in their early teens who normally wouldn’t be caught dead singing a song such as this, were moved to join in. And our little hero was definitely singing, “Do your ears hang low?”

Second verse. We now had a room full of people in full voice, “Do your ears hang high? Do they reach up to the sky?” Old and young alike were looking around catching the warm glow of recognition that this was something special. “Do they droop when they are wet? Do they stiffen when they're dry?” A few eyes moistened. Back on stage, the two girls were holding hands and facing the room. Mom and her friend wept in joy. “Can you semaphore your neighbor with a minimum of labor?” Many of us did not know all the words but we sang along merrily, repeating ourselves, making some of it up. It didn’t matter in the slightest. “Do your ears hang high?”

The song was over in a minute or two, but the fuzzy feeling will last a lifetime. The two girls hugged and the five year old ran into her mother’s arms. Mom’s friend snapped a picture but it will never capture the whole moment. The moment when a room full of people, aged two to eighty-two, but predominantly teens and tweens, came together in a spontaneous chorus of support and tenderness.

And I know that this would never have come to pass if it weren’t for the chaos and opportunity.

Confessions Of A Reluctant Artist

A few summers ago, I was strolling through the Cherry Creek Arts Festival in Denver admiring the incredible talent on display. Artists from around the country exhibited the most wonderful creations. In particular I remember a painter who created a giant likeness of Bob Marley with his hands, in sync with Marley’s music. That same summer, I heard my friends Barbara and Paul play violin with the Colorado Chamber Players and saw my buddy and mentor, Jamie Horton, portray Uncle Vanya on the professional stage. Artists, all of them; and I was envious.

How were these people so talented and I was not? I have vivid memories of sitting in art class, at age eight or nine, and being told that my drawings were below par. I struggled through clarinet lessons and found it hard to tell whether the next note was higher or lower than the previous one. I couldn’t dance. My stories were boring. I was so shy I never dreamt of trying out for the school play. I was asked to be the prompter once but I fell asleep halfway through the show. Yet I knew which of my friends were artists - the singers, the painters, the actors, the piano players, the poets - and I admired them. There were a few things I was good at – I played fullback on the rugby team and I could conjugate French verbs with the best of them – but an artist I was not.

And then a funny thing happened. I moved 7,000 miles away from my home in England and found a place called the Stanley British Primary School. I watched the children. They painted pictures, glorious pictures. They sang and danced, all of them, every week. They played dress-up in their classrooms and put on plays for each other. They wrote amazing stories. They sewed and built and glued. And most importantly, they were celebrated.

Teachers created safe, warm and inviting spaces where art could flourish. Everybody’s work was up on the wall. Everybody’s. All students, kindergartners through fifth graders, got up on stage for the musicals. And if more than a few people wanted to be Peter Pan, or Annie, or Dorothy, then there were more than a few. Nobody was told they couldn’t do it, so everybody did. “Be yourself; take risks; explore; learn from your mistakes; create; turn it into something else; play; go for it!” These are the messages the children heard all those years ago and they are the same messages my own daughters hear at the school today. And my children create. They know they have the freedom to make art and music and dance, wonderfully.

And here’s the thing: I don’t even know if they have more or less talent than I did at their age. It doesn’t matter because they believe they have. That’s what matters. Sure, they have days when the painting or the building is not going to plan, days when they are their own worst critics. But I still believe in them. So does their mother and so do their teachers. My seven-year old has informed me that, when she grows up, she is going to be a book illustrator and author, a concert pianist, a horse trainer, a teacher, and an artist – all at the same time. And I say, “Why not?”


As for me, I once got to help out in one of those plays with seven Dorothys. The next year, I got to help out some more and I soon found myself directing short sketches. A passion for the theater was born. Now I adapt and direct plays for children and I have learned something about myself. I may still have two left feet, I still don’t know which note is higher, I still draw stick figures, but I am an artist. And I will never again fall asleep during the show.

Photo: yes, that's me - Halloween 2008. Photo by Ann Sartori.