In continuation to my earlier post on Holistic education. I came across this poignant post and I heartfully share this wonderful initiative and reflections.
ATTENTION ALL TEACHERS AND PARENTS
Every Friday afternoon Chase’s teacher asks her students to take out a piece of paper and write down the names of four children with whom they’d like to sit the following week. The children know that these requests may or may not be honored. She also asks the students to nominate one student whom they believe has been an exceptional classroom citizen that week. All ballots are privately submitted to her.
And every single Friday afternoon, after the students go home, Chase’s teacher takes out those slips of paper, places them in front of her and studies them. She looks for patterns.
Who is not getting requested by anyone else? Who doesn’t even know who to request? Who never gets noticed enough to be nominated? Who had a million friends last week and none this week?
You see, Chase’s teacher is not looking for a new seating chart or “exceptional citizens.” Chase’s teacher is looking for lonely children. She’s looking for children who are struggling to connect with other children. She’s identifying the little ones who are falling through the cracks of the class’s social life. She is discovering whose gifts are going unnoticed by their peers. And she’s pinning down- right away- who’s being bullied and who is doing the bullying.
As a teacher, parent, and lover of all children – I think that this is the most brilliant Love Ninja strategy I have ever encountered. It’s like taking an X-ray of a classroom to see beneath the surface of things and into the hearts of students. It is like mining for gold – the gold being those little ones who need a little help – who need adults to step in and TEACH them how to make friends, how to ask others to play, how to join a group, or how to share their gifts with others. And it’s a bully deterrent because every teacher knows that bullying usually happens outside of her eyeshot – and that often kids being bullied are too intimidated to share. But as she said – the truth comes out on those safe, private, little sheets of paper.
As Chase’s teacher explained this simple, ingenious idea – I stared at her with my mouth hanging open. “How long have you been using this system?” I said. Ever since Columbine, she said. Every single Friday afternoon since Columbine.
Good Lord.
This brilliant woman watched Columbine knowing that ALL VIOLENCE BEGINS WITH DISCONNECTION. All outward violence begins as inner loneliness. She watched that tragedy KNOWING that children who aren’t being noticed will eventually resort to being noticed by any means necessary.
And so she decided to start fighting violence early and often, and with the world within her reach. What Chase’s teacher is doing when she sits in her empty classroom studying those lists written with shaky 11 year old hands – is SAVING LIVES. I am convinced of it. She is saving lives.
And what this mathematician has learned while using this system is something she really already knew: that everything – even love, even belonging – has a pattern to it. And she finds those patterns through those lists – she breaks the codes of disconnection. And then she gets lonely kids the help they need. It’s math to her. It’s MATH.
All is love- even math. Amazing.
Chase’s teacher retires this year – after decades of saving lives. What a way to spend a life: looking for patterns of love and loneliness. Stepping in, every single day- and altering the trajectory of our world.
TEACH ON, WARRIORS. You are the first responders, the front line, the disconnection detectives, and the best and ONLY hope we’ve got for a better world. What you do in those classrooms when no one is watching- it’s our best hope. http://momastery.com/blog/2014/01/30/share-schools/
Is the form you see
Exactly the form I see
Perhaps they differ
In the way we choose to interpret.
Is form the mark of reality
Does being formless makes it unreal
Is form the contention
To know the real and unreal.
Forms are shaped by intentions
In dedication & deliberation.
For forms become fleeting memories
Perishing in the sands of time.
While the formless evolve in the heart
Holding up to unfathomable faith
They may live on in the silent knowing
Of unspoken trust in the being.
Discernment of the forms
In the inner recesses of the heart and the mind
Waltzes the consciousness of the being
In States of knowing ,of the truth of light
A light of wisdom
That takes many forms
Million times over
To show the path of truth.
The path is lit
As the steps are taken
The forms manifest in the interactions
Of vibrations in resonance.
Between these Illuminating illusions
Of the form and formless
What is real and unreal
All are just reflections in the dimensions.
In the beam of even one moment of truth
Is the convergence of envisioning
Forms and formless become one
Conveying the message safely home.
Grateful for this moment
With this day I complete 300 days of writing continously and publishing my works on WordPress.
Gratitude for the creativity from within and thankful for the experiences that allowed me to go into witness mode.
As a writer there is a space for thoughts to collect and flow as and when you feel like it.
This gathering of thoughts is moments of reflections in ruminations
Of life experiences
Of circumstances
Of happenings
Of situations
Of silences
All resounding reverberations in the responses to the resonances.
Writers need to be grateful…
Writers without pressure
Are at ease to allow thoughts
To seed as they germinate
And settle as they arise in time.
A far cry from spoken words
That simply must happen
When the speaking happens
For it its often relentless in the flow
Unchangeable and undoable
A dare into the unknown
Discover your truths
