The Blessing of a Skinned Knee

 

Wendy Mogel is a psychologist who focused her efforts on counseling harried families looking for help with child rearing. Frustrated by her sense that efforts to provide assistance to families was not yielding satisfactory solutions for them or for her, she went in search of other approaches to add to her tool bag. Eventually she found her way to Judaism's teachings, from which she distilled nine blessings, and she relays her story and the blessings in The Blessing of a Skinned Knee.

Mogel's book had been on my radar for awhile, but I had been reluctant to read it, as I thought it might be overly dogmatic when it came to pushing a religious approach to parenting. The full name is The Blessing of a Skinned Knee – Using Jewish Teaching to Raise Self-Reliant Children. Turns out, I was rather off in my uninformed pre-assessment!

The ideas Mogel espouses resonate with me on two levels – as a parent and as a teacher. Essentially, she is saying that kids thrive when they are given time to be themselves (curious, relaxed, introverted, extroverted, loud, quiet, exploratory, playful – you get the idea). However, they do need consistent and tempered boundaries to help them develop into mindful adults. Not too many of us would disagree with either of these ideas. With that said, Mogel has run into many parents who, often with good intentions, are trying to mold their children into something other than what their children are. And these same parents are attempting to discipline via democratic principles and seeing themselves as friends with their children, rather than placing a stake in the ground as the adults in charge of child rearing.

As Mogel delved into the study of Judaism, she encountered many tenets that she could apply to her counseling practice, and she presents the tenets as blessings described in a straight-forward, non-reproachful style, complete with anecdotes and personal reflections. She is not lecturing, just sharing guidance. Here are the nine blessings:

  1. The Blessing of Acceptance: Discovering Your Unique and Ordinary Child
  2. The Blessing of Having Someone to Look Up To: Honoring Mother and Father
  3. The Blessing of a Skinned Knee: Why God Doesn't Want You to Overprotect Your Child
  4. The Blessing of Longing: Teaching Your Child an Attitude of Gratitude
  5. The Blessing of Work: Finding the Holy Sparks in Ordinary Chores
  6. The Blessing of Food: Bringing Moderation, Celebration, and Sanctification to Your Table
  7. The Blessing of Self-Control: Channeling Your Child's Yetzer Hara
  8. The Blessing of Time: Teaching Your Child the Value of the Present Moment
  9. The Blessings of Faith and Tradition: Losing Your Fear of the G Word and Introducing Your Child to Spirituality

 

Two notes on the blessings. The first has to do with #3, which is also the book title. I once heard an independent school head share an anecdote about summer vacation. In the process of exiting a building, the head was walking down a short flight of steps, when suddenly the head tripped and fell. Ultimately, the head was okay, but the lesson the head chose to share with faculty was "You can never be too careful." That lesson always struck me as being conservative and overprotective; it left no room for risk taking, exploration, discovery. The lesson I would have taken is "You can fall down and get up again." Hence, Mogel's Blessing of a Skinned Knee.

The second note relates to #7. If you are like me, the term Yetzer Hara is not in your daily vocabulary. Yetzer Hara is the "impulse for evil" and is balanced by the Yetzer Tov, "impulse for good". Mogel explains that the yetzer hara is a positive because "it is made up of some of our most robust traits. Curiosity, ambition, and passionate desire all derive their energy from the yetzer hara. … While the yetzer hara should be treated with extreme watchfulness, it must not be eliminated…it is our juice, our spark, our zip." Hence, as parents we need to learn how to help our children channel their yetzer hara energy.

For more of my thoughts about this book, I invite you to read The Blessing of a Skinned Knee on my yogajournal blog.

Guests of the Sheik

I picked up Guests of the Sheik over December vacation, after family had headed home. With the start of school looming. I was starved for a book to read, and found this one lying around on the kitchen counter. As one of the books for a course in Cultural Anthropology taken by our younger son, he had shared the book with his older brother, and there it was on the table, calling to me. At first, based purely on the title, I thought it was a work of fiction, and picked it up to read the blurb on the back cover.

A delightful, extremely well-written, and vastly informative ethnographic study, Guests of the Sheik is an account of the author's two-year stay in the tiny rural village of El Nahra in southern Iraq. To help her anthropologist husband gather data, Mrs Fernea agreed to dress only in the all-enveloping black veils of the women of the harem. Although she shared a small mud-brick cottage with her husband, her daily life was spent only with the women of the town, for in this polygamous society there existed no social communication between the sexes. The hardships were many but the rewards greater, especially for the readers of this extraordinary narrative: this volume gives a unique insight into a part of Middle Eastern life seldom seen by the West–a life of the women who have no outwardly apparent role in society, but whose thoughts and ideas are now emerging with force and helping to shape modern Middle Eastern society.

I opened the cover to peruse the book, and was hooked by the first sentence: I spent the first two years of my married life in a tribal settlement on the edge of a village in southern Iraq. While the story sounded interesting, I was immediately curious about the woman who wrote this book in the 1950s. Elizabeth Fernea became enmeshed in, and enamored by the Middle East, and wound up spending her life demystifying it for others through teaching, writing and film making.

As for Guests of the Sheik, I found it to be a page turner, filled with fascinating descriptions of the people and community in El Nahara. I kept thinking back to the 1950s; while Elizabeth was living in El Nahra, I was two years old, growing up on Long Island just 20 some miles east of New York City, and my childhood and teenage years would form an experience so completely different from that of the people of this small rural village in southern Iraq.

Reading her book, I was intrigued as a woman, a parent and a wife. I tried to put myself in Elizabeth's place and wonder how I would have reacted. I tried to get a sense of her husband, Bob, and decided she was a far more flexible and forgiving spouse than I might have been. And I tried to see life through the eyes of the women Elizabeth profiles. By the end, I was left thinking about how difficult it can be to have a clear understanding of people who are not like us, and how important it is to spend time with people to garner a better understanding of the complexities of geography, sociology, ethnicity, economics, and all those factors that make one part of the world (indeed, sometimes one part of a country) so different from another part.

For more about Elizabeth Fernea:

Robert Fulghum's "It was on Fire When I Lay Down on it."

A close friend and colleague (from whom I have learned much these past seven years) shared this copy of Fulghum's writing with me in the spring of 2009 as we were planning for the fall opening faculty meetings. Part of this piece figured into our introduction to the simulations and workshops we did that September. 

In an effort to reduce the amount of paper I have in file drawers and loose leaf binders, here is a pdf of the article. If you haven't read a pdf online before, try reading it in full screen.

Flipped in Advisory

Back on June 15 of this year I wrote about Flipped by Wendy Van Draanen, my school's summer reading book for all 7th and 8th graders. I quite enjoyed the book, and throughout the summer ideas about how to discuss the book swirled around in my mind. While there would be discussion questions provided, I wasn't keen on doing a standard book discussion with 18 kids.

Fast forward to this past Friday, when all of the 7th and 8th grade advisories, in their separate groups,  spent a period talking about Flipped. Here's what we did…

At the start of advisory we asked all 18 students to line themselves up in age/birthday order. We then plucked a student from either end and one from the middle to form the first group, continuing on in this manner until there were 5 groups of 3, each with someone from the beginning, end and middle of the line. The groups were given 5 minutes to refresh their memories about the book and charged with making sure that everyone in the threesome knew the basic story line. At the end of the time, each group was asked to share a main event from the book, with the first request being for a brief summation of the story (which forms the trunk of the tree). From their responses I drew a word tree on the board.

The reason for placing the events in the shape of the tree is that a tree was a major component of the story. The words in red are the responses given to the second question noted below. Once the kids had finished pulling out main events from the story, I put two questions to them.

• Since there are so many meanings of the words Flip/Flipped,  what are ways that you use the words or what meanings do the words have?• What meaning does the tree have in the story?

Snack was delivered right around when the kids were giving their word choices, and the food helped make for a relaxed yet focused conversation. Each word suggestion prompted someone else to share their word choice, and this sequed to sharing times in our lives when we flipped or an event or person flipped that impacted us. This was the most poignant portion of the discussion, and the aim of the entire activity – to personalize the book and use it to bring a group of 18 students and their advisors together in an ongoing process of supportiveness. We didn't exactly flip head over heels for one another, but we sure managed to share some laughter, seriousness and comaraderie!

Oh, and if you are curious about the book, it's coming out as a movie sometime this fall and you can catch the trailer on the Warner Brothers site.

Yardsticks – Chip Wood

Am reading this book

while sitting on our deck

that overlooks Otter Creek

and wondering why we bring so much of our education indoors. When our 19 year old was in middle school, he made a telling observation during the winter. Why was it, he wanted to know, that school keeps us indoors during the sunniest and best part of the day. I have to wonder the same thing. All the research notes the importance of exercise, novelty and movement on the learning process. Especially during the winter, when it is not uncommon for people to miss the sun, feel a bit sluggish and want to hibernate, we should be getting both young bodies and the bodies of us not-as-young teachers up and out and moving.

This all springs to mind in the middle of a warm summer's day, thanks to Chip Wood's Yardsticks and here is Chip's site.

Yardsticks provides a guide for where children are developmentally from ages 4 to 14. Each age level begins with a description of children at that age, followed by descriptions of physical, social-emotional, language and cognitive guide posts for that age. These same areas are then broken down into patterns that are likely to emerge in school in terms of development, along with suggested ways to engage this age group within the curriculum. There is an extensive set of resources, a birthday cluster exercise, two introductory chapters covering Developmental Considerations, and an explanation of viewing Yardsticks as Broad Guidelines.

I am finding this book an excellent resource as a teacher, and wish I had my hands on it back when our kids were younger. I leave with the two opening quotes:
How old would you be if you didn't know how old you were? –Satchel Paige

In order to be treated fairly and equally, children have to be treated differently. –Melvin Konner

The Complete Guide To Service Learning – Cathryn Berger Kaye

By all counts, Cathryn Berger Kaye is the doyenne of service learning. She has written a multitude of books touching on a wide range of approaches to service learning, with The Complete Guide to Service Learning topping the list as the definitive bible.

Those of us on my school's Public Purpose Task Force were given this book to read over the summer. (For more information about the goal of this Task Force see The Public Purpose of Private Schools.) Berger Kaye's book is a jam-packed resource that provides a detailed explanation of what service learning is, research to support the benefits of service learning, a hefty book list geared to different ages and subjects, and practical ideas for implementation organized by 13 themes. A CD is included that contains over 20 reproducible forms and templates plus additional material.

According to Berger Kaye, service learning can be defined as a research-based teaching method where guided or classroom learning is applied through action that addresses an authentic community need in a process that allows for youth initiative and provides structured time for reflection on the service experience and demonstration of acquired skills and knowledge.

She anticipates the varied questions that teachers might have by providing questions and answers throughout the introductory chapters. I suspect that if someone comes up with an unasked question and gets in touch with her, Berger Kaye would have a response!

The first chapter explains in depth the concept of Service Learning, beginning with K-12 Service-Learning Standards for Quality Practice: (1)Meaningful Service, (2) Link to Curriculum, (3) Reflection, (4) Diversity, (5) Youth Voice, (6) Partnerships, (7) Progress Monitoring and (8) Duration and Intensity.

Of course, the book explains all of these in detail! To carry out these standards, a process is delineated, though keep in mind that while the process is sequential, many of the components overlap. The process consists of:

• Investigation – determining what resources exist within the student group, and what needs exist within the community
• Preparation and Planning  – figuring out what additional information is needed in order to get involved
• Action – carrying out the plan

• Reflection – a continual process between/among students, teachers and the community
• Demonstration – sharing the fruits of the process with others
Teachers will quickly figure out that this book was written by a teacher for teachers. Cathryn Berger Kaye leaves little out in her detailed approach, and her passion for this approach shines through. I am glad to have this guide for what is sure to be a bit of a change in how my school "does school".

Zeroing in on Impact

Along with the 30 or so other members of my school's Public Purpose Task Force, I was asked to read Zeroing in on Impact, a September 2004 article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. (The Public Purpose of Private Schools will give you an idea of the focus of our Task Force.)

The article discusses two tools for nonprofit organizations to utilize in fine-tuning their goals, how they go about achieving those goals, and how they measure whether or not those goals are met. The authors share the process undertaken by the Rheedlen Centers for Children and Families as it morphed into the Harlem Children's Zone. Intended impact and theory of change are the tools utilized by the Rheedlen Centers as they underwent their process, and the tools the authors see as necessary for guiding a nonprofit towards restating goals and prioritizing resources in order to achieve those goals.

- - - - -
Intended impact is a statement or series of statements about what the organization is trying to achieve and will hold itself accountable for within some manageable period of time. It identifies both the benefits the organization seeks to provide and the beneficiaries.

Theory of change explains how the organization's intended impact will actually happen, the cause-and-effect logic by which organizational and financial resources will be converted into the desired social results. Often an organization's theory of change will take into account not only its own resources but also those that others bring to bear.
- - - - -

The authors go on to elaborate upon intended impact and theory of change, clarifying how the process would work. The major issue I see is that we are going to attempt changes to the way our school has functioned these past many years. To do this successfully, so that people have a greater likelihood of not only "going along" with the change, but believably incorporating the change into their daily school lives, we will have to carefully construct and explain our vision. We will have to ensure that its scope is manageable either within the existing structure of our school, or be prepared to systemically alter that structure to support this new scope.

I am curious to see how this initiative plays out over the coming year. It could be the gorilla in the room, in the sense that like the folks earnestly watching the basketball game, they did not notice the person in a gorilla costume walking through the game. Or it could be the gorilla in the room, in the sense that the gorilla is all too noticeable and people do not move while it is present. (Hmm, maybe it will be a playful gorilla that everyone is willing to "play" with ;-)

Flipped - Wendelin Van Draanen

Flipped. That's exactly what I've done – flipped over Flipped.

An 8th grade Language Arts teacher at my school told me I would love this book. She was 100% correct. I may be 55 and a half, but that didn't stop me from completely relating to both Bryce and Julianna as they flipped turns telling their tale of the same events.

Sheesh, I even had tears in my eyes and got choked up as the book came to a close. I am a romantic at heart. I teach mostly middle schoolers. And let's face it, emotions related to love and friendship and family are not reserved for just middle schoolers.

This same LA teacher said that her past 8th graders had quite liked the book, which is one reason that all the incoming 7th and 8th graders, and their advisors (of which I am one) are required to read Flipped this summer. I have often had pause to think that young adult fiction is every bit as good as the adult counterparts. Or to put that another way, well written young adult fiction is not just for young adults; it appeals to us older adults, too. Emotions do not disappear as we get older (thankfully!), but presumably we become better able at dealing with them ;-)

I am looking forward to seeing what my new advisees have to say about Flipped, and am wondering if there's a way to talk about the story rather than just asking "So, what do you think?" The kids will be returning from summer vacation, our homeroom and advisory groups will be – for the first time ever – mixed groups of 7th and 8th graders, and I definitely don't want this to wind up being simply a required academic conversation. Hmm, food for thought. Perhaps this conversation could set the tone for our advisory for the year.

Ha, school has ended and here I am thinking about the next group of students. Surely I've flipped!

5 Minds for the Future - Howard Gardner

I have finished the first of my required summer reading books, and am already empathizing with students who are given required reading over the summer.
                                      

If this were not required, I would probably have put it down early on. Gardner's ideas made me think of Dan Pink's A Whole New Mind, which I found more interesting to read due to Pink's writing style and because I read it around the same time as Tom Friedman's The World Is Flat. The two books complement one another and combined provided a compelling set of ideas to mull over.

Gardner writes as if he is mussing aloud to himself, and his frequent parenthetical comments simply added to this one-way conversation. It struck me I was reading a long personal reflection.

With that said, here's the jist of Gardner's book. He believes there are at least five approaches, or habits of mind, to thinking about the future, and they are all necessary if we want to make positive change in the world.

The five minds, which to varying degrees overlap, are:
DISCIPLINED – This entails mastering a craft or subject area over the span of at least a decade, and then keeping current within that field.

SYNTHESIZING – Pulling together and combining what you know to demonstrate understanding in an area.

CREATING – Contributing original ideas to "extend knowledge".

RESPECTFUL – Understanding and appreciating the diversity of other people and ideas, and acting appropriately with regards to this diversity.

ETHICAL – Focusing on doing "good work", where "good" reflects an excellence of quality, consideration of the work's impact, and provides satisfaction to the doer.

None of this struck me as "new" or ground breaking, but since my school will be focusing for the next few years on Public Purpose and reimagining the Not for Self But for Service motto, I understand why we were asked to read the book. I'll be interested to see the discussion that comes out of our opening meetings in the fall.