High School P.E. Yoga

Last week my work took me out to the small high school in St. Paul. A rural school set in the midst of the fertile agricultural lands of the mid-Willamette Valley.  The landscape is flat as a pancake, and a patchwork of orchards, hop fields, nurseries, afalfa, strawberries and the people who work and harvest these crops.

My assignment was 2 mornings as the middle school P.E. teacher. P.E. was never my favorite gig, as my field is English Ed., but after taking roll, when the class was supposed to spend 5 minutes on warm-ups, my mouth suddenly opened to say "I'm a yoga teacher, and anyone who wants to do yoga stretches instead of laps come over here to this corner."
Substitute teaching is very much improv, and here I was winging it... not sure what would occur, given the large class including a number of boisterous 12 and 13 year old boys.
At the mention of the word 'yoga' several of the girl's eyes lit up, they smiled and I could hear a small chorus of "All right! I LOVE yoga. Oh this is so cool!"
As I began I was thinking, "OK I hope this isn't crazy!"
Fully half the class came into my corner... even a few boys showed up, and almost all of the girls. Most were watching me intently as I quickly scanned my brain for anything we could do with shoes on, no mats, and me having to have one eye out on the rest of the class, none of whose names or behaviors I knew yet.

We did a few stretches and combinations of tree pose balances. The kids were fabulous and sweet. The usual adolescent "everything is stupid" attitude was not on display. What a small joy. No, not small, it was a revelation. One of the biggest obstacles in education is that ennui against enthusiasm. This very thing has kept me from wanting to be in large classrooms. Today, however, I saw a glimmer of what could be.
One girl, Rachel, the angel of my day, (there is usually one) came up after class, looked me straight in the eye and said, "Thank you for teaching us yoga today." My heart melted. That is what I took home with me, after 4 hours of listening to basketballs and shouts reverberate inside gym walls, and the constant supervision of packs of wild, unconscious boys. (I later learned that some of them had urinated into the soap dispensers in the boys locker room.)
It was a 2 morning gig, and on the following day the principal joined me for the last class. The activity of the day was weightlifting. There wasn't a good venue for yoga stretches, and it felt harder to fit them in, so I accepted the routine. One of the comments the principal made after class, a wonderful teacher by the way, was that kids this age are very 'body unaware'. So true, and true for many adults too.

I can't help thinking how wonderful it would be to offer yoga to school kids, to give them early opportunities to learn focus through body awareness. There are some schools who offer yoga, and I hope it will become a trend. It could be part of the evolutionary change we need to make to continue our survival as this complicated species with a the big brain which often isn't our best quality.

Working with middle school age kids is giving me hope, actually. I believe they will find new holistic ways to see the world and to live. They will have to, and maybe on some level most know this, even if popular culture tells us otherwise.

Applesauce Carrot Cake

Here is a cake recipe, in honor of my Arlyn, for  whom I waited 3 weeks past his due date, finally the pangs of labor beginning 33 years ago today. I can still see the green trees and the grass warm from spring sunshine in the clearing near our cabin where I passed the first hours of labor. You know, the ones where you think, oh, this isn't going to be so bad...
He finally joined us on the outisde at 3 am on April 10.
Today I made a birthday cake for our birthday lunch tomorrow. It turned out so well, I have to share it:

Applesauce Carrot Cake

2 c hot applesauce (homemade gravenstein canned last summer is lovely!)
1 1/2 c organic cane sugar
1/2 c brown sugar
2 farm fresh eggs
1 c shredded carrots
3/4 c veg oil
2 teas allspice
2 teas cinnamon
1 teas nutmeg
1/2 teas salt
1 1/2 teas baking soda
1/2 teas baking pwder
2 c. unbleached white flour (preferably Bob's Redmill)
1/2 c. whole wheat flour        "
1 c. chopped walnuts         

Heat the applesauce in microwave for 2 min. Blend eggs, sugars, and oil together. Mix in applesauce and carrots., blend again. Add dry ingredients, blend to consistency for cake batter, adding flour or applesauce as needed for consistency. Bake at 350 for  40 minutes in cake pans.
Muy rico, very rich.
Frost if desired... buttercream or cream cheese frosting.  Decorate with your baby's name, or whoever the cake is for.
Birthdays remind me of how lucky I am to have so many people to love in my life. spending time making a real cake with first rate ingredients is my way of going to the place of gratitude.

April is the Cruelest Month....

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
                       T.S. Eliot, "The Wasteland"


Spring here, so heart breakingly green.
...the tiny pink flowers in the woods, and trillium.
I pick fresh nettles to have them for lunch
they give me strength for more garden work.
The squall comes in at 5, sending me back inside
by the fire.

10 years ago, we thought it should be warm,
My Mom and I,
leaving on the train for the east,
 but no.
The plains were mud and sleet, 
The Mississippi flooding our bridge
The snow
had barely melted in New York.

Eliot wrote of wars, the irony of new life upon the dull
land..
And I know, even in the heart hopes are too sharply bright
for the eyes, like wet spring green grass against the shifting sky

April is the cruelest month, only because of crocuses and cherry trees
Do they they know of their audaciousness?
I think not, as the white blossoms litter the muddy road
And we watch the rain for isotopes
We cannot see.

Bittercress as a Model for Survival

     Bittercress is the springtime weed which defies all efforts against it. As I pull hundreds from my yard and garden every year, I feel a relationship with this tenacious plant. I feel it telling me what it knows. It knows how to survive cold, lack of water, heat, bad soil, other agressive plants, being ripped up, being smashed, it seems almost indestructable. The only way to make certain it is stopped is to compost it before it goes to seed, or burn it.

As a metaphor for life, here is what I can learn from bittercress:

It begins growing in the winter, so it can flower as soon as the sun warms..... :)
It knows to hide between other similar plants, wrapping it's roots in such a way as to create more security against being extracted.
It's roots are like elastic, they grip the soil for dear life.
If uprooted, it has reserves in it's stems and roots which allow it to attach into concrete if necessary, seeking out any iota of water or soil to sustain any small part of it's ability to produce seeds.
It produces seed which flies out from the plant stem like trajectories when the plant is barely touched. 
It grows small and tough when conditions are harsh, and big and bushy when conditions are ideal.
It doesn't care if it is not liked.

I Want to Hear Colors

I want to hear these cold wet daffodils
as poetry in my storm tossed mind

I want to hear the world described
from out of the fog rolling through the trees down into the valley

In words that float or sing to which
I feel a dance coming on

I want to swim the gray air hovering over the garden
swim through it to the hidden
sun
Then afterwards I will know once more
what colors to paint the easter eggs

The dance of spring revealing itself again and again.

What are you Sinking About?

It is Friday evening, Viernes, and the start to a much deserved spring break for the teachers who live in the greater Portland area.  Teachers, go out and a have a few really good beers, laugh a lot, go off to a warm place... I am your fan. Let this be my fan letter!

Today I was given the opportunity to work a full day in a local Elementary School, so I feel an even greater kinship with the teachers in our midst. I must say it now, and with gravity, the teachers, classroom aides, staff in every field - they all should have an instant pass to heaven, they are all angels, they are the best humans, giving every day in ways those of us not at the 'front lines' of education could never imagine.


Picture this:
 A ten year old boy, in diapers, with limited reasoning capacity, laying on a bathroom floor...throwing a tantrum for an hour ....
while the little girl, 8 years old, who cannot speak, has to be fed intraveniously, cannot walk or speak.. she hears the shrieks of the boy and begins to thrust her legs spastically and bang her head against her wheelchair supports... while the 5 year old who cannot walk on his own, decides to spit at his teachers while they work closely with him.. while the staff calmly assesses the situation and talks kindly to the child, bringing him slowly back to reality.
Miraculously the end of the day comes, when we walk the children out to the buses, and a 7 year old who has limited communications ability suddenly throws up in the center of the hallway as the whole school passes by departing at the end of the day..... her aid saying "I don't have any gloves... ' and me, the newbie running to the office to find the health room and some gloves.

Not till I walk out the door headed for my car do I wonder if I have contracted some kind of stomach flu from the little sick girl, with whom I worked in close proximity all day.  I have family who cannot afford to get sick right now, so I must quaranteen myself, on this Friday night.

Again I wonder why those who work with children are put at the lower ends of the pay scale.  Such hard work, requiring far more that just the physical motions of work deserves huge rewards in a society based on justice. 
All this is going on while a nuclear reactor in our climate zone is melting down. This blog is not meant to be negative, only realistic. There is so much it seems we cannot talk about anymore, in this feel good, Pollyanna land. Where are we headed?  I have just joined the 'Coffee Party'.... for real.  Just when I think the cause is lost, I read about cool people with fabulous imaginations doing something proactive and positive. Viva la vida!
Someday when I am not fresh out of the epitome of a wierd day I will edit this essay, but if you see it now you get the full effect of where I am. ( The moon in the gloaming of this evening, one day away from full, but still shining white and magical in the night sky may or may not have something to do with this day... )
I hope we all have springs with flowers, some sun, new ideas, healing and love. If you would rather have passion than love, then her it is.... I hope we all have passion, I wish it for the world.

Kindergarten

Last night, when the job listing showed up in gray, the jackpot color, not the usual red "no jobs at this time", I read the words "Kindergarten" and immediately thought of 1990, the year my youngest son was a kindergartner, and I was his teacher's regular sub.  I knew all the kid's names, and the routine of the class.  I knew about Eli, the little guy with FES, and I had usually talked with Pat, the gregarious lovely teacher, at length in advance. I knew the lesson, the interval for recess, how the routine on the rug went. (Children adore routine).  I welcomed the chance to spend the day with my own son. It was a win/win, in our little rural school where everyone knew everyone, and the principal met the kids as they disembarked from the bus with a hearty welcome and a joke.
Teaching a pack of little ones who want anything but sitting still can be sort of like doing aerobics. I know this, and I know that unfamiliarity makes it much harder, but still, I was excited to be in  kindergarten again!

So, 22 years later I walked into a Kindergarten room, unrehearsed and right out of my new 55 year old life. They whupped me into shape right away. Little kids are so wonderfully transparent. Just when I thought I was a goner, I would put my hand on the shoulder of the kid who could not sit still, and felt him calm. I whispered in ears often, and this they listened to. We sang some songs, lullabies our parents sang to us. It was precious to hear the high child singing recount the song they loved best.  In a few years it will be impossible to get them to sing a song alone, in front of their peers. How lucky I felt today, letting them perform, gently reinforcing to the class how "we listen with respect".

At the end of my day with them, I wanted a small amount of closure, so I said, "I teach yoga, and we have a way of saying goodbye, namaste,.. ) and I bowed to them.  Every child's eyes were on me, they were still and silent for the first time in 4 hours. It was cosmic. It was the perfect way to end my morning with them.

I didn't practice yoga in 1990.   I wish I had, it  might have calmed me in my racing, anxious, fragmented young widowhood. It might have.

To be grateful now for my practice is what I have. To see little kids, and to always see my own kids within them.. To see myself mirrored in their guilless responses, and the future of the world in their eyes.