I am your student, and I have been taking notes

an essayic email from our Head Principal Cassie Thornton reflecting on the first two weeks of class:

I am writing while on a small vacation,
from the future of education.
I am your student, and I have been taking notes.
Not only have I learned what you taught me,
but I have learned about what it is to be a student,
and how I learn.

My best moments as a student so far have been when I have been enveloped in an experience.

Case #1:
‘Senior Movement’

The class was supposed to happen at 11 on a Saturday morning, July 3, but the crowd for the day had not yet arrived so it was delayed until about 3pm. The class was taught by Grace.

Grace had us gather around a coffee table she had brought, which she had painted, and she might have painted just for the class. She had come early to prepare tuna sandwiches, and she had asked me to help her make them because she had never done it before. She wanted to feed her students something healthy, clean, and that fit with her idea of health. We sat around a coffee table in the shade, drinking juice from tiny cups. I was transported to childhood and old age, but what’s the difference, at least my inhibitions were quieted.

Grace began class by talking about her experience taking care of her elderly father. He is 90 years old and no longer talks. He has Alzheimer’s and has had repeated strokes, limiting his ability to speak. He also stopped moving his body. Grace told us about how various hospitalizations and instances when he would lose control of his entire body and the health care workers around her and her father had excused him from the possibility of ever moving again. Grace decided that he should move and she began to help him by developing a daily movement regiment. For hours every day she insisted that he moved his arms and legs in simple repeated motions. Slowly he built strength back and at some point he was able to stand. She started by asking him to do a simple movement for less than a minute. She didn’t expect much but she insisted that he connected with his body. She also gave her father rules. Grace insisted that he did not wet the bed. She set expectations for him. She wanted him to have pride and she wanted him to help her take care of him. Her insistence proved useful for both of them. His dignity remained and Grace didn’t have to carry him to the bathroom anymore. Grace asked for what she needed in order to continue caring for her father, and her father responded.

As Grace shared this story, she acted out the movements that she had developed for her father to practice. Every time he gave up, had a new ailment, or was too weak, she insisted that he maintained this practice. If he wouldn’t lift his own arms, she would do it for him. She wouldn’t let his body die. Grace became the connection between her father’s mind and body.

Just as Grace insisted that her father connect with the earth through using his body, she insisted that we, her students, don’t give up on our parents and elders. She also wanted us to understand how much she has given up to take care of her father. Not because she wants praise, but because she wants us to understand her value as a person, because she fears that her work is going unseen and that her own daily practice has been exchanged for a life as a caregiver. I sensed that this class gave Grace some gratification for what she is doing. This desire for communication with a community of people who understand us can be satiated. It can be a class. It can be a project. It is life, which is a constant struggle to learn, understand, and to be heard.

One of the other students in the group asked everyone in the class of 8 people would explain their relationship to caring for their older family members. Some of us had connections to our familial roots, and others did not, but the need for connectivity to our own histories and the desire to offer reciprocity to the caretakers who raised us or who we are tied to biologically was very strong.

Being in this class made me wonder how my family history will develop as my organic family ages. I don’t have any traditional structure in my family. I am an only child of many parents, but I too want to honor my roots, as rhizomatic as they may be. I don’t want it to be a scary and mysterious part of my life, but a sturdy abstract one that I want to face with creativity and strength as Grace has.

The class was a success because I learned something functional– a technique. I learned about myself by listening to others, everything was tied to a real person with a story, and my attention was focused because Grace created an atmosphere for learning. This class employed my need to experience things physically, to see the practical implications of information, to relate emotionally, to sense and feel someone else’s experience, and to feel like a part of a community that I didn’t realize I had joined by being born.

Thanks Grace, thanks School of the Future.
Cassie

Now get ready for the final two weeks! It’s gon’ be a doozy!