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Letters From The Head
January, 2010 Volume 3, Number 5 From the Head of School Early in my teaching career, just a couple of years out of college, I had the immense good fortune to get a job at the International School of Kenya, located in a coffee plantation just north of Nairobi. (The coffee we drank at the school, unfortunately, was terrible.) At twenty-three, there were many reasons to feel disoriented. I was living nine thousand miles from home. The color of my skin made me an anomaly, which was an illuminating experience. At approximately the same salary I’d been making as a teacher in the States, I vaulted from near the bottom of the income bracket to way up near the top, at a time when the average Kenyan was earning $300 a year. Most of the people I met spoke three languages: my students were worldly kids from all over the globe, and Africans generally spoke a tribal language like Kikuyu, a lingua franca like Swahili, and a European language—in Kenya, that was English. But one of the most destabilizing factors of living in Kenya had nothing to do with culture. The weather was warm all the time. Although it lies on the equator, Nairobi doesn’t have the heavy, tropical heat of the Congo basin or Nigeria—at five thousand feet if altitude, it’s too high up in the clouds for that. At its hottest; ninety degrees; coolest, fifty-five. It’s like Hawaii. This made me, to put it medically, crazy. As a native of Michigan, I needed seasons that had the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Winter, cold! Springtime, mud! Summer, hot! In Kenya, there were a couple of months when a gentle rain would fall early in the morning, brightening up the bougainvillea along the drive from my leafy suburb to the ISK campus. That was it: the wet season. It was hard for me to grasp that time was passing. I’d walk out to the gazebo in bare feet with a cup of tea and a stack of papers to grade, thinking, Is it February? May? There was no way to tell. Not only that, in an equatorial country, the sun rises at six in the morning and sets at six p.m. all year long. You have to love winter to live in our northern latitudes, or at least have some strategies for finding contentment. Watching the ice crust out on the bay, a few more feet a day, is a lesson in the inexorability of time. Sledding down an Old Mission hill with the kids is pure pleasure: part velocity thrill, part slapstick comedy, part anticipation of the Dutch hot cocoa that awaits. As the snow blankets the land, there is a sense of common experience. To illustrate this, here is James Joyce, in the final paragraph of Dubliners . . . . . . . . . . Snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead. In winter, we share the experience of suffering a little, just as we share the joys of winter’s beauty and of its unique activities. It is January now, and, although we feel winter just begin to settle in, it is worth remembering that already the days are getting longer. Our land is regenerating, reforming, evolving. Let’s enjoy the season. Karl Sikkenga December, 2009 Volume 3, Number 4 From the Head of School “Today for show and tell,” says Calvin, holding out a tiny box, “I’ve brought a tiny marvel of nature: a single snowflake.” This is the comic I chose for the cover of our coursepack for the opening faculty workshop on September 1. “I think we might all learn a lesson from how this utterly unique and exquisite crystal turns into an ordinary, boring molecule of water, just like every other one, when you bring it in the classroom.” He tosses the box over his shoulder and walks toward the door. “And now, while the analogy sinks in, I’ll be leaving you drips and going outside.” Some of the appeal of the school scenes of ‘Calvin & Hobbes’ is in the straight slapstick comedy: the slug sandwiches Calvin claims to have in his lunch, or the dashing classroom cameos of Stupendous Man. Many of us may also recognize the cold terror of facing a bully like Moe (‘Never argue with a six-year-old who shaves,’ advises Calvin) or the terrifying cootie-laden ickiness of girls. Beleaguered teachers may recognize the source of Miss Wormwood’s habit of drinking Maalox straight from the bottle in class. But Bill Watterson, an acerbic and keenly observant critic, has loftier comments to make too. “Oh good!” cries Calvin, sitting at his desk in class, waving a sheet of paper. “A true or false test! At last, some clarity! Every sentence is either pure, sweet truth or a vile, contemptible lie! One or the other! Nothing in between!” He regards the paper for a moment and flips a coin. When commanded to use his own words on a history test, Calvin follows the letter of the law, making them up as he goes along. In another strip, he asks, “Why in the world am I waiting in the pouring rain for the school bus to take me somewhere I don’t even want to go?” It’s a remarkable, atmospheric drawing, all vertical lines and dark, freezing misery. Calvin waits. At last he observes, “I go to school but I never learn what I want to know.” There is an epic three-week story of Calvin absolutely blowing it time and time again in researching a report on Mercury with his partner and nemesis, Susie Derkins. I am a great advocate of collaborative work in class, often referred to as cooperative work. I prefer my term, since ‘cooperative’, like ‘tolerance’, implies that you merely put up with your fellow human rather than valuing her contributions. But it’s healthy to remember that, once in awhile, it’s an achievement to manage not to kill each other. The other messages are clear enough. True-false questions have huge limitations and mimic precious few situations in the wider world where knowledge is employed in meaningful ways. Teachers who can’t or won’t explain why a day’s activities are valuable run the righteous risk of losing their students’ attention and respect. And, even as working together is beautiful at its best, classrooms that don’t nurture the individual genius of each child can stifle anyone. In fact, much of the genius of Watterson’s critique of schooling happens outdoors. I don’t think it’s an accident that Calvin declares, “I’m going outside” when he abandons show and tell. When he tears himself away from the television, when he is liberated from the prison of school, he can generally be found out in the woods with Hobbes. (Watterson noted wryly that Calvin’s backyard appears to border on a national forest.) When he’s excited—whether it’s by a snake, a dinosaur, a charcoal briquette, a dead bird, a snowman, a death-defying toboggan—Calvin has adventures. He learns. He just doesn’t know he’s doing it because he’s having too much fun. Karl Sikkenga November, 2009 Volume 3, Number 3 From the Head of School This morning, Inga Chuinard and I happened to be walking our preschoolers up the stairs at the same time. For those of you keeping track at home, it was our ninety-fourth consecutive miserably rainy Monday. Inga and I began chatting about Seattle, where forty-one degrees and drizzling passes for a sunny day. I commented that it’s no coincidence that the newfound American coffee culture was launched in Seattle. What better way to live in a day like this than indoors, by a window, with a hot drink, reading a book? Then again, there we were—out in it. One way to say that a person is impractical is to say that he or she ‘doesn’t have the sense to come in out of the rain’. But at Pathfinder you have to spend five or ten minutes out in it just to get your little ones to class. At Pathfinder you have to get out in it just to go to gym class, or music class, or the library. We hold this up as an inherent good—getting out in it. Shane organizes half her curriculum outdoors. Those snowshoes hanging from the ceiling of her room aren’t for show. And, as I tell guests, we aren’t a school with a bunch of trees on its campus; we’re a school in a forest. We’d better be out in it. Otherwise, what’s the point of this singular setting? It has to be said, though, that on a day like today, on a Monday like most of our Mondays have been this season, one of the true pleasures of getting out in it is going back inside. Generally speaking, the ideal of curling up by a window with a book and a steaming mug of goodness (coffee, cocoa, cider) is a rarity. Who has time? The answer is that our kids have time. In Trisha’s and Paula’s rooms, there are overflowing stacks of books and luxuriously comfortable little chairs. Trisha’s space even has mosquito netting for added elegance. Of course, Mary’s classroom has the iconic Nook, the coziest classroom space I know, rivaled only by Sarah Jane’s Sunflower Room at the other end of the building. Duncan has big cushy couches to which the middle schoolers can retreat when it’s time to read or reflect. Even the Fireside Room has a deceptively deep couch that has nearly lulled a couple of visitors to sleep. Of course we are out in it every day. That’s Pathfinder. We’re an intensely communal place where kids and adults join together all the time for adventures in the big world of the forest. But we also find our way to private spaces, and quiet times, to keep looking for the paths and connections we’re constantly making in our own minds. BEAR Day gave many of us the gift of fresh books to explore. I’m not quite ready to call buckets of freezing Monday rain a gift, but then again I have been able to find moments to listen to the rain on the roof, the wind through the trees, and the surf on the bay. In those sounds I hear an invitation to fluff up an extra cushion, fix another cup of coffee, and get reacquainted with the limitless world of books. These days I’m reading Hopes and Impediments by Chinua Achebe, Say You’re One of Them by Uwem Akpan, and a new edition of Queen Bees and Wannabes by Rosalind Wiseman. At bedtime, Abby’s reading Carolyn Keene’s Nancy Drew mysteries with Kaeli, while Evie and I have been spending time with the peerless Frog and Toad stories of Arnold Lobel. When you get in out of the rain, what are you reading? Karl Sikkenga October, 2009 Volume 3, Number 2 From the Head of School Lots of schools have an early event that looks like Pathfinder’s Fall Experience. All across the country, in September, there are kids harnessed to high wires, trust-falling into each other’s arms, sitting around campfires. It’s safe to say that no one else does it exactly like we do, though. For our early elementary teachers, Fall Experience is both marathon and sprint. Between treasure hunts, live birds of prey, picnics, face painting, and the absurdly adorable Camp Read-a-Lot, our littlest kids never knew where the next thrill was coming from. But their teachers knew, having set an impossible pace for themselves and then executed it so seamlessly that the children never felt rushed, nor aimless: the next adventure was always right around the immediate corner. Pathfinder third, fourth and fifth graders wandered the woods at Cap Hayo-Went-Ha on the shores of Arbutus Lake. Those guys felt safe enough to be spooked. After a full day of jumping, balancing, climbing and scooting, they gathered around a campfire to hear stories, dance, sing, and howl. I can attest that it was a deep, dark night—I’m pretty sure that was Mrs. Iott playing the banjo next to me, but I couldn’t swear to it in court, and I know for a fact that the trip back to the car with my guitar was a pitchier black than the walk to the campfire. I’d have been pretty creeped out at nine years old—it was slasher-movie enough for me at forty-one—but our kids’ firelit faces were rosy and bright, arms around each other, feet happily stomping. Perhaps it’s that Pathfinder children are accustomed to being in the woods. Our oldest students, over at Leelanau Outdoor Center, certainly had the air of old hands. Even after many years together, the middle schoolers continue to find new connections, novel solutions, and original questions. Even if they didn’t manage the hikes and high ropes with the flair of Ms. Pittinos—that is, in heels—they nonetheless demonstrated again the mettle of Pathfinder veterans; none more so than the eighth graders, who, with Shane, Duncan, and Sarah Jane, turned around immediately upon their return to campus on Friday and disappeared into another corner of the forest. Down in Manistee, they slept in rainy tents and managed a Pioneer first by spotting elk in the wild. For Pathfinder people, a couple of days in nature are not a novelty. It’s a deepening of our relationship to the true world around us. Geography matters on our campus, and to our kids. Anyone who’s climbed The Stairs twice in one morning can tell you that. Karl Sikkenga September, 2009 Volume 3, Number 1 From the Head of School Since the moment we arrived two months ago and settled into our home on the Old Mission Peninsula, people have been apologizing to Abby and me about the summer. ‘It’ll come along any minute now’, people say, with the rueful smile northerners wear. What it really means is, ‘This is as good as it’s going to get’. Our own rueful smiles say, ‘Believe me, there is nothing to apologize for’. It isn’t only that the region around Grand Traverse Bay is as beautiful as any other corner of the world. Nor is it that we have been made to feel warmly welcome by everyone whose paths we’ve crossed, from the great people of Pathfinder, to the strangers who run the fruit stands and markets of the peninsula, to the staff and kids of the summer camp. It isn’t that the weather has been, frankly, an absolute idyll (I love the cool evenings—perfect for walking the baby to sleep). I think that what has made us feel the deep, plangent pleasure of this summer more than anything else has been the sense that this is the right place at the right time. The extraordinary challenges of the past two years for the Pathfinder community have galvanized so many of us: faculty, families, alumni, even our older kids, who are acutely conscious of what was nearly lost here, and what has been rescued. There is a settled quality to the community, contented in the school’s newfound and hard-earned stability, and at the same time a popping sort of excitement, something like glee, in the possibilities of the near and long-term future. We are crackling to get started with school and at the same time gripped with optimism about where Pathfinder will be in five years, ten, fifty. This year will carry with it deeper conversations about the wonders of learning. Allow me to share one belief of mine that I believe will become a crucial element of our work in the years to come. Learning is the stuff of life. It is the heart of human experience. Without learning, we do not feel alive. The problem with much schooling is that it dissociates learning from pleasure. Our goal at Pathfinder is to nurture this love of learning. At times this means that the children of our community are racing through the woods; at times it means that they are building musical instruments; at times it means that they are writing from the heart. Ultimately, we seek to match learning with pleasure not merely because it is nice to have fun, but because we believe it is the best way to learn. It is not coincidence that our students ace standardized tests. We don’t teach to these, except to prepare our kids for their formats. Where some schools rely on these results for funding, and therefore are compelled to teach a narrower curriculum focused upon test results, we are fully independent, free to pursue the curriculum we believe is best for our kids in a rapidly changing world. Why, then, do our eighth graders average collegiate-level results? I believe it is because they love a good challenge and enjoy figuring out solutions. Everyone knows the feeling of seeing a way forward through the murk. It is delightful. We seek to preserve and feed that spark. In other words, we teach the way we do because we want the children who pass through Pathfinder to be happy and successful, and we believe that those two characteristics are closely intertwined. The summer of 2009 has been a wonderful time for our family. But we love autumn too. The bite of the morning air, the low sun over the lake, the singular beauty of flame-red trees: there’s an invigorating quality to the life of autumn that always sings of possibility. Thank you for providing us with the opportunity to be a part of such an exceptional place, at such a hopeful time. Karl, Abby, Kaeli, Evie & Roxanne Click to download: Karl letter BTS.pdf |