End of the Year Pep Talk From Cloudy Funkytown

My love is in being. My love is in writing poems, and letters. My love is in how I play, create, and share. My love is in my worst dancing. My love is in my laugh. 

My love is also in my struggle to share in what I feel is a meaningful way, in ways that will reach others. What do I do with all of my poems? My ideas? Where do I begin to find a home for the project I've been working on all year? Do I continue to teach and perform as I have in the past (I know the answer to that is no), or find new ways? Well, there's love in the not-knowingness, in this cloudy funkytown where I find myself, and a burble of excitement as well. Just enough, like a weak fountain full of pennies and dimes in the center of the roundabout.

An inspiration for me is the work of Corita Kent. I keep her Ten Rules for Students and Teachers pinned to a corkboard above my desk. It is brilliant, as was Corita. She was a force of love and artistic talent, and she shared her gifts as a teacher, social justice advocate, artist, and as a sister in the Immaculate Heart of Mary. I recommend her and Jan Seward's book, Learning by Heart: Teachings to Free the Creative Spirit. Each day when I look at the rules, one sings to me more than another. Today, Rules 4, 6, 9 and 10 are in harmony.

Corita Kent: Ten Rules for Students and Teachers

RULE ONE: Find a place you trust, and then try trusting it for awhile.

RULE TWO: General duties of a student: pull everything out of your teacher; pull everything out of your fellow students.

RULE THREE: General duties of a teacher: pull everything out of your students.

RULE FOUR: Consider everything an experiment.

RULE FIVE: Be self-disciplined: this means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.

RULE SIX: Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail, there’s only make.

RULE SEVEN: The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work all of the time who eventually catch on to things.

RULE EIGHT: Don't try to create and analyze at the same time. They’re different processes.

RULE NINE: Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It’s lighter than you think.

RULE TEN: We’re breaking all the rules. Even our own rules. And how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities.

HINTS: Always be around. Come or go to everything. Always go to classes. Read anything you can get your hands on. Look at movies carefully, often. Save everything—it might come in handy later.

Bloom's Taxonomy

The students will describe flowers they have seen.

The seed catalogs arrive daily, illustrations of zucchini and melon, photos of giant peonies. Hope. I throw them in the trash, then remember my preschool art class — maybe they can collage a garden, paste cutouts of roses on top of canceled roses. Their vision is the sky that lives in the ocean, one I wish I had, or remember having once, which is why I return, although this job won’t pay for even an hour of planning. The time clock app I punch on my phone allows the instructor to check in just fifteen minutes before class begins — the corporate idea of enough time to conceive a project, set up tables and chairs, gather supplies customized for students, and create a welcoming atmosphere for anxious toddlers.

The students will discuss animals in the ocean.

This week the class huddled around me as we read a book about the sea, and cut paper fish to glue onto flat, blue oceans.

The students will imagine and draw how their flowers will bloom.

I ordered too many seeds from the catalogs last year, romanced by glossy photos. A whole garden I purchased withered, some seeds, as they waited in the house, were gobbled by mice, the tomatoes we planted starved by drought.

The students will observe how to plant a seed.

Out of the 600 sunflowers I planted in concentric circles, a dramatic vision, six made an entrance, all separate from each other as if they were angry from an underground argument. The others were perhaps too old to sprout, or eaten by crows who watched as I planted on a rainy day in April. My fingers went white and numb.

The students will select their seed and plant it.

This year, I’ll plant sturdy, reliable zinnias. It takes two months for the carnival of colors to spin in wheels of ecstasy. A whole field becomes a tribute to Peter Max, the sixties and seventies, childhood birthday parties, sprinkles on ice cream, a glitter covered crown for bees and butterflies.

The students will predict how long it will take their seeds to bloom.

A few weeks from now my preschool students will press real seeds into dirt filled cups to take them home, watch and tend, or neglect. A real lesson. I will dream about it, analyze, prepare, produce the supplies, cancel the plan, decide to cultivate it, then mark each cup with a name. Who owns a daisy?

The students will cope with whatever does not grow.

The students will hope.