... the children ask me to call them gods and goddesses instead of boys and girls. Or they wanted me to remind them to take their nectar bottles to P.E. or have ambrosia instead of snack.
We recently had field day where our class took Greece as our country for an Olympic themed event. Realizing that there were twelve Olympians sitting on the thrones of Mount Olympus, the children decided that each should choose a god or goddess to be on the big day. In preparation, we took the characters on for weeks in advance. The children would play god and goddesses at recess, often incorporating bits and pieces of myths into the story lines they were acting out. I even convinced our math specialist to announce gods and goddesses names as a joke when calling children to the office.
Along the way I was telling this to another teacher who made a comment along the lines of, "Isn't it nice that these children can go to school where it is still cool to play gods and goddesses at recess? When my kids were in third grade it was anything but cool." By golly, I think she was right. The day before field day I was invited to be Hermes (since none of the girls wanted to be a god and we really needed all twelve represented).
It was magical! I have to admit that it has always been a bit hard for me to keep all of the characters and stories straight and it's all seemed a bit confusing, but something about cheering for Aphrodite while she did the egg race or chanting Apollo's name as he threw a water balloon shot put into the air really helped me to start making sense of it. These names started to come to life as I connected them to people I already had relationships with. Maybe there is something to playing god and goddesses. Maybe there is something to playing in general. The magic doesn't stop in their grade or shouldn't, anyway. If we let ourselves, I think this could be useful in middle school and as an adult. I just wished that I had joined the fun earlier.
Sabot really is magical. Or rather, Sabot preserves those things that are so endangered in many places in our world. In our experiences with another elementary program, I gritted my teeth almost every single day over some small element of life in that community - the way teaching was approached, the way adults interacted with students, the things that were "cool" or not cool. Since coming back to Sabot, nearly every day I have a moment of bliss as I witness something lovely - moments in nature, ways the children are with each other, ways the adults interact with the kids, the values held by parents and teachers. I love that 3rd graders still dig in the sandbox and the time I saw 4th graders under the shade of the trees, composing music together. I love that our resident handyman/artist brought the kindergarteners out to see an owl he had spotted in the forest. I love that our teachers have such rich intellectual lives and still consider themselves to be students in the world.
ReplyDelete