Mister Dahl is a huge Louis L’Amour fan. Huge. Huger than huge. Huge as in, he has read every paperback he can get his hands on and often craves beans cooked over the fire. He can also put his ear to the ground and tell you from which direction the stagecoach is coming. My husband once told me that before the profoundly successful author began writing western novels, he paid his way traveling the world by doing odd jobs. He sailed the oceans as a deckhand, among other things, and built his repertoire of interesting life adventures by grabbing whatever he thought would make his world just a little broader. His education was informal, his classroom, the world.
I too have held a variety of jobs. Nothing on the scale of Mr. L’Amour, to be sure, but I have met some interesting people and toiled in my own living laboratory well outside my first earned degree of psychology. One of those jobs was working locally in a restaurant just minutes from our farm. I had waitressed in college ( the FIRST college experience), so I was familiar with the food service industry. Part of my duties included prep cooking in the back. My boss tried to get me proficient on the grill, but alas, I was too slow. I took the “short” out of short order.
I have also done janitorial work, been a daycare provider, labored in a ski resort (OK, that one was just plain selfish. Free season ski passes for my entire family?? Yeah, I’ll sacrifice for that…). Like Louis, I truly believe that there is no wasted experience in life. I learned something from each job that helped form my character and create interest in my hungry brain. I chose part-time employment for all those years of mothering so that I could be home for most my children’s waking hours. That, and I have lived most of my parenting years in rural areas, where jobs were scarce. You take what you can get.
To set the scene even further, let me spend a brief moment sharing my educational views on classroom environment. I am an adherent of several models of education, which I have rolled into one big wad of educational chewing gum and stuck on my proverbial desk. I adore Maria Montessori and her holistic approach to each child. I bow at the feet of such broad thinking partly because I am ninety-eight percent mother and two percent primary grade teacher. But it also makes perfect sense to me that a child cannot learn at peak capacity if their most fundamental needs are not met; food, sleep, shelter, and love. There is only so much I can do, obviously, but at the same time, there are a few things I can do to look after those critical areas.
I may or may not have spent time (I don’t go back and reread these posts. Probably should, but I don’t) describing the morning I scrambled eggs in the classroom to illustrate blending the individual sounds of a word. I plugged in my handy dandy hot plate, pulled a cast iron skillet out of my bag (I only ever cook in a cast iron skillet), and harkened back to my restaurant days. The children were ecstatic. They slurped eggs, and visited amongst themselves like old timers at the local café. And then they declared me the best teacher in the whole world (they were drunk on warm food and scandalous cooking in the classroom. They were sure it had never been done before). Then they began to wonder aloud why we couldn’t all just LIVE at school? We had pillows for story time, bathrooms for well, you know, and now we had hot food right in the classroom. “I’m asking my mom tonight,” one declared with yellow egg sticking to the side of his face. Someone else volunteered in my direction, “And you could be our mom.”
This topic surfaced again on Friday when I hauled my trusty, ancient Crockpot into the room and sliced apples from my very own tree to make homemade applesauce. We took turns stirring the bubbling brew, were intoxicated with its aroma all day, and added our sugar and cinnamon near the end. The lesson they were completely unaware I was reinforcing was our science unit on the senses. We used all five during course of that afternoon (well, OK, hearing was a stretch, but one of them helpfully offered that they had heard a plane earlier. Let’s go with that. Yeah, good enough…).
As we spooned our spiced cooked apples from cups, the Title reading teacher wandered in to claim a few students for their reading time. She stopped dead in her tracks when she took in the focused eaters and near empty Crockpot. Before I knew it, she had found a spot at the table and was spooning still-warm apples from her own cup. It suddenly felt like a family, of sorts. We could have been any farm family in Iowa or Kansas sitting around the dinner table, sharing simultaneously about our day and the going rate of corn prices. We WERE the Waltons. It felt nice.
The child who had previously been determined to move lock-stock- and-the-proverbial-barrel into the school suddenly paused his plastic spoon in the midair and asked, “Can we have pancakes tomorrow?” I began to laugh. “I’m serious,” he persisted. “We could all bring the stuff for it and then we could just stay and live here.” I guess he had decided that my cooking was good enough that he and his classmates would not starve, at any rate.
The mental image of that is too hilarious, really. Me teaching them all day, looking after them when school is done, stooped over my two burner hot plate cooking for them every meal… sounds like a dream come true, no?? Uh, no. Not really.
I mean, don’t get me wrong. I love them. Truly I do. But wow…… I… no, I can’t even mentally go there.
My short order cook image was further gelled by the small peace sign tattoo that adorned my left bicep. A gift from a certain precocious fourth grader who showers me daily with little proofs of her undying love and devotion. It might be a feather found on the playground, or a rock that is chipped on one end revealing sparkling minerals inside. She has proffered a caterpillar, a frog and would gladly bring a snake, if she thought I would accept it (I won’t). Her “happy place” is found in nature and she desires to share those things with those she feels will appreciate them with her.
On this particular morning she laid a tiny temporary tattoo on my desk in front of me. “It’s for you,” she always begins with. “Do you like it?” is without fail the second question. “Yes, I like it very much. I think I should wear it today.” She nodded solemnly. Yes, of course I should wear it today. There had never been any question in her mind about that. Moments later I emerged from the restroom inked and suddenly wishing I owned a Harley. Mrs. Dahl’s cool factor had just spiked enormously.
As my students arrived for the day, they each noticed my new body art and commented appreciatively. All except for one, that is. He gave a cursory glance at my arm and announced matter-of-factly, “Should have got a dragon.”
And so, as we ended our week on the first day of Fall, savoring the best offerings that Autumn has to give, my darlings dreamed of a Utopia right here in the Magic Tree House, and I silently thanked the Good Lord that such a thing was impossible. I do think it would be a fantastic premise for a class book. When I mentioned it to the students, they agreed but thought it should also have zombies and talking skeletons woven into the story line, so we shall see. I do not want to scare the stuffing out of younger sibling who would get the idea the once they enter the front doors of school as a first grader they are never leaving again, stuck 24/7 with the tattoo covered Mrs. Dahl.
My, oh my. Sailing the high seas as a merchant marine is suddenly becoming incredibly attractive…
should have been "MOM".
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