Leavenworth

We spent President's Day weekend in a cabin in the snow with friends. It was a lot of friends, and a mansion of a cabin: 13 adults and 7 kids, eight bedrooms, two living rooms, huge double kitchen, hot tub, giant yard full of perfect snow, you name it. We knew about half the people fairly well and the other half just somewhat; we all got along great, including the kids. Each family took a meal and cooked for all 20 of us. Here we all are in cooking-and-eating mode:

The kids spent long hours outside building snow forts in the yard (the weather was great).

Subgroups of people went out skiing or sledding or snowshoeing, including Jordan, who learned XC skiing at Billings last year.

The kids came in for hot cocoa, extended sessions of Dungeons & Dragons, and movies in the 16-seat home theater. Adults hung out in the capacious living room playing board games, reading by the fire, or doing crafty things. There was much knitting, and also weaving and spinning (I kid you not, one friend brought a loom, and another spun wool into yarn in the corner like in a fairy tale). I learned to knit and made great progress on my first hat. Really, there were all the makings of a great winter holiday.

Sadly there was a very unfortunate event. Dale went XC skiing with a friend, and almost immediately fell, heard a nasty popping sound, and was in blinding pain. He had clearly done something horrendous to his ankle and spent almost the whole weekend in bed, resting and icing and compressing and elevating. Nothing like the fun weekend we had hoped for. The pain got better over the days we were there, and he was able to hobble around the house sometimes. But when we got back to Seattle, x-rays showed that he has not only a severe sprain, but also a broken fibula.

Ugh. He will be evaluated tomorrow for possible surgery and is looking at a long recovery time. So distressing how things can change in the blink of an eye.

Changemakers

Aaron's fourth grade class was supposed to do a unit on "Explorers," integrating their study of Washington state history with the literary genre of biography. But his teacher found that the selection of explorer biographies at a fourth grade reading level was unacceptably white and male. So she broadened it to "Changemakers," and had them put on a "wax museum" in which the kids embodied a gorgeously diverse crowd of leaders -- including Helen Keller, Rosa Parks, Marco Polo, the Lakota Sioux cousins Tatanka Iyotake and Tasunka Witko (Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse), Harriet Tubman, Sacajawea, Malala Yousafzai, Gertrude Bell, Abraham Lincoln, Neil Armstrong, Annie Oakley, and Juliette Gordon Low. You want to talk about changemakers? Talk to me about the elementary school teachers.

Of course the terrifically committed kids made it fantastic. They dressed, spoke, and acted as their characters (having researched appropriate dress), which is a developmentally awesome way for fourth graders to do experiential learning. I loved how respectful and informed they were about what they were wearing, while also being completely noncommercial and creative. They also painted portraits of their character and made a poster to present everything they had learned. Each poster had a paper button on it that you could press to signal the kid to talk about a particular aspect (childhood, achievements, fun facts). When not speaking, the students posed like statues, hence the "wax museum." Here is Aaron as Crazy Horse.

 Alma as Pocahontas.

Amara as Helen Keller. Embodying Helen Keller posed a challenge for oral presentation; Amara addressed this challenge by tapping her computer keyboard to present PowerPoint slides, which surely is what Helen herself would have done in this day and age. Note her distant gaze!

Eyal and Talia, both as Neil Armstrong. Talia had a helmet but she had taken it off at the moment.

Ayla, as Rosa Parks, wearing business attire. I was particularly moved by her painting.

  

Diego as Malala Yousafzai.

Hannah as Harriet Tubman.

Lily as Gertrude Bell, an extraordinary explorer I had never heard of who, among many other achievements, helped establish the modern state of Iraq. Check out that incredible portrait.

Marni as Abraham Lincoln.

Maya as Tatanka Iyotake (Sitting Bull).

Adam, Aviva, and Anna as Marco Polo, Juliette Gordon Low, and Annie Oakley.

Thank you Dale for the gorgeous pictures!

The history of now

Yesterday morning Aaron wanted to do something with Jordan, but Jordan had homework.

Rachel: Aaron, Jordan has homework he has to do first -- he has to read Trump's 100-day plan and comment on it.

[I admit I used a tone implying that this was a chore, because, well, ugh.]

Jordan: Mommy, I want to correct that. I get to read it. It's not have to read it. I mean I do, but I actually want to read it.

Rachel: Oh yeah?

Jordan: Yes! I think it is great that I am reading this. I love how my classes are not only about the history of a long time ago but also the history of now. I think it's awesome that I am learning about things that are happening right now, because these are things where maybe I could make a difference. If I learn about them then I can participate. And even when we learn about things from a long time ago, it is so that we can understand more about something that is happening right now. That is really engaging for me. It makes me care about it. And also I care because the class is actually about our own ideas. For the Trump homework I have to say if there are some things I might agree with, and some others I disagree with, and in class we talk about what we think and why.

I think in addition to caring, he feels respected by this approach: feels that he is being invited into the world of people who make things happen and make a difference to how things are. 

I know that in addition to being current-events-oriented, Jordan's US Studies class has a strong social justice agenda. Their textbook is “Young People’s History of the United States” (a shorter version his “People’s History of the United States”). Here is what Zinn said about this book:

My history... describes the inspiring struggle of those who have fought slavery and racism (Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Fannie Lou Hamer, Bob Moses), of the labor organizers who have led strikes for the rights of working people (Big Bill Haywood, Mother Jones, César Chávez), of the socialists and others who have protested war and militarism (Eugene V. Debs, Helen Keller, the Rev. Daniel Berrigan, Cindy Sheehan). My hero is not Theodore Roosevelt, who loved war and congratulated a general after a massacre of Filipino villagers at the turn of the century, but Mark Twain, who denounced the massacre and satirized imperialism. 

I want young people to understand that ours is a beautiful country, but it has been taken over by men who have no respect for human rights or constitutional liberties. Our people are basically decent and caring, and our highest ideals are expressed in the Declaration of Independence, which says that all of us have an equal right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The history of our country, I point out in my book, is a striving, against corporate robber barons and war makers, to make those ideals a reality — and all of us, of whatever age, can find immense satisfaction in becoming part of that.

I notice that whatever I have learned about this progressive version of history, I learned long after learning the so-called "regular" version traditionally taught in white middle-class america, about winning wars and conquering territory and creating giant industries. I learned this colonialist version as the "real story" and the struggle against oppression as an "alternative," or maybe a nuance or complication to be added on to the real story. Jordan, however, is learning a version of history in which the stories of marginalized people are moved more to the center - and he's learning it first. I have to think this will make a difference for him, even though of course his learning is still taking place in a world largely defined by the colonialist narrative.

I wrote to Jordan's teacher telling her about the conversation and thanking her for her awesome work. Right? Right.