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Storytelling
Introduction | Prenatal to Three | Children's House | Lower Elementary Upper Elementary | Junior High | Epilogue
Introduction by Paulette Zoë Story. A level of a building. A written or spoken account, factual or fiction, of something that has happened. A way to weave and connect the never-ending observations, interpretations and explanations for the things that happen along a timeline.
Timeline. A storyboard that records and measures events. A road map along the highway of passing time.
Author Margaret Atwood said, "Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. If you can bend space, you can bend time also, and if you knew enough and could move faster than light you could travel backward in time and exist in two places at once." Hmmm. I know of a cell phone company that claims to have figured that out. Their billboard reads, "Now you can be here and there at the same time!" I don't believe them. Atwood continues, "I began to think of time as having a shape, something you could see, like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of another. You don't look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing. Nothing goes away."
Tonight we are here to talk about the shaping of our lives through the stories we tell and the role they play in Montessori education. We are here to think about how the stories that begin at birth, are woven, connected and layered as children move from level to level, exploring along the way their own story, and finding their place on the timeline of life by discovering their cosmic task. We'll begin with infancy.
Storytelling - Prenatal to Three by Millie Dosh The life of each child is a unique story. It is our mission to assist the child in the unfolding of this story.
A group of East African people believe that a person's story begins when a mother first thinks about the possibility of a child. She goes away by herself and sits under a tree, listening to her heart until she hears the special song of this child. She teaches the song to her husband, and together they sing the song, inviting the child to come. The mother sings the song to her unborn baby for nine months and teaches it to the village women, who sing the song as the baby is being born. If the child offends the community the whole village surrounds the child and sings the song, reminding the child of who he is, helping the child restore his relationship with the village. When the child grows up and marries, the song is sung at the wedding. And finally, at death, the song is sung for the last time.
The nine months of prenatal life is the most powerful time to influence the personality of a child because of the direct biochemical connection between the birthmother and the baby. They share every thought, feeling, emotion, substance and expression of love directly. Other family members begin their relationship to this new family member through voice, touch and love. Waiting adoptive families can make spiritual contact with their child through the practice of spiritual presence, no matter how far away their child is.
The child who repeatedly hears special stories and songs in the womb will prefer these stories and songs after birth and will recognize and prefer family voices.
When a storyteller is engaged with a listener, a mind/heart connection is established. Babies love to listen, very still and attentive, as we tell them stories. When we are finished, they respond with their whole bodies and vocalize back to us. The art of storytelling begins here. Sometimes, when the circumstances are right, a child spontaneously recalls memories of his birth and early infancy - either verbally or through play. If we are aware that this can happen, we are more likely to notice.
When a child comes to Children's House, she has already written three and a half years of her life story and already has manifested a unique song with identifiable personality traits and gifts. She will be a confident storyteller if she has been listened to.
When a young child watches television, a startling thing happens. The very same part of the brain that is engaged in listening to a storyteller is stimulated by this powerful medium. But the heart is not engaged. This is why television can act on the brain like a drug and why it is addictive. It is the reason that there is a period of withdrawal from it for most children as they return to the normal person-to-person, heart-to-heart relationships in the family following TV viewing.
Our hope at Lake Country School is to enrich your children with stories and to assist each child in learning to sing his or her unique song.
Storytelling in the Montessori Primary Environment by Peggy McKenna Imagine this. . . .
One afternoon I go to my mailbox at home and find the new National Geographic magazine waiting for me. I eagerly open up the brown wrapping and find the cover article about Ernest Shackelton and the Endurance. I find the details of the story fascinating as well as the photos from the film that miraculously made it through that perilous journey. These photos showed the men sitting in their cramped dining room, playing soccer on the ice and caring for their sled dogs (early on) and the ship in different stages of being eaten by the ice. The photos put real faces on these adventurers and made the story come to life for me. I decided that I wanted to share this dramatic story with the afternooners in my classroom. So the next day at school I took a large piece of white paper and drew the outline of Antarctica. I labeled the places Shackelton had been and drew a line showing the path of his journey. I brought the pictures from the magazine for illustrations. When the afternooners came in from recess I had them sit around me and my map, and I launched into the drama. These 5 and 6 year olds were spellbound: eyes big and round, mouths wide open, and every once in a while a barely audible "wow" is whispered.
The next day I came back with another story about Antarctica. This one was contemporary. I told the story of two women who had read about Shackelton when they were young. One grew up in Minnesota, the other in Norway. They had been so inspired by Shackelton's endeavors that they themselves became adventurers and they were currently, "as we speak," attempting to ski across Antarctica together. We got out my hand-made map again and began plotting Ann Bancroft and Liv Arneson's path across Antarctica and compared it to Shackelton's. From then on, every day, we tracked on the map how far they had gone the previous day. Their story had a drama of its own unfolding each day. They were racing a deadline as well. Would they make it to McMurdo before winter set in and their transportation got iced out? The children were pulled into this story as daily participants - bringing in information from the morning newspaper. They wanted to draw their own maps of Antarctica and trace the paths of these explorers. They calculated with anticipation the miles logged and the miles remaining.
The children were drawn into the stories of history and current events.
The stories of life.
Our lives are filled daily with new stories. Our lives are stories. The young child from 3 to 6 is working to construct the reality of the world around her. Children are touched by personal stories, stories about daily lives and struggle. Children love to hear stories from the adults in their lives about when they themselves were children. When a family has dinner together and shares the stories of the day, it creates an emotional connection for the child to his parents and siblings, because it gives the child images in which to see his family's day even if they weren't together. This emotional connection fosters a greater sense of responsibility in later years as was shown in the recent study regarding adolescent behavior and family meals.
We are all storytellers when we talk about images that we have in our minds. Through storytelling we transmit these images to others. We are the authors, and the stories help the child to create the images. We often hear that Montessori does not allow for the imagination. On the contrary, storytelling can be found throughout our curriculum from science and geography to history and biographies as well as basic grace and courtesy lessons. Stories give meaning to facts, and as the emotion becomes connected, the memory retains the information more deeply. Storytelling helps the young child develop her powers of imagination, concentration and memory, to say nothing of language development. Storytelling provides language enrichment as the child learns new vocabulary, hears your phrasing and emotions. Telling stories not only transmits information to a child, but also provides an indirect preparation for writing and reading. As the child gets older and begins to tell or write his own creative stories, he has heard and absorbed the elements of a good story already. Once a child gets beyond the mechanics of reading, we look for the child to experience what we call "total reading."
Total reading involves not just reading the words but understanding the nuances of the words and phrases and the emotion that the author is conveying. Again, for the young child who has been exposed to a lot of storytelling, this kind of reading will come naturally for her.
In our Children's House classrooms we tell the life cycle stories of animals. We often tell what I like to think of as "a day in the life" or "a year in the life" stories about animals in their habitats. These can become quite dramatic, as you can imagine, as the animal has to find its food, its shelter and defend itself from predators. Within these stories the child learns about the life of an animal, where it lives in the world and what environmental challenges it faces, as well as the ecosystem surrounding it. Again, the drama invokes the emotional connection in the child to the facts of this animal's life. There is a great series of books put out by the Smithsonian that does just that.
In the geography area of our classrooms we have the Cultural Folders with pictures of people, buildings, landscapes and city scenes from each continent. We look at these pictures with the children and tell the stories of these pictures. We ask the children questions around these pictures: "What do you think the girl in that picture is doing?" "Do you think they live in that building?" and so on. The child then imagines what life is like living in that part of the world. We do the same with cultural objects. These are items that have come from another place in the world and may be unique to that area.
Biographies are great stories to tell because they tell of people and children love to hear about people. They tell of composers, artists, and athletes, inventors and discoverers and regular people who follow their passions like Snowflake Bentley, a man who loved photographing snowflakes. Our birthday celebrations provide for the ultimate biography. When we celebrate a child's birthday in Children's House we ask the parents to write a brief accounting of the highlights from each year in their child's life. And using photographs provided, we tell the story of the child's life from first words to first days of crawling and walking to big trips and other important events in the child's young life - again illustrating that each person's life is a unique story to be told.
Morality stories are a favorite with our children. They sit wide-eyed as Ms. Finnegan relates another story from the book My Naughty Little Sister by Dorothy Edwards. The children adore these stories in which a little girl learns many lessons on how to live in her world with others around her. The children who have been with us for three years can recite some of their favorite Naughty Little Sister stories. They love these stories because they are about a little child in real situations to which the children can relate. They may even be situations that a child herself has experienced in her own life, like having to get her photograph taken or not wanting to pull out her loose tooth.
There are a great many books with great stories that are based on real life. These stories capture the child's imagination like no other fantastical story. It is wonderful to read stories to children, and books like the ones I have mentioned here tonight are a great resource for the adult to learn the story. But if you have ever spent time telling a story to a child, you know how much more powerful that is, because by telling the story you are creating an emotional connection with that child. You are able to maintain eye contact. You can add gestures and facial expressions. You are able to elaborate on parts that, through your observation, you notice especially excite your child. These all make the story come alive for the child and once they become alive for the child, they stay in that child's memory and stimulate his intellect, driving his passion to learn more.
Imagine this. . . .
You're with your child at home and she discovers something of yours from when you were her age. She asks you "What's this?" and you relive your time playing with this object and you tell her about the first time that your parents let you do this on your own. Your memories convey the emotions you experienced in that first thrilling moment. Your child is wide-eyed and taking in every detail you share. And when you're finished telling her the story of a younger you, she says. . . .
"Tell me again the story of when you . . . ."
Storytelling in the Elementary by Anne Schuerger If you want the rapt attention of a group of 6 to 9 year olds, I can tell you how to get it. You needn't ring a bell or have a special hand signal. You needn't chide. All you need do is lean in toward the ear of one child and say, "Oh, yes. I remember the time when I was so embarrassed….or so guilty…. or so lost…." As soon as one child senses that a story is about to begin, you will find all faces turned toward you in hopeful expectation.
Of course, the more personal and dramatic the story, the better. In the elementary plane of development, the child is learning about being in community with others. Work that may have been individual or partner work in Children's House is now a great collaboration. Getting along, taking turns, being fair, taking on roles of leadership and follower-ship, and learning the basic skills for entering into, participating in, and exiting collaborative ventures is a key work at this level. Children love to hear stories that illuminate the myriad nooks and crannies of human society. And they ponder them deeply. Example: John Mullin's class last year performed Julius Caesar. Just last week, out of the blue, a child working at the lesson table looked up at no one in particular and said, "Do you think it was right that they killed Caesar?" And for the next fifteen minutes a group of seven and eight year olds discussed what you should do if someone gets just too bossy. They talked about the playground. They talked about being in a play. And they asked me to tell them the story again about the one and only time, according to my mother, that my brother and I got into a fight. (He punched me accidentally with a boxing glove, not fully appreciating how overstuffed it was. I overreacted and bopped him over the head with a two-by-four. He was fine, but I regret it to this day.)
The moment passed, but the themes will surely surface again and again as these young people construct their world view of right and might, walking-away versus taking-a-stand, over-reacting, forgiveness and regret. And as they grow they add their own stories.
A favorite activity in the lower elementary is an impromptu game called "Three Truths and a Lie," or some variation on that theme. Each child takes a turn making four statements about him- or herself or family members. Three of the statements are true, and one is a lie. The group must guess which is the lie. It is fascinating to see the passion with which the children throw themselves into formulating truths and lies from the material of their own lives. They struggle to organize their thinking, to sequence their statements, and to use just the right intonation to not give themselves away. They seem to take equal delight in successfully stumping the group and being found out. This is a key time for the child to differentiate fantasy and reality.
Cosmic Education in EI
Montessori had a profound view of the role of storytelling for the elementary child and it had to do with this idea of fantasy versus reality. In To Educate the Human Potential she wrote about the popularity of immersing children in fairy tales, and she contrasted that with the comparatively dry approach to teaching them facts. She wrote:
"In the school they want children to learn dry facts of reality, while their imagination is cultivated by fairy tales, concerned with a world that is certainly full of marvels, but not the world around them in which they live. Certainly these tales have impressive factors, which move the childish mind to pity and horror, for they are full of woe and tragedy, of children who are starved, ill treated, abandoned and betrayed. Just as adults find pleasure in tragic drama and literature, these tales of goblins and monsters give pleasure and stir the child's imagination, but they have no connection with reality."And so came the great gift of Montessori to the elementary child: Cosmic Education. Storytelling takes on a new dimension. Certainly we continue to tell stories from our life experiences. We continue to read from the vast legacy of literature, stories of the human experience. But we also imbue the study of the universe with the power of the imagination. We tell stories - the Great Lessons - that lyrically lay the groundwork for constructing a body of knowledge of the world: geology, geography, physical science, zoology, botany, language, geometry, and mathematics. Each study rooted in story. Each lesson beginning, "Remember when…."
Montesssori recognized the immense power of imagination in the elementary child, but not just the imagination that we may mean by the vernacular, "Oh, he's such a imaginative child." She called on us to use the power of imagination in every aspect of study. She saw the power of fairy tales and make-believe worlds to stir the child, and then went on to say:
"On the other hand, by offering the child the story of the universe, we give him something a thousand times more infinite and mysterious to reconstruct with his imagination, a drama no fable can reveal."The Great Lessons and stories in the elementary classroom sow the seeds of interest for a great, sustained, six year interdisciplinary study: The Creation, the Coming of Life, the Coming of Humans, the Story of Language, the Story of Numbers.
"The secret of success is found to lie in the right use of imagination in awakening interest, and the stimulation of seeds of interest already sown by attractive literary and pictorial material, but all correlated to a central idea, of greatly ennobling inspiration- the Cosmic Plan, in which all, consciously or unconsciously, serve the great Purpose in Life."From the creation story we ask: how do particles behave in the three states of matter? Children experiment with solids, liquids and gas. We model atoms building molecules. We rise up when we are heated and fall back to earth when we are cooled. We act out the water cycle, then take a look at the geography of waterways, then consider water as a fundamental human need, and then discover the linkage between rivers and early cities.
The Motive Power of Wonder
Which brings me to what I have come to call "the motive power of wonder."
At the parent orientation meeting each year I try to tell parents about what the first months will hold for their elementary child. I tell them about the stories of the Great Lessons and try to prepare them for the fact that their children will probably not come home with much to say about what they are learning. They will most often not be able to recount the stories, having just heard them once or twice. But often what comes out is a question or a comment that shows you that the seeds are there and germinating. Tend to the power of wonder. It is not the facts that matter, necessarily, but the motive force at work in that individual mind. Mario Montessori wrote in Education for Human Development: Understanding Montessori
"It is, then, not so important which facts one teaches the student, because very often these facts are already obsolete by the time they can be used. It is more important to help him to develop his potentialities so that he can rely on his own ability to cope with the unexpected and solve whatever new problems may crop up. He must be helped to feel independent in his own world and to develop the vision that will help him as an adult to maintain the environment in such a way that the unending, creative and gigantic cosmic task of man can continue."Example: In Montessori classrooms we tell the story of the Coming and Development of Life. Paleo-botanists and paleo-zoologists, those who are unraveling the stories that can be told by evolutionary DNA sequences, and those who study "deep time," will rightly argue that we cannot tell the history of life as a dramatic narrative with cause and effect and implied intention. Deep time is too vast and there are too many holes in the fossil record to discern causal relationships with any certainty. But as a classroom teacher I know this. Our story elicits wonder. Through the Timeline of Life and the stories of the eras we create a land of enchantment that draws the child in to a level of study that is unheard of in most school settings. Trilobites rule the oceans! They die out and hand the mantle of power to the mollusks. They discover that mollusks have blood but no heart. Worms have a simple heart. Hurray! Circulation! Now body plans really take off. Fish have a two-chambered heart. Reptiles and amphibians have three chambers. Birds and humans have four chambers. Why, I wonder? Why, indeed.
This is a sturdy foundation for the construction of the intellect.
Storytelling for Elementary by Mindy Holte Although we have separate EII and EI presentations this evening, the two levels are part of the same plane of development. All the characteristics of the EI child are shared by the EII child and the environments are therefore similar.
I would like to explore more deeply the role of stories in the lessons and learning that take place in the classroom.
Would you like to hear a story tonight?
For as long as there have been human beings, people like us using language, we can be sure they were asking questions. I don't mean questions like: When do we eat? or How far is it to shelter? I mean the real true questions: Why are we here? How did all around us come to exist? Think about the lithe ferocious tiger and the delicately colored butterfly; the clouds swiftly moving across the sky and the silver disk glowing in the darkness. Where did it all come from, and how did it come to exist?
We humans have not only been asking questions, we have also been answering them, as best we can. Today I am going to tell about what modern scientists who are studying these questions have discovered.
Imagine a deep darkness, the deepest darkness you have ever known. If you are thinking of a cloudy midnight in the most distant wilderness on Earth, then the darkness you are imagining is like a bright light compared with the darkness I am speaking of. Can you imagine cold? If you imagine the coldest day of the coldest winter it would still be like a blazing furnace compared with the cold of space.
In this vast, cold, and empty darkness a tiny speck of brightness appeared. Although it was much smaller than you can imagine, it contained everything that was ever to be in the Universe.
Well if we were in Class H, I would go on with this story elaborating how the elementary particles were formed, which laws they follow, how the first star was born, how the sun and planets came into existence, and finally how the earth cooled and the oceans filled.
This first "Great Story" or "Cosmic Fable" opens the Universe to each and every child. The elementary child has a powerful imagination. In our stories we harness this power to guide the children to explore the wonders of our vast universe. The elementary child is deeply interested in why and how. When our lessons and curricula answer these ques-tions the children are deeply interested and satisfied by their learning.
There are six "Great Stories." Each of them opens up a major area of study. The first story, "The Idea of the Universe and the Coming into Being of the Earth" sets the stage for all the other studies that will follow. It specifically opens up the areas of geography, chemistry, physics, and earth science.
The next story, "The Coming of Life" introduces biology and the evolution of life. The "Story of the Coming of Humans" introduces the study of human history. These first three stories orient children to their place in the cosmos. The next two stories open up the human inventions of written language and mathematics. Finally there is the story of the "Great River" to introduce the study of the human body.
Dr Montessori's plan for the elementary child included both synthetic and analytic dimensions. She understood that the child of this age needed access to the whole universe, nothing less could possible satisfy the intense curiosity of this age. It is the role of the story to arouse interest and provide a global picture for the child. But this vast and complex whole can only be understood by analyzing the parts. Thus each of the stories is a launching pad for study of the parts. In her book, From Childhood to Adolescence she advises "Let us sow the seeds of all the sciences." In To Educate the Human Potential she explains that the elementary years are the "period when the seed of everything can be sown."
Where the early elementary years are full of spontaneous explosions of interest, the later elementary child is consolidating and solidifying knowledge and insights. This child is profoundly stirred by the big questions, and stories offer an avenue to awaken interest and provide context for deeper exploration.
In addition to the "Great Stories," other stories play a role in many lessons. For example a lesson on measurement of angles is preceded by the story of the Babylonian astronomers who traced a circle pattern in the night sky and confirmed their observations by measuring angles. We pay unconscious tribute to their contribution each time we make a little circle to represent degrees. These "small stories" engage interest and help to anchor learning in a meaningful context. The children come to see knowledge as part of an unfolding story to which we all, and one day each of them, may contribute.
Maria Montessori described the teacher as a "storyteller of the truth." As we unfold our stories and guide the children as they develop and explore their interests we will find, as Camillo Grazzini observed, "that the child is helped in all the possible ways to become a protagonist; helped to develop those inner energies that enable him to become a creative and constructive and contributing individual." In telling these stories we help the child to weave a web of understanding of the workings of the universe as well as helping the child discover his or her place in our wondrous cosmos.
Storytelling in the Junior High by Beth Dooley Most students begin the school year heading back into their classrooms, back to the chalk dust and dim light. We lucky Lake Country Junior High students and teachers climb aboard a great big bus. This year, the twenty-second Odyssey, followed the Mississippi River south like Huckleberry Finn (the protagonist of our Odyssey novel).
The Odyssey is no mere class trip. Named for Homer's classic, transformative adventure, its rigorous schedule involves camping, academic course work, and environmental experiences. As James often reminds us, "There are no children on the Odyssey, just young adults and older adults (and very old adults)." The Odyssey is our story; it inspires and guides our school year.
I like to think of our bus as Huck Finn's raft. Like Huck, the adolescent boy on the big Mississippi River, we traveled detached from the shore, freed from "civilization" with its cultural and social pressures. Here we could try to be our best selves: practice patience and cooperation and work together and in solitude. In the book, Huck realizes how much he and his companion, Jim, a fugitive slave, have in common, how greatly they rely on each other. Our own daily triumphs lay in the concern and respect we showed each other.
Montessori wrote, "The feeling of independence that results from the awareness of one's own usefulness must be born from the ability to be sufficient to oneself and not from a vague liberty due to the benevolent and gratuitous help of adults." No matter what, the breakfast crew had to report for duty, dressed and ready by 6:45 am; each student was responsible for tent setup before joining the soccer scrimmage or poker game.
Our program of study was challenging and real. We'd read about the Civil War, then camped on a battleground site, sharing the pavilion with volunteer re-enactors who practiced maneuvers, fired muskets, and told us the stories they had researched to create their roles.
We camped along the Trail of Tears where more than 600,000 Cherokees were forced from their ancestral homes in the mid 1800's. Tenting in the dense blue forest under a brilliant moon, we heard barn owls cry their loss. At the Trail of Tears Museum, one student copied the following passage from a soldier's letter into her journal, "I fought through the Civil War and have seen men shot to pieces and slaughtered by thousands, but the Cherokee removal was the cruelest work I ever knew."
On the bus we read biographies of Sojourner Truth, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X, and then toured the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis attached to the Lorraine Hotel where King was shot and killed. We sat in Rosa Parks' bus seat as the driver's voice bullied us to move back over the P.A., and we read letters of freedom riders to their families anticipating their own deaths.
Steeped in the South's story, we attended a gospel sing in Pascagoula, home to the Mississippi Blues Commission and its annual Blues Festival. Here, three generations of African-American women welcomed us into their music, inviting our students to perform (which they did with heart and gusto). We sang, we hollered, clapped and stomped to songs born of misery, sure to heal and enlighten.
At the J. L. Scott Marine Biology Center in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, we took lessons on weather, water quality, and sea creatures and then went off into the Gulf. We pumped up yabbi shrimp, snorkeled among moon jellyfish and hunted for shark's teeth along the shore. Having studied hurricanes, we were doubly grateful we'd beaten Ivan home.
In our nightly meetings around the campfire, we wove our day into stories with a ritual beginning, middle and end. Each meeting provided a form for conflict and resolution. "What went right? What worked? What did you enjoy? What didn't go well? What do we need to work on?" We concluded with compliments and thank yous. Here we addressed seemingly minor incidents in terms of larger ideals &emdash; fairness, justice, empathy, respect - the cornerstones of our community, community defined by Robert Parker as "an outward sign of an inward and visible grace."
The Odyssey is really the first chapter in the story of our year. It establishes the tone and introduces the students to what will come on our urban and Land School campuses.
This year we've launched both our adolescent residency program at the Land School and the ninth grade, completing the third year of our adolescent program and making real Montessori's ideal of Erdkinder (children of the soil). We provide (in Montessori's words) two forms of work, manual and intellectual, equally essential to a civilized existence.
At the Land School, the academic work does not replicate that of the urban campus but employs a similar, if not more purely, Montessori approach. In my classes, students will read To Kill a Mockingbird while Land School residents read the award winning Sand County Almanac and interview residents about the history of Dunn County. They will continue with math and French, both cumulative subjects, but they will work primarily on big, integrated projects that weave together science, literature, social studies and humanities. Our first residents have begun their projects focused on the theme "Water". Students are tackling a variety of topics, such as Dunn County's watersheds; The Underground Railroad in Minnesota and Wisconsin; the history of farming in the Upper Midwest.
We are excited about the Occupations. Students become experts in one area at the Land School and manage it. During this residency, we have a Chicken Wrangler (who feeds the chickens, organizes coop cleaning, and collects the eggs); a Shepherd; a Park Ranger (who maintains the trails); a Cook; a Concierge (do call for reservations); a Shop Keeper; and a Vegetable Farmer. These students are truly engaged in meaningful work. As Montessori said: "People with hands and no head and people with head and no hands are equally out of place in the modern community."
The classes on our urban campus are stories of subject matter wed to experience. In his geometry class, James will convince us that P implies Y or "When I make my bed, I can go to the mall." Doug will help us figure out that 60% of the eggs laid in the nesting boxes became fledglings, that Queen Bee Mira swarmed, and that we harvested almost 100 pounds of honey. Now those are stories. Through the tales of civilization and weekly rousing discussions of current events, Kris links us to our history and (hopefully) to our future.
In writing and literature classes, I have witnessed what can happen when one allows a well-crafted narrative to become a source of reflection and wonder, a lense through which to examine one's life. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, we ponder who the hero really is, Jim or Huck? What did Twain mean by his disclaimer beginning the book: "Anyone attempting to find a moral will be shot."
Sensitive readers, these students are becoming fine writers, influenced by good work. In their transition to adulthood, students begin to abstract, think about thinking, write about writing. As they develop a personal identity, these students gallop through more emotions in a class period than most of us do in a week. They, like Huck, seek refuge in the wilderness (real and psychic); they need a safe place to be themselves and the freedom to change.
After a discussion about an evocative passage in The Adventures of Huck Finn, one girl wrote the following in a personal narrative essay: "When you're happy and heading off to Ship's Island for the very first time, the flapping of your bandana, the slap of the waves on the bow, the clanging buoy bells, the deep fog horn and the crying gulls, all sound like music."
This is from a boy's recent essay about the Odyssey. "Last night we sat in a circle in the sand to have our meeting. I wondered, what do other people think when they see 47 teenagers walking down the beach together at sunset? I kept thinking, how lucky we are!"
Epilogue by Paulette Zoë Like many of the tales we tell that help children discover their place in the scheme of things, the story of LCS rests too, on a timeline. It all began, over 28 years ago, as a seed of an idea in the minds of Larry and Pat Schaefer, founders of Lake Country School. In 1975, Larry and Pat, sponsored by Larry O'Shaughnessy and the Montessori Foundation, moved to Minneapolis, to work at the St. Paul Montessori school. The following year, Lake Country School was established, incorporated and opened at the Basilica of St. Mary with 65 children in one Children's House and two elementary classrooms. Brad St. Mane was the first president of the first board of directors and Zoe, the mother of two Lake Country Students. The elementary performance that year was entitled, Panic in a Desk Drawer, which hints at what they may have discovered with this new undertaking.
The school grew and grew, and between the years 1977 and 1982, enrollment went from 65 to 225, with eight teachers who joined then, still teaching here today. During that time a move was made from the Basilica to the place where we now stand, a building that had once been the original Incarnation Church and that was later called Cleary Hall.
The school grew and grew, and between 1983 and 1988, there were many firsts to record. The JH was founded, the first Odyssey and bike trips taken, extended day was started and the first ISACS self study was begun. The first staff retreat explored the theme Using Storytelling to Solve Problems in Children's Lives. The first capital campaign was planned in order to purchase Cleary Hall, renovate Children's House and build the gym and junior high. When the campaign proved successful, the children hugged the building during a celebratory spiral dance. In true LCS fashion, we had put down roots in a permanent way.
The school grew and grew. During the next 5 years, there was an exchange with Moscow School #31 that established Wisdom Day, now a Lake Country tradition. The land for the back lot was purchased and many more staff people, who are still here today, planted themselves amongst the flourishing LCS community. Lake Country was already into its second ISACS evaluation, the Twins won their second world series and Jane Goodall came to pay us a visit. On Martin Luther King Day, the whole school recited I Have A Dream, and the auction theme, Field of Dreams, raised money for a new playground.
The school grew and grew. Between 1994 and 1999, maximum enrollment of 301 was by now, the norm, and waiting lists were established. Larry and Pat stepped down as co-principals and the community embraced them in celebration of all they had done and how far we had come. When Kathy Coskran was welcomed as Lake Country's new principal, we were also welcoming our first Amity Scholar and putting down rural roots with the purchase and development of the Land School. In addition, the Infant program was begun, the house next door was purchased, and a strategic plan, created by the whole community, was adopted. The sculpture outside our door, entitled Montessori's Vision, was presented to the school by Steve and Mimi Fisher in memory of their daughter Carly who spent 10 of her 16 short years on Earth, constructing herself as does every child, in the loving arms of this community.
The school grew and grew. In the year 2000, when LCS celebrated its 25th anniversary, 6000 trees had been planted by the JH at the Land School, and $600,000 had been planted or pledged to the newly established endowment fund. And in the years up to today, we have witnessed the renovation of the elementary levels, the building of the O'Shaughnessy Homestead and the Land School's first residency therein, the sprouting of a 9th grade, the beginnings of Bright Water, the declaration of our Peace Site, the French student exchange with Les Pouces Verts, the creation of the Council of Children, the retirement of Kathy Coskran and the welcoming of Lake Country's newest principal.
The spirit of this school marches on in hearts, in memories, in deeds, staying true to our belief that through providing this place for children to live and grow, we can create our very best story in the book on humankind. It is in honor of this spirit that this community has received many gifts over the years, gifts of time, talent and treasure that help to sustain and celebrate our mission and carry it from the present into the future. Every family is a gift in and of itself and brings with it, a unique story that adds to the rich mixture of our narrative.
These articles were presented at the October 2004 parent evening and printed in the Fall 2004 issue of the Lake Country School CourierLCS Home Page > Parent Resources > Articles > Storytelling