Tea & Tradition:

The Business of Building "We"

“Here (in Pakistan and Afghanistan), we drink three cups of tea to do business: the first you are a stranger, the second you become a friend, and the third, you join our family.”—Haji Ali, Korphe Village Chief, Karakoram Mountains, Pakistan (from Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortensen and David Oliver Relin)


Every year about this time, Mrs. D. and I begin bagging our belongings and hauling them to school. Teapots (5 this year, which I’m only slightly embarrassed to say represents less than half of my current collection, most of them given to me as gifts), a Santa-sized sack of tea (again, somewhere near half of what lives in my cabinet), baskets, bowls, spoons, servers, plates and platters, and what my brother refers to as my magical “water hotter”—all of it gets packed up and taken to school. “Whoa, that’s a lot of bags,” commented a third grader this afternoon when they (the bags) were all lined up, ready to go back home. It’s a lot of bags, and it’s a lot of work. My mother indulges me by loaning some of the contents of her cabinets and (begrudgingly) allowing me to forage for fresh flowers in her garden. Mrs. D. slaves over egg salad sandwiches and devotedly decorates sugar cubes (pink and red hearts, this year). Our students’ generous parents shop and bake and make placecards for the table. This is not your typical cookies-and-CapriSun Valentine’s Day party.

For me, this particular affliction began in the second grade when a British mother prepared for my class an authentic English tea, complete with silver teapot, milk, and sugar. Ahh, I was hooked. For my twelfth birthday party, I invited friends to a hotel for afternoon tea. “I can’t go yet—I have two more to try,” protested one friend. The next year, I spent two weeks living with a family in Japan, where the tea ceremony is quite literally a religious experience. In college, I corralled friends for a tea party and convinced two football player friends to whip cream cheese for cucumber sandwiches (keep in mind, this was Oberlin—where we forfeited games when too many players had upcoming exams and found our way to Sports Illustrated fame on the length of our losing streak). I don’t think it will come as a surprise to anyone who knows me that tea parties have become a Valentine’s Day tradition in my classroom.

We prepare ahead of time by reviewing appropriate table manners and practicing at the lunch table.
"Here are all the manners:
1) If you have a napkin, unfold it and place it in your lap.
2) Always take small bites.
3) Don't speak with food in your mouth.
4) Eat then have a little conversation.
5) No elbows on the table.
6) Please do not hold your cup like a coffee cup.
7) No yelling across or down the table.
8) If you think you don't like the food take a little to just try it.
9) If you don't really like the food don't say 'Yuk!' or 'Nasty!'
10) And dress nicely.
The 10th rule is my favorite because I love my outfit that I'm going to wear. My outfit is a secret and a surprise for Mrs. D. and Ms. S. because I love them as family." --WL, 3rd grade

When the day arrives, children who have completed a reasonable amount of work are invited to help with set-up. Our Beautiful Classroom manager arranges fresh cut flowers in vases.

Another child whips cream for the scones and strawberries.
More children arrange food attractively on trays (after carefully washing hands, of course)

and set the table. An older child sets out placecards, choosing spots in which children will enjoy one another’s company but not get so silly that they are excused from the table.

Before we move to the table, we have a quick history/geography lesson on tea, the regions in which it is grown, and some of the countries in which tea drinking has become a tradition. We look at photographs of tea plantations and tea ceremonies around the world. We then examine and smell the tea itself, passing around the fuzzy white buds of white tea, the grass-green leaves of green tea, the powdered yellow-green matcha used in Japanese tea ceremonies, and the oxidized dark leaves of black tea. The children sniffed the spicy aromas of loose chai—black tea blended with cardamom, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, black pepper, and star anise, simmered with milk, and served sweet throughout India. We looked at a nest-shaped pellet of compressed tea (Pu-erh Tuo Cha), discussing early American Colonists’ anger at the tea tax imposed by the British and the speculation that this type of compressed tea, in the form of “tea bricks,” is probably what was thrown into the harbor during the Boston Tea Party. We passed around a hand-tied “teaposy” and then watched it magically bloom in a glass teapot of hot water. The “silver needle” white tea leaves are hand-tied with herbal flowers (rose and lily, in our case) in such a way that when water is added, the leaves “bloom” like an opening blossom and the flowers tied within spring up into the water. The effect is delightfully dramatic.



When everyone is seated at the table, we begin passing the savories from left to right:
egg salad finger sandwiches, meat & cheese sandwiches, deli spirals,
pigs in a blanket, mini quiches, banana bread, and mini muffins.

We then serve tea. The children are adventurous in sampling different types of tea. This year, we offered a bigger variety than usual: our blooming tea (“Heart of Love,” a white tea), Moroccan Mint (gunpowder green tea blended with peppermint), Mango Ceylon (black tea scented with mango and blended with marigold blossoms), Vanilla Almond (black tea blended with vanilla and almonds), and Cardamom Cinnamon (an herbal “tea” with flavors similar to chai—but not made with the leaves from the tea plant, Camellia sinensis, at all).

Napkins in laps, everyone waits to eat until the hosts (Mrs. D. and I) have assured that everyone has a cup of something warm and are seated. There are a few precious, silent moments after that when everyone (all 24 of us) is peacefully chewing and sipping.
I always wish our principal would walk in just then because it is a scene that’s difficult to describe and even harder to believe, but these moments are usually private. It’s probably just as well that these special times are shared only among members of our class. That’s what this tradition is all about: building a “we.” When I suddenly realize that time is getting away from us, and we must soon distribute Valentines and shepherd the children to ancillary and then dismissal, we pass the sweets: ginger snaps & lemon curd, strawberries with whipped cream, brownie bites, mini éclairs, and mini cream puffs. As we chat and munch, one of our second-grade boys remarks, “I better enjoy this day because it’s my last Valentine’s Day tea party.” His family plans to move this summer, and he continues, “This was my last Thanksgiving Feast and this will be my last End-of-School Pancake Breakfast.” The children mark their days by our traditions. That’s what makes all the work of this worth it—we’re building community in our classroom.



What We’re Reading:
A Valentine for Norman Noggs by Valiska Gregory
Roses Are Pink, Your Feet Really Stink by Diane deGroat
Ginko and Moon by Lisa Mertins
It’s Valentine’s Day by Jack Prelutsky
Oops! The Manners Guide by Nancy Holyoke
How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food? by Jane Yolen
Emma Lea’s First Tea Ceremony by Babette Donaldson

More on Tea:
Tea, Aromas and Flavors Around the World by Lydia Gautier
Tea in the East by Carole Manchester
The Tea Companion: A Connoisseur’s Guide by Jane Pettigrew
A Dish of Tea: Recipes, History and Etiquette from Conner Prairie Museum (which oddly, I discovered in the Jamestown Settlement Gift Shop)

A great book for grownups:
Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
Note: Greg Mortenson is the closing keynote speaker at the upcoming American Montessori Society Conference! I can’t wait!


Great places to drink tea:
Serenitea (reasonably priced afternoon tea services)
Path of Tea (all-organic loose teas, with a “tea sniffing bar”)
Té House of Tea (light meals and a variety of teas)

Peace paste

I love the way children respond to the creative process. I used to teach ceramics and sculpture classes after school and in the summer. What amazed me was that a child whom I knew to be distracted and unsuccessful in school could walk into the ceramics studio and become happily and peacefully engrossed in a project. (Adults respond in the same way when they can let go of product and focus on process.) Art has transformative powers to soothe the spirit and settle the body.

This week, we've been engaged in a particularly messy art process: paste paper. When a new volunteer stopped by to chat about the work she'll be doing in our classroom, I was up to my elbows in paste!

The children, though, were peacefully creating.
When everyone was settled with supplies, disagreements and tattling melted away, leaving the happy hum of imagination at work.

I discovered the joys of paste paper at a summer Book Arts Studio at The Museum of Printing History. You should have seen our little group of teachers happily creating beautiful messes—let go of product and focus on process.

Paste paper is made with powdered wallpaper paste. Surprisingly, this is not to be found at your local all-night hardware gigantistore (I naively assumed it would be so and visited several on a late night one-woman field trip around town)—check Ace Hardware or Sherwin Williams. Learn from my second mistake by heeding the directions and mixing the powder with warm water rather than the cold water available from the tap at your local elementary school. Shake the powder and the water in a large glass jar with a lid (“My paste smells like pickles!”) until it resembles the clear gel I applied to mosquito bites and sunburn as a kid (if you didn’t benefit from this magical anesthetic, think Aloe Vera). Mix small amounts with a drop or two of acrylic paints of your choice, and you’re ready for your very own paste paper party!

Use a popsicle stick, a sponge brush, or a paint brush to spread colored paste on a piece of paper (choose thick art paper or cardstock—paper that tolerates being wet).

Next, you get to use all those random objects you’ve been saving for something special, you just didn’t know what.
Now’s their chance to shine (and your chance to prove to loved ones that you were right to save a stash of trash)!

Combs,

forks,

corks, marbles, gelato shovels, railroad tracks—anything that might make an interesting pattern.

The only rules here are:
Have fun
and know when to leave it alone and get out a fresh piece of paper.

After the papers dry, you will probably need to iron them.

Use your decorative papers for anything you wish: bookmarks, the fly pages or cover of a handmade book, scrapbook supplies, etc. We’ll be using ours for homemade cards.

Robert Fulghum writes, “Maybe we should develop a Crayon bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A Beauty Bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. It would explode in the air—explode softly—and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth—boxes of Crayolas. And we wouldn’t go cheap, either—not little boxes of eight. Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in. With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination” (All I Ever Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten).

Pass the crayons . . . and the paste!

Soil science

Armed with our new microscopes, we returned to "the lab" to analyze the soil samples we had collected from our two holes.

To hone their skills, our soil scientists first trained with separated soil components: sand, clay, humus, and gravel. I constructed “slides” from 1-inch by 3-inch pieces of cardstock, each punched with a hole and backed with transparent tape to hold a sprinkle of soil.

The children examined each component with a hand lens and then a microscope, creating a scientific illustration for each.

"I discovered that each soil has a different texture."--CJ, 3rd grade

"I observed that the clay looked like dust."--EN, 3rd grade

"Sand has crystals and grains of rock in many different colors."

"Gravel looks like mountains with snow on it." --KL, 3rd grade "The gravel looked like popcorn."--EN, 3rd grade

“Humus had a big chunk that looked like bark.”

Finally, our soil scientists had the expertise they needed to recognize these soil components in the samples from our holes. They began by examining soil collected from different depths (surface, 8cm deep, 23 cm deep, and 29 cm deep) in the hole near the building.

One group observed, "It looks like there is quartz or calcite in it and clay." Another group noticed a tiny chunk of broken glass. A third group concluded, "We think we would need humus--lots and lots of humus--to make a garden by the building."

The hole we dug in the grassy area produced more interesting finds.
"The hole near the building has more crystals than the one in the grassy area."
What would explain this difference? "The one in the grassy area had more clean water and the non-grassy area gets dirty mop water. Also, the grassy area has humus that has dead things in it that earthworms eat, and earthworms make good soil." Another group warns gardeners, "Make sure not to hurt the living creatures because they help the soil stay moist."

“We found something moving in our soil.”
“Ms. S., you better come and look at this.”
When I went over to check, I had difficulty finding it. “It has crystals and dirt on it.” . . . "Where?” . . . . “It’s the thing that’s moving!”
“Oh! Oh, my!” Suddenly I am a Minnesotan mom. “Oh, my.” Something translucent and invertebrate pulsating in a hole-punch sized soil sample. Pinworm, perhaps? (Based on later research, probably not.) From across the room, a few moments later, another group issued gleeful cries of, “We found a parasite!” Yes, soil is the place where geology meets biology and becomes habitat. Special attention will be given to hand-washing today!



What we're reading:
Kids Discover Soil
Dirt by Steve "The Dirtmeister" Tomecek (National Geographic)

What I’m reading:
Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv

Groundhogs & ground meat

Last week, it was Chinese New Year. This week, it's Groundhog Day and Dia de la Candelaria.

"Good morning. Did you bring the tamales?" That's how I was greeted by more than one student when we shook hands this morning. Yes . . . well, Mrs. D. did, as did our student who found the baby January 6th. The person who finds the baby on Kings' Day is responsible for bringing tamales to the party on Candelaria, or Candlemas. 40 days after Christmas, Candelaria marks the day Jewish law prescribed that the baby Jesus would be taken to the temple. On this day in Mexico, many families celebrate by dressing the baby Jesus from their Nativity scenes and taking him to the church to be blessed. The term "Candlemas" refers to the practice of priests blessing beeswax candles on this day, to be used throughout the year.

Today also marks the mid-point between Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox, hence the association with weather predictions for the second half of winter. Originally, German tradition held that on Candlemas Day a hedgehog would predict the weather. When German settlers came to Pennsylvania, they decided that the groundhog, which resembled the European hedgehog, would serve well for the tradition. In the United States, all eyes now turn to Punxsutawney Phil on Groundhog Day. Six more weeks of winter!

What we're reading:

Geoffrey Groundhog Predicts the Weather by Bruce Koscielniak

Go to Sleep, Groundhog! by Judy Cox

Gregory's Shadow by Don Freeman

Chinese New Year (Rookie Read-About Holidays) by David Marx

Celebrating Chinese New Year by Diane Hoyt-Goldsmith

Sam and the Lucky Money by Karen Chinn

Lion Dancer: Ernie Wan's Chinese New Year by Kate Waters

Ruby's Wish by Shirin Yim

The Cable Car and the Dragon by Herb Caen

Quick like a cockroach

How do you motivate students after five tedious days of testing? I challenge them to a race.

Actually, I'm not sure how it happened. I think maybe they issued the challenge--two of my boys (a second-grader & a first-grader). "Don't forget to bring your running shoes!" they reminded me multiple times. Well, of course I forgot yesterday, and then they were trash-talking me: "I bet Ms. S. runs like this" (accompanied by slow-motion running pantomime). I think I heard the "Chariots of Fire" theme song.

This morning, they checked to see if I brought the shoes. "Are you wearing THOSE shoes for the race?"
"No, I brought some different shoes."
"Yeah, remember she has those green shoes?" True--last year's running shoes (they laugh when I call them sneakers: "SNEAKers! Ah, ha, ha, ha!") were green, but those have long since been replaced. I haven't worn them since summer when they got swamped wading through a tidal cave in the Bahamas! How do they remember these things?

There was diligent work all morning, with children urgently reminding each other that they wouldn't want to miss the race at recess, and much speculation about who will win. "Ms. S. has longer legs than you."
"Yeah, but I'm lighter and gravity doesn't pull on me as much. So I'll be light and fast like a cockroach." Hmm, not the simile I'd choose for myself, but there ya go.

I was sure they'd beat beat me, but I did manage to motivate two wiggly little boys for a few days and provide much entertainment for the rest of the class. "Can we make signs for you?" "What's your favorite color?"
"Hey! How come their sign is bigger than mine?"

With much cheering and hand-made signs attached to rulers, the race was on! One lap around the track.

"Ready, set, start! They ran and ran. Then Jalen fell over! And then Jalen takes the lead and Nkozi stops! What?! He starts to walk. Then Jalen comes in 1st, Ms. S. in 2nd, and Nkozi in 3rd, and the crowd screams and asks for autographs."--JB, 3rd grade

It was not the sound defeat I expected. Jalen fell and I had to go back to check for blood and tears (no, on both counts), but I received a second place "ribbon" with my name on it, handmade with my favorite color of construction paper. "That's STILL pretty good, Ms. S. Way to go!" Jalen's "trophy" was a construction paper foot (picture a cross between Italy and a cowboy boot). Then, there was an onslaught of pretend paparazzi, wanting to take my picture, and real requests for autographs. "You should write about this on the blog, Ms. S." There is already talk of a re-match.

Magnify your world

Early last week, Mrs. D. overheard one of the children say, “I can’t wait ’till our microscopes come.” My sentiments exactly! Thanks to generous contributors to our DonorsChoose project, we were slated to receive a stereo microscope, in addition to a durable Magiscope and padded field case to take along on field trips.

Later in the week, when our secretary stopped to tell me, “There’s a box in the office with your name on it, and it says ‘Fragile,’” I could hardly contain myself. Even though I knew what it was and we were testing that morning, I had to open the box. Mrs. D. says I’m funny when I open packages. Must be something about the squealing and hand-clapping involved . . . . . . . OK, sometimes, there’s also a bit of a dance.

"I think using a microscope is fun! We get to see things (crystals, humus, hair, etc.) up close! It's very exciting that we get our own microscope."--EN, 3rd grade
“To use a microscope you have to use it properly. First thing, don’t put the lens too close to the material. There’s a part where you adjust it so your eyes are comfortable. And on the microscope there’s a plate that has a black and a white side. You can change it when you have a dark or light object. The dark object goes on the white side and the light object goes on the dark side.” –CJ, 3rd grade
I pulled out a hair, and we examined it on the black side of the stage plate.

Looking at a piece of printed type, we discovered that the Magiscope inverts the image of the letters. “It’s upside down!”

We brought in aphids, who are currently attempting to devour the Mexican Butterfly Weed in our garden. We could see them in their different stages, crawling around on the seed pod. A surprised smile of discovery spread across the face of each child, as s/he brought the image into focus. “Oh, wow!” “Awesome!”

A first-grader dissolved into angry tears and when he was finally calm enough to tell me what was wrong, it developed that our third-grade self-appointed bug handler had done what most of us would do to dispose of a cockroach. Crunch! “But I [sniff] wanted to [sniff] look [sniff] at the cockroach [sniff] moving [sniff] under the microscope!”

I can sympathize. When a friend who is currently living in India wrote to tell me that she, her husband, and her cat were all playing host to an ungrateful group of biting mites, I couldn’t help thinking, “Eewww!” immediately followed by “I wonder what they look like under the microscope!”

Testing . . . testing

. . . testing

“I’m not sure how I feel about testing today. I am sort of excited and sort of nervous. If there is a feeling of those feelings, I’d call it excivous. So I am excivous. But mostly excited.”—EN, 3rd grade.

Actually, our students enjoy testing far more than their teachers. Frankly, I think there is no quicker way to numb the mind and dampen the creative spirit of a teacher than to pile on the tests. One principal I admire points out that we wouldn't think of yanking a carrot from the ground on a daily basis to check if it's growing. Obviously, this would make growth a challenge for the carrot. Yet somehow we spend more and more time checking to see if children are learning and less time allowing them to learn and explore.

I think I understand what happens. When teachers leave the classroom and become administrators, they get nervous. How can I be sure that the students for whom I am responsible are learning? Far removed from the classroom, they can’t see the children’s curious faces or hear their thoughtful questions. So we put learning on Pause and administer tests: TPRI, High Frequency Word Evaluation, Stanford 10, TAKS, but it doesn’t stop there. When the stakes are high (and bonuses are on the line), they become even more nervous and issue tests to see if we’re ready for the test: TAKS release tests, CBAs, common assessments. With all these tests, the only thing of which we can all be certain is that there is less time for learning.

We do what we can to help the children relax and do their best. In an increasingly data-driven culture, good test-taking habits will serve the children well for the rest of their educational careers. The children treasure our testing traditions. We begin the morning with a snack and journal-writing.




Each child visits the restroom, and then we go for a quick jog/walk around the track to get the blood flowing.




Next, we gather our chapter books and water bottles and hunker down behind partitions for a long morning of silently sitting in rows, bubbling in answers. In between test sections, we take a break to stretch and breathe.

Two more days to go . . .

Holes

When I announced to the class that we were going to go outside and dig a hole, I was met with spontaneous applause. 'Yay! Digging a hole!' I didn’t think much of it because excitement about science is not uncommon in our classroom, but after school Mrs. D. laughed that only my class would cheer about digging a hole.




My plan was to quickly dig two holes, one near our building and one near the garden, measuring the depth and taking samples as we dug. Then we’d move on to the real learning—examining the samples and comparing the soil components present in the two different holes. Once again, I miscalculated. We only got as far as digging one hole that day, but that one hole provided wonderful discoveries:







Soil forms different colored layers.
There’s clay down there!
That looks like a brick!
Digging became more difficult as our hole grew deeper. “Boy, it really would be hard to dig a hole to the other side of the world!”

I had no idea that the digging of the hole would be such a learning experience. I guess children don’t dig holes anymore. We filled in the hole because my wise and thoughtful students worried it was a safety hazard for other children, but Ms. A. dug it up again so that she could show her students during after-school tutorials. A couple of students who happened to pass by were so intrigued that they joined her group for the afternoon.

The following week, I invited any interested students to join me during recess to dig the second hole. Only three dedicated souls joined me.

Our first attempt at the second hole failed miserably. Even when one of my diggers hopped up and down on our shovel, we weren’t able to penetrate the grass. I was ready to give up and wait for another day when I could bring a more heavy-duty adult-size shovel. Undeterred, one of the children suggested we try in a spot where the grass was browned and largely dead. Bingo---much easier digging!

Not long into the digging, one of my diggers observed, “Only girls wanted to dig. Maybe boys don’t like science as much.” “I think the boys just like to play more,” suggested another. I suspect this is closer to the truth—we’d been testing all morning and the lure of running and playing was too much competition for digging holes—but I am heartened that my girls are so blissfully unaware of conventional gender stereotypes.

“I wish I could keep a chart of this in my mind.” Great idea! Scientists use illustrations to record what they see and to help them think as they work. Soon, she was running inside for paper, clipboard, and colored pencils.

When we finished the hole, we called the class together so that the girls could share their observations:
There are roots and other living things in this hole.
The soil in this hole is darker.
The soil in this hole is looser and easier to dig.
Why might the soil in the two holes be different? “Maybe because it gets more water?” (The hole near the building was under an overhang, while our second hole was open to the sky and the rain.) “Maybe building materials were dumped near the building.”

“There’s a worm!”
Hmm. We didn’t find any living things in the hole near the building. Why might that be?
“There’s less sun there.”
“It doesn’t get as much rain.”
Mrs. D. shared the sad truth that there may be another reason. Our custodians have been known to dump mop water, floor stripper, and wax from summer floor-polishing in the spot by the building. Not so good for living things, I think.



What we're reading:
Kids Discover Soil
Dirt by Steve "The Dirtmeister" Tomecek (National Geographic)

What I’m reading:
Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv