An essential truth about me: I love to sleep. Some of my earliest memories are of curling up on my green cot at preschool and snuggling into some very welcome nap time. It just felt so warm and safe and cozy. As an adult, one of my favorite (though infrequent) weekend luxuries is to eat a big, homemade breakfast and go right back to bed. Sleep almost always feels healing, restorative, and rejuvenating to me. After a recent presentation on my work in the classroom, I was jokingly asked the question, "Do you ever sleep?" I didn't even have to think about my answer - "I work hard and I sleep harder."
While I love my sleep, I have always struggled with the idea of rest. I'm thirty-four years old and still trying to figure out exactly what that is. I like the idea of it. It conjures images of quiet beaches and novels read on a shady porch. Lovely, in theory. But in practice, these scenarios just make me uncomfortable. It takes me a solid week of vacation to even begin to settle in to a feeling of relaxation; and by that point, it's usually time to go home. I've had lots of practice with rest, but I feel as though I still don't quite have the hang of it. If I'm tired, I might as well be sleeping. And if I'm not, I might as well be doing something.
I realized a big "doing something" dream of mine and ran in the marathon relay last weekend. I loved it. My time was nothing to write home about, but I met my personal goal of running the whole course without stopping, which feels really good. Besides, I didn't even know my average pace when I set out on my leg of the race, so just knowing that I'm a 13-minute mile helps me set some new goals and challenge myself further. The run was just the right mix of challenging and fun, and I couldn't wait to continue my training.
Trouble is, the twinge of pain in my ankle that I used to be able to ignore while running isn't staying so manageable. I'm all too familiar with stress injuries (one led to six weeks of physical therapy last summer) and I know the drill: Rest, ice, compression, elevation. Rest. Just when I'm finally committing time to exercising and taking care of myself. I don't want to injure myself further, but I also don't want to lose the little bit of progress I've made. I'm cutting down on the frequency of runs, focusing on strengthening and stretching, and trying not to get too cranky about the whole thing. Rest is, after all, just one of life's dependable cycles. Rest and activity. Day and night. Winter and spring.
These ebbs and flows are apparent in the classroom, too. We're currently in the midst of some really rich and inspiring work. The children noticed a male cardinal that was repeatedly flying into one of the large windows of our school, so we investigated birds in many different ways - we made binoculars and went on a bird walk, learned the calls of local birds, worked with feathers and nests, and created papier-mâché eggs that we adorned with patterns inspired by photographs of bird eggs. We also spent some time observing the cardinal's behavior and learning about the reasons for his actions, which led us to create a large communal piece of art with reflective materials and feathers. After just a few days of this artwork hanging nearby, we noticed the cardinal no longer flying into the window and, more importantly to the children, "staying safe." Our new focus is the symbolism of birds in folktales and mythology, particularly in those cultures represented by the children in our class. The students are also fascinated by the many insects, worms, and spiders they're finding on our playground. We're making them habitats, singing songs about bugs, and learning the vocabulary to describe them. Through these varied explorations, the threads of family and home connect it all. Both the children and I are full of questions and ideas. It's a period in our classroom that is magical. It's a time that makes me so grateful to be in a Reggio-inspired program and a school that values an emergent curriculum.
But it's not always like this.
There are times when I'm positively stumped or confused, when the class feels restless or in a rut. Times when I'm tossing out just about anything to see if it sticks, poring over notes to see if there's some recurrent theme I've missed. When I was first getting my feet wet with a Reggio-inspired approach, these times were a little scary. I used to always know just what was coming. And, if it wasn't particularly inspired, it was at least predictable. Over time, I came to recognize that this was just another natural cycle. I came to accept the times when the path was unclear because I could trust that those beautiful, exciting, "in the zone" moments would be coming again soon. Could it even be, perhaps, that the dry spells are necessary - a period of rest for teacher and student alike - to have some space for creativity to blossom?
Welcoming periods of rest means having faith that they won't last forever. The magic will happen again - in the classroom and on the trail.
While I love my sleep, I have always struggled with the idea of rest. I'm thirty-four years old and still trying to figure out exactly what that is. I like the idea of it. It conjures images of quiet beaches and novels read on a shady porch. Lovely, in theory. But in practice, these scenarios just make me uncomfortable. It takes me a solid week of vacation to even begin to settle in to a feeling of relaxation; and by that point, it's usually time to go home. I've had lots of practice with rest, but I feel as though I still don't quite have the hang of it. If I'm tired, I might as well be sleeping. And if I'm not, I might as well be doing something.
I realized a big "doing something" dream of mine and ran in the marathon relay last weekend. I loved it. My time was nothing to write home about, but I met my personal goal of running the whole course without stopping, which feels really good. Besides, I didn't even know my average pace when I set out on my leg of the race, so just knowing that I'm a 13-minute mile helps me set some new goals and challenge myself further. The run was just the right mix of challenging and fun, and I couldn't wait to continue my training.
Trouble is, the twinge of pain in my ankle that I used to be able to ignore while running isn't staying so manageable. I'm all too familiar with stress injuries (one led to six weeks of physical therapy last summer) and I know the drill: Rest, ice, compression, elevation. Rest. Just when I'm finally committing time to exercising and taking care of myself. I don't want to injure myself further, but I also don't want to lose the little bit of progress I've made. I'm cutting down on the frequency of runs, focusing on strengthening and stretching, and trying not to get too cranky about the whole thing. Rest is, after all, just one of life's dependable cycles. Rest and activity. Day and night. Winter and spring.
These ebbs and flows are apparent in the classroom, too. We're currently in the midst of some really rich and inspiring work. The children noticed a male cardinal that was repeatedly flying into one of the large windows of our school, so we investigated birds in many different ways - we made binoculars and went on a bird walk, learned the calls of local birds, worked with feathers and nests, and created papier-mâché eggs that we adorned with patterns inspired by photographs of bird eggs. We also spent some time observing the cardinal's behavior and learning about the reasons for his actions, which led us to create a large communal piece of art with reflective materials and feathers. After just a few days of this artwork hanging nearby, we noticed the cardinal no longer flying into the window and, more importantly to the children, "staying safe." Our new focus is the symbolism of birds in folktales and mythology, particularly in those cultures represented by the children in our class. The students are also fascinated by the many insects, worms, and spiders they're finding on our playground. We're making them habitats, singing songs about bugs, and learning the vocabulary to describe them. Through these varied explorations, the threads of family and home connect it all. Both the children and I are full of questions and ideas. It's a period in our classroom that is magical. It's a time that makes me so grateful to be in a Reggio-inspired program and a school that values an emergent curriculum.
But it's not always like this.
There are times when I'm positively stumped or confused, when the class feels restless or in a rut. Times when I'm tossing out just about anything to see if it sticks, poring over notes to see if there's some recurrent theme I've missed. When I was first getting my feet wet with a Reggio-inspired approach, these times were a little scary. I used to always know just what was coming. And, if it wasn't particularly inspired, it was at least predictable. Over time, I came to recognize that this was just another natural cycle. I came to accept the times when the path was unclear because I could trust that those beautiful, exciting, "in the zone" moments would be coming again soon. Could it even be, perhaps, that the dry spells are necessary - a period of rest for teacher and student alike - to have some space for creativity to blossom?
Welcoming periods of rest means having faith that they won't last forever. The magic will happen again - in the classroom and on the trail.
