Each school day, when the day ends, twenty or thirty folks gather outside the back gate. I come to the playground, open the gate and parents step onto the yard to pick up their children. They mingle and chat. Friendly almost always. Connections and reunions abound. One Friday, however, I got a call on the […]
Tag Archives | Wisdom
Wisdom
Jordan just turned ten. He is my height. He has a round, soft face, dark brown skin, and a button nose. I have known him for two years and have never seen his face twist in anger nor have I heard him spit out an unkind word. When my friend, Mr. Charles Tucker from Mississippi, visited Jordan’s classroom […]
Time
Tuesday morning, I scooted my way into school just before sunrise and from the start, I got little signals that the day would bring something different. For example, I fumbled in the dark to get my key into the lock on the school’s front door. Then, fingers of sunlight extended across the pre-dawn sky and a […]
Chalk
On Tuesday, chalk came out for recess. On Wednesday the blacktop exploded in powdered gridlines of blue, orange, and yellow. Sketches everywhere charted the mental scatter-shot of eight year-olds – hundreds of secrets written in block-letter code, boy-loves-girl scandals shared in tight whisper rings, now stood out for public review. Our playground had become a […]
Second
At the end of recess last Friday, I blew the line-up whistle. The scramble began. It took only one child switching from walk to run and then the pandemic spread. In an instant I had twelve students dashing across the playground to be first. Several boys showed remarkable cutting skills, slicing in front of their […]
