VR Tech Staff Development: Ropes Course 2011

VR Tech High School is a very different kind of high school. It is a school that is based on online classes, but the students have a staff that keeps track of them, gives guidance, cares about them as individuals, and helps them to persist in their studies. I can honestly say that I have never, in all my years of teaching, enjoyed my work place as much as I have at VR Tech. I say that having taught for years in alternative education, which I loved with a passion. VR Tech is something of an alternative education situation, but remarkable in that it is well-structured and well-supported. Our students didn’t do well in a traditional high school, but they are doing very well here. The trust and respect between the teachers and the students is quite remarkable. There are many reasons for that, but much of this success is due, really, to Deb Feenstra who runs the program. She has a remarkable ability to create a positive, cooperative atmosphere, that is low-stress, but highly productive. She is also good at networking with many community groups and churches to give the students opportunities they would not otherwise get, and she is a very good advocate for her program, students and staff. It is a “happy ship”, as Patrick O’Brian, the author of the “Master and Commander” series would say, and I feel very fortunate to be a part of it.

One example of how different the program is, is shown in this video. It is of our staff development. Instead of having long meetings full of the usual in-service work and seminars, from which teachers come away feeling tired and sometimes even lectured to, Deb arraigned for us to go out to a place called the Filmore complex in West Olive, Michigan, to a ropes course that has been set up for troubled teens to push themselves and find out what they can do. Deb wanted us to use the course to do some team building exercises. I really appreciated it. I also appreciate the fact that we have pretty much the same group of teachers and staff that we had last year in spite of all the lay-offs and economic trouble my school district has had to face. I’m glad because we are a very good team. We work well together, and that makes us better able serve needs of our students—and those needs are very real, and run very deep.

Riddle #3: Nine Young Children

This month’s riddle is a little different than my past riddles. It is more like the riddles written by Kit Williams, a wonderful author who put together some very beautifully illustrated books. Two of his books were given to me as gifts—perfect gifts, given the kind of person I am—Masquerade and The Book Without a Name, which was based on the theme of bees. I am, and have been for many, many years, fascinated by his books which offer the most enchanting illustrations, clever puzzles, and a strong sense of mystery from pre-Christian pagan times.

My riddle, like most of the ones I have posted, was written sometime in the early eighties. I have mentioned this before. It was after moving from Sioux City, Iowa to Terra Haute, Indiana.

Regarding Sioux City, I think those areas along the grassy bluffs that over look the Missouri river and out across the flat, fertile lands of Nebraska and South Dakota are among the most beautiful and spiritually alive places on earth. I was there during a recession. Unemployment was at 14% and I was single and out of work. That is partly why I entered in to a kind of darkness of depression that was very deep. To deal with it, I used to escape to the bluffs and hike for miles and miles over the rolling prairie lands. My state of mind and soul are hard to describe. Perhaps it was because I was in that darkness that I became sensitive and receptive to all kinds of things that dwell in the darkness. I knew that the landscape was not just hills and grass, but it was very much alive—present. The sky, from the top of those bluffs was also alive and I could almost reach out and touch it. I began to listen to the crows and I understood that they possessed language and I could, if I listened long enough, begin to learn their language. And I knew the ancestors of the Lakota were right there, willing to offer wisdom, help and guidance to anyone who understood that all things are connected. All things are connected. Me, the bluffs, the trees, the crows, the ancestors and other people—all of us are connected.

But that is a long way from my riddle! The image of this riddle comes from when I was a young man, and I was put in charge of a three day camp with a group of church kinds who were about seven or eight years old at the time. We had a great time, but one of the nights I was there I had just settled down to sleep, when one of the boys needed me to walk him to the bathroom. “Just use the trees” I said. But he said it wasn’t that kind of bathroom. So I got up our of my bed to take him, and suddenly the rest of them had to go too. So I took them all, and as we were passing the girls tents, one of the women helpers heard us and shouted from her place in the tent that she had several girls who had to go too. So the next thing I knew I had about eight or nine kids processing down a path that ran through pine trees and out to the open grassy field to the bathrooms by the camp swimming pool. While I waited for them, I looked up at a full moon and thought it was the most enchanting night I’d seen in a long time. One, by one, as the children finished their business, they came out and stood with me under the moonlight and waited for the rest. We all thought it was a magical night. When all the children were with me, we didn’t go right away. “Grab hands and form a circle” I said. They did. And so we began to sing and dance in a circle under the moonlight. The girls in their nightgowns, the boys in their pajamas, all of us were dancing and dancing under the moon.

It is one of those things you never forget, and something those kids would bring up many, many years later: “Hey, Kenny! Rememer that time we danced in the field under the full moon?” Those kids are in their early forties now, and I bet they still remember. “How long will we dance together?” is the question I ask, and I need, for this riddle, the exact answer!