You Reap What You Sow

In life you really get what you put in. I do believe that nature is balanced that way. It's so easy to be obsessed with your career, and earning a living so that you can provide for your family. That recipe can be a disaster if the very family you are working hard to provide for seizes to exist. It's never an easy equation to balance, but the reality is simple. People put the most energy into the things they care about the most.

Click on the video link that follows to capture how the morning began! http://youtu.be/VaQg4zuc_Os

I am certainly not a farmer by any scope of the imagination. I love nature and the great outdoors, but to be in it, not to create it! Well that's the story I have told myself and believe. Having said that, spending a morning with my family and some of the school community from my daughter's class doing "work in the garden" makes me question that belief.

Maya has been telling me about The Forest Classroom they are building, so that they can formally have class outside on some days. She has been talking to me about their shelter that they are building themselves, with "no assistance" from teacher or an adult. She has been going on about the bed they are making in order to plant some oats. It did not really sink in for me until this weekend when I saw it.

I did almost blow it! I could have missed it all and experienced it at best as a figment of my imagination. On Friday when we were talking about the class meeting I was going to on Saturday, Maya mentioned that we must dress appropriately as we would work in the fields on Saturday. I had a melt down. "I don't like working in the garden" I thought, "so why would I take my precious Saturday and go to the school to work on someone else's garden?"

As I reacted, I saw the disappointment on Maya's face. For her, this was not as simple as that. She did not see me as coming through and having to labour in the forest (garden). She saw this as an opportunity to not only show me what they had been doing, but also a chance for me to be a part of it!

I wound my neck in pretty quickly, as I realised what I had done. Yes, I was ashamed of myself, but I quickly apologised and said the right thing to correct my error in judgement. "I will get my hands dirty and have fun"! It was the best decision I made all week.

I was blown away by seeing the piece of land in the first place. To have school premises, with those kind of grounds is a privilege. Having served on the school board, I knew about the land, but more because of knowing what we use it for and what we are renting it out at. To be a child, and have access to that type of forest at school I think does help ground you and save you from being the city slicker people are becoming.

Seeing how eleven year old children from one class, picked their own teams and came up with their own ideas as to the shelter they would put together, as well as their own presentation to describe their shelter and why and how they got there made me remember why I love the Waldorf Education System. It was not easy for them. They learnt about group dynamics, conflict while working in a team, resolving the conflict, and all the other realities of working with people. Most fascinating was that they had no point of reference to start with when they built, it was all about learning by doing and tapping into their intuition.

So a bit of spade work, wheel barrow pushing and tipping was all I had to put in to get this experience. More importantly though, I got to spend time with my family and community and I enjoyed it! There is something about being in the soil, it literally does earth me. What I thought was going to be a long three hours at school, ended before I was even ready to go. I really got a lot out of the experience, and it was worth putting in the effort.