Cherries and Cherry Pits, a Story for Optimists that is Lovely For Reading To Children In Celebration OF Black History Month

Today I re-discovered that the Internet can make you laugh.
I did not intend to begin this post this way, but the sheer delight of discovering another fun site is permeating all I do.

Doug Noon decided to introduce me to the Uncyclopedia. While I love Wikipedia, it is nothing like this site.

Among my favorites found there today were: Waiting For Godot ,
Things Bono Invented,
I before E, except after C ,
and Rant.
(If you are not aware, I have a special connection to these topics.)

Oh, excuse me, my parents were married on Groundhog's Day. And it's too many days with six-year -olds on rainy-day schedule. Just silly. It happens.

I sat at lunch amazed that, while my district blocks Wikipedia, I can access Uncyclopedia, truly relevant for my ongoing research into the wildly irreverent.

At least I had a laughing lunch (half) hour. Thank you, Mr. Noon. Thank you, Mr. Noon.

Do you ever wonder about the sheer scope of this technological noosphere?
I do. It's just such a joyful moment to discover Del.icio.us or Wikipedia. The way art is joyful for children. Like a waterslide.

We had a short meeting at my Under-Performing elementary this week, to inform us of possible expansions in our existing ten-year-old technology due to our Under-Performance "needs." Buying and growth is supposedly slated for us next year.

I can only hope this will happen. In the past it was hampered by a person on the site controlling and self-rewarding, and also the fear-o-technology based faculty looking the other way, inadvertant peer enabling...all done without broad school vision. It takes a school visionary. And prior experience tells me our technology person will hold firmly to his personal right to the stuff. We will see; it's not the same as it was ten years ago.

The district is severely limiting current students using the technology, without creative understanding; narrowing to a basic skills and a completely proscribed format. It really is a workbook in a can. It will take leadership, and a realization, for change to bring the school what it needs. The sky is the limit.

Today, to see so much humor in one place reminded me of innovation in our school in my lifetime...creation...and art. And Molly Ivins.

I do "believe" in teaching as an art form. And wandering thoughts on a Friday Night.
I am an artist; see the points of connection technology to teaching to art to humor in my analogy.
It may need further writing on my part to contextualize here, but I am really posting thinking about a very creative character in a wonderful book who inspired me for years. Because I think we need to teach creativity and happiness to get to the Promised Land.

I use this character, Bidemmi, the way these new technologies inspire me to work with children. (It's a stretch; you'll have to forgive my writing.) She is a character the author, Vera B. Williams, based on herself. She sees her world, loves to tell stories, notices contradictions, looks for happiness, draws, improves her community, expands the positive in the world, makes pictures to explain ideas and visions, connects through another medium to better "know" her world. To me that's what I want to do with this technology.

Bedemmi is a young black artist, writer, dreamer, seer. And her world view is one of creativity and making meaning.

Reading the book that contains her story makes me want to draw. I'm going to use this book next week when my new after-school art classes start with the children. Use it to inspire drawing.

We will be drawing turtles after reading Owen and Mzee, a story sent to me by Susan Ohanian, along with Mama . Both books are stories about a survivor of the tsunami that hit at Christmas in 2004. A baby hippo survives and bonds to a turtle, Mzee. It is a story of friendship. We will be drawing turtles using the technology we have to access and then post images, because last year we lost a very close friend--our school secretary, Terri Truxler, to a horrible fatal illness that simply wasted her away in front of my eyes. She was a woman who had been my husband's clerk-secretary too, when he worked in the District as a Principal, and she looked after him and my kids as they went to Bard School. After drawing, we will paint them on the bottoms of the classroom doors school-wide. And I'll make a site on-line to share our work. Maybe blog if my plans work out. Miss Terri loved turtles. She ran After School Programs for my husband too.

So next week, all the things I love will come together in a 4-day-a-week 'til 5pm after school art program. But the book that I will use first, the book that unites this to my thoughts of celebrating Black History, is the book Cherries and Cherry Pits. This I will be using first to inspire a desire to draw, to create, to find a place to reach inside and look for unique ways to tell your story, see your image, find your truth. To reach the inner turtle. So that we can honor Mrs. Truxler, Miss Terri.

This is the story of the book...if you do not own it, please consider it for the main character is an inspiration.

On
Cherry and Cherry Pits
Vera B. Williams


Our kids are our seedlings and we nourish them with our heart and soul.
Nothing else we do comes close except in our love given to each other.

Our children come to us unique and complex, beyond anything I ever conceived possible. The love we feel for our child is so elemental and so simple. It's there.

That said, I am amazed this story was the favorite of favorites for my daughter Sylvia when at four she entered kindergarten. That was 13 years ago September.

That first week of school at Hathaway, my site, I requested she be allowed to read "Cherries and Cherry Pits" aloud as her birthday present (what did I know of cupcakes then?) so we could then donate it to her new class. I still feel that should be universal courtesy to classrooms. Donate books to teachers, please.

I can still see the incredulous look on Mrs. Wren's face; a momentary fleeting insight into her perception of the request. What did I know? First-time parenting, it seemed natural enough, asking to read a book at school. Putting my daughter into a " 'hood" school seemed natural too. I was teaching there and I felt strongly together we would make a place for any and every child. This is what I think public school is about, frankly. I'd never want to teach where my child wouldn't be welcome, happy and so it went. We lived this life. She is grown and interviewing for Harvard. My school really was fine until NCLB literally ripped the school to pieces, chasing away experienced teachers into retirement, kids to other sides of town, stripping art, music, implementing canned workbooks and stilling the possibilities and potentials.

That my Sylvia heard the message in this book speaks to my now 17 year olds' inner core.

"This is" a story told in child voice.
"This is" a story of a young artist.
"This is" a story of a young girl in the now.
"This is" the story of a writer, dreamer, observer.
"This is" a story of a young girl who weaves tales of cherries and discarded pits, who has a vision of all the pits, remnants of cherry-eating and spitting, being planted...growing.

In her story we find the why. She draws and tells of saved cherry pits growing to fill the neighborhood with trees, with the beauty of the cherry tree blossoms and the delicious cherry tree fruit. And the neighborhood needs it. She has a vision of beauty in what we plant, in what we do.

My teaching life, that my daughter saw as real, the art I created, the actions she watched, the writer told of here . In many ways it is what a teacher does. You plant the seeds of the future. I realize tonight within the life we lead educating, working in community, striving to bring to fruition the joy of reading, of life, of living. The art of all of that--really it was the same story. Just a different version. Our cherry pits and our flowering blossom. So I think my daughter read and connected both to our life and Vera B. Williams. She was really something; to read of her is very fascinating.

I read somewhere once about the cherry tree and its symbolic meanings. I think that's interwoven here into what remains for me a highly metaphorical tale. This is a story for children and families. In short the cherry symbolizes the sweetness of character that is derived from good works. It is often referred to as "the fruit of Paradise" in reference to the destination of those who perform good deeds. (see Noon)

It was a story once read in our old Houghton Mifflin Whole Language-based reading series. The one that served my daughter. A time which recognized that a story, well-told, rich, rising from cultures, from contexts, from places of human thought that reflect our observations, our capacity to find ways to speak to the young through our tales...this is something to motivate, to help, to educate.

After reading with my first graders this story for years I was always able to make "this is" stories from the way the writer initiated her set of stories. The child talks and says , "This is..." Or I used it to teach cherry-related works, or to get markers and seriously look at illustrating our stories once we reached in deep and found "our stories" needing to be told in words and pictures. It's phenomenal for using with childen to teach "voice". I recommend this with children and remain proud of the day I came upon my daughter happily reading it aloud at three just to herself.

Please consider it for your daughters or sons. It will inspire a crew of turtle artists. I use it to talk of activating the artist inside, finding your voice. I'm sure as we realize that to celebrate cultural history is to raise our voice and celebrate the children.

and for terri:
Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.
For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
the time of the singing of birds is come,
and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;
The fig tree putteth forth her green figs,
and the vines [with] the tender grape give a good smell.
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. THE SONG OF SOLOMON, I. 11-13