We Are Not All Created Concrete Sequential

Not that this will endear this writing to anyone but I was just reading the last book Abraham Maslow wrote, "The Farther Reaches of Human Nature", in fact he actually did not finish or edit it for his dying so young at 61, tragedy. Which is a terrible loss to us now, though this is a very credible effort.For me a life altering work. When I read it in 1993, and again this week I realized how influential it is in my teaching and in my stretching to understand learning. This is the man that brought us a triangle to look at needs and the way a human must meet needs, whose work in motivational theory still astounds me.

If you read no other book, and you are concerned with learning and future, with human development and with the stance to take in living a life in this now, he's the person to read. He talks in the book about the capacities he perceives are needed for the kind of changes this new 21st century of rapid information and change brings us. Remarkably he defines this as the creativity, the drive and the capacity to see creating impulses into forms as his model. He describes this capacity in terms of his intense study of individuals he studied that were "actualizing" and that demonstrated this in their lives. He suggested it almost as an evolution, not a skill set to go get. His talking about scientists as imitators of this, fairly poor imitators, and how these capacities are fundamental to cope with the rapidly developing world-well you just need to read it. Because it says something that the world should here. Just as we heard him on motivation, and on meeting needs hierarchically. It matters. a great deal to a teacher, his work was the study of this work. And it's essential to read well about what you are doing, in the bigger scheme of things. I could quote this entire book and will try in future posts to do just that.

By coincidence today on my apple carpet in Room 10, at the start of another year I read a book to my first grade by Rosemary Well's called Fritz and the Mess Fiary. Notable here because the main character of this book by Well's, Fritz, is "just a little different." Perhaps meant in this kind of way. Someone that is child-like, creative, seeing out of the boxes and having some trouble being understood and understanding. He is also struggling with an aspect of his life, cleaning up. His struggle is in meeting the expectations others place on him to clean up. He is extremely busy in his thoughts and in his life in the "doing". And he is doing things others just aren't sure about at all.
Or how it might be in a very young childlike state, when describing just the kind of person that will evolve into being the creator that Maslow was talking about. Maslow actually talks a good bit about that childlike stance, its value. There is something about Fritz, and how he is presented here which links these two books together in the gestalt that is my teaching and story sharing with children. I rather like the juxtaposition.

Fritz lacks the trait of working so systematically on his "ideas" that he can keep his room, and home "neat" within the definitions of neatness we are largely fairly "normatively" in schools and perhaps in our culture imposing on children. My Mom used to say something important to me when my children were young. My husband would bluster through their evening demanding they "clean up their stuff". What she said was....you disorganize and knock down the blocks first, until one day you develop the capacities to construct. And that struck me as awfully thoughtful.

So, too, applied into my teaching life I often see children struggling with a backpack or a cubby space, things akimbo. Sometimes they are collectors, sometimes they seem to naturally chew apart everything they touch. it amazes me how quickly a folder is shredded to dust. It seems that these things are structured and helped by explaining, practicing, modeling and time. And by perhaps expecting something different and allowing it to be different. And maybe noticing some other things.
I watched Mom allow my kids to knock her block towers down. Over and over when another person might scold, she just built again and they laughed together and she said, "Ready, knock it over." I saw that, they loved that.

And so Fritz seems unable really to figure out how to clean it all up and believe me his room is a disaster. It's kind of disconcerting that added to this when he is asked about the mess he just denies that he had anything to do with it ....and that comes back to be heard again in a bit of guilt for him that seems sort of sad....within the story. i think he simply denies because he had no alternative, he was in hot water and he was struggling knowing he had "done wrong." It's sort of the root I think of lying.

Fritz in getting a science experiment going really outdoes himself in terms of bringing a house to it's knees until he has angered a generally laid back group, one I might add that perhaps ought to have stepped in earlier to assist him. But for a little one he has ambitious , creative ideas going. I remember those days when i was busily thinking of how to get a project off the ground. He has a rocket added into the mix. As I said a pretty liberal family.
In a kind of complicated and somewhat strange series of twists he creates something (a fairy?) that's worse than he is, in terms of outrageous mess. Oh my. And he does find a way to solve that awful problem finally too in a very inventive and now competent way. Maslow talks about artists creativity not in terms of the impulse but also the drive, discipline the carry forward of the idea, the process. It was this he saw as informational to our world as it is now. And it is this which reminds me of Fritz because he tries and does amazingly complex things.

Then Fritz in this little circle of guilt as he thinks about this horrible messy fairy "sees the error of his own ways" miraculously staying up all the night to put it all right, to own up to what he did and stop spewing it out in denial ...until...maybe ....the next time.

So I was a little disappointed because in working with children I do meet little and big Fritzes. They usually have a hard time organizing and cleaning, and are pursuing their own things. I can't recall a time where I saw one simply just do it all fine, as quickly as Fritz. Once he sees the light all impediments fall by the wayside. Let's face it, in lives this kind of thing takes time. Capacities to organize for any type of person come over time. I recall, sorry to steer into my associations, a man who worked under my father, an ag. professor, with a room of books and papers stacked to ceiling -one needed to tunnel in to find him. I'm not sure that "Fritz" whose name was Jim Clark ever actually organized according to the standards of many of his peers. And yet he was known for this mess in rather teasing and at times insensitive reception. But he was extremely well loved by students, excellently read, completely head and shoulders above many others in productivity. Someone who did things, who you wanted to associate with and learn with or from. But it was not unusual that a "hunt" was required for this or that paper, no doubt.
Fritz in this story will always be benefited by some more watching, until he's older, perhaps a bit more supervision and structure and a continued family acceptance of his nature. Well's leaves in her stories this kind of ambiguity. She's often not a complete resolver, and her work stands up to the kinds of situations that arise in children's worlds, that are a bit disconcerting. Fritz's story of the Mess Fairy is a little tiny bit disconcerting.

I read the story in U Pick It Time and this was chosen today from a big Well's selection, as I usually start the year with Wells. My 1st grade considered it very carefully.
They recently painted "tooth fairies" with much debate about these kinds of imaginary beings. The thought of a Mess Fairy they found equally interesting. You know the most fascinating thing to me was they expected her to CLEAN UP THE MESS in the house after it was made. Say like in the Cat In The Hat. So it was utterly fascinating to see her have to be vanquished. She remained awful, and with the creation of a black hole by Mr. Fritz, wow.

For awhile they did re-discuss and consider this Mess Fairy who would squeeze all the toothpaste everywhere. This seemed very serious stuff. Quite a conundrum. Fun to draw, we did a follow-uo where they thought of things The Mess Fairy could do that would "make a real mess". How often do you think of that?

One of my new students is struggling, struggling to find his way, to get things in the boxes or to put the pencil in the sharpener. He is messy, but he did not know the word. Little one. I met with his mom today and she noted to me how difficult it is for him to put away a toy or care for clothes. Very young. At the end of my reading this book to them I asked him what he thought. "I'm a little bit afraid of that big fairy coming to my house." Oh I said, it's just a pretend story.
And he looked at me. kind of like, "what are you talking about it's right there in the book".

The start of a year with much to do, and many teaching puzzles to consider.