A Day In the Life: Molly As Our Pilgrim -Part Two-"Religious Freedom" and "Giving Thanks" as a Cornerstone

I am writing a second post after doing some "reflection." My first post on Molly's Pilgrim by Barbara Cohen, a children's book, to be found here and here, full of the exuberance of "Making." I am a maker.

This Veteran's Day weekend among the things I'm doing as a teacher includes getting ready for grading, organizing my classroom records, thinking about the year so far, and preparing some activities to carry us to Winter Break.

One of the kinds of activities I haven't done for a few years with my class is to look at any holiday. Kind of like we would prefer not to endorse "that kind of thing" in the mandated curricular objectives. Because I taught 3rd grade in a job share with my friend Heidi whi is quitting by the way over these mandates in December after 15 years, I taught with her a couple years ago I know the Houghton Mifflin reader returns in it's "themes" to talk about immigrants and their contribution to the nation. I recall a story of a Korean immigrant and a Patricia Polacco story excerpt about a quilt keeping the story of Russian immigrants.

But again the notion of "the holiday" is not stated. It's not that I want to abuse this into hegemony, but it seems to me that my students do, as immigrant students, bring fascinating culture with them and it does blend in interesting ways into this country. And it seems to me the stories that Thanksgiving can generate tell us a lot about this nation. I just re-read a website talking about the mistakes in our perceptions about the first Thanksgiving. It was fascinating reading. And of course I'm planning on making bean turkeys next week. I'm not sure i want to give up bean turkeys. I attended a session once with a federal person who was talking about NCLB. Serving the "region" he had a habit of targeting teachers and using profanity. I believe he said, " They'll need to get up off their a** and give up their little pet projects."

I think this might be one of those Mr. NCLB. And I don't think so, your point of view is not mine.This lesson, Molly's Pilgrim, has a value that I am quite concerned about, it teaches us to not think in us against them so that one day we don't call our little plump white haired teacher an a**, or anything else. Because of this experience, listening to him talking of setting these teachers "on fire.' I became confident that my writing was "the right thing to be doing." It was then I decided to talk reality and truth to power.
Even from my little corner of the fields.

As we charted the student's birthdays on our solar observation calendar in our Exploring Time and Space project talking about a year to take a trip around the sun, and as they saw that visually in a new way, children talked too about how that day is for them.
One little boy, who lacks language, got out a bunch of paper twoels miming for me an elaborate show until like charades with props we were all guessing...cake, yes....birthday cake...yes and then he smashed his face into the "cake" several times until I "got it" at his home to celebrate the day they smash his face into the cake.

I decided this year after seeing the results of last year strictly following the mandated curriculum to address the units of study with better teaching. I tire of the notion that the little Houghton Mifflin suggestions for 2nd Language Learners might be worthwhile activities. Usually they are so lame. For instance last week here was the "suggestion" to learn ordinal numbers. "The Chicken Game". Choose a child to be a chicken. Have them pick students to line up in their hutch by number.

I'm sorry that's not a game. That's a person writing at about 2AM for a textbook company saying, "This sounds good, doesn't it Margey?"
No, it sounds like ideas in a dorm meeting on the float committe after a case.

Anyway I like to plan curriculum that will lead children into the curricular goals by making and doing. One of my goals is "understanding there is a past", "tolerance for others" "understanding others have cultures and belief systems" and my favorite "understanding the values systems of America"......these kinds of Standards are the ones upon which a great deal of work can be done. My work, necessary work.

I have been making doll's as examples for my children so they can make "Molly's Pilgrim" dolls.

But last night I started thinking about the story having read through it again. It is lovely, it is a family story. It could be my Uncle Jack's story, his family fled the Pograms in Russia. It could be Gladys Pearls's story, my grandmum. Written by Barbara Cohen it tells the experience of an immigrant child (her family story) arriving in 1904 to a fairly intolerant public school classroom. She is teased and she thinks about what that tells her about Americans. She looks hard at what we say and what we do. Very hard.

My husband's father, an Italian immigrant, 1st generation American, used to tell me something I find somewhat generalizable. When he was in school in the Washington DC area he would take these lovely meatball sandwiches to school made by his Nonnie, delicious and trade them away for peanut butter and jelly. Such was his determination to "be American," I think he sold them showing his hudspah another American value actually, and not appearing to be anything but "from here." I know he told this story for "a reason."

Just as I know Molly's Pilgrim is a story repeated and loved "for a reason."

As I listen to Lou Dobbs spill and spew and then deny the content of his words that daily build intolerance and enflame a sense of negativity towards the immigrant students I teach so that legal or illegal, citizen or not, the immigrant from Mexico is seen as a lesser being....I know the forces at work. These forces have worked a very long time. Zeniphobia in our world, in Europe, in the world is a force that has destroyed many people. Hurt. It hurts us still in solving any issues. It's pretty easy to practice and it's extremely easy to build into lingo of the day.
Look at Lou. He's convince of the fairness of this thing he does like a rabid animal....in his view nothing he says ever could be interpreted as intolerant and a bit hatefilled. Review the tapes Lou. I've never been able to understand how unreflective that stance is, but I do know an unreflective stance is a first step into real trouble. So is too much self-reference.

It is my thought that elimination of story, myth, of cultural pieces from my text for 1st graders must be done "on purpose." It would seem to me that the homogenization reflects a desire to just not "go there." So terrific stories like Yoko, like Molly's Pilgrim, like the stories of Martin Luther King all are washed away. Washed away to younger teachers too. It's awful to watch. It is awful to participate in this. Up in Warner Sprngs the children waited for me to "get in trouble" for teaching Black history. I honestly lived this several years ago. No one taught it, the prejudices against it were visceral. And those kids needed someone to stand on that.
The teachers there waited to see too, visiting the room where I put my books up on the chalk tray, and asking me if I really was "going to do that." The books out were some of the most beautiful trade books written. "Yes" I'm going to do that. We had several students from an African American/Black background in the room and more importantly students "need to know." Can you imagine how they felt? Well Willie said he felt "good" and from that day on Willie counted me as "somebody' because now Willie was "somebody." I actually tear up. Sorry.
Yes, as a teacher, part of my role is teaching to "who we are" and "what we have done" so that in our mistakes "we are not doomed to repeat them." In our wisdom we understand what "matters." I am going to address race and culture, fumble perhaps. And I would hope learn many things in the process.

Molly's Pilgrim has something more to say than JUST you can make beautiful dolls from all the places in the world. It talks of the immigrant that comes to our country for religious freedom. That is America baby.

For the very right that founded our country.
Molly's Pilgrim is a story about how essential this freedom is.
In our present time I think perhaps we do not celebrate this enough. Do not teach it enough, do not embed it enough in projects and fun. I think we have forces now operating that find religious intoleance as easy a stance for themselves as freedom. Yes, I said that. Here is an excerpt I want to share from the net. It says some of the things I did not, I was enjoying my doll making yesterday. There is something here to hear:

"The story teaches tolerance. The story teaches acceptance. And the story teaches how in America in 1904 when a young Jewish family comes over from Russia, it was the last thing that was thought of," says Mrs. Roth. "The little girl walked into a classroom and was totally made fun of -- her clothes, her accent, her inability to pick up right away on the things they were learning in school. I'd like to think that that would not be as common now as it was in 1904. There's a lot more interaction in schools, meaning there are a lot more immigrants from a lot of different places. But I don't believe that that means we have any less need for understanding tolerance."

Actually I break here this quote to point out in 1904 immigration numbers proportionally were far, far greater. This is a mistake actually. We allowed this for the engine to build our country in the wave baby.

In the story, Molly and her mother flee anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia to settle in the United States. While Molly has her troubles with her schoolmates, Molly's mother is ecstatic about the opportunities their new life offers them.

MOTHER: "Do you know, Molly, that some mornings when I wake up the first thing I do is pinch myself? I still can't believe I'm here, in America!"

MOLLY: (sarcastically) "America, where the streets are paved with gold."

MOTHER: "Gold? That is an old wives' tale. You won't find gold on the streets here. But you will find everything else for sale right outside your door. It is like the Garden of Eden!"

Molly's story centers on pilgrim dolls that the class is assigned to make as a project for Thanksgiving. At home, Molly tells her mother that she needs to create a girl doll from a clothespin, and explains that the Pilgrims who celebrated the first Thanksgiving in the Plymouth colony were people who came to America from England in the sixteen-hundreds to find religious freedom. Molly's mother has a revelation. "Didn't you just tell me that a Pilgrim is someone who came to this country from the other side of the world to find freedom?" she asks. " Well, Molly, that describes me! I'm a Pilgrim!"

There is a real genius at work in this story. For what it really does is underscore for all of us that we should live what we say. We must. Immigrants to my mind remind us of this.

I recently made a fool of myself going into my boss and essentially blowing up verbally over the poorer behaviors in my school staff. Teachers in my school hold grudges, involve others in lower behaviors, gossip and trivialize until hording and getting for "self" is a predominate behavior. It tires me. It pulls me in at times. It deadens the mind. Much that needs to be done for students is not done as these kinds of teacher behaviors are tended to like the fire that must never burn out. Eternal flame, is hatred. AND I'M TIRED OF IT.
It strikes me that as we pay homage to this, don't address it, don't speak to it, never confront it and certainly don't deconstruct it, so much damage is done that affects children. I see this as the way it works, over time it starts to be considered "legitimate" we've been doing this so long. But it isn't. A teacher who won't speak for 9 years or longer because she decided you were rude when you said something one day about her spelling and spends 9 years involving others in banning you and being nasty to you is a sick person. A network of hurt. And we model this. We must model health mental and personal. We must model love. And the world operates much like this too. Model inquiry, curiosity, model and channel our energy into making, doing. Into the stance to carry us forwad. To be a learner, to evolve our self. To teach this way.

Much the same has to go on in the microcosm of a school. The keeping of opportunity for a few, resource hording based on the misunderstandings, the lowness of one to another....it caused me to blow. To say. Stop it.
I think this is something that we need to talk about when children are young. I have no doubt I am calpable of these behaviors. It infuriates me in myself. But I also have no dount that the people I knew, their examples, the teachers and their work with rich literature, our community in Morgantown, West Virginia addtressing the issues, with their desire to explain and broaden my horizons, I have no dounbt this gave me the ability to be in another's shoes.

And it is through building those understandings, that empathy, this is what Molly's Pilgrim is really all about.

It is coming to Thanksgiving. Once a child said to me so happy making a doll for this project actually, "Every Thanksgiving is like the 1st Thanksgiving with fun like this." She was loving our play.
This is a time for our grateful acknowledgement of what we have, for sharing, for being able to say I am thankful for this country, her charter, her values. I need to exemplify them.
I am everyone here and I am myself. I am an American.

I cannot say this better:

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,