A Pot Washing Party!

Hey, let's have a pot washing party! What images does this conjure in your mind? Well for the Two Block Diet club it's a group of gardeners getting down and dirty to re-use our plastic plant pots. It's mid April, the lilacs and cherry trees are blooming and it's time to get serious about seedlings. (Well, actually we're a bit late, but who's counting?)

Garden experts used to tell people not to reuse plastic pots because they might carry plant diseases but now in the era of ecological awareness they admit if you wash them out properly and sterilize them with a bit of bleach (9 parts water to one part bleach), it's better for the planet to reuse your plastic pots. Sterilization is particulary important for those plants that are more likely to carry diseases such as tomatoes and brassicas. The prospect of scrubbing my 70 or so small pots was very daunting so I was very happy when Kate and Dawn picked a time an a place and we did it together. DIT as opposed to DIY. Any pots (with a number 5 recycling rating) that were broken beyond use ended up in the plastics recycling depot that Kate has set up for things that can't go in our regular recycling stream.

Another neighbour lent us a big black basin, I brought some rubber gloves and Kate got out her bleach. A few of the neighbourhood girls set up an impromptu sidewalk sale and mostly bought from and traded with each other. The older kids set up a giant game of manhunt. We washed and scrubbed and caught up each other's news. It was hard work. My back was strained, I must admit I was in pain, but it felt good to bond together over dirty pots and to get the job done.

In fact a couple of days later Dawn helped me do another job--cleaning bags of used clothing, books and toys out of my front porch that needed to go to the thrift shop. I don't have a car, so we used her mini-van. What does this have to do with food? Well, not much, but it's an example of how the two block diet meetings and events improve the quality of our lives.

Blue School

While teaching yesterday and I noticed some students being hypnotized by the sink--running the water over their hands and squeezing the sponges, watching the riot of colors disappearing down the drain. It was hard to get the kids to take turns because the sink was such a coveted location. I told one girl to move on and she just nodded her head with a dreamy look in her eyes and stayed right where she was. As I saw the students enjoy the sensation of the water running over their hands as they cleaned the brushes and rubber stamps I wondered if students are getting enough "tactile" time at school. They sit in desks and touch paper and pencil all day, but what about all the other thousands of textures life presents to us? During gym they feel the pebbly surface of the basketball, they might jostle the polyester and cotton of their fellow players' clothing, but maybe they need more texture, more color, and more environmental stimulation

This morning I thought about books I've browsed through on Italian educator Reggio Emilia. He made sure that preschool students explored the world through their senses in creative ways. In fact he saw the environment as the "third teacher." What a simple but stunning concept. Imagine classrooms built on these basic Reggio Emilia principals:

--The aesthetic beauty within the schools is seen as an important part of respecting the child and their learning environment
--A classroom atmosphere of playfulness and joy pervades
--Teachers organize environments rich in possibilities and provocations that invite the children to undertake extended exploration and problem solving, often in small groups, where cooperation and disputation mingle pleasurably.
--Documentation of children's work, plants, and collections that children have made from former outings are displayed both at the children's and adult eye level.
--Common space available to all children in the school includes dramatic play areas and work tables for children from different classrooms to come together.

As the Campbell government squeezes funding for education and libraries my mind boggles how the education of children could be made so much more stimulating if the system received the proper funding.

Now imagine what would happen if a bunch of performance artists created and school. The Blue School, an innovative school for young children was created by members of The Blue Man Group in New York. Don't you wish you could have let your creativity run wild in a place like that? Part of what I found exciting about the school is that it welcomes parent involvement and it attracts the kind of parents who want to be involved in the process of their children's education. It certainly looks like a stimulating environment--maybe not the best place for kids who need a more calm and settling space, but finding a balance would have to be a major part of the educational practice in a place like that. Kind of like life outside the classroom.