What Ignites Me: A Revisitation

As I looked at my last blog post, I thought: it's been THREE months since I've written anything! Have I failed to be ignited? No, of course not. Then I realized that I should really share the poem that inspired the title of my blog. I can't believe I didn't share it right off the bat, in fact. It fits with today's theme because there are three things that ignite me regularly.
1) Working with students and learning from each other.
2) Writing -- reading others' or creating my own.
3) Stitches; yarn; knitting; spinning; crochet; the feel of fiber between my index finger and thumb.

This poem falls under #2.
What I Have Learned So Far

Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I
not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,
looking into the shining world? Because, properly
attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.
Can one be passionate about the just, the
ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit
no labor in its cause? I don't think so.

All summations have a cause, all effect has a
story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.
Thought buds towards radiance. The gospel of
light is the crossroads of---indolence, or action.

Be ignited, or be gone.

--Mary Oliver

She's got it right on so many counts. What matters is not the thoughts we sit and think but the action we take. "All kindness begins with the sown seed."

I have finished the wildly patriotic socks, and passed them on. I saw MA today (the student they were for), and I asked him how his middle school experience was going. He said "It's going really great." Just in those words I could hear the genuine quality of his voice, and that he was trying just a little harder to be more grown up. What's happened since June? The sixth graders of last year have become middle schoolers, and they're doing exactly what we as teachers intended for them to do -- grow more independent and responsible. It's so hard to see it happening in your own children (as my son hits fifth grade I see the process just beginning), but as a teacher, it's quite fun to see it happen in other people's children! You get all the benefit and very little weepiness.

There were two other sixth graders to knit socks for last year. HW was one of them, the last of the boys. A bit smaller than the other two LARGE boys (both taller than me, as if that were saying much), HW made up for it in his classroom presence. He was such a creative kid with exceptional ideas about all kinds of things, from group names to literature to art and beyond. At first I thought I'd be making some sort of crazy patterned socks, but once he saw a classmate's blue ones (see previous post) he asked for one that was "all kinds of red". I obliged, to the best of my ability. These socks were knit out of a yarn called Happy Feet DK that is so incredibly soft it's hard to believe it's wool. Harder to believe it's washable. I love them, and if I could have gotten away with it, I would have kept them for me. (After all, all these sixth years have the same size feet as me, essentially!!) But.....bad karma and all that. They got sent to HW. I hope he likes them.


Onward we go. Today one of my now-fifth graders asked what happened to the things I was knitting for them last year. Ummm.....