Authored by Jessica Parker-Farris
It’s no secret that the Lower School is in need of a major renovation, and thank goodness, the school has steadily been envisioning and planning to make that a not-too-distant reality. But what are we supposed to do in the meantime? Folks at the South Campus know that we teachers hunt and gather. We hoard things: chairs, used books, tape, you name it! There’s an underlying panic of You never know when I might need that! I’ve been working in the same space for eight years now, and the only thing in my room that was not scavenged is the rug. I had been using a twenty-plus-year-old rug, but when we came back from Covid, the space was just too small to fit twenty 4th graders without difficulty and fuss. I am so thankful for that perfectly new rug, but there’s been benefits to inheriting what I’ve convinced the guys (Greg, Arty, and Kenney) to retrieve from B quad, or, what I like to call The Chamber of Secrets.
Throughout the years, I’ve constantly thought about all the things my space didn’t have, what I couldn’t do. And then one day it hit me, Don’t think about what you don’t have. Just list out what you actually DO have. And that was a game changer. I suddenly realized the table at the back of the room (that had not been moved in over 20 years!) could serve as a table kids could access materials from rather than hold items that belonged in the back storage room. I could place the rug in the center of the room, giving breathing space between tables to allow for better classroom management and separation of centers. Inundated with more grade-level sets than places to put them, I scavenged three unused shelves that now simultaneously function as a focal point, art supply storage, and showcase grade-level sets, serving as both decoration and continual kiddo-artist inspiration.
Transition to this year.
As some of you know, I’ve been determined to find joy. One thing that brings me joy is making ikebana-inspired floral arrangements. Instead of hiding what I do at home, I wondered if seeing arrangements would bring others joy the way it does me and decided I’d share my arrangements with others. I eventually had two main goals: experiment every morning (a morning play-date, if you will) and keep the main LS foyer table tidy and supplied with a simple composition.
Often getting to work while it’s still dark, it’s become a meditative joy, and doing so has also, yet again, connected me to fellow co-workers. I quickly realized buying flowers each week adds up, so I asked our amazing new Lower School Science Teacher Rolando Roman if it would be possible to use some of the school’s flowers for an upcoming LS art reception. He was more than excited for us to be using the flowers as a way to celebrate community and beautify campus. So I began using school flowers for school events on a regular basis. Rolando headed up the school’s first farmer’s market, and, already having connected over flowers, he asked if I would help sell the school’s flowers. It was a huge success. Flowers were sold out in the first 18 minutes, and we completely wrapped up the market 50 minutes before official time – we’d sold out! One connection led to the next, and before long, I was making one arrangement after another: April Cosgrave’s baby shower, the front desk, the round table entering the main building, school plays/parent receptions, art receptions, and chapel services.
Then came our first real temperature drop.
Almost all of the flowers were taken out, all but a few planted near the science room which had more protection. How would I now make arrangements? Out of necessity, once again I asked myself the question, What do you have? and then began a whole new series of creating and designing. I’ve always foraged twigs, bark, and extra greenery to fill my arrangements, but this time I thought, What if I made everything out of dead materials? I have endless amounts of dead materials at my fingertips!
As I transitioned into working with sticks, bark, lichen, and stems, something resonated with me that Anna Frame had nonchalantly mentioned at the baby shower: “Your work is so sculptural.”
I took plenty of ceramics courses in college, but I’ve never thought of myself as a sculptor. I think this shift of creation could only have happened because I allowed myself to both share my work with others and, like a child discovering the world for the first time, to experiment with my gathered natural materials by simply noticing what they could do, how they were structured, their textures, how they might connect, no product required. And what’s funny to me is that I always loved abstract expressionism and wanted to paint abstractly, but I’ve always felt like a fake. I can make beautiful abstracts, but I’ve never known what each work truly represents in my mind. And here nature has been speaking so clearly to me! Each branch and work has told me exactly what it wanted to say, what it wanted to be. Maybe it’s because I was finally listening.
I had quietly made this commitment to playing and creating, and so for a while no one knew it was me. Eventually folks figured it out and made comments like, “I’m glad you can see beauty in such weird things,” but I knew I wasn’t the only one. I’d seen folks walk past the stick arrangements, pause, and softly smile, so I knew it at least brought a handful of others a tiny spark of joy. And by the end of this year, I had teachers bringing me all kinds of twigs, branches, dead wisteria vines, you name it! By May Day, folks were literally pulling dead branches from trees right adjacent to the May Day field and telling me “This branch has potential!”
I’ve loved and learned so much through this uninterrupted time of discovery, but if I could wrap it all up in a pretty little bouquet of findings, here’s a few lessons my play sessions have taught me:
- A bouquet of flowers or sticks, it’s what you do with what you’ve got. Reframe. What do I have?
- Beyond efficiency, even a bouquet of sticks can be beautiful and spark joy. One of the most beautiful branches I’ve found yet was one Arty had just thrown on the golf cart along with trash bags all ready to be thrown out. We can breathe life into something that has otherwise lost it!
(If Chanel can reimagine women’s fashion with curtains or mens’ undergarments, if scientists can see the potential health benefits from understanding the way cicadas urinate, what joyful learning experiences could we have that might also contribute to society if we simply allowed ourselves the space to follow our own curiosities?)
- Being your authentic self and following personal joy begets community connection, creativity, and more joy!
- There’s probably a lesson in limited materials, limited free-choice for students
- Intentionally beginning the day with a creative endeavor rather than waiting till after work when I’m too exhausted helps me feel like I’ve accomplished something just for myself and sets me up to start the day in a more joyful, positive mood
- Everything’s connected. I can directly see how my mindsets, animation studies, summer travels (both work and leisure), and flower and furniture droughts have all informed both my floral arrangements (possibly now better described as assemblages) and teaching practice.
- Honor yourself, each other, and your space (even if it’s a tiny table that’s continually shoved up against the wall and often sports a disarrayed assortment of crumbs, waddled papers, coffee rings, backpacks, dust, and lost water bottles).
- Neuroscientist Beau Lotto says play is the only time we not only are comfortable with uncertainty but the one time we actually celebrate it. If being comfortable with uncertainty is one of the most vital skills we can teach our students, shouldn’t we be helping them “play” as much as possible? But also, how can we teach them a skill we ourselves do not practice? So let’s follow our curiosities into the rabbit hole and spend the summer playing and celebrating, shall we?