Tag: ritual

15 Jan 21 – Friday Night Rites

I didn’t have a lot of traditions and rituals in mind when I became a parent. Holidays and the lot, sure. But I don’t know that I had anything in mind apart what might come marked on calendars.

One surfaced in our first weeks as a family, though.

Every Friday, we order pizza and watch a movie. Which movie is on a choice rotation from oldest to youngest. The pizza is almost always Papa Murphy’s. (Every Friday, $5 large thin crust cheese, sausage, or pepperoni pizzas!) And, the movies can be television shows, holiday specials, or pieces of a few things until the chooser finds just the right film.

I’ve seen Season 2 Episode 2 of Netflix’s Ultimate Beastmaster more times than I can count. Same for Disney’s Zombies and Zombies 2.

Part of the fun of Friday Movie Night is its transgression against one of our other rituals – dinner together at the dinner table. Quite a little bit of research speaks to the importance of eating dinner together each night, but it just sort of happened for us.

Stealing from another movie The Story of Us, we take turns each night sharing our “high” and “low” from the day. Right now, it’s a lot of modeling from me. We also learned in our first couple goes that someone naming you in their description of their low for the day was not that person trying to make you feel bad or pick on you.

Many nights, the kids say they don’t have a low. Then I share mine, and they say, “Oh, that’s my low too.” This happens even if my low was about something that happened at work. I know what’s going on developmentally, so I never comment on it.

I know, if I let things develop organically, when we enter adolescence, this piece of ritual will give me some rare glimpses into their lives.

It’s also why the transgression of Family Movie Night is so important to us. We get to eat DOWNSTAIRS! We watch TV while we eat. We get to stay up late, though one of us tends to be zonked about 45 minutes in.

When we have visitors on Fridays (which used to be a thing), the kids are excited to welcome them into our tradition. It’s special for us, so it will clearly be special for our guests. It’s a testament to my friends that they’ve stuck out some pretty heinous choices.

In both these cases, it has struck me how easily these rituals came into being. No special forethought to get them started, no real planning. How easy these little things became big and important parts of who we are.

Things I Know 301 of 365: It was one hell of a game of musical chairs

All around the Mulberry Bush,
The monkey chased the weasel.
The monkey stopped to scratch his nose
Pop! goes the weasel.

The requisite announcements had been completed, the student skit designed to encourage students to keep on track in the new trimester had been performed. I was feeling certain community circle was about to wrap up and the students of Codman Academy were about to head to classes.

I was wrong.

The sophomore with the microphone announced it was time for Crew Olympics. The couple hundred assembled high school students took a collective moment before the crowd was peppered with the start of cheers. Our host had another announcement. The game – musical chairs. The competitors – the faculty.

At 9:45 in this school that has had 100% of its graduates accepted to 4-year colleges saw the faculty who helped make that happen walk down the aisles of the meeting hall to represent their crews. Crews are what Codman calls its advisories, and these teachers were out to represent.

The chairs were assembled, Reel to Real’s “I like to move it” blasted from the PA and the teachers started circling the chairs – slowly. Painfully slowly. No one wanted to be out. Some deep pre-schoolian instincts were revived. Plus, they were doing it for the kids.

The first few eliminations were mundane. Expectedly, the more timid of the teachers were the first to go. They had spirit, but realized the dangers of the sport.

Things got interesting when Round 4 signaled the beginning of double eliminations. By that point, those teachers who remained were in it to win. A few went for chairs and found themselves on the floor. As they exited the arena, they were applauded and cheered for. Those who remained high-fived and “good game”-ed as they left.

A few rounds later, there were three. Somewhere, on the other side of the hall, chanting started. To quote the great Neil Diamond, “like a small earthquake.” Before long, little else could be heard other than the blaring of a hundred voices calling for their champion.

In that round, he fell.

Literally, he ended up on the ground.

The two others who remained helped him up and shook his hand.

I looked around.

Somewhere in the course of the 10 minutes of the game, the crowd had taken to its feet. I realized I was leaning in. I’d even picked my favorite in my head.

The music picked up somewhere in the middle of Beyoncé’s “Single ladies.” The competitors – two grown, college-educated men – circled a plastic chair. The students screamed in glee. The music played longer than it had in any other turn. On one down beat, the contestants thought the music stopped and attempted to sit only to be cheered on by the crowd. We would see the game played out.

Greg, one of my classmates from school completing his practicum at Codman, was the first to sit. But, his opponent lunged to lie flat across the seat as Greg was sitting back. The judges swarmed in as the chair and the two men toppled backward.

Seconds later, Greg’s opponent was named the winner and first his crew, then the entire room exploded in applause.

As both men, appropriately dizzy, walked back to their seats, a retraction was made.

Greg had won.

The students were dismissed. Classes began.

The entire episode took 15 minutes of the day. This semester, we’ve studied what Richard Elmore refers to as the Instructional Core – students, teachers, and content. When writing about this concept, Ted Sizer also included how the content was delivered as a fourth aspect.

In this game of musical chairs, the school and its faculty had taught many lessons.

The students had seen their teachers more fully and developed more complex understandings of who they were as people. They saw what sportsmanship could look like. While the teachers good-naturedly ribbed one another during the game, each eliminated player was sent out with a handshake or high five. Those leaving the game did so with smiles on their faces. They’d done what they’d come to do – play.

Though the teachers were representing separate crews, those separations never kept them from enjoying and supporting the whole. If all they’d been thinking of were their crews, the game could never have started.

No one processed any of this with the students. It happened and the day moved on. As it should have. There are times to reflect and their are times for ritual. This game of musical chairs was silly, fun and energizing. And, it was ritual – an act of community to remind members who they are, of what they are a part, and how they play together.

Things I Know 216 of 365: Some rituals I’m ok leaving in the past

Ritual is necessary for us to know anything.

– Ken Kesey

I love rituals.

Big fan.

Huge.

Today I witnessed one I hadn’t expected or had possibly even forgotten – moving in.

This wasn’t just any moving in, this was moving in for an entire city.

By design or by fate, I’m willing to wager the bulk of Boston’s collegiate population moved in to their new places today.

Coming from out of town, hopping to a new place from across town or returning home after a summer of frolicking, the emigration was everywhere.

For a little over a week, I’ve been without a home.

Not unlike many of my classmates or what appeared to be much of the Boston metro area, I was at the mercy of the Sept. 1 start to my lease when the summer’s subletters moved out and we got to move in.

Since departing my house in Philadelphia at the end of June, I’ve been living out of two suitcases. I’ve couch hopped from Philly to Springfield, IL to Los Angeles to Denver to Brookline, MA.

And, I’m done with it.

When the apartment I’d arranged before leaving the East Coast fell through when I was in California, I took to Craigslist and selected a place I’d never seen and roommates I’d never met (save for one telephone call).

Many of the moments from the next 9 months will be happy and gentle reminders of my studenthood, chances to glimpse back at experiences I haven’t focused on for a decade.

This, this moving in, couch hopping, roommate navigating, this is a piece of college life I have not missed and could have done without.

Over dinner tonight, my friend Vanessa summed it up, “I’m 30, and this is where I am.”

She’s also left her “adult” life for grad school.

I added to her statement, “And, I’ve chosen this.”

It’s late, and I’ve been helping folks move all day.

Tomorrow, I’ll be refreshed and once again excited about the adventure I’m on.

For now, I’m going to revel in this exhaustion and rawness of emotion that only moving can elicit.

Things I Know 202 of 365: It’s time to re-collect

Today is tomorrow. It happened.

– Bill Murray, Groundhog Day

I had a chance today to interview a fellow teacher from Omaha for a new podcast episode. She’s been in the classroom 17 years and brings to the table all of the perspective of those years.

We talked a bit about teacher burnout and she brought up the movie Groundhog Day.

She said she certainly had her moments of burnout when she knew she wasn’t the best she could be, but that she knew those moments wouldn’t last.

“In the movie,” she said, “Bill Murray’s character goes through a phase where he tries to kill himself because he can’t find any way out of the day. Then, at some point he changes and starts making ice sculptures.”

As it was a perennial favorite in my household growing up, I remembered the scenes she was describing.

“It’s like that with the classroom – sometimes I want to die, but most of the time I’m making ice sculptures.”

I’ve been collecting teachers’ comments and thoughts as they gear up for the trip back to the classroom.

This is the first time in eight years I won’t be entering the classroom as a teacher, and I’m enjoying observing the rituals of return that I’ve been too tied up in myself for the past several years to truly appreciate.

My friend Henry posted tonight that many of his students are coming from other schools:

They have been rejected. I understand rejection because when I was in high school I didn’t fit in and it was very visible. Today, I am a better person and a better teacher.

Henry was one of the first African Americans to integrate his school district in the South. I’ve talked with him about the experience and read his recollections of the events.

And that is what he was doing when he wrote his post, he was re-collecting.

It’s what the teacher I interviewed does as she’s “making ice sculptures” – re-collecting all the moments of weariness and frustration from the darkest parts of teaching and connecting them to the moments that bring her the most joy.

When Henry enters the classroom tomorrow, he will not have simply collected whatever rest and renewal his summer break provided, he will have re-collected every memory of being other, different, afraid or strong that has made him who he is as well.

And to truly teach and connect to the children in our charge, we must re-collect all the pieces and experiences of who we are so that we can see the richness of experience each student brings to the classroom.

While the perspective of 17 years in the classroom is a powerful source of strength, it is nothing if we do not re-collect who we are as people and offer that to our students.

The Death of Ritual

20 July 09

Today was a down day during which we debriefed the previous two weeks with Edunova and then had time to ourselves to decompress. Decompression and stray thoughts lead to what’s below.

Becoming a Man:

At 18, Xhosa males are taken into the bush where they become men. According to Khonaya, our guide for our township tours, this ritual is about “learning the identity of the tribe” and “grasping the true essence of ritual.” During their time in this conclave, the boys are circumcised.

During the ritual, Khonaya told  us, the boys are not allowed to flinch or show signs of pain. “Being masculine,” he said, “you have to handle the pain.”

This was just about as much as he could tell us about the ritual as the men are not allowed to divulge or describe what happens once they return.

In fact, during yesterday’s braai, when Terry asked one of the Xhosa Edunova facilitators about when he was taken into the bush, all of the women at the table excused themselves and Terry was told men weren’t allowed to talk about what happened in the bush. 

“I have a younger brother,” Khonaye had told us, “and all I can do is support him when the time comes.”

Sharon asked if there were any differences once the men returned home. Khonaya said sometimes “circumcised boys in the classroom expect to be treated differently” especially by female teachers.

I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around all of this for over two weeks now, and I just don’t think I can. More to the point, this is one of the pieces that creates a breech in my ability to understand the culture here. I’ve no basis for comparison. While I’m certain this ritual and others like it have far-reaching social implications, I simply don’t know what I don’t know.

When I see the community that exists here, the strength of the social structure, I begin to worry that the plurality of America also means we’ve watered down or lost our rituals along the road to coexistence. While I’m not suggesting the adoption of this particular ritual, I do wonder if the lack of a shared threshold experience leaves most of our youth without a clear sense of whom they are and where they come from.