Mindfulness Week and The Trapped Flea Principle

Next week our sixth and seventh grade students will participate in Mindfulness Week. The title for the week begs the question, “Don’t teachers challenge their students everyday to be more mindful, why a special week?” I can assure you that our teachers, our exceptional teachers, do an amazing job day in and day out of coaching their students to be critical and creative thinkers – quality producers. What then is the nexus between what students will participate in next week and the day-to-day classroom routines that they experience throughout the year? As a response to your questions about what the connection is between next week’s program and what happens everyday in school, I’d like to borrow a story from John Gatto’s book, “Dumbing Us Down.”

Andrew Hu explained how you break the spirit of fleas so they can be trained. Andrew won the Washington State Science and Engineering Fair, for his sequencing of a gene held in common between man and mouse: COL201A.

He speaks Chinese, French, and English, all fluently. He works in his spare time as an assistant on professional documentary films. Andrew is eleven years old and he is home schooled. When asked to describe the most important lesson of his life, the one which held the most influence over his choices, he said it was a story told to him by his father about a method used to train fleas to swing on trapezes, drive little chariots, (or pull them) and all the other wonderful things fleas learned to do to amuse kings and courts in world history. The story his father told goes like this:

“If you put fleas in a shallow container they jump out. But if you put a lid on the container for just a short time, they hit the lid trying to escape and learn quickly not to jump so high. They give up their quest for freedom. After the lid is moved, the fleas remain imprisoned by their own self-policing.”

Reading that, my whole life as an educator flashed before my eyes. I am so thankful to be able to practice my profession in a school like St. Gregory where teachers can create a week where their students can:

• Synthesize and then apply “seat time” learning in the classroom to real-world experiences (open-source learning) in our community and surroundings.
• Can begin to develop and nurture an ethos of caring, service to others, and a deeper sense of their own identity in place and time – a positive future orientation to be sure.
• Can begin to formulate answers to the human puzzle: 1) What can I know? 2) What may I hope? 3) What ought I to do? 4) What is Man? 5) Who am I? They can do this, not in isolation or in front of a computer screen, but in emerging social relationships with their peers outside of the classroom.

In a nut shell, sixth grade students will connect to the land by walking the neighborhoods, studying the uniqueness of their desert home and reflect through writing and digital photography about their place on this “pale blue dot” in the vastness of space. Seventh graders will focus on building connections with people by working with their peers to help handicapped children, create a community garden and develop stronger relationships with one another. They too will chronicle their experiences for their portfolios. Students in both grades will apply not only their IQ but will press the edges out further on their EQ during the week.

Tess Cotter, current eight grader, shared with me that as a participant in this special week as a seventh grader she discovered that, “We can do something important even if we were only seventh graders.” She recounted that her eyes were opened to new friendships and that she and her friends have started a new community service club on campus with thought-filled plans to help others as a result of their week-long experience in the seventh grade.

Were you able to have this experience in your schooling? Is there another school in Tucson that honors students with the opportunity to think beyond passing a standardized test or to get their hands dirty with their peers and in the process develop lasting relationships?

The physical world, near and far must be thoroughly examined, analyzed, tested. This is work which cannot adequately be done in confinement or through a smart board presentation. When seat-time learning steals time needed for this work the damage is great. There is a time and place in life’s sequence when these appointments must be kept; too long delayed and opportunity is lost forever.

I urge you to look at this special week through the eyes of your child. I urge you

to trust our teachers to help your child make meaning of and develop authentic connections to their day-to-day seat-time learning (seven hours every day, thirty-five hours a week!). And then, after the week is over, let’s all reflect together about what was gained, what was learned. I am looking forward to hearing about your perspectives.

As always, I am available to receive your commentary and opinions on this topic or anything else that you might want to share.

Phil Woodall

Middle School Head