Longhouse School

3:30pm, Lolita, home.

I have comp time for some of the weekend work I have been doing so I didn’t go out ice-skating with the kids. I have so much work I want to do for my course!

I am also slowly getting http://www.longhouseschool.blog into shape. I have about 60% of the content I want to include up already. I find WordPress not very intuitive and easy to learn despite what it claims. My site is still just text and I have not even begun to work on the visuals.

But my uni mentor is very happy with my progress. She wants me to think of this project as “a road map” for other educators. I agree with her that people are desperately looking around the corner and want to sniff and catch alternative ways to school.

Because Max and his crew were finishing their work on the pool enclosure and Lodge, we postponed the Saturday/Sunday Deep Clean for yesterday. We had a good turnout of both parents and children. After our hard work, we all jumped into the pool and had fun. The water temperature was delicious and the pool people were right, the heat from the water warms the surrounding air. Outside the enclosure, however, it was about 50°. So we just courageously dashed to the changing rooms, giggling all the way.

Mrs. Marable invited the parents who were available to her RV for some coffee and tea. The kids wanted to play outdoors. But around a tiny Oliver table we were able to squeeze me, Veera, Emily, Dei’s Mom and Mrs. Marable. We just gabbed about school, my coursework, Kitten’s gig, kids, and Trump’s peace deal in Gaza.

My role is kind of interesting. I’m the authority figure as Teacher Lolita but the youngest around the table! I don’t care, it’s just something to write about!

I can’t praise enough the wonderful moms who support our Track and Swim activity early in the morning. We have a new routine of doing the Perimeter Walk right after everyone is dressed.

Today we were joined on the Walk by “Larry the Landscaper” who wanted to get to know us better as he starts his work. He and his crew want to begin today with the first stage of their work in expanding the Perimeter Forest.

When we finished the walk, he asked the kids to take him to their classroom. They looked at him like he was from another planet. They told him we use our classroom mainly for hanging up our art and storing our materials. “Well, where do you learn?” They told him that the world was their classroom and they usually grab cushions and small tables to do their work outside. They asked him whether he was cold. He pretty quickly seized up the situation. “No, I’m not cold, I was just worried about you guys.”

So they found a nice spot and made a semi-circle around him. Dee brought her cart with hot porridge and cornbread with spreads. And the session began.

He told them about his work trying to restore forests in places that had experienced fires or other environmental disasters like flooding. “We are extending your perimeter forest into the lawns of your neighbors. Lawns are very pretty but they are not so good for the environment. Grass roots do not go deep enough to hold soil together or  absorb enough rainfall that falls with major storms. We are going through a cycle of global warming and lawns are also not very adaptable. They are not particularly hospitable to many animal species and lawn mowers are deadly to many important plant species.”

Larry is not as charismatic as Max but I was surprised how concerned and attentive were the students! ”What do we do? Where do we start?”

He told them that the first step is creating a wind barrier, called a windbreaker, along the outside of the new perimeter that will protect the growing forest on the other side. “What? You are going to break the wind?”

He told them, “Yes and today we are going to plant many poplar trees as windbreakers. He held a few up but the kids insisted they look just like sticks!

“They are sticks!” he told them. “But by this time next year they will be 8 ft tall, about twice your height!” He explained to them that this tree is very good for erosion control and grows in different types of soil conditions.

“Who here has ever gotten sick?” Of course, everyone raised their hands including me, Guy Bernie, and Artie. “Well, trees can get very sick, too!” he told them. “It’s called a ‘blight.’ Scientist have developed “hybrid varieties” that have been pretty successful in resisting the blight.”

“But…” he said. Larry was very good at creating suspense. “Poplars grow best in a wet climate and we are having some drought conditions here. This week we will plant many ‘InnovaTrees’ which are among the best varieties to resist the drought if they get a bit of help from their human friends.”

He continued, “We are planting late in the growing season so we may lose a few if the temperature goes below 32° but I am thinking we will be fine.”

The kids wanted to know what else could be done. “Well, I am not a magician and I can’t change the weather. Let’s see how the InnovaTrees do.

“No promises, right, Landscape Larry? Do you have a Plan B?” I could hear my colleagues thinking, how did they ever hear of Plan A and Plan B?

“Right, no promises. But I do have a Plan B. Behind the poplars we will plant a variety of Weeping Willow in some drainage areas, Quaking Aspen which are quick growing and good in colder temperatures, and American Sycamore which is highly adaptable and excellent for reforestation. We will also mix in a few slower growing trees like the Northern Red Oak and Black Cherry. I am sending your teachers a very good [website](https://share.google/5DKz2PfS43vgmh2tc) where you can get a lot more information. Next year we will add shrubbery and floor plants.

I could tell that the students were very excited! I really was not expecting such deep listening and thinking. Can this be the result of our work inspired by Sukhomlynsky?

“But for today,” Larry picked up, “let’s just get started planting our hybrid poplars. Because we want them to be a line of windbreakers, we are going to plant them about 8-9 ft apart. The planting is the easy part of the work! After we plant them we will need to hand-water them, carefully weed around the trunk for a couple of years, build stakes to help them grow, and protect them from deer.”

We broke ourselves into four different work groups. Each group had a landscaper plus a teacher. I thought their attention span would be a good 45 minutes. But, NO! These kids worked as hard as the landscapers and teachers. We are talking about almost 3 hours until it was time to wash up and eat.

Captain Dee is finishing up her unit on seafood. Today she introduced the kids to “bouillabaise” and there was plenty to go around. The kids and landscapers all ate together with lots of treez buzz.

Following lunch, we spent some time on ELA and Math workbooks. Then they started writing and drawing about this morning in their notebooks. And, so many delicious new sight words for their cards! I waved them off to the rink and here I am.

Uncle Vasyl:

At the end of our time together in the School of Joy I compared how Volodya, Katya, Sanya, Tolya, Varya and Kostya were a year ago to how they were now. They had been pale and weak with dark circles under their eyes. And now they were all rosy and suntanned. People say such children look like ‘peaches and cream.’

I was also joyful because without a stuffy classroom, without a blackboard and chalk, without pale drawings and cut-out letters, the children had climbed the first step up the staircase of knowledge — they had learnt to read and write.

Now it would be so much easier for them than if that first step had begun with the rectangular frame of a classroom blackboard. I have the greatest respect for pedagogy and hate hair-brained schemes. But life itself requires that the acquisition of knowledge should begin gently, that study — a child’s most serious and painstaking work — should at the same time be joyful work that strengthens children spiritually and physically (p. 111).