crossing to safety
Michael L. Umphrey
I've been making myself annoying trying to create curricular space to do a better job with heritage teaching (I have a principal who takes seriously the idea that teachers should teach the assigned curriculum) so next year I see they've scheduled me a class of kids with reading levels varying from grade 5 to grade 8 because they would like all those "hands on" trips to museums etc.
Transcript of actual conversation:
"Are you teaching the curriculum that's been approved by the board and assigned to you?"
"I say it doesn't exist. I say the burden of proof is on whoever says it does. Put it on my desk"
You can't beat this place for comic potential.
I'm glad I've worked with all of you or I would doubt it's possible to do what I've seen you do. I've been wondering about how important a youth festival might be, for making it real to students and to set a standard and a drop-dead deadline.
I've been asked to do a workshop for some college in Oregon--Portland State University, I think--anyway, I was invited by Greg Smith, who you might remember from the last institute. It just seems hugely important to figure out how to communicate just what you all have accomplished. I'm even more stunned than I was in the midst of it, and I loved it then. If I get time this summer to create something I'll make sure you all get a copy, if you want.
I had occasion this evening to recite to a pretty young woman who was talking about hard decisions she and her husband are making that poem that we used as the theme of our last institute in Butte. The last two lines still seem to be as wise as anything I know. We get to keep the things we won't let go. (Everything else we lose).
I Could Give All To Time
Robert Frost
To Time it never seems that he is brave
To set himself against the peaks of snow
To lay them level with the running wave,
Nor is he overjoyed when they lie low,
But only grave, contemplative and grave.
What now is inland shall be ocean isle,
Then eddies playing round a sunken reef
Like the curl at the corner of a smile;
And I could share Time’s lack of joy or grief
At such a planetary change of style.
I could give all to Time except - except
What I myself have held. But why declare
The things forbidden that while the Customs slept
I have crossed to Safety with? For I am There
And what I would not part with I have kept.
So I've been thinking about what I'm not going to part with.
(The good news: "they" also gave me a class of seniors in a "Montana
Literature" elective.)
Michael L. Umphrey
120 Arrow Street
P.O. Box 546
Saint Ignatius, MT 59865
(406) 370-4369 (cell)
(406) 883-6351 (School District 23)
(406) 745-3305 (Home)
(406) 745-2757 (fax)
The Power of Community-Centered Education
http://www.montanaheritageproject.org/index.php/MichaelUmphrey