The Garden School Tattler

Good Morning!

I haven't posted in a while because I've been traveling. My husband and I traveled to a small town in Southern Alabama where my daughter lives. She had a minor surgery and Terry and I were there to escort her and make sure she got home safely. As I told Kelly, no matter how old a child gets, she or he is still your baby. I really enjoyed doing this for Katy.

This week is our finale week. We will swim Tuesday and Wednesday and go up to the lake on Friday. We encourage parents to come on this field trip. It's a sign up only weekend. Please let teachers know if you are going to come for the sake of having enough food. Even if you drive, we need to know because of food. There is no place to buy food there.

We will be having a cookout and make the usual summer stuff. It's a marvelous place to tour and then to swim. We will go up to the Garden of the Gods to see the rock formations and take in the view, and then over to the lake to swim. It's a beautiful sandy beach lake and mostly shallow!

The following week we will be going swimming on Tuesday and Wednesday, but school opens for Warrick County on Thursday, and Friday we will take the other children to Audubon Park and be back early for school pickups. We will try to get to Ellis Park and watch the horses run if possible.

Then the next week, Vanderburgh County schools start and we will probably not swim or travel. It will be our first in school week with testing and getting ready to start school.

Summer seems to be evaporating before my eyes. It's been a great summer. I hope the kids have enjoyed it. So many of them have learned to swim and go off the board.

This summer we were slammed by a grandparent who could not understand why we even bothered with field trips or swimming. "Swimming!," she railed, "What can a child possibly learn by swimming?"

The truth is, our summers are the counter balance of a whole year of pencil pushing. What do swimming and traveling teach children? Traveling and doing teach children about the world around them while they teach them to be a part of it. Swimming says to a child, "I can, and I can do this all by myself. I can accomplish anything I really try to do." At the same time, there is a special bond created with the teacher who teaches swimming. A child looks at that teacher differently. Holding a child in a swimming pool and showing them how to stay parallel in a pool, kick, stroke, and just make their way in the water, or standing at the side watching a child jump from the board saying, "You can do this; you can achieve this huge accomplishment," is about the best "teachable" moment I know of.

My young teachers are skeptical about this at first because in school they learn to teach in small increments, but after a summer of teaching, they realize just how powerful that bridge is, and how much the teacher-student relationship improves and increases. Going back to school after a summer of swimming is a snap.

It's funny how we can always tell the difference between a child we've had all summer and one who is new in the fall. Travel with kids will teach a teacher so much about a child. The child begins to depend on the teacher, open up, and create a traveling bond with jokes, and a rhythm that continues year after year. I see it in all our returnees who come back every summer to continue the special bond for a few weeks. Children who are not allowed to travel with us lose out on this special part of our community.

Do we travel in the fall and winter and spring? You bet, but it's shorter and not so hurried. We can't get very far because our wonderful bus driver, Miss Sandy, needs to do her route and she must always return to the city at 1:00 and that doesn't leave us much time.