It’s windy outside tonight. The clouds look like cotton wool blobs in the bluel-black sky. I wouldn’t have known this, but I stepped outside to put the oven pizza box in the recycling bin, and my hair started blowing in my face.
Seeing the clouds reminded me of the pinkish evening sky from the other day. Every time I see a pink sky, I think about that stupid Shepherd’s phrase. Then I have to recite it to myself in my head to see if I need to prepare for rain the next day. It probably rained anyway.
Thinking of the pink sky then reminded me, as it often does, of the time I tried to make that lovely Ancient Greece board in Lime Class. We weren’t even supposed to be doing a module on it, but by that point, I’d lost all commitment to the illusion of the curriculum. Learn about something fun because it compels you, that’s what I say! Why wait until Year 5 to learn about Ancient Greece when you can put on a heavily adapted version of The Frogs in Year 3/4?!
None of those dreams came off, obviously. I still think primary school productions of Aristophones’ plays are a good idea… maybe that’s one for the personal workbooks. And my Ancient Greece board, beautiful though it was in conception, came to little more than a whimsically painted sky of pink and white clouds and a few child-drawn columns. I’d envisaged a temple on Mount Olympus and a memory the children would cherish forever… instead we ended up chatting most of the time and the unfinished board became a signature of my teaching style: Our classroom may not be top-tier at the Ofsted Awards, but it’s got soul…
And the soul is heavily aligned with what’s real, believe it or not. Both are all messy and alive and vibrant, and yet they need a little pressure, a little resistance, to prove their existence at all.
And the wind provides that, wouldn’t you know? You step outside in the empty evening air and the wind blows against you like a cold (though gentle) reminder of your own messiness and your own reality. Your hair gets all in your face and you dump the pizza box in the recycling bin and you look up at those cotton wool clouds… and you remember that you’re real amidst it all.
Wonderful.
MT 