Recipe to Beat the Blues

If you are down, or beat, or blue and need to get out of your funk, I invite you to come to LCW for morning sing.

There, every Friday morning, 88 kids will sing with their wacky/cool music teacher Matt. Parents line up along the back and sides, sipping coffee, holding younger siblings, dragging visiting grandparents, and they try, they just try NOT to sing.

The children sing Willie Nelson, Miss Piggie, and A LOT of Beatles.

When you hear a school full of five to nine year olds belting out "Dear Prudence, won't you come out to pla-a-ay" you cannot be sad. You sing, too. And the world just feels sweet.

Cool Tools

I wrote about this system of emotional learning when Theo started school and now Benji is learning it, too. This is the second time around, but I am still bowled over by its power, and relevance for older people, like me.

In this system kids learn about put-ups and put-downs. (Compliments and insults) They learn that it takes about five compliments to undo one well-aimed insult. (Because we all know the insults stay with you longer.) They learn that it is not just words that load what you say with emotion, but also HOW you say those words. What is the emotion behind the words. Is it HOT and RED? (fiery and angry) or cool and blue (calm and less emotional).

Seriously, I think every adult could benefit from a week of working with the cool tools. They could introduce this system to employers, CEOs, husbands, wives, therapists and teachers. The system could change the world.

But here is the funny thing. Yesterday we were reviewing how it works with Benji over dinner. Jonathan said, "What is an example of a put-up, Benji?" Benji couldn't think of one. Jonathan tried to give me one. "Wow, this is a really good dinner, Hilary." Even in the moment it sounded fake. Artificial. Obsequious.

Then Benji chimed in. "A put-down is, 'Stupidhead.'" Jonathan encouraged him to do a put-up again. But Benji was on a roll with the put-downs. "Mad-crazy!" "Dumb!" he shouted out. He would have kept going.

A few hours later I was sitting in a tiny chair for back to school night as his teacher explained the system.

"I decided not to reinforce the put-downs so I did not write any of those down," she said with a smile. Too late. They are locked in my son's brain. He loves his new vocabulary of put-downs. As for his put-ups, I still have not heard one come out of his mouth.

Isn't it funny what our brains hold onto? Is it just human nature? Is it so hard to compliment? Does it just feel dull and fake? Do insults just feel sharper, smarter and more creative? Or do the real compliments always go hand in hand with jealousy, making them so hard to say? Or is that just what we are afraid will happen-that they will be perceived that way? It is always hardest to compliment those we know well who are most like us. Those are already established greats, no problem. those who are safely below us, easy to give a kind word to. But what about those who need it most, just our friends and those we see every day, who need a lift or a kind word from those who know them best.

It made me wonder.

But to all of my readers, I just wanted to say: You rock! You really do!

Back to School

This is it--the first week of school.

After three years of moving, all the students are on one campus, and the campus is ALL ours. We don't share with Larchmont Charter, and we don't share with Rosewood. We don't have to tiptoe around and make other principals happy and pretend it is not a big deal. And all of our students can be on one campus--with noone squeezed into a divided classroom.

We can paint the way we want to, set up our library the way we want to, and grow our garden the way we want to. Our school now starts at conventional hours and we make our own rules.

I always felt blessed to be at LCW, but what a huge difference it makes to have a place of your own.

Psychologically it feels like now Kristin (our amazing principle) can settle in and really hone the vision, work on the education, think only about the students.

Of course this is just an illusion.

At this moment our current campus is at capacity. We fit K through 3. Next year, when we add the new kindergarten we will be K through 4, and then what?

But here is the most fascinating thing. In three years the school has gone from being a pioneering experiment that drew parents willing to take a wild chance on a start-up, to an established and desirable school with hundreds of people in the lottery praying they will get in. The teachers are set, the curriculum is set, some test scores are in (yes! the constructivist education currriculum with an eye to academics and an acceptance of state testing is really working! wow!).

And already the vibe of the school is shifting from the homesteader/pioneer mindset to the safer, I just want a good school for my kid, mindset. Both are important. And it is good to have a rest. It is exhilarating, but also tiring, to always be a pioneer.

Besides, come January, the crazy scramble for site will begin again.

Uplift

We took the summer off and did not volunteer an hour at LCW.

So last Saturday when I drove to the St. Ambrose campus of LCW, where our students will finally be all together, the transformation of the site took my breath away.

You have got to understand. This site has been the incubation tank for every charter school on this side of town. Larchmont started there, then Los Feliz Arts Charter, then back to Larchmont, then us and Larchmont, then Larchmont, and now all us.

The site has been painted and repainted by ambitious parents and hopeful educators. I really did not think it could be improved.

But it has.

This is the mural outside--just a tiny portion of it--coordinated by Joey, father of Presley--a realtor and muralist (so L.A.!).
The wall is covered with colored stencils from one end to the other. There are birds, Tahitian masks, elephants, yoga poses (that was me!) fish, and frogs balancing on reeds. Around the corner a blue butterfly soars to the heavens.

The mural is so simple and so elegant. Even better is knowing that dozens of parents (and children!) worked on it.

The economy is crashing, and our nation is fucked, but my school makes me inordinately happy.

I feel so blessed, so extraordinarily blessed, to be part of this tiny community, an incubator of hope.

Community

This is the topic I am to speak on next week at a school tour for LCW (Larchmont Charter West Hollywood). There are few restrictions, no guidelines, and I am, to be clear, not the main attraction. That would be our outstanding and inspiring principal Kristin Droege, who is truly one of a kind--Phd in education from LAUSD, hands-on teaching experience in both public and private schools, and entrepreneurial--she has already started a Charter School herself in Victorville that runs on Montessori principles. Now she is running ours. If we could clone her she could save LAUSD.

Anyway, at the end of the tour, her presentation, and a few words from a teacher, I will speak. About community.

What will I say?

When I heard my assignment I wanted to back out. It is not that I do not believe in community (I do!). It is just that I am still more comfortable being the observer than the motivator. I like facts and tangible things more than squishy intangibles. And now I will be standing in front of people I don't know talking about the absolutely squishiest of intangibles, trying to inspire them. The thought makes my stomach curdle.

So for the past week this word has been rattling around in my mind.

And I think of what this school has taught me. In many ways it has changed my life--or at least my outlook on life. And I know that when I die being part of this grand and inspiring experiment--whatever happens in the end--will be one of the things I am most proud of in my life.

When Marya and Jay (THE two founding parents) came to us (referred to us by a friend who helped start the original Larchmont Charter) to ask if we would help start a school we went and met them on a playground in February. It was the four of us and some kids. They wanted to get the school up and running by the following September. Jonathan said yes. I nodded politely, but thought, there is no way in HELL this is going to happen. Believe me, we had a backup plan for our son.

Before we even got the charter approved Marya gathered a group of founding parents and told us we needed to raise $200,000 by September. We didn't have a charter yet, which meant we didn't have anyone to call except ourselves to raise money. Inwardly I scoffed. And the next day I made sure my paperwork was in order for Melrose Elementary (another great neighborhood school, now a magnet).

The charter was approved. A principal was hired. A lottery was held. Teachers were hired. We had two classrooms in half of an old Catholic school that we would share with the original Larchmont to help them pay the rent. Two kindergarten classes were squeezed into one large old classroom with a moveable wall in the middle that did little to stop the noise between two boisterous classes. The teachers endured and did a fantastic job with our kids. My son dreamed of being in first grade so he could have a full classroom just for his class.

By March we had held a drawing for the following year, but still had found no spot for our school. It was a crisis. Would the experiment end so soon? We scrambled. And so did a lot of other people. Again, by the skin of our teeth, Prop 39 came through about four months late and we got four classrooms at Rosewood Elementary School. The new principal graciously agreed to share the space and even gave us an extra room.

Over the summer parent volunteers came, painted, planted trees, put our insignia on the doors. When school started in September the school looked spectacular. I almost wept, the transformation was so complete.

All through this process I was the skeptic. I did not believe we could open the school by September. (we did) I did not believe we could raise $200,000 by September (we did). I grew anxious in the spring that we would not have a site for the following year. (in the end, after sleepless nights and much anxiety, we got one!)

I wasn't a downer or a negatroid. Throughout the process I kept my thoughts (mostly) to myself, and I always pitched in and tried to help out--as did ALL the other parents.

And this is what I learned: with a community, you can achieve incredible things. You really can change the world. What I personally did was not spectacular or amazing. There are some amazing people on board to make this school work. But even they could not have done it alone. The miracle is, that if everyone really pitches in, really volunteers, really does their best to make something work, it really can happen. If you add the labor of 80 dedicated parents, or 120, or 160, then throw in fantastic teachers and staff, you can accomplish a lot. In a society where we cannot typically reach those in power to even say what we think, and reform can take years, if not decades, this experience was so empowering.

I care about making the world better. I wrote for a newspaper so I could try to do that. But to join forces with others, to stand side by side with people and build something out of nothing--it is an amazing feeling. The lessons extend so far beyond the school and your own children.

And our children are all watching. They know their parents built this school. We don't run it. We leave it to the professionals. But we are essential to making it function. And that passes that feeling on to them: that with work, they can engage, they can work with their friends who share their vision, to make the world a better place.

As our Executive Director Brian Johnson said last week: "Part of what we are teaching at the Larchmont Schools is how to build a community from the ground up. And that is something people do not know how to do in Los Angeles."

Those lessons on how to build community are woven throughout the curriculum for our children. They learn it when they sit down to eat lunch family style in our Edible Schoolyard program. They learn it when they build the garden. They learn it in projects they do at school that teach them about the world, and their responsibility in it. And they learn it watching all of us pitching in--not being critics or consumers--but community members.

This isn't a church. But it is a cause. It is a vibrant community that is building a school committed to community, diversity, eco-literacy--that is determined to provide an extraordinary education to children of every social, racial and economic group.

To be part of something like this is a privilege. And it makes you feel good besides.

Have you ever been part of a community that changed how you looked at the world?

LCW West

Today was Theo's first day of school at the new site on the Rosewood campus. LCW is relegated to a clump of portables on the north side of the campus--nothing gorgeous--but land we are supremely grateful for. And the principal from Rosewood has been gracious and helpful every step of the way in a process that must be very difficult: sharing a campus with an upstart charter.

I walked in today and I was stunned. In a month parents and teachers have transformed the space. A new garden has been planted along the fence and hay bales have been placed out to sit upon--reminiscent of those at the original Edible School Yard in Berkeley, at Martin Luther King Middle School. The classrooms are painted freshly, and each door has the LCW insignia painted on it in bright green. I was reminded powerfully that a great school does not require endless money or high tech. This corner of a beautiful old school property looks amazing because a group of parents and teachers combed over it and worked every inch of it with love and care. It shows and they have made it a magical place. I did not a thing on this project but I was so proud. Parents and their labor make a difference. We are not helpless. We are the power.

My Son Is a Flower

There in the center--the green boy dressed as a flower--is my son. In fact, he turned out to be the only male flower in the whole school. This is a picture from the Earth Day Concert at Larchmont Charter West Hollywood. It is all part of the school's mission to promote eco-literacy.

I know--concerts and events where children do cute things and parents weep is such a cultural cliche! But now it is my child, and I admit it, I wept.

The children created an art museum of their work--animals constructed with recycled materials, accompanied by stories they wrote themselves. (Theo made a whale he named bottlecap--because his spout was made out of a bottlecap, not pictured here). On the wall was a giant rain forest, with all its layers--the canopy, the undercanopy, the recycled animals and giant flowers in the understory. The trees reached to the top of the auditorium and were all made by the children.

But best of all were the children themselves.

They sang beautiful songs and played cool, multi-ethnic instruments. They danced like seaweed and crabs and fish. And they dressed up like living things. Most girls were flowers. Most boys were some kind of bug--with little eyes.

But not my son.

He was a beautiful flower. And he was soooooo proud of it. They had rehearsed this event for a month--learning the songs, the dance, the accompaniment. He demanded that I wash his green clothes for the performance so his body would look like a stem. And, though he wanted many things to be a secret, on the morning of the show he gave himself away as we snuggled in bed.

"Mommy, I'm going to be a flower. You are going to love it!"

He didn't care that he was the only boy flower. I don't even know if he even noticed. And this is what I love about him.

I said something to another mother and she said, "Oh, he is so comfortable in his masculinity he doesn't even care!" (She is a psychoanalyst so I felt comforted somehow, though what was I worried about?? )

And, I have to admit, he was an adorable flower.

He made his mama so happy.

CIRCUS CIRCUS

Today my son performed in a circus show after 10 weeks of classes with Clown Julia. At 3:00 his after school classmates and a bunch of parents gathered in the assembly room. After much scurrying and bustling and stomping and whispering and peeking out, the velvet curtains opened and the show began! Theo whirled ribbons artistically like a Chinese gymnast, walked on (low) stilts, and spun plates on sticks (plastic, because a lot of them fell down, a lot). He peddled across the stage at high speed with his arms out wide on a mini unicycle contraption (almost shooting over the edge), and balanced a peacock feather on his hand, his arm and his nose. He wore a huge mad-hatters hat and pranced around the stage like a true performer, dropping his plates and ribbons when his classmates cheered and called his name.

I forgot my camera and tried to shoot blurry seven second video clips with my phone, but alas they are unusable. I befriended a Dad who promised to send me some of his iPhone fotos by tomorrow.

Stay tuned, circus fans!!!