School is a Verb

“Verbs act. Verbs move. Verbs do. Verbs strike, soothe, grin, cry, exasperate, decline, fly, hurt, and heal. Verbs make writing go, and they matter more to our language than any other part of speech.”

Each September, when a new school year starts up, I like to revisit May Sarton’s remarkable, vigorous description of how she felt about her school when she was a child growing up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Maine poet wrote, “We children must have seemed a primitive insurgent tribe. We were not subjected to a theory of education. We were set down in the center of a primal force at work. We never knew what would happen next, but what did happen was always immensely interesting— everything we learned was alive, hunted down, a private possession.”* I like the vision of children and their teachers as a tribe of hunter-gatherers of knowledge and experience.

    I had the good fortune to teach for ten years at Sarton’s former school—long after she went there—and some of that insurgency persisted and surely rubbed off on me. I can attest to the uncertainty and adventure of inquiry being a great, fundamental learning result of the teachers and children I worked with. Sarton also reminds me that “school” is a verb, with galaxies of helping verbs lurking within earshot of the predicate. It’s not something static or walled-in, packaged, synthesized and data-bound.
Start with “hunt” and shake or stir together with Bloom’s taxonomy of the verbs of learning: name, define, list, quote, recite, explain, convert, translate, illustrate, reword, interpret, classify, compute, solve, demonstrate, diagnose, distinguish, outline, analyze, diagram, divide, point out, associate, differentiate, examine, reduce, conclude, discriminate, find, separate, designate, dissect, infer, determine, devise, originate, revise, compile, expand, plan, rewrite, compose, extend, pose, synthesize, conceive, generalize, propose, theorize, create, integrate, project, write, design, invent, rearrange, develop, modify, critique, judge, assess, contrast, deduce, weigh, compare, criticize, evaluate, bagpipe.

Well, old professor Bloom can get a bit cerebral, can’t he! It’s tough to reduce so many subjects, plus lunch and recess, where a great deal of learning takes place, to a single English verb. Not all verbs carry the predatory oomph of “hunt.” You certainly don’t get a pungent whiff of the quarry from “compile;” and a verb like “outline” might be a little too much casual gathering of berries for a
really exciting social studies class. You have to choose verbs carefully. You are what you conjugate, after all, and the more irregular the verb the more exciting the reading, writing, art, and arithmetic. School pounces, climbs, scratches, jumps, juggles, races, tugs, skips, laughs, explodes and plays. School blossoms.  That’s more like it. To co-opt another New England poet, Donald Hall, “Verbs make [school] go, and they matter more to our [learning] than any other part of speech.”

But it’s all good. Thinking is action. To really appreciate a verb, or a school, or a school kid, you need to see it in action. School belongs in a sentence with a cloud of objects, direct and indirect, circling its nucleus. It’s kind of like observing quarks and neutrinos, the subatomic particles or invisible celestial objects whose presence is detected by the behavior of the matter and light around them. School has a powerful gravitational force that can run the universe.

The first food delivery is on site to keep our omnivorous insurgent tribe stoked with pizza and chocolate milk. There are fresh cougar footprints leading into the building—our mascot is at hand. Let this year’s hunt for learning’s big game begin. Lights, Camera, Action!   

* I Knew a Phoenix

Bonjour St. Castin: The 7th and 8th graders completed our DVD/film tour of Castine and sent it off to St. Castin for their “Fete de St. Castin” on September 14th.  Thank you for participating in our effort to continue the greeting and meeting between towns and schools.

Soccer began This week….Students in grades 5-8 can play after-school soccer. The first practice will be this Thursday 9/6, at Fort George, our home field. Welcome to our coach Zach Martin! Practices will be Monday, Tuesday, Thursdays from 2:30-4:00. The game schedule is now on our web site.  

Homework Club…Le Club de Devoirs:  It’s back! Starting next week, Ms. P’s homework club will meet Monday-Thursday, 2:15-3:00 in the grade 3-4 classroom.

Blackwood Park: Many thanks to all who put in so much extra time and effort to make the Blackwood land donation ready for the start of school—Denny, Denny, Larry, the Castine Fire Department, MMA student athletes; Kendall Hodgdon for hauling the debris to the transfer station.

Lofty Accomplishments: Grade 3-4 students were treated to a new reading loft and a new window in their classroom. Jim and Colin Goodson designed and built the loft; Joe Spinazola installed the new window. Many thanks! It makes the room feel new and special

Nature Center: We had a big workday on August 25th and moved the project along towards completion: shingled the backside and right side, finished porch roof boards, porch floor finished. Thanks go to Kevin Griffith (and Liam the scaffolding assistant!), Jan Ordway, Dick Read, and Drew Marks for a long, hot day of work. We hope to have another work session to finish shingling and roofing the building by Columbus Day dedication.

Handbooks… “Calling all forms”: We need to be sure that every family has received this year’s school handbook. There is a tear-off “receipt” sheet inside. Could you please return it to us ASAP?

Bottle Drive: We’re going to try a new approach to bottle drives for fund raising. We’ll have bins set up at the front of school that will be emptied each Friday. Simply deposit your returnables whenever you like! Benefit goes to the 7-8th grade trip to France.

Cheerleading is back at Adams School!! Here is the practice schedule for the months of September and October. As always, soccer players may miss cheerleading practices where there is a conflict between the two sports' schedules. All practices will be held at Emerson Hall.

Monday September 10 2:30-3:30pm
Friday September 14 2:30-4:00pm
Saturday September 15 9:00am-11:00am
Monday September 17 2:30-3:30pm
Friday September 21 2:30-4:00pm
Saturday September 22 9:00am-11:00am             
Monday September 24 2:30-3:30pm
Friday September 28 2:30-4:00pm
Saturday September 29 TBA
Monday October 1 2:30-3:30pm
Friday October 5 2:30-4:00pm
Saturday October 6 TBA
Monday October 8 2:30-3:30pm
Friday October 12 2:30-4:00pm
Saturday October 13 9:00am-11:00am
Monday October 15 2:30-3:30pm
Friday October 19 2:30-4:00pm
Saturday October 20 9:00am-11:00am
Monday October 22 2:30-3:30pm
Friday October 26 2:30-4:00pm
Saturday October 27 9:00am-11:00am
Monday October 29 2:30-3:30pm

Participants should wear tee shirts, stretchy shorts, and sneakers. They should also bring a snack.
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ADAMS SCHOOL MENU         SEPT. 10TH – 14TH

Monday – Fish Sticks, Rice, Carrots, Brownie, Popsicle, Milk
Tuesday – Chicken & Cheese Quesadillas, Tortilla Chips, Salsa, Salad,
                 Applesauce, Milk
Weds. – Ravioli, Italian Bread, Green Beans, Pineapple Upside-down Cake, Milk
Thursday – Pizza, Cucumbers, Goldfish, Pears, Milk
Friday – Ham & Cheese Italians, Baby Carrots, Chips, Juice, Cookie, Milk