Today...

Today the 3rd and 4th grades students made rockets and the 1st and 2nd grade students finished their wooden kangaroos. Stephen, who often has hard days in wood shop, told me, "this has been a really good day!" We all have those kinds of days when things work and others in which we may struggle within ourselves. I ran across this interesting definition of craft from David Gates: "a series of intellectual acts rooted in a language of itself." We spend far too much time trying to explain what we do, and it is like hollering from one hilltop to another. If children have not had the opportunity to learn the language of skill, creativity, spoken not by words but by movements of hands, shaping wood or other materials, they just won't get it either as children or as adults. You can holler from one hill to another, but the language is garbled and not shared well enough for the meaning to be understood.

Paul Harper quotes Wittgenstein "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." But there is a language that must engage us in renewed dialog. It is where you take someone by the hand and introduce him or her to renewed creativity. It is why I teach at Clear Spring School and why I serve on the board of the Eureka Springs School of the Arts. We know that verbal language is a totally inept means through which to embrace creative reality, but there is a language of the hands that speaks clearly to the human heart.

When I take photos of the kids with finished work, they often want me to take a silly picture so they can look goofy. In the photos you see the finished kangaroos with pouches and joeys and some of the kids being silly.