The Creativity Sweeps: Everything Those Teachers Did, They Did With Flair; They Knew No Bounds

Jackson Pollock, untitled (Green Silver)

Jackson Pollock, Untitled (Green Silver); ca. 1949, enamel and aluminum paint on paper, mounted on canvas. Solomon Guggenheim Museum; New York Gift, Sylvia and Joseph Slifka

by Julia Sneden

Back when I first started writing this column, a friend suggested that I write about some of the "wildly creative" types I’ve encountered during a lifetime of associating with theatre people (my husband is a set designer; I was a drama major; and, back before my children were born, I worked at a couple of movie studios). The idea sounded good to me, because I have indeed been fortunate to have met some famous and fascinating people.

But when I sat myself down at the word processor to try profiling a few, the most flagrantly creative and Out There people who came to mind were the preschool and kindergarten teachers at the extraordinary school my children attended, long ago.

Everything those teachers did, they did with flair. They knew no bounds: They entrusted good, sharp knives to four-year-olds who chopped vegetables for their "Pilgrim Stew" contribution to a feast which was held the day before Thanksgiving, outdoors (as the Pilgrims had done). They hung the kids' art works from the ceiling, on the playground fence, off the rail of a balcony. They taught letter formation using pencils to scribe rolled-out clay. They taught beginning sounds through cooking ("Preparing Plain or Pepperoni Pizza"). They let the children make designs and large letters using push pins on individual cork boards. They broke down recipes and made pictogram cards, setting them up in a long, left-to-right row, so that if a child followed the recipe steps, he or she emerged with ONE cookie or ONE individual pizza. They showed the children how to find the seeds in various flowers and vegetables; they taught them how to coax sprouts from those seeds. They gave the kids shovels and hoes and rakes to turn up the ground in the class garden plot, where the children planted a garden using their seedlings, and the following year, when the children were no longer in their classes, the teachers invited them back after school to harvest the fruits of their labors.

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But, first, we'd like to note three preschools that our children attended: The Lindgren School, founded in 1944, in Closter, New Jersey, The Out-of-Door Academy, established in 1924 on Siesta Key, Sarasota, Florida and The New Canaan Nature Center Preschool in Connecticut. The school that Julia is referring to is the Summit School of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. — Tam Martinides Gray, Editor and Founder, SeniorWomen.com

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The Creativity Sweeps: Everything Those Teachers Did, They Did With Flair; They Knew No Bounds

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