Butterflies and Children, Soaring Naturally

Southbound Monarch

Countless fourth-graders, their teachers and parents, missed an entire school year during the pandemic. Wouldn’t we all go back to fourth grade if Mrs. Nelson were handing out the worksheets? Poet Brad Modlin drops us into her classroom in “What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade.” Psalms and cigarettes, listening to the wind and your grandfather, and how magnificent the “English lesson was that I am / is a complete sentence.”

Let’s learn from an elementary school parent and her two children about this September’s return to school. Revive in nature with them—fly like a monarch butterfly. Enter elementary school again, depart doused in beauty.

Amber’s children attend the rural elementary school centering their community. She and her mother are among its graduates and her grandparents among its employees. Living nearby, Amber’s volunteer days preceded her children’s attending. Her now fifth-grader experienced third grade virtually, fourth grade homeschooling. Her current kindergartener missed preschool altogether.

What’s hard going back to school in a pandemic? Outbreaks at other elementary schools, no distancing and no masks required and few worn, no notice if teachers or students have the virus, HVAC system failing for almost a month, not enough staff to allow students to eat outside as expected…. Amber’s boys, boosted and mask-wearing, carry a CO2 meter in their backpacks which monitors risk of virus transmission. So far, okay, the cafeteria riskier than classrooms.

What to do? Amber speaks.

“Homeschooling gave us a chance to really reflect on what education is. What should it be? What are schools for? It revealed a lot about what we liked and didn’t like about public school. We’re going back with a different perspective and a willingness to really work for the changes we want to see. I asked myself ‘What can I do? How can I make this better?’ I think that’s going to be my big takeaway this year. We can support our teachers, communicate with the principal, and speak out at school board meetings. We can work to create change. But sometimes, we can also just do the thing that needs to be done. I now volunteer at least 2 days a week to take a group of kindergarteners (my son included) outside to eat lunch. It’s not a long-term solution, but it helps right now. We all want the best for our kids, but our kids don’t live in a bubble. They are part of this school community.”

This longtime volunteer engages children and teachers, groups and individuals, hosts an afterschool gardening club—outside—for any/everything. Aware of pressure on educators to teach to “standards of learning,” Amber created a list of projects for each grade that match science standards, interweaving nature, gardening, and science. How about that?!

Check out these projects. Use them. Pass them along. Adapt to your region. Today, imagining I’m a student alongside Amber’s children, I’ve chosen an activity from each grade. A kindergartener scavenging for colors, textures, shapes. First-grader finding animals, their traces, their homes on the nature trail. Second-grader planting a three sisters garden—glass gem corn, Lakota squash, Trail of Tears beans. (The gem corn, eventually harvested for popcorn to eat while the class watches “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving,” oh school bus, fetch me.) Third-grader observing worms. Fourth-grader stuck at the honeybee station in the pollination lab. Fifth-grader identifying and fingering rocks, a witness to weathering on the nature trail.

Pound the refresh button—shake free in communion with nature. Elementary. Essential. Easy.

Step right up and fall in love with the monarch butterfly. Amber and her kindergartener discovered tiny monarch caterpillars in the school garden, unlikely to survive hovering wasps and flies. She placed three in the library… all eyes on the gradual transformation… chrysalises forming…. Now their butterflies migrate south to Mexico, winging 50-100 miles a day, the school beloveds set for a warm winter.

Last week, sitting at a picnic table by another garden, I chatted with each of Amber’s children.

Fifth grader H always wears his mask and got permission to eat lunch outside in the Japanese Garden. He finds peace watching goldfish in the pond Amber cleans. “Mom’s more than kind—I think you’d call it empathy.” During homeschooling, H wrote “Tiny Things That Are Overlooked,” shared with me by that mom. “Most people don’t believe in magic. But I do. If there’s one thing I love doing, it’s noticing things that are often overlooked—a tiny ladybug, female bullfrog, curious eyespots on a click beetle. Rocks, dirt, fungi, the northern lights. Magic is everywhere.”

Kindergartener J, giggler and speed runner, thrills describing a game of tag that will last the whole school year. He wears his mask except when taking bites in the cafeteria. Today Mom fixed veggie sticks with hummus, water, apple slices, peanut butter crackers—the cashew bar the only thing she didn’t make from scratch. “I’m sure Mom loves me because she tells me all the time.” That mom shared J’s poem written after a solitary summer walk. “One tiny plant / and many others / I hope will survive.”

Finishing up our garden visit, Henry discovers a caterpillar under the table top. Four silent, riveted admirers. Butterfly or moth coming soon? Three of us (them) know. Herbie Hancock and I, along with a soprano sax and a bass clarinet, wish for another “Butterfly.”

Amber and her duo send you music. Mom agrees with Jack Johnson that “We’re Going to Be Friends.” Sure enough: “…Fall is here, hear the yell / Back to school, ring the bell.” The boys’ instrumentals deliver another transformation—adults into children. From “Hook,” take composer John Williams’s “Flight to Neverland” with the City Light Symphony Orchestra. Join J and the Vince Guaraldi Trio, and try not replaying “Linus and Lucy.”

Corn pops. You know.

Water flows. I know.

Butter flies. Magic weaves. We know.

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