Dear Reader,

I ran into a neighbor I hadn’t seen for a long time at the dog park Saturday morning. When I learned that she has been taking writing classes, I asked what’s been capturing her writerly attention. “Nonfiction,” she tells me. “I want to write something to help teachers and parents stop being so anxious.”

You and me both, Neighbor.

When Susan and I proposed refuge as our September 2024 Studio focus, we thought that it might resonate for people at this moment. It didn’t take a crystal ball to make that prediction - and it seems to have been all too accurate. Since then, the US surgeon general named parental stress “a serious public health concern for our country,” a warning that fell alongside similar concerns for educators. Over the last week, schools were closed in Springfield because of threats rising from false, opportunistic statements and Florida demanded that educators take sex out of sex education.

In The Studio, we’ve been wondering together how our learning communities can be “islands of sanity.” As we’ve gone back and forth about whether “island” is the pertinent metaphor, one thing has become clear: Like other islands, detritus from seemingly great distances washes up on the shores.

A Studio member shares that the new administration where she works seems to be prioritizing control. She wonders how she can respond with compassion. Another member writes about how she has trouble recognizing the drive to create conditions of refuge in the actions of her colleagues and principal. She wonders whether she can create that space of refuge by keeping the door shut.

The story that catalyzed those closures in Springfield and vilified Florida programs - perhaps similar to ones informing the members' experiences - is what john a. powell calls a “breaking story” - a story that tells us “that we are heading for a future where things could get much worse. Who we are, our very way of life, are up for grabs. If we do not do something quick—and possibly something extreme—it will be too late. In [this] story we hear they are threatening us. There is no room in this story for the possibility that we might live together. Attacks and other forms of violence can be recast as self-defense and the protection of our group.”

powell’s work tells us that we can counter that breaking through bridging.

Courtney Gore - who was the subject of this Pro Publica article and who I learned about through the Have You Heard podcast - was captured by one of those breaking stories. Having heard that schools were indoctrinating children into a twisted, anti-Christian worldview, she was motivated to run for school board in her Texas county. Upon assuming office, she dove into investigating this insidious movement - and she found that “the pervasive indoctrination she had railed against simply did not exist. Children were not being sexualized, and she could find no examples of critical race theory, an advanced academic concept that examines systemic racism. She’d examined curriculum related to social-emotional learning, which has come under attack by Christian conservatives who say it encourages children to question gender roles and prioritizes feelings over biblical teachings. Instead, Gore found the materials taught children “how to be a good friend, a good human.””

Grappling with that new understanding, she responded by bridging.

In his recent post, Sam Chaltain posits that we need to “make schools the frontier of connection in a world of algorithms.” That seems like such a beautiful way of describing the refuge we all seek to create - and which we learn about through sharing stories, in The Studio and beyond.

In a conversation with Ada Limón that Studio members listened to last week, Limon says,

“Sometimes when we go through really big catastrophes, when we’re careening from one crisis to another, one of the main jobs that we have as artists is to remember that we may not have to have hope, but we have to have some curiosity. We have to have some sort of resilience at this time. And I think that poetry can make room for that. It can help us feel like, “Oh, right. I’m not alone in this feeling.”

“It's when we despair alone that it becomes easy to think there's no hope, whereas poetry is complex. It allows for different ways of being: “Wait, I can feel that and that too?” I can lose someone and grieve and feel really deep pain and then also feel a sense of tenderness watching a little lizard go in and out of the rosemary bush or a tenderness to the kind person at the grocery store that just asked how I was in a nice way. We have to make room for all of that, and I think that a poet's job is to do that, to encourage us not to numb.”

As we continue to go through big catastrophes and crises - because we will - finding those points of connection and celebrating those complex feelings, those shared points of attention, seems like not only the job for artists and poets, but for educators, parents, and neighbors.

It is the way we can create refuge for and with each other.

Next week, we turn the calendar page to open a throughline of curiosity. That seems deeply connected to those approaches - in that same conversation, Limón asserts that, “being curious is such a good way to live.”

I look forward to going there with you.

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One place I know I find refuge is in humor. We're thrilled that the wonderful Shawna Coppola has offered to explore this joyful part of our work that gets too little attention with us in a new course. Recognizing that this is a topic that people are curious about but might be a little uncertain to step into, we've decided to drop the price way down for a limited group of registrants - just $75 for this investigation that runs mid-October through November.

​Treat yourself!​

And remember: Registration for Laughing Matters and other courses is included with Transform Plan Memberships.

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November's Through Line is CURIOSITY. Our curiosity will be sparked at the beginning of the month through a conversation with Shawna Coppola, will be sustained through engagement with pastels, and extended by reading, listening, and viewing a range of texts.

WATCHING, LISTENING, READING

Good things:

• While we usually limit viewing of Guide Line conversations to Studio members, we decided to post the recording of our September conversation with the Tijuana Nest team for a limited time publicly. Watch it here today.
• It feels so important to construct and articulate connections between our values, pedagogical approaches, and personal experiences. A beautiful example of that is Kath Murdoch's new post, What A Broken Heart Reminded Me About Teaching, Learning and Inquiry.
• In case you skipped past them in my message above, I think this post from Sam Chaltain and this conversation with Ada Limón are very much worth your time.
• ​Susan and I will be in Denver in a couple of weeks. We're really looking forward to it - and we would love to see you - or your Denver area friends - there.
• Fiction passing by my bedstand in recent weeks has been the novels Catherine Newman's Sandwich, Joseph O'Neill's Godwin, and S.A. Crosby's Razorblade Tears and I'm now reading Yiyun Li's short story collection, Wednesday's Child. A diverse lot - and all recommended. What are you reading that I should add to my Libby list?

"If we believe... that the purpose of education is to cultivate dispositions for critical thinking, glad collaboration, imagining, inventing, questioning, and investigating, then we direct our educational leadership and professional learning towards creating opportunities for exploration, reflection, and collaboration. We strive to honor educators’ capacities to be professional marvellers, to be researchers curious about and compelled by children’s thinking."

​Ann Pelo​

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