Tend the Flame

So my favorite day at the conference in Kathmandu was Saturday—it was the mix of everything I set out to do for this six-day jaunt to Nepal. I enjoyed a keynote address, chose a provocative workshop to attend, enjoyed sumptuous Nepalese food, bonded with colleagues, made a new friend, toured a new city, enjoyed a cultural experience, and even wrote a couple of the 60 comments I needed to finish before I landed in Amman. All in one day! Now if you know me, that is my kind of day—inspiration, laughter, new planes, new sights, satisfaction.

The day started bright and early with one of the scary Nepalese taxi rides to the hotel which hosted the conference. However, we had a bit more room this time since one of ours had not made it downstairs on time. The breathing space was welcomed as we careened and bumped through town to the gorgeously designed Hyatt. Hey, the Yak and Yeti hotel was pretty nice, but not as temple-like as the Hyatt. We started off with a keynote address by educational research guru Jay McTighe who spoke interestingly about what a teacher’s job is when teaching, and what is the teacher’s job when not teaching. He and his writer partner Grant Wiggins revolutionized the teaching world when they explained their “backward design” of curriculum planning, and again, with such a simple premise there was great brain work going on.

I had chosen a workshop for that day that very clearly stated in the conference booklet, “This workshop will not provide new techniques or strategies to take back to your staff…” but what appealed to me was the leader’s announcement that he would challenge us to “reflect on the role” we play “in creating the emotional condition” of our school community. It struck me as something different from all the rubrics one usually discusses at conferences—don’t get me wrong, rubrics are provocative and food for thought, but there was something in the promo for the workshop that grabbed me. And the leader, Steve Shapiro, is from Ohio!

At the outset of the workshop Steve again made it clear that this was not a conventional workshop, but hoped to engage us in reflection intended to help us create more collaborative, positive, reflective school communities. He said he planned to have us read some poetry, do some writing, and engage in deep conversations with the other participants. Several people left at that point since I guess they hoped for a different “take-away.” I thought this would be like a different kind of spa day. The man running the conference had opened the entire event with a poem, so I had been kind of tuned in to poetry since the convocation on Thursday. Steve had suggested this poem, and it bears repeating here:

What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,
a breathing space.
Too much of a good thing,
too many logs
packed in too tight
can douse the flames
almost as surely
as a pail of water would.
So building fires
requires attention
to the spaces in between,
as much as to the wood.
When we are able to build
open spaces
in the same way
we have learned
to pile on the logs,
then we can come to see how
it is fuel, and absence of the fuel
together, that make fire possible.
We only need to lay a log
lightly from time to time.
A fire
grows
simply because the space is there,
with openings
in which the flame
that knows just how it wants to burn
can find its way.
--“Fire” by Judy Brown



What an interesting image to think about how a fire grows—with the space and not the reckless piling on of log after log. Certainly in our world we suffer from the too-many-logs syndrome, but the poem, and indeed the whole conference seemed to provide me with some space to tend that flame of excitement about education and leadership. The poem reminded me of friend Gary (yes, that blog entry will come someday all about him!) and his old adage, “It is the silence between the notes that makes the music.”

In this four-hour workshop it became such a thrilling place of sharing, discussion, engagement and introspection. That night Steve joined my colleague Ola and Dana and we spent the time at the cultural evening laughing and joking. What was quite remarkable was the ease with which this quartet interacted. Rarely it seems do adults actually enjoy the tingle and excitement of making new friends, but instantly Ola and Dana and I enjoyed Steve’s conversation. For me, there was the midwestern connection—Steve met his wife teaching in Cincinnati. But it was that rapport and that collegiality and respect and joy that rarely seems to come when we are just busy piling on the logs.

So that evening the conference transported us about an hour away from Kathmandu to Bhaktapur, a UNESCO World Heritage city that is a thousand-years old. At one time this city was the capital of a unified kingdom. Remnants of temples and other examples of faded glory stood proudly throughout the town. The city inhabitants greeted us as we stepped off the bus and then we were a part of a parade, well, we were the parade through the town with the townspeople of Bhaktapur applauding our visit to their town. They celebrated Dashain again with us and we ended our parade through the windy city streets at an airy square, Taumadhi Square, where a banquet had been set up for us catered by the Hyatt. Steve, Dana, Ola and I found space and even though we were surrounded by hundreds of the other attendees, joked and relaxed like this whole evening had set up to stimulate these new friendships. During the evening a dancing troupe performed perhaps twenty dances right under the 5-story Nyatapola Temple. Indeed, at the beginning of the evening the MC, the happy-happy man from Bhaktapur, introduced us to a “living goddess,” a young woman who is raised from birth to act as the embodiment of blessings on Bhaktapur as the ideal young virgin. She sat in a throne high up above the dancers with her hand raised in a mudra of peace and love. The mysterious tantric goddess Siddhi Laxmi, to whom the temple is dedicated, is hidden inside. At each corner of the temple is a shrine to the popular god Ganesh, the lovable half-boy, half-elephant. Hindus visit this shrine to ensure safety on a forthcoming journey and when starting any new work. As a defender and remover of obstacles, Ganesh must be honored first before worshipping other gods.

The buffet was marvelous, the dancers impressive, the enjoyment quite splendid. As the attendees of the conference dined on the food from the Hyatt, along the edges of our banquet, the townspeople watched with pride as their dance troupe entertained us. They had floodlights for us to see and the central square of Bhaktapur looked charming in the night air. The MC smiled and smiled and kept uttering his catch phrase of the evening, “Come on—surely you agree: once in Nepal…is never enough!”

We rode back into town continuing our chatting from the evening and bidding adieu to our new friend. I wrote 5 more comments before packing the suitcase since I had a 7:00 a.m. departure.

I finished the comments on the flight back to Amman and even more important I sketched out the six-month plan for the teaching workshops I will lead for the young faculty. It was a magical trip—a totally new environment, delicious food, an opportunity to see colleagues in a relaxed, open way, space between those logs to reflect on where I can work on being a leader and how to lead the faculty…all the things you hope you might accomplish from a professional and personal adventure.

One of the things I have done in the last couple of weeks since my return is look up some more poetry to use to create a little space and reflection. This is a busy place, no doubt, a consuming place, but I have worked extra hard not to let the consuming nature consume the fire. That fire needs to be tended, and if an afternoon in a steam room at the Dead Sea, a lingering meal of mezze and conversation, or a little poem can help tend the flame, all the better.