Inner and outer senses

I have a vivid memory from an experience at school in the third grade:

I was dreamy, everything seemed to move too quick about me, as if hearing voices while under water. There were assignments, alliances between the children. I could see it all happening around me but couldn’t understand or keep up enough to fit in. Recess, was as I encounter dreams now; slides with waving tongues the size of beasts that children screamed as they slide down, small caves set back, I would peer into the darkness, to find children hiding from each other. Monkey bars with strong quick tongued girls swinging across, who never bothered to speak or look at me. It’s all a dream, I walked through it, was stranded and trapped within it but unable to speak within it, anymore than shy responses.

I know that they worried about me, special tests were done, I would raise right arm and then left while they shone a flashlight into my eyes. I would sit with a pleasant woman in a blank room with green walls and put together puzzles for her.
There was a small terrarium near the door that led out to the play ground. It was filled with sand, I don’t remember that it held anything else. I found some small plastic animals and began to arrange the animals in the sand, to talk with them, not with my voice but in how I held them and arranged them. This terrarium became my solace each day. I never questioned why I was at school, but it seemed a strange place and I didn’t understand who I was there only that others laughed, joined each other, knew what was asked and did it, in delightful ways that would make the teacher smile and befriend them.

Everyday I was given an arithmetic ditto sheet and wasn’t allowed outside at recess until it was finished. I was told if I wouldn’t be so stubborn, slow, if I would stop dreaming and pay attention then it would all be finished and I could go outside.

I did not connect the numbers with amounts. I knew that they were in relationship with each other and that they needed to create something new out of their combinations but what?
So I sat and sat, and they became not unlike the terrarium to me. I can still recall seven as a tall handsome cowboy, three the saloon girl, two a dainty lady, five was the sheriff, and eight was the banker. They would combine and recombine in their scenes with each other, like the wild west. The correct numbers were never written, but I would write down numbers as seemed appropriate to the story.

I have wondered many times since what would have supported me. Most of the other children didn’t seem adversely affected, to them it was a happy, thriving place to learn.

As a teacher how would I have taught myself? Not by insisting that I work in abstractions, like number symbols without someway to make them concrete. The way that I would explain it to myself now is that the outer world, needed attention so that rich inner world could connect to it and they could be equals in their being and becoming. The volume of the inner was turned up and the outer was a static confusion so I clung to th outer. The place I found comfort was in the movement and arrangement of the plastic animals in the sand.

A powerful place for this kind of child and really for all children is a consistent time with hands-on processes. Sand play, water play, building hideouts and forts, clay work and moving out from these basics are lenghened work with agriculture and food, animals, a relationship with nature. Natural, healthy and basic processes to connect them into their bodies and senses, to in fact bring them down to earth.

I know that in those years that a sense of balance and coordination were difficult for me, so all of the opposites inherent in work and play would have been good for me. Climb and jump; push and pull; in and out; over and under. The different states of a process: raw, chopped, baked and eaten. The potentials are endless but it’s a matter of observing the child’s natural inclinations towards unfolding and then to follow that lead. You lead where there’s a following.

If I could have used the time at school to be immersed in sensation, to make discoveries and naturally strengthen the bonds between the inner and outer senses. Then I would be ready for abstractions which are a short hand for real understanding.