Summer is an opportunity to shift into a different mode, even as I mark six months as part of the Mandel School community and set goals for the coming school year. There are movements happening around the university and within the school itself. Sometimes it feels like the plate tectonics of the globe are affecting each of us on a terribly micro level and we might be on shaky ground within our profession, economy or what we thought was a solid plan to live our lives and commit to ethical existence.
For me, summer is a time to review the past semester and my teaching, take in some educational opportunities for personal and professional edification as well as for CEUs, and breathe deeply and without haste to prepare for the big push that is the “regular school year” even though I still teach in the summer. Teaching only one course feels like there is a little more wiggle room to reflect and prepare, have coffee with current and former students and colleagues, attend to some projects that do not get enough attention during the fall and spring semesters (such as CSWE reaffirmation for our accreditation standing), and replace and conserve a little energy. As a gardener, I am also preparing my garden—mostly vegetables—to sustain my family’s access to fresh food and share with my neighbors the bounty my yard produces. Because I garden, I am very attuned to the weather and nature (being a Kansan, we seem to be made that way).
My students also had me engaged with Goose Watch this spring. The mama goose that lays her eggs on the green roof of our building gives us the remarkable opportunity of watching her family grow. I noticed the similarities between watching Mama Goose and her partner tend to the eggs, then finally the goslings, and my own sense of nurture for my students who were about to graduate. This fledging from the nest affected me profoundly. Mary Oliver’s poem about geese struck me, but more so her words from another poem have been prominent in my mind and on my heart. I share them here, to remind us to practice intention with the “one wild and precious life” we get to experience.
Poem 133: The Summer Day
Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
— Sherry Warren
Director of Enrichment and Engagement
Note: The views expressed are my own and do not represent those of Case Western Reserve University or the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences.