Kids saying good-bye, and a man waiting to die.

My class recently had a teacher candidate come for a three-week observation practicum. Translation: a lady who is in teacher’s college right now came to see what it is like in a real classroom. This was just her first practicum. She was only to observe and help out when asked. She didn’t need to write lesson plans, or practice teaching the class. She will do that later in her course of studies. And I hope that she will do that with a more experienced teacher than me. I was happy to have another adult in the room to help. But I wouldn’t want to be responsible for that level of teacher training.

She was great, the teacher candidate. She bought in, right from day one. She was engaged with the kids. She was focused on learning as much as possible. And she helped me out a lot. It was so nice to have someone to bounce ideas off of. Every elementary teacher in Ontario gets a 40-minute preparation and planning period every day. That means that we get a break from our students so that we can get other stuff done. My Kindergarten colleagues and I all have our prep period at the same time, with the idea that we will collaborate and plan lessons together. In reality, it doesn’t happen much. We are often busy doing stuff that is specific to our class. For example, I might be busy getting signatures for a field trip form, or talking to the vice principal about how to handle an incident of student violence. But even if my Kinder colleagues and I were all free at the same time, I don’t know how much we would collaborate. Our styles are very different and what works for one won’t necessarily work for another. My ECE teaching partner and I are usually on the same page. But we are always busy, and we don’t get planning time together.

Working with the teacher candidate was the truest experience of collaboration that I have had as a teacher. Why? She didn’t have other responsibilities to pre-occupy her. And she wasn’t set in her ways. Every day I told her what I was hoping to accomplish, (e.g. A unit on 3D shapes) and then she helped me plan a course of action. With her help, I had the most productive three weeks that I have had as a teacher. They weren’t perfect. Some of our ideas didn’t work out as well as we had hoped. But that will always be true. I was happy to be trying new things and seeing how they go. After all, that is how we learn.

At the end of her three-week practicum, I told the students that the teacher candidate would be leaving us. The students all ran to hug her. I had to guide them into making a line and tell them to move out of the way after hugging her so that someone else could hug. I have experienced being group hugged by kindergarteners and I know that, when you reach a certain number of simultaneous huggers, it stops being fun and starts being dangerous. I have almost fallen over from too many leg huggers.

At dismissal time, two kids seemed particularly sad to be saying goodbye to the teacher candidate. One little girl didn’t want to stop hugging her, even as the little girl’s mom stood at the gate waiting to take her home. After all the kids had left, and before we said our goodbye, the teacher candidate told me that she was at peace with her desire to teach Kindergarten. The three weeks in our class had affirmed for her that Kinder is where she belongs. Hopefully that works out for her. She might have to teach other grades for a while, too. You have to take the jobs that are available. It takes years to get the seniority required to choose your grade level.

Seeing the sad hugs at the end of the day made me think of all the goodbyes I have had to say in my life. It is nearing the end of the school year, so there are a lot more goodbyes coming up for me. I will be moving schools, as I don’t have the seniority required to stay where I am.

Out of all the results of my “group hug” Google search, I liked this one the best.

Sometimes I think about friends and/or friendships that I have lost. As a Friar, I had many great friendships based on deep and honest conversations about faith. I remember many people being moved to tears as we talked about God, and their own struggle to accept themselves. There were many people who opened up to me at every stop of my journey. I connected easily with a lot of people. In my first year with the Friars, I signed up with a local volunteer organization that acted as a central hub to connect volunteers to people in need in the community. The coordinator saw that I had social skills, so she paired me up with a guy in a nursing home who needed a friend. The guy was famously cantankerous. He had fallen ill with ALS at a relatively young age and was stuck in a nursing home, unable to move anything below his neck. That is a good reason to be cantankerous. He was at least 20 years younger than everyone else there, and he was probably the only resident who had his full, undiminished mental capacity. So, he had good reason to be lonely. He was divorced, although his ex-wife visited from time to time. He had a daughter who visited more frequently, thank God. But time passed slowly for him in that condition and in that situation.

Another one of the first year Friars already wanted to volunteer at the nursing home, so we both signed up to be volunteers and we started spending a lot of time there. I paid the man a visit and we quickly became good friends. Sure, I was a volunteer, but our friendship was real. I not only felt great compassion for the man. (He was in constant pain. His nerves had lost their ability to control movement, but they retained their ability to send pain signals. His legs were constantly cramping and his feet were extremely sensitive.) But I genuinely related to him in many ways. He had been a business owner, just like myself. He had been a bit of a loner, much like I had been for a long time. We understood each other. He had a lot of reasons to be angry, chief among them was his contempt for the nursing home food. He could not stand the food there. He had his daughter bring him in plastic containers full of pre-cooked hamburgers which he would microwave. And I started bringing in Chinese food one night each week. On Sunday or Monday nights we would eat Chinese food and watch football. I imagine that, on those evenings, he felt almost normal. The other first-year Friar always joined us. Together we had a little “guys night” in the nursing home.

The coordinator of volunteers at the nursing home told me, before I took the job, that the man had already signed up for medical assistance in dying (MAID) and that I was not allowed to try to dissuade him. So, when it eventually came up in conversation, I did not try to convince him to do otherwise. Back at the Friary, the full-fledged Friars (most of them were priests) asked me if I was going to try to talk him out of it, citing religious reasons. I told them that I could not. And, deep down, I was very thankful for that. I didn’t want to have to pronounce judgement over something so complex. That was between the man and God. Now that I have given away the end of the story, and seeing that this happened a long time ago, I am going to call him Gary. Gary was a good friend of mine, and a good man. He had dictated an angry letter or two in his day. But all the nursing home staff agreed that he had a heart of gold and was a gentle soul.

As the date of his MAID appointment neared, Gary and I spoke more about death. He told me that he hoped there was something on the other side. He hoped that God was real. He didn’t have any fear of meeting God. Gary accepted who he was, and how he had lived. Deep down he accepted his suffering. Gary told me about the times in his when he had been overly head-strong, competitive, and selfish. He admitted he relished hurting people on the football field as a teenager. Gary knew who he was and who he wasn’t. And, deep down, he was starting to understand the good and compassionate heart of God.

Gary and I were guy friends. He didn’t show all his vulnerability to me. But he was very close with some of the care workers in the nursing home. One of them told me, in confidence that, close to the end, Gary felt that God was forgiving him and welcoming him. He felt loved. He was at peace. He was even crying tears of sweet relief.

When the day of his MAID appointment arrived, it was I who wheeled Gary from his room to the front door where an accessible bus was waiting to take him to the MAID site. They couldn’t do it in his nursing home. He had to go to a larger care facility. His ex-wife, his children, and their families would be there with him. I wasn’t going there. It was only for family. But I was honored that Gary (and the care workers) let me take him for his last ride in the nursing home. His last words to me were “Thank you for everything.” He was crying. I got the sense that he wanted to say more. After a little reception in the dining room, I wheeled Gary to the door. The driver of the accessible bus backed his chair onto the lift, and Gary started going up. As his chair rolled backwards into the bus and the doors started to close, we looked at each other. He opened his mouth to say something. I gave him a kind-of casual, friendly salute. He closed his mouth, nodded and smiled. Enough said.

Gary was a good friend. He was not, nor had he ever been a perfect man. But he was honest and sincere. Sure, I listened to him vent his anger about everything. But he also listened to me. He was a counsellor to me, in many ways. Our friendship was balanced. I wasn’t a high and mighty volunteer, stooping down to help him in his lowliness. We were just two friends, trying to make the best of a tough situation.

Gary is just one of the many people I have had to say goodbye to in my life. Some have died. Some I have lost contact with as I moved away and took on a new life as a teacher, husband, and soon-to-be father.

When I think of Gary now, I feel more gratitude than sadness. I am in awe, really. There are so many people in this world. In my neighborhood, when I cross paths with people on the street, my lizard brain sometimes feels threatened. I would say that, in general, people feel a lot of competitiveness, stand-offishness, and insecurity in relation to each other. The friendship that I had with Gary was pure. He was no longer in the rat race of life. He could not compete anymore. He wasn’t striving for anything. He wasn’t preoccupied with politics. He was a powerless man, waiting to die. As sad as that was, there was beauty in it. I am sorry for his pain. I wish that he never had to suffer as he did. But the transformation that it brought about was beautiful, and that is what I am in awe of. There is a well-known passage of the Bible that says, "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh." (Ezekiel 36:26) When Gary talked about his past, it sounded like he had a heart of stone. But as he sat, in pain, waiting to die, I saw that his heart was softening day by day. The man who I saluted as the bus doors closed was a very different man than the one I first met.

I hope that I never suffer the way Gary did. I hope that no one ever suffers like that. But still, when I remember Gary and his journey, I have to say that life is beautiful. Focusing on beauty makes it easier to say goodbye.

I’ve got it! I know how to make my Kindergarten students feel better about saying goodbye to the teacher candidate: I’ll tell them the story of how my friend Gary got sick with ALS, got confined to a chair in a nursing home, and eventually took medical assistance in dying. That will surely make them feel better!

No, I won’t do that. But I might explain to them that the word Goodbye comes from “God be with you” (or “God be with ye” if speaking to a group. And Adieu literally means, “to God”.) When people used to say goodbye, it was with the understanding that they were entrusting the other person to God. They wouldn’t worry about the other person because they would know that they were in God’s hands. So maybe I’ll explain to the kids what it means to say goodbye to the teacher candidate: we are trusting that God is looking after her on the rest of her journey.

In a few weeks, I will entrust my little flock of 4 to 6-year-olds to God, as we all continue on our respective journeys.

ESL kids, school assemblies, and hospital visits

You have to give kindergarten students credit for one thing: In whole-school assemblies, they are generally the best behaved out of all the students. There are two reasons: 1. They always sit at the front, closest to the presenters and the principals. 2. They are often the most genuinely curious about what is being said. But that second point changes when the kids are English language learners. For ESL (English second language) junior kindergarten students, assemblies are mostly just gibberish. My ESL students have always tuned-out assemblies and just made their own entertainment for 20 or 30 minutes. During one assembly I saw one of my ESL JK students going down the row of our class, rolling up everyone’s sleeves at the wrists. Another time I turned around to see one of my ESL JK students sitting still and looking calm and attentive, the only problem was that he was sitting in the middle of a fifth-grade class, 4 rows back from our group.

Kindergarten is so much harder for ESL students. Their brains have to work ten times harder. I spent a year in a French speaking convent and the first six months were terribly frustrating. It was hard to be part of a group but not know what was being said, especially when people looked right at me while they were speaking. All kindergarten educators should be mindful of how hard the school experience is for ESL students.

One of my ESL students often showed up to school looking very downcast. She clearly wasn’t loving the school experience. I could see that she was a fun person and a leader. But she couldn’t communicate orally. So, she was often very sad at school. When her mother dropped her off, she would walk into the yard and stand by herself, looking at the ground. So, I would get a soccer ball and kick it gently at her feet. Without looking up, she would kick it back to me. We kicked it back and forth for a few minutes until she cracked a small smile.

One day we had a particularly exhausting school assembly. I sat in the middle of our row and had to maintain constant vigilance, looking from side to side to see who was talking, who was grabbing or hitting someone else, who was playing with plasticine from home, and who was slowly inching their way back to the grade 5s. I found the whole experience draining. And our morning routine was thrown off. By lunch recess I was short tempered and found myself being harsh with the kids. I realized that I was in a bad state of mind. So, I took some deep breaths and walked over to a less busy part of the yard to try to calm down. Suddenly, the little ESL girl with whom I liked to play soccer was standing at my side, reaching her hand up to mine. She said, “hand?” I put my hand in hers and we walked around the yard for the rest of the recess. I still had to break up fights and make kids share the toy cars, but it all seemed lighter, and it was easier to be kind to the kids while my little friend held my hand.  

It reminded me of an experience that I had while I was in the religious order. In my first year, my director encouraged the first-year guys to find volunteering opportunities in the city. We had to show that we were willing to work and contribute to society. I got involved with a few things, and I ended up meeting a chaplain who invited me to volunteer at a large hospital. The chaplain needed people to go around to the Catholic patients to tell them about chaplaincy services. There was Catholic Mass in the hospital chapel every day. And the priest could come and do the anointing of the sick if people wanted. I was also supposed to offer to pray with people and bring them Holy Communion if they wanted. I got a name tag, a parking pass, and a key that would open like 2 or 3 doors, and I became an official provincial health services volunteer. For the next couple of months (before I was shipped overseas for the next stage of formation) I went to the hospital a few days a week and visited Catholic patients. Almost all of them were surprised by my visits. They hadn’t asked to be visited by chaplaincy services. They had simply checked the “Catholic” box on the religion section of their admittance form. But I was very respectful and polite. (I had been an excellent salesman in my previous career) So, I do not think that I offended anyone. I simply explained who I was and what I was offering, and most people gave me a very polite “No, thank you”. But many people welcomed me, and I had many deep conversations. Some people stayed in touch for years after. I was amazed at how open and reflective people can be when they are in a vulnerable state.

What does this have to do with my little ESL friend? Well, at one point, I experienced some burnout from cold-calling hospital patients all day. I was very much aware of how intrusive and borderline rude it was. And some of the conversations were heavy. There were so many sick, lonely, and sad people. While talking to one guy, he heaved a heavy sigh and said, “It’s just nice to have someone to talk to.” Another guy, on my second visit, asked me for medical advice. He said, “I trust you entirely.” I told him to listen to his doctor! Anyway, one day I was just worn out. I felt like I was on the verge of tears, for no reason at all. I should have stayed home at the convent. But I went into the hospital anyway. The first person to welcome me in was a woman in her late 70s. I don’t know what she was in for. It was not my business to ask. But she seemed like she had been in the hospital for a while. I had talked to sad elderly ladies before. But this lady seemed to be at peace. She was happy to have a visitor, but not because she was desperate for one. She just seemed like a nice lady who liked people. She asked me about who I was and what I was doing. We talked about my faith journey, and she seemed to have her own spiritual life, but didn’t need to gush about it. At a certain point in our conversation, I realized that she ministering to me, and not the other way around. She made me feel normal. She made me feel lovable, even if I wasn’t saving the world. I went to that hospital to help people. But I was the one getting helped. It was like with my little ESL friend. I am the teacher and am supposed to be helping her. But when she held my hand, she was the one helping me.

After my visit with the elderly lady, I sought out some familiar patients and then called it quits early. I was a volunteer. And I didn’t think I should try to be anything special for anyone that day.

But I didn’t feel guilty about my conversation with the elderly lady. That is life. Sometimes you help someone. Sometimes someone helps you. Sure, she helped me a lot on that day. But I got the sense that she was happy to help, as if it allowed her to feel normal again. I think that she saw someone who needed motherly love that day, and it probably felt good for her to fulfill that need. I lost my mother when I was 16. So, motherly love came rarely in my adult life. I guess I didn’t realize how much I needed it until that day.

I had been working on this post for a few days and was going to publish it today, regardless. But today happens to be Mother’s Day. So, I am glad to share that story today.

Eight minutes to count from 160 to 161.

One day, as I walked outside to supervise recess in the kindergarten yard, one of my students ran up to me and said, “Mr Monk, I can count to one hundred and sixty.” “Wow”, I said. “That is a big number!” I didn’t ask him to prove it. I was looking around, trying to locate the kids I needed to keep an eye on (for safety). The boy ran away to play with friends. Eight minutes later, the boy ran up to me again and said, “One hundred and sixty-one now.” Did it take him eight minutes to realize that the next number after 160 is 161? And, why did he then stop at 161 and not keep counting to, say, 170?

The people with the strongest faith in God usually have the least faith in their own opinions. That is not to say that they are indecisive. It means that they are self-aware. They know that they aren’t always right. So, they take time and reflect on and evaluate their beliefs and opinions.

The boy who counted to 161 is not stupid. He is, in fact, very bright. But he is only 4 years old and there are a lot of concepts to learn. Firstly, not every child understands the concept of infinity, i.e. that a person can keep on counting forever. Some kids might think of counting numbers like they are words in a song: you say this word then that word then that word, etc. Maybe the boy had been taught how to count to 160 but not further than that. Maybe it took a while for it to dawn on him that he could keep counting by himself. He would have also needed to recognize the pattern that numbers that end in “ty” (20, 30, 40, etc) are always followed by numbers that end it “ty one” (21, 31, 41). Kids at that age don’t have such a firm concept of tens. For all he knew, 160 could have been followed by 165, 168, or “one hundred and sixty eleven”. So, it makes sense that he took eight minutes to figure out how to count from 160 to 161. He was probably thinking things through, very carefully.

I was talking to my father recently about the state of the Catholic church. There is a shortage of priests, yes, but we agreed that that is just a symptom of the overall lack of participation in the church. My dad cited examples of some of our family members who don’t go to church. They believe themselves to be good people, and so they don’t see the need to go to church. They ARE good people. But it is dangerous to believe too much in one’s own goodness. History has shown us terrible examples of people who did horrific things, all while believing themselves to be right.

That is not to say that everyone needs to go to church or else they will become a bad person. I just think that it is shame that people think they don’t need God. They are closing themselves off from the best part of life, in my opinion.

I know that, often, the church experience is not as inspiring as it could be. But overall life is brighter with religion in it.

It took me a long time to realize the value of going to church. I was (and still am) an arrogant man. When I joined the religious order, I thought that I had more to offer it than it had to offer me. Like many people today, I thought: “I’m good” and so I didn’t need church.

Religious life was a humbling experience. God held a mirror up to my face and I realized that no, I am, in fact, not good. People hear religious teachings, and they think, “Yeah, yeah, golden rule, treat others how you want to be treated, be good… I got it.” But what happens when you encounter people who do not live and act the way that you live and act? How do you react? Are you nice to the people you don’t like? In religious life I found out that I was terribly judgmental. I looked down on many of the brothers in the order. I thought some lazy, others dimwitted, others selfish, others vane. I had no sympathy for them. I did not value them. I did not recognize their dignity as children of God. I was an arrogant jerk to some people. And, it took me a long time to realize it. The golden rule is not nearly as easy as people think. That is why the holiest people are the most careful and reflective. They are always asking themselves if they are truly doing the best that they can.   

Religious life involves a lot of prayer, reading, studying, and discussion. In addition to the bible and the Breviary, we also read from the writings of saints. Almost every day I was bombarded with teachings about being humble, nonjudgmental, compassionate, and loving. I had to accept the harsh truth that it was I that needed to change, not those other brothers that I looked down upon.

Maybe the 4-year-old boy in my class was very proud of his ability to count to 160 and so he got caught up in savoring his accomplishment. Maybe he went around telling everyone that he could count to 160. Maybe it took him a while to realize that he could go further.

My life experience had been transformed by faith and spirituality. I had been depressed and unhealthy. But after finding God, and adopting a spiritually disciplined lifestyle, I had been experiencing health and happiness. I was very proud of how my life had been transformed by faith. I thought that I had already changed as much as I needed to change. So, I thought that the next step for me was to affect that change on the rest of the world. It took me a long time to realize that I needed to keep working on myself. 160 is just one point on a number line that goes on forever. Likewise, I joined the religious order at one point in my spiritual journey. I had to keep going. I still need to keep going!

I told ai, “create an image of a number line from zero to God”. This is what it came up with.

When the boy told me he could count to 161, I thought of next steps. Whenever I think that I know the next step in my life, I am almost always wrong. I almost never know what is best for me. I get stuck at a certain point, unable to move forward, like the boy stuck at 160. It is a repeating pattern in my life. I get stuck until I give up and say, “God, I don’t know what to do. I need your help.” That is when things work out for me. I place my trust in God, and I stop trying to figure everything out myself. That is the only next step that I can recommend to anyone in life.

Once, in religious life, I was staying at a foreign convent for a while and there was a lot of tension and resentment with some of the brothers. At one point, after weeks of being preoccupied with thoughts of anger and resentment, I broke down and literally cried to God, “Is this all that I am? Judgment, anger, and hate?” That was the most humbling and liberating moment of my journey with the brothers. That was the final tumble from off my high horse. After that I prayed only for help to forgive, love, and get along with the other brothers. And, that is exactly what I received from God. We started getting along. We started having warm and friendly interactions. I started to understand them. I started to love them. And, though I eventually did leave so that I could pursue my current vocation of marriage, fatherhood, and teaching, I still think fondly of all the brothers. I go and visit them when I can. I hope that we all continue to progress on our journey to the infinite.  

Blobs with arms: The impossibility of describing God

“Do you have hair?” This was coming from the boy staring directly at me from across the table. “I have some hair”, I said. The boy looked down at his drawing and added three short vertical lines coming up from the roundish head/body which represented me. It had legs and arms, all of which were angled at 90 degrees at the joints. It had a smile and two eyes. “I’m almost done. I just need to do your moustaches.” He squinted at me, then added three short vertical lines coming down from the chin, which was the bottom of the head/body.

My wife once asked me how I introduce the concept of God to kindergarteners. It is tough. Once I tried to tell the kids that God is always there for us, even though we can’t see him. A little girl put up her hand and said, “God is eating his lunch in his office.” Most kids are not quite that “Out to lunch”, but it is still hard for them to understand God.

Explaining who God is and what he does is a lot like trying to sketch a portrait of someone when you have the skills of a 4 year old. (I appreciated his sketch, BTW.) I do believe that many people have close relationships with God, by way of which they come to understand him very well. (God is not shy. He does not hide from us. It is usually a case of our egos closing us off from God.) But when it comes to describing God, the pictures we create are about as accurate as the minion-resembling sketch that boy made of me. Those who are humble and faithful have felt the grace, peace, and love of God in their hearts. Those who are bold in their faith have experienced little miracles, and moments of togetherness with God. But any attempt to describe God and his activities in detail leaves one confused. There are big questions that are hard to answer. I am sure that you can think of many examples of such questions.

This isn’t THE drawing that he did. But it is similar.

I find that God does not work by giving us intellectual understanding. God works in the moment. He works through us and speaks through us when we turn to him in our greatest need. I’ll give an example: I was once having a hard time with one of the brothers in my order. It was COVID and we were all struggling. He was a superior, and he was used to preaching to small crowds, and directing the operations of the convent and chapel. All of that stopped during COVID so, whether he realized it or not, he switched to preaching at us and micromanaging the younger brothers. We had butted heads over a few things and there was festering resentment between us. One of the great things about living in a religious community is that you are always reading about, and hearing about virtue. Our communal prayer book, itself, was telling me that I needed to forgive the guy. And, I knew it. The resentment was bad. It hurt my heart. I wanted peace. So, I prayed for help to get along with the guy. I prayed A LOT for help to get along with the guy. Then one evening I walked by the door to the kitchen and saw him inside. I could have walked past but instead I stopped. I walked in, filled the kettle, and just stood there, facing him while I waited for the water to boil. He started talking. He was muttering, really. It was just small talk about his day and some of the challenges imposed by COVID. I tried to just listen and be polite. His body language changed. He seemed to loosen up. He started talking to me more, and I responded, trying to be as friendly as possible. He started smiling. He became warm and friendly. We ended up talking for a while. After that, things got much better between us. We made peace, and it was a great weight off my heart. All of this happened on its own. God didn’t tell me what to do or say. I didn’t go down to the kitchen with a play book. I went down there with a willingness to let the Holy Spirit in. I walked my body into the kitchen but left my ego at the door.

The bible describes the Holy Spirit like wind (John 3:8) not like a jar full of air. The Holy Spirit is dynamic. It is not something that one can find, hold, and keep. One must surrender to its action. Things go best for me when I ask God for help and then trust that He WILL help me.

This is how ai thinks God looks, apparently. It is better than a blob-man, at least.

Kindergarten students do not ask very complicated questions about God, spiritual philosophy, and metaphysics. So, that saves me from having to try to explain things which are beyond human understanding (thus making blob-man pictures). When I was younger, I used to be very interested in the complicated spiritual philosophy questions. Now I am more concerned with day-to-day life. I want to be patient, kind, selfless, and loving with my students, my coworkers, and my wife. I am not thinking about what will happen after I die. I am thinking about today, tomorrow, and next week. Sometimes, as a teacher, I don’t know what to do. So, I pray for help. Then, when I am in the moment, I find that I somehow do the right thing, without thinking about it. God doesn’t tell me what to do. I just place my full trust in him, I make room for his grace, and then good things happen.

I think that the main thing that I need to teach kindergarteners is to trust God. I tell them that God is their friend, and they can always ask him for help. They can ask him for help to calm down, or to feel less afraid, or for help getting along with others.

That is my advice for adults as well: trust God and ask him for help. God will help us exactly as much as we let him.  

The ego of man is like underwear on the floor.

There was a day when, if you had walked into our Kindergarten area, you might have thought we were running a literal s***show. Three steps inside the doorway there was a pair of white underwear laying on the floor, looking pretty dirty. A kid had walked in with their backpack unzipped and a spare pair of underwear had fallen on the floor and the kid had refused to pick it up. Teachers had asked them to pick it up several times, but they refused, not because it was underwear, but because they are defiant to almost all requests and directions. They leave their stuff everywhere and refuse to pick it up. It is a control and attention thing. The kid isn’t in my class, but I see them often enough. The underwear had been clean when it landed on the floor, but after it had been stepped on and kicked a few times, it looked soiled. We, the educators, decided that none of us were going to pick it up for the kid. We didn’t pick up their gloves when they tossed them on the ground, so we weren’t going to pick up the underwear either. At the end of the day, the underwear was swept up and thrown out. If the parents ask where they went, somebody will tell them how many times the student was asked to pick it up.

In my first two years of Kindergarten, I told my friends and family that some of my students were “ego monsters”. Everything had to be about them. They sought one-on-one attention at all times, by any means necessary, including violence. They had little to no patience. They were loud and defiant. They were quick to anger, loath to share, and difficult to deal with 98% of the time. Eventually, while taking a course online, I read about attachment theory and suddenly those kids made sense to me. (Basically, attachment theory says that if the primary care giver (usually the mom) is attentive and responsive to a child’s needs, is calm, kind, and caring, and is consistent and predictable, then the kid will feel secure in life and be able to handle stresses and disappointments. But if the primary care giver is inconsistent, unreliable, inattentive, preoccupied, emotionally unstable, unkind, too demanding, etc, then the kid is … well… going to be difficult for teachers to work with. Let’s just say that.) Once you learn what the rest of a kid’s life is like, their behaviour at school always makes sense. It is good to learn as much as you can about difficult children because it helps you to be more patient and compassionate with them.

Image taken from Ontario Counselling and Psychotherapy website. https://ocpsychotherapycentre.com/attachment-theory/

I often hear people talking about certain public figures as being narcissists, sociopaths, or megalomaniacs, etc. They talk about those people as if they are jerks who should know better. But I see those personality traits already manifesting in Kindergarteners. You can learn a lot about the human ego by working with kids. I have to look my own ego in the mirror every day as well. There have been times when I have pushed too hard for things to go my way, or for a kid to accomplish a certain task. I have inadvertently caused emotional meltdowns by being insensitive. Teaching kindergarten is a very humbling experience and, deep down, I am very grateful that my job does not permit me to be a jerk without consequences.

During my Novitiate (official year of training for life in a Roman Catholic religious order), I volunteered at a day center for adults with special needs. I really enjoyed my time with the clients. They were positive, gentle, warm, sincere, and humble. They were a tight knit group who loved and supported each other. It was great to hear them tease each other like family. Sure, they struggled with things like mental math and they were naïve in some ways. They all had disabilities which prevented them from being able to work or live independently. Many had down syndrome. One was severely autistic. One had been choked by the umbilical cord in the womb. One had suffered a head injury in a car accident. But I didn’t think of them as being less than I was. They were gentle, humble, loving, and peaceful. They had the qualities of greatness that I admire in a person.

One of the favourite activities of the clients was the bi-weekly trip to a local farm where they would help feed the animals, clear deadfall from the fields, and help the farmer however they could. I realized that the clients do not often get to feel useful, and contribute in concrete, practical ways. They were dependent on their families and the professionals at the center. They didn’t get the same feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction that fully-able people get from working and being independent. I felt very sorry for the clients in that respect. At the time, I was also struggling with the feeling of uselessness, and guilt from not contributing to society.  

But with greater ability and greater accomplishments there is the risk of greater pride, and a bigger ego. And, what I observe with kindergarten students is that the ego, when running rampant, has a divisive, isolating effect. The ego pushes others away. It is unpleasant to be around an egotist. And, because they only care about themselves, they rarely develop true, deep connections with others. Egotists want to set themselves apart as being better than everyone else. I know that my ego caused me to close myself off from relationships for a long time.

Everyone has an ego. My Guru said that if the ego was stripped away, we would be one with God. So, the only reason we have our individual existence is because of our ego. He said that when God truly wants to bless someone, he humbles their pride.

Our society idolizes athletes, entertainers, influencers, and rich entrepreneurs. I think that the clients at the day center in Ireland are closer to God and are probably happier. They might not be able to reflect on their abilities, accomplishments, and possessions and say that they are satisfied. But it seemed to me that they had more peace and love in their hearts on a daily basis than most fully-able people. I can tell you that, in Kindergarten, the kids who try hardest to control everything and make everything go their way are the most miserable. It is a pitiable existence full of envy, jealousy, brooding, conflict, and disappointment. In that respect, when I see some of these ego maniacs in the news, I have less hate for them and more pity.  

Luckily in kindergarten we are getting them early. By being attentive, responsive, compassionate, firm, but always fair, we can help kids learn to think in new ways, and change their perspective on both the world and themselves. I’m not so sure about the 78-year-olds on TV though. It might be too late for them.

Flexibility, Forgiveness, and a Flying Starfish

“Mr Monk, watch this!” At first, I thought that she (one of my SK students) was going to do a cartwheel. She ran and jumped sideways into the air, her arms were out like a star fish, but she wasn’t quite rotating enough to do one of those hands-free cartwheels that the gymnasts do. She had gotten up into the air, and somehow her body had rotated to be upside down, but it had stopped rotating there, and I was now looking at a little girl, flying upside down, arms and legs out like starfish, smiling like a sea sponge. My heart lurched. Down she came on her neck, and when she hit the ground she bounced like a soccer ball before tumbling over into a seated position. I ran to comfort the now crying girl, who I assumed was gravely injured. I called for first aid, we got her inside and checked her out, and her mom came and picked her up to take her to the hospital. She was back at school the next day.

Little kids are remarkably tough and quick to recover. In the winter, I sometimes give a play-by-play commentary on the various slips and falls we see on the yard, except that I am commenting on what would happen to my colleagues and I if we fell the same way as the kids. “Broken wrist… broken hip… torn groin muscles… paralyzed… dead” I swear, some of the falls would kill me. A lot of it is that the kids are more flexible. But also, they don’t fall with as much weight as adults do.

Kids aren’t just physically flexible; they are mentally and emotionally flexible. I had a student who struggled to “enter play” with other kids. That means that if other kids were playing and he wanted to join, his approach was loud, abrasive, and often destructive. He wanted everything to be his way, and so he would smash what others made so he could take over the play area. If people were playing a game, he would rush in, yelling loud in their faces. He was brilliant, but obviously not “neurotypical” (meaning that he didn’t think like the majority of people think.) At a certain point in the year, he fixated on two girls and basically harassed them. Wherever they went, he ran around in front of them and got into their faces. He tried to grab them both in a bear hug, he tugged at their sleeves, he made loud nonsensical vocalizations in their faces. They tried to get away from him, they tried telling him to stop and leave them alone, but he kept following them. They came to educators for help, and we literally had to pull the guy away for the girls to get some peace. We couldn’t reason with him. His eyes never left the girls, and he didn’t stop trying to reach for them even as we pulled him away. It continued for days. At one point the guy hit one of the girls, hard, in the face, out of the frustration of being rejected. The girl’s parents were so mad that they threatened to call the police.

We, the educators, can’t lock kids in a cage. We couldn’t incarcerate the guy. In cases like that we have to stay close to the kid, monitor every situation, and try to guide/steer them towards appropriate behaviour. That is what we did with that guy. We kept him away from those two girls for a while. Often it meant that I had to shuffle my feet, like a basketball player on defense, to keep my body between him and them.

As expected, the girls were on alert anytime the guy was nearby. But over time, (not a very long time) they must have watched the guy enough to realize that he wasn’t truly malicious. Somehow, they saw innocence in him, even at a time when the educators were struggling to find compassion for him. If an adult man had behaved the same way towards an adult woman (let alone two), and there had been witnesses, the police would have been involved, and he would have been locked up. If there had not been witnesses, then it would have been harder to prove, but one thing is for sure: the woman would label the guy as a jerk (rightfully so), a creep (matches the description) and they probably would have avoided him for the rest of their life (with good cause.) But in this case, after only a week or two, the girls somehow got over their anger and fear, and they started giving the guy a chance. First, they tolerated him playing near them. Then they allowed him to play beside them. And then one day I saw the boy and the girl who had been hit in the face, playing together in the sandbox. They were actually working together, using bowls and kitchen utensils to make a structure out of the sand. I said, in surprise, “It is so nice to see you to working together so well!” The little girl looked at me and said, nonchalantly, “We’re friends now.”

My Guru said that children are closest to God. Yes, they are flexible. Not only are they physically flexible but their minds are still creating new neuropathways, allowing them to think in new ways all the time. They are not at all stuck in their ways like adults. I mentioned that they fall with less weight. That could be an analogy for the ego. With their egos being less established, they don’t take as much offense, and they get over things quicker. But maybe it is more than that. Maybe they are literally closer to God. Maybe their consciousness (their ways of thinking and feeling) more closely resembles the consciousness of God than our adult consciousness. Those two little girls forgave and accepted the guy faster than we, the educators, did. And we weren’t even the real victims of his behaviour.

A mini kindergarten miracle happened after that day. Once those girls forgave and accepted the guy, he dropped his fixation with them. I realized that he was fixated on them because he wanted to be accepted and approved by them, and he couldn’t get over the rejection. Over the course of that year, we realized that when at least some of the students accepted that guy and regarded him like a friend, he behaved well and was easy to work with. But when his behaviour wore out everyone’s nerves and they started telling him to go away all the time, he became extremely hard to work with, to the point that an adult had to literally be within arm’s length of him at all times, usually in a one-on-one setting*. It showed that the guy, deep down, just wanted to be accepted and loved. Yes, he wanted everything to be about him. He wanted it all to be his way, on his schedule, with him in control. But his strongest desire was to be loved and accepted. That is a comforting thought: the deepest and strongest desire in people is not for control, recognition, wealth, or anything else. The strongest desire, at the root of everything else, is the desire to be loved and accepted. And it took a pure hearted child to show me that.

* This is an example of “negative attention seeking”, where a kid will act out just because it gets them attention from an adult. Sometimes they go to extremes of noise/violence so that they end up in one-on-one situations with an adult, which, I think, is what they crave.

Getting fatter, yes… but there is growth to celebrate

“A hundred!” The kids were trying to guess how old I was. It was my birthday in my first year of teaching kindergarten, and I was turning 38. The ECE in the classroom, my teaching partner, was 52. “Try to guess who’s older, me or him!” she challenged the kids. “Oh, Mr. Monk is older for sure!” they said. The ECE grinned ear to ear. I didn’t take any offense. The first five months of kindergarten had taken years off my life. I started the year with a more-or-less full head of hair, with a normal hairstyle. But by December the top had thinned so much that when I went to a barber and said, “Do whatever you think will look best.” he gave me a comb-over. The next day I went somewhere else and got it buzzed off. Now my only choice for haircuts is between a 1 and a 1.5 adapter on the clippers.

Anyway, with the bald head and salt and pepper beard, I couldn’t blame the kids for assuming that I was the elder between myself and the E.C.E. When she told them that she was, in fact, 14 years older than me, they were dumbfounded. “But he is taller!” one boy yelled out.   

It makes sense that a kindergarten kid would assume that people keep getting taller as they age. In their families, the older you are, the taller you are. So, I explained to the kids that people only keep growing taller until they are about 17 years old and then they stop growing. While the kids were processing that, a little boy with big eyes and a frown on his face said, in a deadpan shout, “My dad’s not getting taller… he’s just getting fatter.”

I imagine that being in kindergarten must feel like a magical experience, where the world is full of endless possibilities. At that age there is constant growth. Day by day and week by week kindergarten students are getting bigger, stronger, smarter, and better at everything they do. Can’t print any letters? You will learn one today. Can’t hold scissors well enough to cut paper? By Christmas you will be cutting out shapes. Don’t have any friends? Give it three days. Don’t know how to wipe your own bum?... umm… ask your dad. I’m busy.

Kindergarten kids are constantly encountering new things, trying something for the first time, and seeing their skills develop before their eyes. It must be an age of optimism. A lot of kids retain that optimism as they get older. But by grade 8, I notice a lot more pessimism. Some kids have experienced too much personal failure.

Adults have optimism as they move “up the ladder” at work, build personal wealth, buy houses, have children, plan for retirement, etc. But I think that many people lose their optimism at certain points in their lives. I lost my optimism just when I had finally achieved long term stability at work and at home. I had everything that I wanted: an amazing wife, a stable and rewarding career, a house that we could kind-of afford and wasn’t completely collapsing. But my day-to-day life wasn’t balanced. We were watching too much TV (as an escape from thoughts of work), I was drinking too often (to reward myself), and I was suffering mental, emotional, and physical ill-effects. For 15 years I lived a life of prayer, abstinence, and discipline. I suppose that it was natural for the pendulum to eventually swing the other way. But the “fall from grace” was hard. Not only did I lose my peace of mind and positivity, I also lost a big part of my ego identity. The spiritual life has always had real benefits. But I also derived much pride and satisfaction from my efforts and progress. I thought of myself as a spiritual mountain climber. When all that crumbled, I had a mini crisis of identity, and I had to evaluate my purpose and goals in life. I was as special as I thought I was. I was a normal stressed-out guy, drinking craft beer and watching series on Netflix. It was very humbling.

It can be hard to sit before God, with your entire mind, heart, and history laid bare. I used to spend a good amount of time praying everyday. I never felt any shame before God because I truly believed that I was doing the very best that I could. Students are always eager to show someone their work when they are proud of what they did. But if they are ashamed of their work (or lack thereof) they avoid attention. When people are ashamed of themselves, it can be hard to talk to God. Some people would rather ‘fly under the radar’, and let God do his thing without bothering him. I eventually realized that I was in a rut and had to go back to prayer. I missed the peace of mind and natural positivity that comes from spending time with God. My need for peace eventually outweighed my shame. And, after I processed the humbling truth that I was not so special, I realized that I really missed God. So, I made up my mind and, with the support of my wife, I began sitting down in a quiet room to pray again. Once I did, I found that God ran out to embrace me just like the father does in the parable of the prodigal son.

AI made this image for me. Pretty cool, eh? I didn’t need the briefcase, but oh well.

For a kindergartener, there is always visible/tangible progress. I believe that if we examine our lives carefully, we will see that we continue to develop and progress all through life. Even my “fall from grace” was a necessary stage of development. At the time I felt like I was going backwards, but with God, no time is wasted. Wise and holy people have told me that everything in life is either a blessing or a lesson, and every lesson is a blessing. In my case, when I was humbled, I let go of some pride, and I learned to focus on what I truly wanted in life, which is peace and love, not pride and exaltation. I came out of it as a purer version of myself.

What aspects of your life are you ashamed of? Are there any changes that you want to make? Do you feel like you have already lost too much time? Try talking to God. Maybe everything in your life has helped prepare you for this moment.

“I didn’t go camping”

On Mondays in my first year in kindergarten, the ECE and I used to ask the kids what they had done the previous weekend. We would go around the room with a microphone so that each kid got the chance to speak and be heard. But after a December day when 9 kids in a row said that they had gone to the beach the previous weekend I realized that what we were doing wasn’t working. The nearby beach was wind-whipped and frigid in December. Nobody would have taken their kids there that weekend. The first kid to say it had obviously been thinking of a trip from the summer. Then the other kids just repeated what they had heard. They must not have been comfortable with the whole thing. Maybe they froze and just repeated what others had said because it was a safe answer that had worked for others. Either way, it wasn’t authentic and so I stopped putting the kids through it.

One day, while we were still doing the weekend recaps, a student said that they had gone camping. Given that it was November, I assume that they were actually recalling an event that happened in the summer. Nevertheless, a bunch of other kids picked up the idea and said that they too had gone camping. Afterwards, when the kids were busying themselves with other activities, a little boy came up to me with tears welling up in his eyes. He said to me, slowly, and with great sadness, “I didn’t go camping.” I tried to comfort him by saying, “That’s o.k. I didn’t go camping either! I’m sure you will get to go camping again one day.” He just stood there, bottom lip pushed out, staring off into deep memories. Then, suddenly there was a spark, his eyes widened, and his lips broke into a smile. He turned to me and said, “Hey! Marshmallows are good!”

I am far from an outdoorsman, but I really enjoy camping when the weather is nice. For a few years in a row, back when I was in the kitchen renovation business, I went camping once a year in the Adirondacks of upstate New York. On my first trip, I stayed the first night at Cranberry Lake. I remember the air. I am an asthmatic and when it is very humid, or the air quality is bad, I feel like I am willing a corpse into motion. I feel best when I am in the oxygenated air of a forest. At Cranberry Lake I remember the clean, dry late summer air, purified and filled with life by a hundred miles of forests in every direction. I felt the best that I have ever felt in my life. I travelled and camped at different sites for a few days, doing scenic hikes along the way, and then I drove through the green mountains of Vermont and then down to Boston where I visited a friend from university who I hadn’t seen in years. He took me to a game at Fenway Park (the Toronto Blue Jays happened to be visiting) and, when he and his wife had to go to work, I went to a beach and had what I am told is a classic New England experience. It was the hottest weekend of the year, 35 degrees Celsius, 95 degrees American (I know there is a proper word, but it is hard to spell), and not a cloud in the sky. But even though it was late August, the ocean off the coast of Boston was still very cold. So, I walked out until the water was around 3 feet deep and I alternated between standing up until I could no longer stand the heat and sitting down/swimming around until I could no longer stand the cold.

I do not have any photos from my trips to the Adirondacks, so I found this picture on Unsplash.com I hiked to this same spot and enjoyed this same view.

That was my first vacation in years, and even though I was only gone for 5 days, I felt like it lasted me the next 6 months, if not longer. By that I mean that for a long time I felt rejuvenated, as if I had just returned from vacation.

That is a happy memory. I sometimes have random flashbacks to happy memories of childhood. They just come on their own. They are usually memories of peaceful places and scenery. They make me realize that I am very blessed to have lived a mostly happy and peaceful life. Being a teacher, I know that isn’t the case for everyone. I fear that children who spend all their time on tablets won’t have so many foundational peaceful memories to lean on later in life.

One of my favourite happy vacation memories is from a trip to India. At the time, I was tired of waiting for my future. I had been working long hours at the kitchen business for years, dedicating all my time and energy to that, my prayer life, my health, and my spiritual disciplines. I was hoping that my Guru would tell me I was ready for whatever great thing I was destined to do. Maybe he would give me a mission. Maybe he would give me a challenge. Maybe he would invite me to stay in India and be a renunciate yogi like him for a few years before sending me back home in triumph. That had been my dream for a long time. But instead of that, there was nothing. He was happy to see me (he was always happy), and he was very good to me (he was good to everyone), but I didn’t receive any special attention. The trip was very good for me though. Each member of my family had gone to India with my dad at some point. My brother had been twice, and I was told that he made quite the impression. Everyone loved him there. They always asked my dad and I how my brother was doing. I could see how they smiled as they thought of him. One time I asked my dad if people in India ask about me when he is there, and I am not. My dad thought for a few seconds and simply said, “No.” in a way that didn’t hurt my feelings but made me think.

That’s me on the bench on the left.

When I had visited my Guru’s ashram in previous trips, it was with some pride. I thought of myself as another yogi, like him, in development. I never thought that I would be as pure, holy, and elevated as he was. But I definitely thought of myself as a future “somebody”. I probably carried myself an arrogant star of a junior hockey team who assumes that he is headed for the NHL. Add in the language barriers and my desire to keep to a meditation schedule and I guess I came off as cold. My brother, on the other hand, is just a warm, gentle, and humble guy who has no aspirations of being anything other than who and what he is. He was just grateful to be there.

On this particular trip I was by myself, without my dad. So, I decided that I would make an effort to be friendly and outgoing with the people who lived at or near my Guru’s ashram. I smiled more. When people waved me over, I went over and sat or stood with them, even though we couldn’t understand each other. Sometimes they wanted to give me some food or clothing or show me something. I found ways to still joke around even without words. I tried to just relax and give people my time, rather than always rushing back to make sure that I meditated for this or that length of time. One day I sat for a long time on a bench outside my Guru’s house while he was busy with some other guests. I had been hoping that he would finally invite me in and change my life somehow. But instead, I waited there for hours, just staring at the sky until, eventually, I was at peace. Instead of a life-changing event, I found the peace of a clear mind and an open heart. Eventually my Guru did invite me in. We just smiled and small talked a little bit and then he went off to his meditation chamber and I went out to walk around and see who would wave me over that day.

That is a happy memory.