Blog

Every spring semester, I have my Pre-Kindergarten students embark upon the challenge of memorizing the twenty-third Psalm. While it is a beautiful passage for the students to memorize for its own sake, it is also a particularly relevant passage to our class since we get the opportunity to partake in shepherding our own sheep at The Saint Constantine School. 

"A writer is someone who has written today."

When I first heard this maxim back in graduate school, I thought it had the ring of obvious truth. I used to tell it to all my students: "A writer is someone who has written today!" It would usually be met with a wide-eyed accusatory gasp, as if my students were saying: Hey! How dare you call me out like this?

At least a few times each year, the faculty of The Saint Constantine School gathers to do something our students do each week: discuss a great text. Throughout the experience, I try to recall and reflect on the principles which I hope will guide my reading and discussion.

Every year when I meet with Mrs. Gilbert, our Head of School, for our end of year meeting, she asks what I would like to teach next year. I always request to teach the kindergarteners in garden. Teaching kindergarteners in the garden is one of my favorite classes. I love watching the wonder and awe that our young students have in the natural world.

TSCS is perhaps the only school I have encountered where our philosophy of language learning matches what I experienced among missionaries whose work depends on their ability to communicate effectively.

Why aren’t you practicing law?” “Couldn’t you be making a lot more money as a lawyer?”

I have a JD from Texas Tech School of Law, so I get asked those questions a lot. The answer to the first question becomes obvious once you see what a special place The Saint Constantine School is. As for the second question, the short answer is yes, I could make more money practicing law. However, there are some things in life that you really cannot put a price tag on, and working at a place that brings you joy while seeing your kids every day is one of those things for me.

I'd spent the entire day in a suitcoat jacket, sitting down on comfortable couches in air-conditioned rooms amongst beloved students, parents, and colleagues, discussing things that really mattered, and feasting on cup after cup of warm, well-balanced coffee from my fancy new Nespresso machine. Yet for all this, I was deeply, profoundly exhausted. 

If well-meaning adults aren't careful, we can create a world where adults supply rules and then kids practice as much anarchy as possible within those rules. This encourages students to look at rules as arbitrary boundaries. Instead, we should encourage the type of play environment in which kids will naturally create their own rules.

There is magic in seeing the world through the eyes of a child. Children don’t wait until Christmas to dive head-first into the pool of joy and wonder. They live there.

On one Monday afternoon a month, I sense a tangible joy among a certain group of students. The contagious thrill is present because it’s a tea club meeting day!