An Open Letter (Journal 34)

To the new owners of our family camp:

I believe that places have memories; that locations are imbued with feelings from the past.  Sometimes when you first enter a place, you can feel them in the air, hear them whispering – a legacy of sorts.  The camps at the end of Sheldon Road carry this legacy.  Built by my great-great-grandfather, the red camp sits at the end of the point, a sentinel from the past, guarding memories – memories you will soon share in.

 

My great-grandmother spent her summers at the camp.  A teacher for many years, she spent her vacations here amongst walls papered with her students' artwork – crayon drawings of the ducks and geese that inhabit the lakeside.  My grandparents, Grace and Sheldon, brought their five children down the dirt road to the camp, and in the late 60s, my grandfather and uncle built the white camp.  Since that time, the camps have been the site of many family gatherings and barbecues at the picnic tables on the porch of the red camp.  Hopefully, your family will inherit this legacy of joy and communion.

 

Opening the creaky screen door to the red camp, the gray planks of the kitchen floor sag a bit with the weight of all this history.  The kitchen window looks out on the blueberry bushes that surround the property, ripe in summer with indigo fruit.  We would pick buckets full, often like the little girl in Blueberries For Sal – one berry plinking into the bucket, and two staining our lips with their bluish hue. 

 

From the kitchen of the red camp, comes the living room.  As you sit before the stone fireplace in the living room, see the reflections of ancient fires mirrored in the mica embedded deep in the quarried stones.  The large windows of the living room always opened to let in the evening breezes and the sultry scent of the scarlet geraniums growing in the window boxes outside.

 

Climb the stairs to the second floor, and feel your feet fall into the grooves carved by all the bare feet that traveled that same journey.  There were never doors on any of the upstairs bedrooms, just curtains hung across the thresholds.  The view from upstairs across the waters always took my breath away.  And in the master bedroom, countless lids have drooped and fallen asleep, dreaming to the music of the lapping waters of the lake as they murmur against the stones at the shore. 

 

One of those stones, just off the porch of the camp is called the “fishing rock.”  You'll know it when you see it.  It's part of an old stone wharf, now submerged beneath the waters.  There's an old tree just to the left of the rock.  The gnarled roots weave into a stone seat, a place of peaceful respite with a view of the islands.  From here, you can see Blueberry, Doctor's, and Battleship, all nestled like verdant jewels in the azure waves.

 

At  sunset, the waters turn to flames of golden ripples, but beneath the sapphire skies of day the still waters steal the souls of the island trees, holding them captive in their depths.  The twin reflections mirror in the glassy surface of the lake, a lake whose waters refresh even the hottest summer days. 

These camps are truly a place of beauty, and I hope they bring you and your family as much joy and fellowship as they have brought mine over the years. 

Wishing you all the best on behalf of my family and this place that we have all loved so much,

Sincerely,

Stephanie

Professional Development: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Journal 33)

A workshop I sat through that made me proud to be part of the audience......

I was blessed enough to be a part of Harvard's Center for Mideast Studies Egypt Forum.  Paul Beran was our leader, and he is brilliant.  He knew just which books to read, which films to recommend, which questions to ask, and how to challenge us to think through ways to bring the Middle East back to our New England classrooms.  He challenged us to choose novels, provided cuisine from the area, and whet our palates and senses with music, photography, and field trips.  Any time I went to one of these meetings, I felt as though I was a part of something important, that I was truly doing good work.

In Egypt, we met with the Fulbright Committee, we visited with World Bank officials, we met a newspaper reporter who had been imprisoned by a dogmatic Muslim regime, we had a late supper at an ex-patriot author's Cairo apartment.  Every activity or seminar I took part of made me feel surrounded by brilliance and happy to be there.  I knew I was part of something important.

I also love workshops where I get handouts, packets, free materials, and practical advice.  I want something to take away and bring back to my classroom, even if only in the form of new information.  That's what makes a good quality workshop.

A workshop I sat through that was not helpful.........

I have been forced to sit through many unhelpful workshops.  Workshops are hard for me because I enter with high expectations: I want to learn something knew.  I yearn to be told about resources or texts that I didn't know existed before.  This is more challenging than it sounds.  For the most part, though, our scheduled in-service days are the most horrendous waste of my time imaginable.  They are full of buzzwords and taking heads; important-sounding jargon is thrown around, we pat ourselves on the back, but no real work is ever accomplished.  Nothing ever really changes or improves as a result of these in-service days.  I say this even as an individual who has been charged on no less than three different occasions with leading school-wide in-service workshops.  There is little accountability, and little respect.  Teachers sit there playing videos or engaging in on-line poker tournaments instead of listening.  Fellow colleagues are downright hostile or disagreeable.  They feel put upon and disinterested, and there is no true accountability to make sure that anything changes or is implemented anew as a result. It's a little disheartening sometimes...