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Learning-About What’s In Your Heart
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Tuesday, November 14, 2017
 

STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

As a Native American, Julie Cajune prefers a traditional greeting that is far removed from a simple “Hello” or “How ya doing?”

“We greet one another with the words, ’What’s in your heart?’ ” she said. “And that tells us the head is not the most important part of what we are. It’s the heart. So, there’s much more to becoming fully human than knowing facts.”

Cajune, an educational consultant with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and the Flathead Reservation in Montana, spoke these words to parents and supporters of Syringa Mountain School during its Fall Garden Party this weekend at the Sawtooth Botanical Garden.

The evening was a fundraiser for the school, which follows a Waldorf-inspired curriculum that stresses allowing children to learn to read at their own pace and activities, such acting out short plays to engage them in the things they’re learning. And it was termined a success, raising nearly $20,000 for the school's operating budget.

When we wake up in the morning and take that first breath, we need to consider that breath a gift. And when we drink that first sip of water each morning, we need to understand that water’s a gift, said Cajune, whose grandson Orion attends Syringa.

“I want these kids to understand the meaning of life and I want them to understand that they are loved, but I also want them to know the gift of reciprocity. When you get a gift, you give something back,” she said.

The Fall Garden Party was as hands-on as Syringa Mountain School itself, with children’s work for parents to peruse and a recital featuring Syringa students playing “Old Joe Clark” on fiddle and other songs on recorders.

“We make music a social activity, not a competition,” said music teacher Erin Storey. “When you play music and read music and listen to those around you play music, it uses every portion of your brain.”

Nathan Kolar, father of a second-grader named Dash, looked through large story books put together by students featuring drawings and prose concerning Paul Bunyan, Joan of Arc and other people they were learning about.

“My son starts reciting a poem about fall and winter out of the blue and it’s so beautiful—he gets me imagining how generations have marked the changing of the seasons,” said Kolar. “He loves to knit and sing and play. He joins me when I’m working in the garden and teaches me about the creeper vine being an invasive plant. He likes going to school, and I couldn’t be happier,” he said.

Teacher Miles Teitge presided over a display showing how students mash corn with mortar and pestle as they learn to make tortillas and how they turn calendula and marigold into salves. He picked up a couple heirloom tools.

“I love these and the reverence I have for quality things transfers to the students,” he said.

Syringa expanded this year, remodeling the upper floor of its building near Power Engineers into classrooms. Outside, near the playground where the youngsters built their own teeter totter, Teitge and the students planted a bread bed to grow grain to show where bread comes from.

Inside, the school boasts a new library featuring books Crystal Oliphant picked out especially for her young population.

One book, “Leaf Man,” features a leaf that travels as the wind blows him from place to place as it teaches about the changing seasons. Another, “First Snow in the Woods,” depicts a fawn preparing for his first winter, while teaching the value of being flexible and adaptive. She picked out “The Houdini Box,” about a boy who wants to be a magician, for older students.

Barb Mercer, who taught in a variety of colleges including South Pacific University, volunteers at Syringa, tutoring students and serving as library coach. Hot with the kids right now, she said, is “The Outsiders,” about a group of boys who band together; “The Island Keeper,” about a girl surviving alone on an island,  and “Hatchet,” about a young boy who must learn to survive on his own when the bush plane he is riding in crashes.

“I like happy kids and these kids are all busy having fun indoors and outdoors,” she said.

Head of School Nigel Whittington noted that in many schools students are more concerned with getting good grades and passing standardized tests than they are in learning.

“I want students to go to school to learn and play the way you played tonight,” he said, after attendees took part in a getting-to-know-you game.

Jamie Truppi concurred.

“I love that our kindergartener son is allowed to be a child and not know he’s learning,” she said. “He never wants to come home he’s so excited.”

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