Dr. Grauer's Column - Teacher of Original Instructions

Teacher of Original Instructions
By Stuart Grauer

The rider draws closer
on the great drum of the plain.
In the forge the child
has his eyes shut tight.
Bronzed and dreaming, the gypsies
cross the olive grove.
Their heads held high,
their eyes half open.

- Garcia Lorca, The Moon, The Moon

1.

Many among us don’t understand where we come up with a “curriculum.” Even though I have been writing curriculum for decades, it often seems foreign. We gather daily on our campus and at times take the content of our studies about as for granted as the soles of our shoes.

So, consider this: We may not be the original stewards of the lands we occupy on our schools. Or in our homes. This thought struck me this week as I read the words of DeCora Hawk, Lakota Advocacy Center Director:

Remember the water, remember the land, remember our relatives—the winged and the four-legged.

Knowing we had not remembered very well, here was a leader from a group that has lost their land and livelihood multiple times, reminding us:  we can study our land in a spirit that endures through all seasons and tragedies.

2.

It could not have been just a year ago, but it was. California communities were burning under drought and wind, then braced for mudslides when the rains finally came. Remember? Fire followed by flood in a matter of weeks.  At the time, it seemed ancient/Biblical and urgent/now at the same time? How can this be already out of site and mind? Consider…

Many of us were raised to think of land as property, scenery, or wealth. Or ego. Something to own, improve, consume, or pass through. But the old wisdom traditions ask something more demanding and more beautiful of campus-making and land development: Can we see land as relationship?

What if curriculum began there? What if that is the most basic job for a teacher that there is? Studying what is right under our feet and in front of our noses.

The thought struck me this week, as I say, as I read the words of DeCora Hawk:

Remember the water, remember the land, remember our relatives—the winged and the four-legged.

Leaders from a people who have lost their lands and lives again and again can remind us: care can endure even when possession does not. Connection can survive what ownership and power cannot. But we have not taught much about the water or land.

Maybe that is the real loss—not just the land, but the forgetting.

Many of us were raised to see community as property, scenery, or wealth—something to own, improve, consume, or pass through. But fire and flood don’t respond to ownership. We teach and learn with our land, not just on it.

The older traditions don’t let us forget this. They ask something more demanding, and more beautiful, of how we build schools and communities. Can we see land not as a backdrop or underfoot, but as a living relative?

If we begin there, then our teaching changes. So if DeCora is right, the most basic work of a teacher is not just to pass on knowledge, but to help students remember:

remember where they “really” are,
remember what sustains them,

remember things outside of their own heads and classrooms,
remember their place in a living system that does not belong to them.

What if that remembrance is the most basic job for a teacher that there is, the essence of teaching?

What if schools taught students not only history and science, but the names of the birds overhead, the health of the watershed below, the story of the trees at the edge of campus? How and when did we lose track of teaching the most basic essence of our time on campus? When did that lose value, and why?

Does this question sound wild? What if we ranked our campuses (or our neighborhoods) partly by how pollinators, soils, and streams were doing all around us? What if leadership meant protecting what is barely heard in board meetings—the creek, the hawk or owl, the old coastal oak, the next generation of children? Would we be so worse off?

What if when a coastal oak died on our campus, we knew?

Heat, water, and lighting are wall switches or dials to turn. What do our students think of our recycled water program? What do they think of school solar energy production? —are they connecting the dots between these and their future? Where do they think the grass and the classroom lighting come from? Does it matter more than the state curriculum?

3.

To reclaim stewardship and history is not to imitate cultures whose roots run deeper than our own. It can start in understanding why their traditions lasted for 10,000 years while ours is gasping at 500.

You do not need to own ranchland, manage a preserve, be a Native American, or write curriculum for the state to study what is beneath your own feet every day, or to equate that with being educated.

You can plant natives. Protect habitat. Learn your watershed. Reduce waste. Oppose reckless development. Remember to teach children to notice tracks in the mud, names of spiders, and phases of the moon, and that 7 minutes is a long time to run water to rinse the conditioner out of their hair. Support leaders who understand that water is wealth and health.

What if we shift from asking, What can my students and I get from this place? to asking, What does this place need from us?

That may be some beginning of wisdom in our time—the real curriculum. We may not be the original stewards, but maybe we could be the worthy ones who remember those essential things that we barely even knew.

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