Inside the Spin-Mosaic Studio

One little girl trickled down the hallway behind everyone else. Each slow step was like a dripping faucet. Had she just woken up? Or, was she about to fall asleep?

A red baggy shirt swallowed her thin shoulders--the same shirt she had worn last week; the same she had worn yesterday, too.

Her pants were either too short, too long, or too wrinkly on any given day. And, not in a stylish way. 

Like the runt of a litter; her legs were 2 steps, 4 steps, 12 steps behind everyone else no matter where the class was going. I had seen this classes' line enough times to notice consistencies. Once a week; her class came to my Art room.

Clearly no tender hands brushed or barretted her mussed curly hair that draped in her eyes like my poodle when she needs a shave. Puffy eyes balanced precariously above her always-flushed but ever-pale cheeks creating a dewy glow. Had she just finished crying...or was she about to begin?

I asked the school counselor about my flushed and puffy sweet straggler in red. She tilted her head to the side, "Sooner or later," she said with a sigh, "every teacher who has her asks. If, they are a good teacher."

The counselor had much to say.

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Her 3rd grade class carried a different rhythm when their troupe came walking around the hallway corner to my room. She was always at the end of the line...in her red shirt.

Like a country music song that suddenly revs back to life with a whole extra stanza just when you thought the song was over, this line always had...one straggler. Her.

My eyes didn't look away even when the last child skipped into view. I knew the last child wasn't the last child unless I spied the distant red shirt.  She was still coming.

Her last name started with one of the trailing end letters of the alphabet, like mine: Ziebarth. "Z".

I was also always the last or near-the-last child in line when I was her age. My maiden name was Williams. I did my future children no favors by marrying into the very last-est letter of the alphabet straight from a "W to Z". Thus, I sealed their destiny to be the extra-super last in every long and unfair line all through grade school, too. 

When I was the last child so long ago, I anxiously observed my new teacher each September to see if she abided by the last-name-order philosophy of teaching, standing in line, arranging desks, reading groups, privileges and duties. Teachers seemed to be either all-or-nothing on this.

I nievely dreamed of marrying a guy...any guy...whose last name was Anderson just to feel what it must be like to be at the front of a line. 

I was a proud Williams before I was a proud Ziebarth. If I became a teacher like my father someday; I would never organize my students by last name. It was inhumane. In this way, I resolved to be a torch-bearer of both creativity and liberation. It made sense in my young mind--the same mind who doodled polka-dotted elephants in the margins of every paper.

Students came to my art room marching neck-to-nose to whatever helter-skelter last name, military arrangement or meandering-random order their classroom teachers had mandated. When students left my room; there was no hint of their classroom teacher's mandate. They were in my room now. We would line up as I saw fit. I saw fit creatively, sensitively, and yes, lovingly.

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One of the early concepts to wrap my grown-up young mind around as a fresh teacher was sensitivity to "accommodations". These came in many forms from mainstreamed special education IEP plans to less set-in-stone or committee-discussed undefinable accommodations for cultural diversity.

Sensitivity was a topic never articulated or bulleted with tiny black dots in a typed font within the blue teacher packets at the beginning-of-the-year meetings. These were concepts tacked on to the bigger topics of standard-based education. We were professionally trusted to translate as needed.

"...be sure to consider sensitive accommodations for the Amish and migrant communities." Like skipping a smoothe stone across the surface of a glassy pond, each teacher was to let that stone of wisdom slow and drop at the depth needed.

As a compliment to the school corporation, 600 Amish students attended the 3 elementary schools while floods of migrant families dropped in and out with the rhythm of the planting and harvest seasons. English was their 2nd language on a sliding scale of comprehension ranging from nothing to something to everything.

There were also less obvious categories to consider---categories that have no check-boxes attached: red shirt stragglers with unkept hair and many more with their own stories.

Sensitive accommodations at times take on the warmth and appearance of good old-fashioned "love". But, love is not a popular word in this society. So, we take a step back from this action and call it sensitive accommodation.

The wall near my door was lined corner to corner with bright bulletin boards. From there I hung wall-to-wall clotheslines. If there are two things the Amish children are familiar with, it's horses and clotheslines. We drew horses sometimes. We hung them on clotheslines along with other Art.

It was such a small expense to add clotheslines when a stapler would work fine enough to make them stick. But, tell you what, when I asked little Amish girls to switch out the art on the bulletin boards, they knew how to work a clothespin with grace, elegance, speed and smiles. It was something they knew well.

Though many of the children of migrant families knew little or no English, they did know their colors and were very detailed and colorful artists. Colors were a celebrated common ground to begin to learn English. 

At the end of class, when it was time to line up, my voice sing-song called out the colors of the spectrum-rainbow order in English, Spanish and Sign Language.

Red. Orange. Yellow. Green. Blue. Purple...

Each child would look down at their clothes. If they were wearing a majority of the color called; they got to take their place in line. Giggling, pointing. Each week the line was different according to the clothes they wore!

...Except for my flushed, puffy-eyed, mussed-hair, high pant-legged sweet girl in red with a rip on her shoulder.

She, was always the first in line. 

As a teacher, this may have been a sensitive accommodation. To her; it felt like Love.

      "The last will be first, and the first will be last." Matthew 20:16

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Special thanks to the Mamas and Grandmas who submitted their child's artwork (keep scrolling below) to represent the Art on clotheslines behind the children in the illustration!

Look back and forth. See if you can find each Artwork in the pictures below. 

Acacia Tiger in bold colors!

Pretty Kitty surrounded by flowers!

Portrait of sweet Grandma!

Green Dino and a volcano!

Rainbow and writing in the rain!

Potted purple flowers!

Cute little boy!

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Process photos of the creative process of watercolor article illustrations along with 1st-release notifications of new blog articles tracing memories of my early days teaching Art among the Amish are posted on the Facebook Group, "Artistic Affinity & Rural Simplicity". You are invited! Click HERE.