My Second Curve

Working with Principia School through classroom and curriculum transformation

When I left The St. Michael School of Clayton in 2008, I gave up being a Head of School to become a full time consultant to other schools.  I remember my excitement as I launched with Louise our new venture, Cadwell Collaborative.  However, I also felt some regret.  For some time I second guessed myself.  I was 60 years old.  I had invested 16 years to create with several marvelous colleagues a unique and successful educational program, one that hundreds of other educators had come to observe over the years.  The school was humming along on a solid foundation of best practices and the faculty was ever ready to discover even better and more creative ways to organize and invent authentic learning experiences.  And, I had developed a keen understanding of how to share the leadership of this progressive enterprise.

Why would I leave?  My intuition told me to.  I knew I was doing the right thing…but why?  Now, 14 years later, I’ve just read From Strength to Strength by Arthur Brooks, and I know why.  The subtitle of the book points to how I grew after I left The St. Micheal School and how I have been happily evolving ever since: Finding Success, happiness and deep purpose in the second half of life…or as Brooks also calls it, the second curve.

For me, Brooks’ first stunning assertion was: in practically every high skill profession, decline sets in sometime between one’s late thirties and early fifties. (p.4)  Huh?!?!  Well, to be honest, I had to admit that I was tired — tired of the daily, seemingly relentless multi-tasking.  And here Brooks relieved my feeling inadequate as he based the decline in brain research: “…structural changes in the brain — specifically the changing performance of the prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain behind your forehead)…primarily responsible for working memory, executive functioning….” (p.13). Yup, that was me…with my shrinking forehead I could no longer keep up.  Looking back, I know this was true, but I never realized it…or, I never admitted it.

Besides, there was part of being Head of School that I enjoyed, that I was good at…better than ever.  And here Brooks shined another light: “two types of intelligence that people possess, but at greater abundance at different points in life.” (p.25).  Brooks cites Raymond Cattell’s research.  Cattell writes: “Fluid intelligence is conceptualized as the decontextualized ability to solve abstract problems, while crystallized intelligence represents a person’s knowledge gained during life by acculturation and learning.”  Brooks has a helpful translation of this: ”When you are young, you have raw smarts; when you are old you have wisdom.  When you are young, you can generate lots of facts; when you are old, you know what they mean and how to use them.” (p.27)

At 60, after 16 years at the school I had reached the point where my fluid intelligence had ebbed and my crystallized intelligence was flowing.  I was able to maintain, without embarrassing myself too much, the daily moment to moment demands, but with more and more effort.  However, I thrived in the curriculum planning meetings and leading professional development sessions, and in personal consultations with students, parents and board members.  I was drained by the former and fulfilled by the latter.

And here, Brooks affirmed my decision to leave the Head of School job and begin a consulting career.  He references the 1st century Roman philosopher, Marcus Julius Cicero, who as Brooks summarized, “believed three things about older age.  First that it should be dedicated to service, not goofing off.  Second, our greatest gift later in life is wisdom, in which learning and thought create a worldview that can enrich others.  Third, our natural ability at this point is counsel; mentoring, advising, and teaching others, in a way that does not amass worldly rewards of money, power, or prestige. (P31)

I realize that those three things have been the core of the fulfillment I have felt over the past 14 years.  My work with Louise in schools is counsel…and wisdom (I hope).  My volunteer work as Chair of the Building Committee for our local Habitat for Humanity board, and as Treasurer of the John Graham Homeless Shelter is service (with dashes of wisdom and counsel).

That said, the transition from being Head of School to being an education consultant and not-for-profit board member (what Brooks calls jumping from my first curve to my second curve) was not seamless.  Brooks dedicates roughly a quarter of his book to explain the three things that hold one back from making the jump: ‘addiction to work and success, attachment to worldly rewards, and fear of decline.”  I definitely manifested bits of all of those and Brooks’ in depth exploration of each was illuminating.

In many was my second curve has been even more fulfilling than my first. And being a founding partner in The Green Mountain Valley School, living for a year in Reggio Emilia, Italy, transforming The St. Michael School, traveling with Louise and our boys, designing and building our homes and others, filled a first curve to be deeply thankful for. In the last half of his book, Brooks explores three things that make the second curve better than the first: develop relationships, start a spiritual practice, and embrace your weaknesses.  I am intrigued and inspired by each of these.  I find myself more conscious than ever of my deep connections with family and friends (old and new).  I am firmly grounded in my morning mediation practice (most delightfully in garden season when I sit in a raised bed garden that I built and cultivate, under a trellis of honey suckle vine visited regularly by the thrum of a band of humming birds).  I am humbled by my awareness of this physical body slowly falling apart despite miraculous insertions of titanium.  I know I can form strong opinions, so I work daily to be mindful of other points of view.  I know I can be quick in my responses, so I work to be careful and respectful with my words.  I know that I can be self-centered, so I work to be compassionate and to open my heart.

While there is no one path for everyone, and mine is my own, as is yours unique to you, Arthur Brooks has composed a deeply meaningful and useful reflection on how to live one’s life.  Not surprisingly, it’s a New York Times Best Seller.

My raised bed garden, affectionately known as My Chapel Garden

Summer

Alden Boyd Cadwell

We are full on into summer here. We have a new grand baby! Visiting him and his family and welcoming him is truly a joyful miracle. We are also finding joy and ease in the warm sun, the blue sky, the waters of the lakes and rivers, outdoor concerts, fresh greens from our garden, visits with friends and family, planting for pollinators…. At the same time, the world is suffering in so many ways…war, the climate crisis, guns, the human rights crisis. Yesterday, I attended a zoom webinar with Joanna Macy at Upaya Zen Center. I was moved and inspired by Joanna at age 93, an author and activist and engaged Buddhist practitioner for many decades. She supported all of us to be Shambala warriors who train this way….

Their weapons are compassion and insight. Both are necessary. We need this first one because it provides us the fuel, it moves us out to act on behalf of other beings. But by itself it can burn us out. So we need the second as well, which is insight into the dependent co-arising of all things. It lets us see that the battle is not between good people and bad people, for the line between good and evil runs through every human heart. We realize that we are interconnected, as in a web, and that each act with pure motivation affects the entire web, bringing consequences we cannot measure or even see.

Joanna concluded the morning by sharing these vows, (see image below), which I am happy to remember and use as a north star every day.

We wish you all joy and ease in the beauty of summer, the natural world, and the love you feel for friends, family and your community. May you spread it all around you like seeds in the wind.

Image from presentation by Joanna Macy, Upaya Zen Center, July, 2022

View of Adirondacks from Mount Van Hoevenberg

Concert at Pittsford Village Farm with Caitlin Canty and Noam Pikelny and the Vermont Symphony quintet.

Picking cherries, Shelburne Orchards

Planting for Pollinators workshop at Red Wagon Plants

Grand daughter, Delilah, jumping into Squam Lake, NH

New grand baby, Alden Boyd Cadwell, with his mother, Lei, and his Uncle Alden

The Capacious Heart of author Kate DiCamillo

Ashley’s mother, Mary Cadwell, reading to her grand daughters

As we round the corner from the school year into summer, there is something that many of us, children and adults, look forward to…reading more, reading what we want to read, stories that will enchant us, stories that will be beautiful and funny, heartwarming and heartbreaking.  Even now, I dream of curling up in an adirondak chair or a hammock with a favorite book. Or reading on the beach, or at a picnic table or on a blanket by the lake.

Tomorrow I will go visit a dear friend of mine who spends the summer at a lake house on Lake Champlain. Her family’s house opens to lawn and to stone steps that lead right down to the lake and to a spectacular view north to open water.  There are recliner chairs there and that is where I always want to go this time of year…to read, to write, to draw, into the afternoon with no thought of time or deadlines or having to be somewhere. This is summer at it’s very best.

Squam Lake, New Hampshire

If you haven’t read them, you will not want to miss, by any stretch of the imagination, books by children’s book author, Kate DiCamillo.

I have been reading them now all year, since two things happened. First, I read an essay in the New York Times by best selling author, Ann Patchett…Why We Need Life Changing Books Right Now, March, 2020. She describes how she started to read Kate DiCamillo’s books and couldn’t stop. How they changed her life. She writes:

So maybe you don’t have children, or they’re not small or not in the house. It doesn’t matter. Read them anyway. Maybe you do have children and you can read these books together as a family. My point is this: Don’t miss out. Do not make the mistake I nearly made and fail to read them because you are under the misconception that they are not for you. They are for you.

The second thing that happened is that Krista Tippett interviewed Kate on her podcast, On Being in March of 2022.  It is the best interview that I have ever heard and it is the most beautiful.  Please listen to it. Don’t miss it.

The thing you come away with is how important stories are in our lives..how they save us. Kate DiCamillo says that it is her job as a writer to develop capacious hearts. What does that word capacious mean?… spacious, ample, big, large, generous, vast, huge, immense.

One of the most powerful parts of the interview is when Kate DiCamillo reads a letter that she wrote when she was asked: “How honest should we be with our readers? Is it the job of the writer for the very young to tell the truth or preserve their innocence?”

In the letter, she writes that when she speaks to children at school assemblies she frequently asks if they have read Charlotte’s Web. Then, she asks how many of them cried when they read it. She says that most hands in the audience stay up for both questions.  Her letter continues::

My favorite lines of Charlotte’s Web, the lines that always make me cry, are toward the end of the book. They go like this: ‘These autumn days will shorten and grow cold. The leaves will shake loose from the trees and fall. Christmas will come, then the snows of winter. You will live to enjoy the beauty of the frozen world, for you mean a great deal to Zuckerman and he will not harm you, ever. Winter will pass, the days will lengthen, the ice will melt in the pasture pond. The song sparrow will return and sing, the frogs will awake, the warm wind will blow again. All these sights and sounds and smells will be yours to enjoy, Wilbur — this lovely world, these precious days …’

I have tried for a long time to figure out how E. B. White did what he did, how he told the truth and made it bearable.

And I think that you…won’t be surprised to learn that the only answer I could come up with was love. E. B. White loved the world. And in loving the world, he told the truth about it — its sorrow, its heartbreak, its devastating beauty. He trusted his readers enough to tell them the truth, and with that truth came comfort and a feeling that we were not alone.

I think our job is to trust our readers.

I think our job is to see and to let ourselves be seen.

I think our job is to love the world.

Go out and find a book by Kate DiCamillo. There are over 25 of them.  My favorites are all the ones that I have read: Because of Winn Dixie (which is also a film), The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, The Tale of Despereaux, (also a film), and The Beatryce Prophecy.  I can’t wait to read The Tiger Rising (also a film!) and Louisiana’s Way Home. They are next on my list.

Very best wishes to all of you for a wonderful, free, few months, full of stories, family and friends, and endless summer afternoons loving this beautiful world.

Ashley reading to grandson Jack in early spring

The Inspiration of a Grandfather: Luther Ely Smith

Marker for Luther Ely Smith in an interior garden of Luther Ely Smith Square

We were recently in St. Louis where we visited the newly installed marker dedicated to my grandfather, Luther Ely Smith, on the grounds of the Gateway Arch National Park.  The marker has been there since 1970 when the city dedicated a park to him.  During the restructuring of the Arch grounds the marker was moved.  My family recently arranged to have it located in a quiet spot in an interior garden of what is now called, Luther Ely Smith Square. The marker is engraved with these words:

This Park commemorates Luther Ely Smith, whose vision, dedication, energy, and love of his city and country brought into being the great Arch that symbolizes the nation’s expansion west of the Mississippi River.

Luther Ely Smith Square

On the website of the Gateway Arch National Park, Luther Ely Smith Square is described as the beautifully landscaped green space that leads to the entrance of the Arch. Born in 1873, Luther Ely Smith was a St. Louis lawyer… who first proposed a riverfront memorial for President Thomas Jefferson. His efforts led to the creation of the Gateway Arch. Today, Luther Ely Smith Square welcomes visitors to the Gateway Arch National Park, where they enjoy the unique plantings, picnic areas,…and benches with the Arch or Old Courthouse serving as a backdrop.

The Old Courthouse, St. Louis. Missouri

My grandfather’s Amherst College classmate, who was then president of the United States, Calvin Coolidge, appointed him to a commission to supervise the design and construction of a monument in Vincennes, Indiana. On his train trip home, as he crossed the river, he envisioned a revitalized riverfront and a monument that would commemorate this place as the gateway to westward expansion, to Thomas Jefferson, and the journey of Lewis and Clark. 

My grandfather dedicated himself to this vision, working over thirty years with the city of St. Louis and the federal government to realize this dream.  He was appointed by Mayor Bernard Dickmann to be the chairman of the committee to investigate a monument.  The committee was developed as the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Association and was formally chartered in April 1934.  President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order on December 21, 1935, authorizing the Department of Interior to acquire and develop the memorial.

In 1949, the Association selected the design for the Gateway Arch by Eero Saarinen following a design competition.

In 1948 Grandpa wrote to contest winner Eero Saarinen, an architect from Finland:

It was your design, your marvelous conception, your brilliant forecast into the future, that has made the realization of the dream possible – a dream that you and the wonderful genius at your command and the able assistance of your associates are going to achieve far beyond the remotest possibility that we had dared visualize in the beginning.

Eero Saarinen and Luther Ely Smith

Our grandfather died in April, 1951 and the Arch was completed in 1965. He never saw it, but he knew it would be built and could imagine it.

On April 3, 1951, the St. Louis Post Dispatch published an editorial entitled, What a Life Can Be about my grandfather.

The editorial describes many of the efforts that he championed like The Missouri Plan, also known as the Non-Partisan Court Plan, which spread far beyond Missouri and is the foundation for merit-based judicial selection in America.  He led the commission for the development of the city’s first public playgrounds.  In 1920, he represented hundreds of St. Louis citizens who were immigrants when they were about to be deported for unjust reasons. More than anything, he cared for and worked for the liberties of free men [and women.]  Any report of oppression found him ready to learn more and act accordingly.

Another editorial and letters to the editor in the St. Louis Star-Times include these stories and words.

From every city hundreds of these people were rushed to New York and shipload after shipload of them were sent back to Europe in the successful coup of the Palmer Red Raids. Except that none went from St. Louis. We have a thousand loyal, patriotic citizens, who but for [Luther Ely Smith], would be disseminated throughout Europe.

Luther Ely Smith’s influence was vast-the finest and most enduring kind, that of character, integrity, and skill in human relations….Most of all, Luther Ely Smith was known as a person, a great, lovable, wise and gracious person. He leaves a heritage to the entire city of St. Louis.

I did not know my grandfather.  He died in 1951 when I was just two years old. I do, however, feel his legacy and the example of his life deep in my bones. I love hearing stories about him. My older brother and sisters knew him well and remember bird walks and picnics with him in Forest Park and the St. Louis Zoo. I am awestruck reading about him and what he was like and what he accomplished.  Likewise, I am filled with wonder when I see the Arch from any vantage point.  It is awe inspiring in its simplicity, its strength, and its openness to the future and possibility.

These days, especially this week, when our country seems so very down and out, so full of grief and shame about what we have allowed to happen with gun violence where no one, not even young children in school, is safe.  What are we to do? How do we gather ourselves and move on?

I am buoyed by people like my grandfather who do not lose hope and continue to work for justice and good through many challenging and difficult times.  I listened to Sharon Salzberg speak on a Community Vigil through Insight Meditation Society a couple of days ago. She said that to fall into helplessness is the hardest and most dangerous place. We need to feel our deep connection to one another and know that our kindness, our care, our action means something and will affect everything.

So that is what I am doing.  I am staying connected and I am believing that our country can and must do better and that I can and will play a part in that. That gun safety regulations and laws will be established and that we will not be terrorized by the powers that be that are standing in the way.

This Memorial weekend, I am remembering all who died for our freedom. (Heather Cox Richardson writes a moving story today about Beau Bryant who died in 1943 at age 20, giving up “not only his life but also his future to protect American democracy against the spread of facism.”)

And I am also praying that we will have the strength of will and heart to find our way out of the darkness of violence that we have created… that is far away from freedom.  

Sending many blessings to each of you always.

Gateway Arch, image from the website

Returning to The College School: Reggio Inspired for Thirty Years

In the Big Bend Room, The College School

We just returned to Vermont after a week in St. Louis working in schools and visiting friends and family.  It was our first trip back in two and a half years, of course, because of our global pandemic.  It is a joyful experience for Ashley and me to be able to be in schools again! We are lucky enough to have been in five schools in the last two weeks.  We are eager to feature our work with one of the schools in St. Louis, Principia School, in a blog post soon.  This month, we want to revisit The College School, Louise’s “home school.” 

Entry to the early childhood wing, The College School

I graduated from my teaching career at The College School 14 years ago, and I moved out of the position of atelierista in 2002.  Twenty years ago.  For the last fourteen years, Sarah Hassing has served as the atelierista at The College School.  I always look forward to going into the atelier to see what is happening and how things have evolved.  For the last two years, Sarah has worked toward a Master of Arts in Innovative Early Childhood Education at UC Denver in partnership with Boulder Journey School, as has Uchenna Ogu, another friend and colleague at The College School.

Inside the Atelier, The College School

When I visited last Monday, four kindergarten children were sitting with Sarah around the small round table that is still a center piece, one that we ordered from Italy many years ago.  Sarah introduced me to the children who were working on making drawings of “the beautiful tree,” in the nearby park that they had followed and befriended through the seasons with their teachers, Uchenna Ogu and Emily Levin. The children consulted photographs and were all focused on their drawings, which were beautiful and distinctly different. Uchenna told me that the children had named the tree and wanted to visit often. “Our class visited the tree during the different seasons and noticed that while the leaves changed over time, the bark did not. This feature made it into The Beautiful Tree Song that the children wrote and composed for the tree: “I am the tree, The beautiful tree, Swirly bark, in the park, I can just be me”.

Drawings of “The Beautiful Tree”

While four children worked on tree drawings, another child was playing and building with loose parts; working to construct a marble run out of two tables pushed together, plastic tubing, and large blue marbles.  Sarah told me that he was an avid engineer.  

As the children finished up, Sarah asked Georgia if she would give me a tour of the “Hidden Museum.”  An end table was moved out of the way at the end of two easels pushed together to reveal small drawings and paintings on tiny cardboard frames on the inside of the easels. There was a ticket booth and a café made out of tiny loose parts…all hidden from view until opened up.  Enchanting…like a secret garden.  

When I asked about how this all started this is what Sarah said:

The hidden museum began when I found one of my daughter's old dollhouse toys, a tiny framed portrait of a cat. I was so taken with it, that I felt it needed to come to The College School for some reason... knowing the children love small spaces, I hid it by hanging it up underneath the easels. I also hung a small arrow there that I cut out of paper. It began as an experiment, would they notice this? Would they be drawn into a tiny world? What might happen once they made the discovery? They were as smitten with the tiny artwork as I was, and so they began to add more and more small compositions around it. Their initial work ranged from simple illustrations in pen and ink to watercolors and detailed drawings. Feeling that this first wave of interest was waning, I relaunched the experience with new materials such as collage and sculpture. Our build led to one of the small groups deciding that the museum must have a cafe. One child managed the group, giving some jobs of furniture builders and others that of menu creator. The children continue to add to the museum, and we have recently been working diligently on a special exhibit for the museum, one that will be set-up outdoors for parents to come and view. Uchenna noted that kindergarten children are excited to feature their drawings of the beautiful tree in the special exhibit of the “Hidden Museum”, so that, in their words, ‘others can love the tree’, as they do.  

The Hidden Museum, The College School

 In one corner of the atelier a large handmade loom stands with a nearby dowl holding many spools of ribbon…a place to weave for several children at a time.  There is a grow table with newly sprouted wheat grass and loose wooden parts where children are working on fairy house prototype designs for final versions that will eventually be installed outside.  Cuttings of plants in small jars line the ledge of the window wall behind this grow table.  On the shelf nearest the door, there is a display of scents, crushed herbs and flowers in tiny jars that the children have mixed to make and name new fragrances. 

Fairy house designs in a grow tab

There are so many senses engaged in this room.  So many materials organized beautifully and in ways that invite imagination and intellectual challenge as well as choice and focus.  So many disciplines and domains are at play…growing plants, mixing dried plants to explore fragrance, physics, literacy, ecological literacy, writing, drawing, sewing, weaving, sculpture…And all of this with a relaxed and easy flow and focused attention and great pleasure in making and inventing, sharing and laughing, connecting and learning.

 From this central room with three glass walls, we can see the three-and four-year-old children on one side and the four and five-year-old children on the other, engaged with materials and areas in the rooms that are irresistible to them.  This space always evolves.  The teachers grow and change.  Organization, pleasure, learning, joy, surprise, respect, creativity, beauty…these values and foundational principles are always present as new chapters are written in this space.  Next door, and down the hall, you will find similar scenes of engaged children and lively learning in the kindergarten, first, second and third grades.

The Newport Room, The College School

I am always honored to return here.  I feel thrilled to know that this is where I started and this is where I grew as a teacher, a thinker, a partner, and a writer.  Thank you, Sarah Hassing, Uchenna Ogu, and Penny Allen, Lower School Division Head, and all the teachers of early childhood at The College School, past and present, who continue to do this beautiful, evolving work, year after year.  You are an inspiration to so many, and most of all, to the children who live and learn alongside you every day.