Category: Life Lessons

The 57th Grade: A Half-Century of Hand-Me-Downs and Happenstance

Published on by Andy SmallmanLeave a comment

I’m pretty sure the picture on the left was taken on the first day of school in 1975, what would have been my first day of 7th grade and my very first day at Tillicum Junior High in Bellevue, WA. Stick with me while I do the math: if that was 1975 and this is 2025, well, that’s 50 years ago. By that calculation, I guess I’m now in the 57th grade, assuming I’ve not been held back (or skipped ahead, for that matter).

The picture on the right, I’m almost certain, was taken by Mrs. Martin, my 7th grade homeroom teacher. Homeroom meant having a teacher for two periods: Language Arts and Social Studies. As initially scheduled, those classes were back-to-back, periods 5 and 6 in the afternoon for me. But Tillicum had this quirky system where the class periods rotated. So depending on the day of the week, your morning classes would take place in the afternoon and vice versa. Looking back, I suppose it was meant to keep things “fresh,” maybe even based on some circadian-rhythm research. But to us kids, it mostly felt like an extra layer of confusion and stress, as if junior high didn’t already have enough of both. We’d just come from elementary school, where we basically stayed in one room with one teacher the whole day, to suddenly juggling seven classes in seven different rooms. Why not add in mixing up when the classes took place? Not to mention going to school with 9th graders, some who looked like the teachers?

So, yeah, I can just imagine the Tillicum administration saying something like, “Hey, let’s mix things up! On Tuesdays and Thursdays, we’ll put afternoon classes in the morning and morning classes in the afternoon. That ought to keep those kids sharp.”

Now, if you look closely at the picture on the right, you’ll see I’m wearing the same shirt I had on the first day of school. That makes me wonder if Mrs. Martin snapped the photo on the first day. Maybe… but I look like I’m working awfully hard for a first day, and the pencil I’m clutching is way too stubby to be a “first-day-of-school pencil,” if you know what I mean. So let’s assume it wasn’t taken on day one. That leaves us with two possibilities:
1) I really liked that shirt.
2) I only owned one shirt.

I really liked that shirt. 70’s paisley. Sign me up!

Speaking of clothes, the jacket I’m wearing in the picture on the left was handmade by my mom. She was super handy with her mint-green Singer sewing machine (which, if I remember correctly, my parents “bought” with Green Stamps back in the ’60s). The fabric design was Buffalo nickels. If you don’t know, a Buffalo nickel was a U.S. five-cent coin minted from 1913 to 1938. Since my family were collectors, we collected coins and getting a Buffalo nickel was kind of a big deal. We kept them and our other coins in those blue books where you’d press the coins into little round slots, all neatly organized by year. Half the fun was jamming the coin in without bending the cardboard. Remember those?

By the early ’70s, my brother Steve had become the main coin collector. I’d moved on to hockey cards, and our older brother Scott, well, we always said he just collected money. Not coins, not cards, just the kind you stick in a bank or invest. Steve eventually eased up on coin collecting, and I sold off my hockey cards in the early ’90s. Scott? He’s still doing a pretty good job collecting money.

You might be wondering why I’m wearing the Buffalo nickel jacket if Steve was the coin collector. Good question. The simple answer: Mom made the jacket for him. She’d sewn a hockey-themed one for me. By the time 7th grade rolled around and I needed a jacket, Steve had outgrown it, so it became a hand-me-down. Being the youngest of three boys, I got a lot of hand-me-downs. And, yes, I’m still waiting for my first “new” bike.

As for the Buffalo nickel fabric, I think Mom picked it up at a store in the old Eastgate Shopping Center in Bellevue, right next to the old Bellevue airport. The center had a Safeway where, fun fact, a pilot crashed his Cessna in 1976. There was also a drugstore called Fischer Drugs, a Dairy Queen, and I’m pretty sure a Fotomat (look it up!) in the middle of the parking lot. My dad bought his Racing Forms at a place called Lil’ Johns, and my brothers and I bowled at Sun Villa Lanes. Sometimes we even got our hair cut at Jerry’s Barbershop. Get this, Jerry was my mom’s first cousin!

I think the fabric store was called Wigwam, a name that hasn’t aged too gracefully (kind of like some old sports team names; for instance, the Seattle Mariners are playing the Cleveland Guardians as I write this – see the connection?). I liked going to Fischer Drugs as they had sports cards and candy. Wigwam, though, was a colossal bore for me back then. Add in that my mom could get lost looking at the fabric, and well, “Mom, can I go to Fischer’s and get some candy?”

Keep in mind that my dad was a candy salesman.

I think I’ve digressed. Let’s get back to 7th grade homeroom and Mrs. Martin. I really liked her as a teacher, even though she was a bit strict. I was the kind of student who could meet a teacher’s expectations, provided they were clear, and Mrs. Martin’s expectations were crystal clear. That said, I’ve been a certified teacher in Washington State for 35 years now and in retrospect, some of Mrs. Martin’s teaching strategies clash with a lot of the principles I’ve spent my career advocating.

For example, she used competition as a teaching tool, pitting classmates against each other. I remember us having spelling bees where she divided the class into two teams, one lining up on each side of the room. The person at the front of each line was given a word to spell. Spell it correctly, and you moved to the back of the line for your next turn. Spell it wrong, and you slunk back to your desk between the two lines, feeling the sting of public humiliation. The team with the last person standing was the winner

See what I mean by junior high school stress??

I was one of the last people standing during one of these epic battles and got knocked out on the word receipt. Yeah, I got the “I before E except after C” thing right, but I forgot the letter P. Give me a break, I was 12 years-old! Do YOU hear a P in the word receipt? Boy, was I humiliated when I returned to my seat, especially when a girl named Katie on the other team spelled receipt correctly. Game over. My cheeks burned.

I do have to give Mrs. Martin some credit, though. I’ve never misspelled “receipt” since that day. Not once. But seriously, at what price? Some lessons stick for life… and some stick with a little trauma attached.

As much as I think spelling bees like that are really bad teaching strategies (After all, who gets the most practice? The best spellers, of course.), Mrs. Martin did something else that was quite hard on me, specifically. For behavior management, she handed out demerits to misbehaving students. That might not sound so bad at first, though getting a demerit in front of your classmates could be pretty embarrassing. The real kicker? She didn’t keep track of them herself. Too busy teaching, she handed the job to a student.

And that student was me.

How would you like to be chosen by your homeroom teacher in 7th grade to keep tabs on your classmates? When a student distracted her or otherwise misbehaved in a way that Mrs. Martin deemed deserved a demerit, she’d turn her attention, and that of the class, to me. In a little notebook she had given me, I had to make a mark next to a kid’s name every time they got a demerit — four lines for four demerits, then a vertical line through them for the fifth, and then start over with the next group of five.

It never even occurred to me what would happen if I got a demerit. But you can bet I was on my best behavior to make sure it never happened.

I can still remember the kid who racked up the most demerits – Kurt (I’ll spare his last name for privacy, but yes, I remember it, too). Poor Kurt. So many blocks of five. It was almost like he was collecting demerits on purpose once he got started. I think many of them were for making funny noises, probably something he couldn’t control. Kurt had a talent for distraction, and apparently, for accumulating demerits.

Here’s where the story takes a wild turn. Years later, after high school (Sammamish High, if you’re keeping score at home), Kurt went to Washington State University, the same university Melinda, my wife, attended. They were there at the same time, they knew each other, and yes, they even dated. Melinda says Kurt was her first serious boyfriend. Sadly, he passed away in 1984 while on an exchange program in Sweden.

Okay, enough of the sad stuff. Let’s lighten the mood. Back in high school, Kurt, I, and a few other friends went to see the Boomtown Rats (yes, that’s a band) in Seattle on St. Patrick’s Day, 1981. What a fun night! It started with a light dinner at Debbie’s apartment in North Seattle, Debbie being my brother Steve’s girlfriend (side note – on December 30th this year, which we’ve already established is 2025, Steve and Debbie, now Deb, will be celebrating their 43rd wedding anniversary). For us high schoolers, it was a big deal because Steve and Debbie were in college and had invited us over before the concert.

I don’t remember everyone who was there, but I know for sure it included my buddies John and Marc. Pretty sure Kevin and Bruce were there too, though don’t quote me on that. After the pre-concert dinner at Debbie’s, we carpooled to the Paramount, where the show was being recorded for future radio airplay. Bob Geldof, the lead singer and main songwriter for the Boomtown Rats, cued the audience at times to get the right crowd noise.

I don’t think Geldof gave any cues to John that made him throw up halfway through the show, which scattered a few rows of concert-goers. Could I blame it on something John had eaten at Debbie’s? Let’s be honest, it wasn’t what he had eaten. It was what he drank. Well, what he drank and how much, if you get my drift. It’s become one of those stories we tell over and over. And Kurt was there. I don’t recall him getting any demerits.

Here’s an interesting twist / digression: The reason Melinda and I even know each other is because she had learned you could make a surprising amount of money working at an Alaskan cannery over the summer, enough, maybe, to cover a year of college tuition. She and a friend found out through a classified ad, maybe in The Little Nickel (a pre-Internet Craig’s List – look that up, too). Later, at a party, another guest told her they had just overheard two guys talking about the same opportunity on a Metro bus.

Melinda looked into it, and in the summer of 1982, she had the “pleasure” of hacking up salmon to prepare it for canning (to this day, the smell of canned salmon is known to cause her to behave in a way that could scatter a few rows of concert-goers at a Boomtown Rats concert). She met Kevin and Bruce at the cannery that summer. Yes, THAT Kevin and THAT Bruce, two of the people who may or may not have been at the Boomtown Rats concert a year and half earlier. And by all accounts and as wild as this sounds, Kevin and Bruce were probably the two guys the party-goer overheard on the Metro bus.

In 1984, after Kurt passed away, Kevin and Bruce helped Melinda through the early stages of her grief. Around that time, she and I met at a party, though it wasn’t until 1990 that we became, shall we say, romantically involved. On December 31, 1990, we got married. Kevin and Bruce were our witnesses.

Can we all agree that it’s a crazy world — Buffalo nickel jackets, demerits, canned salmon, and all?

So, yeah, the picture of me on the left was taken on the first day of 7th grade in 1975. And I’m pretty sure the picture on the right was taken by Mrs. Martin, my 7th grade homeroom teacher.

The Summer of the Ladysmith Station, July 2007

Published on by Andy SmallmanLeave a comment

All families have stories they regularly retell, the ones you have no idea will have long-lasting significance when they happen. This was certainly the case with an experience from 18 years ago this summer, when my wife’s parents, Dwight and Michele, dropped off my family – Melinda, my wife, and our daughters, Chloe and Ella – in Ladysmith, British Columbia after spending a week with them on their sailboat.

Spending a week on Dwight and Michele’s boat for the Commodore’s Cruise was a semi-annual event for us. This Seattle Yacht Club (SYC) event was always a highlight of our summer when it took place, and it fit Melinda’s and my meager summer holiday budget. As administrators of a nonprofit school, money was always tight.

We’d drive from Seattle to Anacortes and park our car, then take the ferry from Anacortes to Friday Harbor in the San Juan Islands. From there, we’d make our way to Roche Harbor where Dwight and Michele would meet us on their boat. From Roche Harbor, we’d travel by boat to Henry Island where SYC has an outstation. They’d tie up the sailboat there, and we’d have the run of the outstation for the rest of the day.

The next day would be the beginning of the Commodore’s Cruise, a social event that includes both casual cruising and a friendly competition among a large number of boaters, including point-to-point races for sailboats. It starts in the waters of the Salish Sea before crossing into British Columbia, with stops at various SYC outstations and other marinas for planned dinners, parties, and social activities.

Dwight & Michele at the helm!

In 2007, Dwight and Michele were going to continue north on their boat following the conclusion of the cruise in order to circumnavigate Vancouver Island. Because of our work responsibilities, Melinda and I didn’t have that much time so we needed to return to Seattle. Checking train schedules based on our planned location at the end of the cruise, Melinda determined that we could catch a train in Ladysmith, a tiny town on Vancouver Island, that would take us to Sidney. From Sidney, we’d catch a ferry to Anacortes, reunite with our car, and head back to Seattle.

Simple.

Traveling by boat is different than traveling by car. You have to take into account things like tides and water depth. And the morning we were being dropped in Ladysmith created a tight window for Dwight and Michele to have the depth of water they’d need to get through a narrow passage later that day. In other words, dropping us off would need to be both efficient and quick – no long goodbyes or dilly-dallying.

Also, Dwight’s and Michele’s sailboat, while comfortable and tremendously fun, was not really built for six people to live for an extended time. Quarters were tight and this needed to be considered when packing for the week-long cruise. Most of our clothes and essentials were packed in a single large duffle bag that could be easily stowed. The four of us each had a small backpack for personal belongings plus this larger duffle, which was understandably a tad heavy.

It was overcast as we approached the Government Dock in Ladysmith, our drop-off spot. Dwight expertly navigated the sailboat to the dock and Melinda, Chloe, Ella, and I jumped off, along with our backpacks and overstuffed duffle. I recall that Dwight didn’t even have us tie up to the dock to make the transition from sea to land easier. We pretty much jumped onto the dock before he quickly powered away, Michele waving and blowing kisses.

The Government Dock, Ladysmith.

So there we were, Melinda, Chloe, Ella, and me, on this very industrial-looking dock in Ladysmith with four small bags and one overstuffed large duffle. This was before smartphones with GPS. We really weren’t sure where the train station was. To our advantage, we had a few hours before the train was due to arrive. We set off on foot, me, with Melinda’s help, hoisting the duffle bag onto my back and latching it around my waist.

The first part of the walk was straightforward. There was only one way to go and that was away from the water. But we quickly discovered that this involved climbing an incline. In short order, Melinda, certain she’d found a shortcut, suggested we leave the paved road and walk on a trail of some kind. I was wearing flip-flops (it was summer vacation). I had a heavy bag on my back. But arguing with Melinda in moments like this is a losing proposition. Up the trail we went.

The trail got a bit steeper and one of my flip-flops started to fall off. I stood up to adjust it. With the weight of the bag on my back and the steepness of the incline, I started to fall backwards. I’m not quite sure how I caught myself but the look must have been entertaining to the rest of my family. They seemed to think it was worthy of laughter. Me, I pictured myself flat on back, my feet above my head, stuck on the trail and flailing like an overturned beetle.

I guess it was kinda funny.

We trudged on and found, get this, train tracks! Melinda’s next brilliant idea?! To walk along the train tracks as they certainly would lead us to the train station. I agreed, that’s true. But what about being run over by a train that happened to come by before we managed to arrive at said station? Being the one to have booked our train tickets, Melinda was pretty sure our train, the one still a couple hours away from arriving, was the only train scheduled. We walked along the tracks.

Before continuing with this story, let me just say that we all had it in our minds that a train station would be a place we could rest and wait for the train. I mean, what do you picture when you think of a train station? People, right? Workers, correct? Maybe a place to grab a drink and a bite to eat?

The Ladysmith Train Station was nothing like that. It consisted of a lot of overgrown brush and trees and a single, obviously abandoned, outbuilding. Littered around it was drug paraphernalia and evidence of past romantic trysts (aka syringes and condom wrappers). Most entertaining, though, was the graphic “F*!@ You” spray-painted on the building. No one else was there.

I’m pretty sure this is when Chloe’s internal warning system, heightened by being a fairly sheltered 14-year-old, went off. “Is this where we’re spending the next three hours waiting for the train? Where is the town? I bet the train isn’t even going to stop for us!”

I think it’s fair to say her foot came down strong on the side of the “I’m not staying here.”

Melinda’s parenting instincts had already kicked in. I knew her well enough to recognize that she was feeling pretty much like Chloe, but knew she also had the perspective that our options were limited. The sign here did say Ladysmith and by all accounts, we would be catching the train from this spot in a couple of hours. I could see her mental wheels turning and pretty much knew I didn’t need to say or do anything. She was going to, and in short order, say how we were going to make the best of this situation and help two kids pass the time with a halfway decent attitude.

A photoshoot.

It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.

A photoshoot!

We had our camera (again, before smartphones) and, I had to admit, the overall look of the place would inspire the most creative of set-designers. Following Melinda’s directions, I carefully set down the duffle bag and we placed our smaller bags around it. Then we proceeded to line ourselves up in front of the abandoned station to take arm-distance group selfies before selfies were a thing. We were a little too scrunched together to get all of us in a really good shot so I took a few pictures of the three together. Melinda acted as photoshoot director, working to infuse energy and silliness into the moment. In the initial pictures, Chloe is looking pretty skeptical but ultimately came around. Ella, at age 10, was pretty game from the beginning.

Melinda pointed out that our camera had a delay feature, meaning we could try to get some posed group shots at a distance using the timer. We walked around to the end of the building and found a spot that we thought we could all sit down, backed by the peeling paint and graffiti-tagged exterior. I stepped on a lower plank to get to where we would sit, and my flip-flopped foot broke right through the rotten wood. A reminder to be careful.

By then, Melinda had set up the camera at the proper distance to capture the four of us and the building. Suggesting this could be the cover for our “record album,” she set the timer and rushed back to join us on the shady platform. By then, the sun had come out. Perfect! The resulting picture is one of my all-time favorites of my family.

One of my favorite family photos.

Maybe 20 minutes had passed and the photoshoot started to lose its luster. It was still more than two hours before the train was due to arrive. But we did notice a road at the far end, opposite of the way we had arrived. We walked up it and found the edge of Ladysmith, including a place to get a drink and a bite to eat. We relaxed, realizing that we weren’t the only people on earth, and laughed at our experience so far.

Close to the appointed time, we returned to the “train station,” and pretty much right on time our train appeared. About the train, it really didn’t come to a full stop for us. It slowed down, mind you, and a conductor did appear, clearly aware that some people were scheduled to be picked up in Ladysmith that day (that probably didn’t happen too often). He helped Chloe and Ella onboard, then Melinda jumped on. She reached back and helped get that crazy duffle bag onboard. Then I jumped on. The train picked up speed.

We had a lovely train ride to Sidney. I highly recommend it.

END NOTES:
– What prompted me to write this story was having recently come across an article in the Nanaimo News. Dated May 26, 2025, the headline is “$1M awarded for restoration of historic Ladysmith train station.” This pleases me no end. When the renovations are done, here’s hoping Melinda, Chloe, Ella and I can return for an updated photoshoot.
– Perhaps of interest, Pamela Anderson of Baywatch fame is from Ladysmith and lives there again now. Her TV show “Pamela’s Garden of Eden” shows how she has renovated her childhood home.
– In 2011, my efforts to promote ordinary acts of kindness were featured in a publication called Gulf News. The editors asked for a photo of me to include with the article and I sent them one from our Ladysmith photoshoot. Find the photo and the article here.

Planned Renovation

Moving Toward – The Spirit of Commencement

Published on by Andy SmallmanLeave a comment

I’m the principal of a small school in Seattle called Spring Academy. Spring Academy serves students who, for a wide variety of reasons, have needs and/or circumstances that made things more challenging for them within a mainstream school. At Spring, we focus on building a compassionate school setting and providing the students personalized attention, thus allowing them to succeed in high school.

This past week we held our graduation ceremony and, as principal, it was my job to both facilitate the ceremony, which involved introducing the staff and addressing the graduates and their families. After personalizing the staff introductions, I addressed the graduates, of which there were five, as follows:

Here we are. You’ve done it. High school is complete. You’re finished with classes – well, you are welcome to come tomorrow, it is the last day of school, you know. Show of hands, who’s coming? No one?

Okay, you’re done. You’re about to get your high school diplomas! Whoo-hoo, right?! It feels like an ending, doesn’t it? A wrap-up. Your birthday and all the presents have been opened. Finished. You’re done.

But look at the name of this ceremony. Have you ever thought about it, the actual name of a graduation ceremony? It’s not called an ending or a termination. It’s called a commencement. Just what does that mean?

A commencement means a beginning.

This isn’t just a difference in words; it’s a powerful difference in perspective. It invites us to think about how we move through life – are we primarily moving away from something, or are we moving toward something?

Really, think about it. Moving away from something is often driven by fear, by the need to retreat. Sometimes, this is necessary – getting out of a dangerous situation, for example. But as a constant way of being, moving away can feel uncertain, heavy, and draining.

It’s an energy of retreat.

In contrast, moving toward something – a goal, a dream, a curiosity, a passion – is an act of active engagement. It brings energy, hope, excitement, and purpose. It’s like moving with a light guiding you. Moving toward something you believe in, something that inspires you, is an act of bringing positive energy into the world.

You might even call it a form of love.

Today is not just about moving away from the structure of high school. It is fundamentally about what you will choose to move toward next.

As you step out from here, into whatever comes next, I encourage you to find something to move toward. It doesn’t have to be a perfectly clear, lifelong plan. It can be a subject you want to learn more about, a skill you want to develop, a cause you believe in, a place you want to explore, or simply becoming the best version of yourself.

By actively seeking and moving toward something positive, you do two important things:

– You truly honor the spirit of a commencement ceremony, recognizing it as a beginning.
– And, more importantly, you contribute positively to the world around you.

So, Spring Academy Class of 2025, as you leave this chapter behind, go find your “toward.” Move with hope, move with energy, move with purpose. If you do, you will undoubtedly make all of us proud. And most of all, you will be proud of yourself.

Congratulations on your commencement!

The Tao of Kindness – 81 Songs Now Available

Published on by Andy SmallmanLeave a comment

A few years back, a quiet weekly reflection became something bigger than I expected. From 2018-2020, I translated each Tao Te Ching chapter into kindness-focused poems, sharing them on Facebook and on my Kind Living website as a personal anchor and maybe a little support for others who value kindness.

Last year, I discovered an AI music generator called Suno and started turning those poems into modern pop songs. I wrote the words and prompts. Suno made the music. The result? “The Tao of Kindness,” a five-volume music series inspired by all 81 Tao verses, seen through a lens of kindness.

I’m pleased to announce that the fifth and final volume of The Tao of Kindness is now completed! This wraps up the full cycle—81 kindness poems, 81 kindness songs. You can stream the songs for free and even download all 81 tracks for free on Bandcamp.

“The Tao of Kindness” has been a real passion project, exploring old wisdom in a fresh way. I hope it resonates with some of you. Here’s a sample song:

“Does Time Tell Us?” by Recteur Schmitt

Published on by Andy Smallman1 Comment

Back in the late summer of 1996, my older daughter, Chloe, age three, and I were home, just the two of us on a Saturday night. My wife and Chloe’s mom, Melinda (who was pregnant with our younger daughter, Ella, at the time), had gone out with some friends. Together, Chloe and I made ourselves a casual dinner and now, the dishes cleaned up, it was nearing her bedtime.

At Chloe’s request, I had gotten out the art supplies and she was busy coloring, cutting paper, painting, and whatever else struck her artistic fancy at three-years-old. I was taken by the seriousness with which she was engaged, although it also struck me that part of her seriousness was to keep herself busy so maybe she would get to stay up past her bedtime. Watching her, all of these things kind of converged in my mind and this idea of who controls time came to me.

We use the expression “learn to tell time” to refer to being able to read a clock. But I had the inspiration that there was another meaning for that expression, that if we tried, we might want “to tell time” to ease up on us. I mean it’s Saturday night, your lovely little three-year-old is engaged in an art project. Do you really need to put her to bed because the clock says it’s 8pm? Who’s telling who what to do?

Do we tell time or does time tell us?

I made note of that expression and let Chloe stay up past her bedtime. After finally putting her to bed, I wrote a poem that ended with that line and referenced the evening we had had together. Over the next nearly 20 years, the poem was stashed in a binder where I kept things like it, songs, poems, ideas. Soon before Chloe graduated from college in 2015, I came across it while sifting through the binder in one of my frequent forays down memory lane. I asked an artist friend (Fish Astronaut) to illustrate the poem, and I presented the hand-printed illustrated version to her as a graduation gift (click on the image above, that’s it, to see it enlarged and read the original poem).

In the ensuing nine years, the poem would find its way back into my mind. Or, more accurately, the idea of being the master of my time or time being the master of me would find its way back into my mind. The concept of mindfulness, Eckhart Tolle’s book “The Power of Now,” and even expressions like “there’s no time like the present” would rattle around.

One night not loo long ago, I decided to see if I could make the poem into a song lyric, a song that would make the point about being the master of our time rather than the other way around with an added implication that maybe we could all learn something from little kids. The rewrite came fairly easily. Then this month, April of 2024, after I discovered the Suno AI music generator, I inputted my song lyric and the prompt “An eastern European gypsy punk ballad with accordion and power chords, sung fast.” The song here is the result. For the music video, I added pictures of Chloe from in and around the time she was three.

Postscript – I’ve named the “band” performing this song “Recteur Schmitt” for reasons I will explain at a different time. For now, understand that Recteur Schmitt is the name of one of the stops on Line 2 of the tramway in Nantes, France. Find an entire album of Recteur Schmitt songs on the usual platforms – Spotify, Amazon Music & Apple Music. If you want to buy a copy of the album for $1.00, go to Bandcamp and know you will have made my day.

DOES TIME TELL US?

Saturday night sunset, the moon comes up – big, orange and bright.
Too late for being on time, too early for saying goodnight.
You sit undisturbed, absorbed in the concentration of being three.
Your bedtime comes and goes, now what becomes of me?

What do we know, what is the fuss?
Do we tell time or does time tell us?
What do we know, what is the fuss?
Do we tell time or does time tell us?

I buried a wish in the sandbox when I was eight.
And lost more than my friends when they could not relate.
Now I hold your tiny hand and I’m back in the right place,
I thank the clock each time I see your face.

What do we know, what is the fuss?
Do we tell time or does time tell us?
What do we know, what is the fuss?
Do we tell time or does time tell us?

They mismanage the time they save for themselves,
while little kids listen for fire trucks, fairies, and elves.
You and me, we are the secret no one understands,
colored paper meeting scissors, manipulated by little hands.

Hour glasses to measure time, alarm clocks to wake us up.
Too much sand is passing through while morning is too abrupt.
Saturday night sunset, the moon comes up – big, orange and bright.
Too late for being on time, too early for saying goodnight.

What do we know, what is the fuss?
Do we tell time or does time tell us?
What do we know, what is the fuss?
Do we tell time or does time tell us?

Hearts Expand By Expressing Gratitude

Published on by Andy Smallman2 Comments

Each interaction we have with people opens a metaphorical circle. Simple interactions, like those we have passing a stranger on the street, cause the circles to open and close quickly without much work on our parts. But those interactions we have with people in which something significant takes place create larger circles with larger openings. To close these requires more mindful awareness of our responsibilities in the relationship.

If we move through life learning to open and close our circles with mindful awareness we live happier, more fulfilled lives. Those of us with lots of unclosed circles experience a “cluttered” feeling in our interactions because we have so much unfinished business with others.

With this explanation, I introduced my kindness class to their new assignment – to do something kind for someone who at some point in their lives had helped them. At its core, the assignment was intended to help my students identify circles that were left open in their lives and to try to close one.

“If more people did this the world would be a better place.” So said Elizabeth at our next class session. She was actually quoting what was said to her by the wife of one of her college professors, the person she chose to be the recipient of her kind action.

Elizabeth explained, “In college, I was in my senior year and paying my own way. I got a notification that my bill was unpaid and I wasn’t going to graduate. My professor and his family suggested I stay with them to save on room and board. After all these years, I was able to thank him for his kindness. Without it, I don’t think I could have gone on in my schooling, met my fabulous spouse and got my wonderful job, also teaching. I think we will correspond for a long time, a kindness for both of us.”

People who have helped us, been generous toward us, or have served as a source of inspiration for us are our benefactors. These folks come into our lives to help light our way on our own unique paths.

And they often come into our lives in a way and at a time in which we may not fully appreciate them. This can be, perhaps, for reasons having to do with our youth, how hectic our lives are at the time, or for a number of other reasons. We often best recognize their influence in hindsight.

Other students shared their experiences, including:

  • “When I suddenly found myself alone with five small children and very little money, a friend offered help without unsolicited advice or criticism, including organizing a painting party for my dilapidated house. Today, ten years after her untimely death, I placed flowers on her grave. Her widower and (now) grown children were surprised and touched to find me there…”

  • “I called my cousin this evening to more fully express my gratitude and why I sent her the mum plant. We both had tears and laughter as we talked. A full 35 minutes of deep connecting and appreciating of each other. Yes, we’ve said it and we say it often, but decidedly acknowledging and honoring that gratitude more fully makes it come alive in my own being, and my heart expands from the activity of expressing this gratitude.”

This assignment required Elizabeth and the rest of the students to think about the past, to bring something positive from their lives into the present to both relive and more fully appreciate it. Bringing these stories into the present helped the students acknowledge their importance.

Expressing their gratitude for their benefactors then helped them close the “circle of the story” and feel a profound sense of satisfaction. In closing a circle left open, some of them also were excited to open a new one.

Also of importance, the kindness extended to the benefactors included a solid kindness for the students, too. The statement, “my heart expands from the activity of expressing this gratitude” summarizes this concept perfectly and poetically.

Appreciate Your Mundane Tasks

Published on by Andy SmallmanLeave a comment

We all have repetitious tasks that may seem tedious, even boring to do, so much so that we might complete them on auto-pilot. But these are often the tasks that need to get to done to ensure the bigger projects get done.

If it helps, think about what happens to your teeth if you don’t brush them every day.

This also holds true in our relationships with others, be they personal or professional. In the relationship dynamic, we all have tedious jobs to complete in order for the relationship to work.

For a little exercise, get out a pen and piece of paper and write down at least five tedious tasks you do that enhance one of your personal relationships.

If you’ve chosen a home relationship and you live with others, your list might include grocery shopping, doing the laundry and/or the dishes, making the bed, cleaning the bathrooms, changing the toilet paper roll…

In all likelihood, your list quickly grew to more than five tasks.

Next, consider what kind of breakdown would occur if you didn’t do one of the tasks. For instance, if your list includes grocery shopping and you don’t do it, there won’t be food in the house. And if there isn’t food in the house, what would happen next?

People would be hungry?

You’d have to eat out, which might mean you wouldn’t be eating healthy food, and you might go over your budget, thus impacting your plans for an upcoming vacation?

Again, you can likely extend this pretty far and pretty quickly, including the lack of food having a negative impact on your relationships.

As I said earlier, the point here is that the little tasks getting done is what leads to the bigger projects happening. When you do the grocery shopping, for instance, you are saving toward the family’s summer vacation.

Now it’s all well and good to simply think about the little tasks that WE, ourselves, do. It’s a more challenging exercise to identify the little tasks others do and from which we derive benefit.

In other words, who else in your relationship dynamic is doing the little things in a way that helps ensure your family will get to go on its summer vacation?

On your paper, try to write down five tedious tasks that are done by someone else in a personal relationship with you. You’ll likely find this to be more difficult to do than creating your list of tasks, the reason being that we tend to take for granted the tasks completed by others.

We are even more likely to take them for granted when they are done consistently, for the simple reason that we don’t notice them being done. For instance, if doing the laundry isn’t on your list, the fact that you have clean underwear in your drawer is due to the efforts of someone else.

With these things in mind, consider the word “synergy,” which, at its root, means “working together.” In practice, the word has come to mean working together WELL.

When there is food in the house and underwear in the drawers, and hundreds of other things are completed and/or available, there is synergy at play. This synergy allows for smooth functioning in the home, which stabilizes the home lives of everyone.

So think again about those little tasks you do, but do so with this awareness of synergy. You are contributing to the smooth working of your home.

Further, we all have had times in which we are functioning so well with others that we feel we are part of a whole. It is at these times that we gain glimpses of the concept that we are part of something greater than ourselves. This form of synergy awareness is warming and provides us energy.

Here’s another way to think about the ideas of synergy and that we all are part of something bigger than ourselves:

Holographic images can be recorded on glass. Looking at them, they appear 3-D despite being in 2-D form, and seen from different angles give you the look of seeing the image from different perspectives. Further, if the glass that holds the image is broken, each piece contains the whole image. It’s not like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that have to be reassembled to form a whole.

Each piece CONTAINS the whole (learn more here).

With that in mind, consider the value each member of a team plays in making the whole team function, like the five basketball players on the floor during a game, that have to work together well in order for any one of them to excel.

Next, consider that every person on a team is one piece of glass of a broken hologram, each piece containing the whole. Seen like this, our responsibility as individuals is to contribute positively to the whole, to do our part to make sure the team functions at its best.

Now apply this same concept to those with whom you share a home.

Are you familiar with the Dr. Seuss book “Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?” Many people see this book, intended for children, as a way to focus on how to feel better about their lives by comparing them to the lives of less fortunate, albeit silly, characters.

For instance, this quote comes from page 24:

And poor Mr. Potter,
T-crosser,
I-dotter.
He has to cross t’s
and he has to dot i’s
in and I-and-T factory
out in Van Nuys.
Yes, poor Mr. Potter.

These may seem like meaningless tasks he has to do, but if Mr. Potter doesn’t do them, an attention to detail is lost that will contribute to a significant problem down the line, just like what would happen if you didn’t do the grocery shopping or someone else didn’t doing the laundry.

As such, I encourage you to appreciate when you have to be Mr. Potter and to acknowledge when others are doing their “Mr. Potter” tasks. Extended to our places of businesses, to our cities, to our country, and to the world, it’s how everything keeps functioning.

Ultimately, we’ll come to appreciate that it’s completing the repetitious tasks in our lives that move us closer to peace on earth.

Focusing Our Attention on the Profound

Published on by Andy Smallman1 Comment

(I’m reviewing articles I’ve written for my professional website, narrowing them down to some favorites. Here’s the first, which focuses on a life lesson I received from a respected teacher and try to pass along to some of my students who I think might appreciate it.)

I’ve often told my students an allegory that was told to me by one of my most important teachers when I was a young adult, the story of two people walking at dawn one morning, the rising sun at their backs. One paused and turned to look at the beautiful sunrise, awed by its beauty. Wanting to share it, he tapped the shoulder of his friend, who turned to look and was equally awed.

I invite my students to stop and consider this story, to contemplate it for its meaning or meanings. One comes from recognizing the important role we have to help those in our lives be aware of meaningful things.

Related to that, however, is the truth that try as we might, we can never MAKE another person be aware of something. We may WANT to share things with others, but they still have to turn, literally and/or metaphorically, to see them. THEY have to do the physical and mental work.

If my students get to that understanding, I’m pleased.

As I’ve gotten older, interestingly, I’ve found what has become an even bigger lesson for me from this story. It’s that we all are being tapped on our shoulders all the time. Every second of every day, we are being offered the opportunity to see meaningful things.

Many of us wonder who or what does what I’m calling this shoulder-tapping. Call it Source, or Light, or Intelligence, or God, or some other name. For my purposes, though, putting a name to what taps us is not the most important thing.

What’s important is to recognize that we are being tapped and to practice focusing our attention. In other words, I have the responsibility to do the physical and mental work, to turn and look, so to speak.

As I’ve gained experience doing this, I’ve learned that there is discipline involved in the practice. Undisciplined, my attention is drawn to all sorts of things — negative news stories, certain uses of social media, drama from the sports world — each of which distracts me from what is actually meaningful.

I sometimes even fool myself into believing the distracting things are important.

Disciplined, I learn to see the difference between the distracting and the divine, between the pointless and the profound. In time, I find that I’ve started to internally filter out the things that distract me, which better enables me to gently focus on the divine and the profound.

Like a sunrise.

Dyslexia, an Advanced Form of Evolution?

Published on by Andy SmallmanLeave a comment

In 1985, at age 22, I was a first-year college student at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA. I had spent the four years since graduating from high school trying to figure out who I was, my high school having done such a poor job of helping me do that. Having been moved by my experience mentoring a young boy as part of the Big Brothers program, I felt a calling to make a career in education and chose Evergreen as a place to begin my more formal training.

One day, while at the public library near my apartment and as part of a search on child development, I found a paperback book called “Son-Rise.” The book tells the true story of how author Barry Neil Kaufman and his wife, Suzi, helped lead their son out of his autistic world. Reading the book changed the trajectory of my college experience.

At the next academic quarter, I shifted my academic focus at Evergreen to issues in special education. I began conducting independent study projects on topics such as dyslexia, brain injury, and cross-cultural special education practices. I began working with brain-injured children as part of my studies, earning college credit in the process.

Teaching in 1995
The summer of 1986 I signed up for a program of study called “Children of the World.” One of the professors was a Navajo and during one meeting with him he said something that literally stopped me in my tracks. I had been reading about dyslexia and was trying to understand if dyslexia was a condition more about a child or more about the educational settings in which a child was placed.

Sharing a Navajo perspective, but phrased in modern terminology, my professor asked me, “Andy, have you ever stopped to think that dyslexia might be an advanced form of evolution, an advanced way of seeing things?” It was a radical thought for me at the time, an example of outside-the-box thinking that I’ve tried to employ since. Instead of viewing dyslexia as a “dis”-ability, as I had been doing, what if I treated the concept as providing some kind of advantage?

That got me thinking about our school system. Certainly, being dyslexic was not an advantage in a typical American school setting. But how much of this disadvantage came from the beliefs and attitudes of those people working with dyslexic children? Couldn’t teachers learn to accept students for who they were and instruct from their strengths?

My studies continued. Evergreen allowed me to do something I had never done before as a student – study what I wanted to study, when I wanted to study it. The idea of a school allowing this never occurred to me. Such uninterrupted immersion in something could only be done after the requirements were met, and usually after the school doors were closed. A spark that had all but been extinguished began to glow brighter as I welcomed each day with an armload of books, which one day included “Son-Rise,” which I began to re-read.

When I first read the book I was impressed by its clarity. Re-reading, what Kaufman wrote made even more sense to me, opened me up and allowed me to gain access to a part of myself that was waiting to emerge. I became more accepting of myself and others; in his writing I found words for things I had never been able to express. In short, the Kaufmans developed a therapy program for their autistic son based on a lifestyle of love, trust, and acceptance. The basic principle of their lifestyle was that people were always doing the best they could based on their current beliefs, that each of us is our own best expert.

In the spring of 1987, I accompanied a family with an 18-year-old autistic son named Eric to The Option Institute in Massachusetts, the institute founded by the Kaufmans to help others learn from their experience. We spent a week there learning from the staff how to create a home-based therapy program for Eric. Returning home, I began working with Eric several days a week, hoping to join him in his world as a way of communicating that I respected him for whom he was.

Working with Eric, I came to know myself better than I ever had. The principles of love, trust, and acceptance had a natural effect in other areas of my life. I began living in the present. Instead of doing things for some future reward, I ended each day knowing I had done exactly what I wanted to do. Another thing became clear to me – I settled on wanting to be a teacher.

I graduated from Evergreen in 1988 and in 1989 entered a graduate program in Human Development, the first year of which was a teacher certification program, through Pacific Oaks College. I completed both programs, earning both a teaching certificate and a Master’s degree. Because of my work with Eric and other children with unique needs, and my independent studies done at Evergreen, I carry Special Education endorsements on my teaching certificate.

I began teaching in 1990 and have always tried to bring what I learned from my study of the Kaufman’s philosophy to my interactions with students. The creation of Puget Sound Community School in 1994 was a clear attempt to create a school that allows students to take charge of their lives. I’ve now spent decades helping young people learn that while I may be a trained teacher, I’m not an expert on who they are. I want to help them to learn to identify their goals, however trivial they may seem to others, and plot courses to achieving them. I want them to trust themselves fully, to be happy with who they are.

I believe that happy people have a burning desire to grow and develop, reach out for new opportunities and challenges, and are an asset to the world. A.S. Neill, the founder of Summerhill, wrote, “All crimes, all hatreds, all wars can be reduced to unhappiness.” Imagine a world that puts as its priority the happiness of its citizenry.

So back in 1985 I read a book that dramatically changed the course of my life. It deals with such topics as love, trust and acceptance, topics that typically aren’t discussed in books on education, in most teacher training programs, or in most faculty rooms.

I challenge you to ponder why that is, and to think of the possibilities for schools and students if they were.