Teacher Margaret's "View From My Window" - October 17th

Dear Friends, 

So far, I have “found” eight of the 18 Trolls scattered throughout the Burlington County Park system. One of the delights of this search is all of the new neighborhoods and open spaces and scenic drives we have discovered as we have traveled from troll to troll.

Our Meeting for Worship theme this month is Sustainability. At the rise of Meeting our 8th-grade student leaders asked us how caring for our school building and grounds helped our environment. As you can imagine, our children had several heartfelt ministries to share – “Don’t litter”, “Remember to care for the whales”, “Love the earth”, “Give thanks for birds and the sun”, “We are all part of nature”, “We have one home, earth.” Throughout the school children are learning about their world and connections with it.

On Tuesday we had a 3rd through 5th grade Kayak Trip on the Delaware and Cooper Rivers. Students worked together to paddle their kayaks in windy conditions. They learned that in their parents’ lifetimes, the Delaware River went from a dead, anaerobic body of water, to a vibrant restored waterway where Shad are now returning to spawn and top predators like hawks and otters are regularly spotted. Our guides mentioned the importance of the Clean Water Act of 1972 as the beginning of the long river healing process. Coincidentally,  I am listening to Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Starry Messenger. He posits that it was the iconic images of the earth from the Apollo space missions that helped move the stalled Clean Water Act from idea to law. 

Currently, the 7th grade is reading Neil deGrasse Tyson’s book Astrophysics for Young People in a Hurry. In Science, these same students are learning to manipulate their microscopes to unravel cell mitosis. Their first-grade schoolmates are working to understand their planet and the way the continents are arranged around the globe. These same students are also creating science notebooks where they record their observations on living versus non-living parts of the natural world. Our 3rd-grade kayakers remembered from their first-grade science that most animals need oxygen which is why there were no fish in the Delaware in the 1960s through to the 1990s. To finish this virtuous cycle, 5th-grade students (kayakers) are learning about the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide in photosynthesis and respiration. A few of them connected this process to the plants they observed in the Cooper River. 

I will finish today’s View From My Window with a poem, the 8th grade will read later this month.

Let me remember 

Let 

Me

 remember 

beyond forgetting –

let 

me 

remember – 

- let me remember always 

for my spirit is often shrouded in the 

mists – 

let me remember beyond forgetting 

that my life is not a solitary thing – 

it is a bit of the rushing tide

 a leaf of the bending tree –

 a kernel of grain in the golden wheat fields – 

a whisper of wind about the mountaintop – 

a reflection of sunlight upon the 

shining waters – 

it is fleeting – 

it is of the moment

 it is timeless – 

it is of eternity. 

Winston O. Abbott

Warmly,

Margaret Haviland

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