Tales from the Loft - We Begin with Place Journals

We are all schoolmasters, and our schoolhouse is the universe. To attend chiefly to the desk or schoolhouse while we neglect the scenery in which it is placed is absurd.

-Henry David Thoreau, "Journal"

Bear with me .........

Two summers ago, I attended a week of professional training on Walden Pond. THE Walden Pond from literature, usually attributed to Thoreau and often mistaken as a magical, made up place.

Yet Walden Pond actually exists.

Today it is preserved by a few different entities - a state park system, The Walden Woods Project, a couple of nonprofits, and many generous Thoreauvian. When I visited, the entire east coast was living through a heat wave, and the local residents of Concord, MA, frequented Walden Pond to escape the heat and take a dip in the clear, crisp waters. After all, most people in the northeast (including me that week) langured through the heat wave without air conditioning; swimming provided a welcome reprieve.

In the magical Walden, life at a pond would seem serene, quiet, peaceful. Thoreau described his time there as almost a sabbatical from busier town life and responsibilities.

What I found out through my training was that he exaggerated.

There was a main road to town not a hundred yards from his cabin. Neighbors stopped by consistently to check out the odd friend living in the woods. Thoreau also seldom travelled and preferred to stay grounded in Concord, near all that held familiarity. Life for Thoreau wasn't silent or serene, but it could have still been magical, perhaps.

In 2023, the Walden I experienced included crowds, families with picnics, lifeguards, children everywhere, and an overzealous park ranger with complete control of a megaphone and a sound system. It was chaotic. Getting away meant stepping off just to the side and walking to a tucked away spot - hopefully with access to the water. I could still hear all the commotion, but I could also find peace just outside the perimeter of it all.

At DGS, each classroom has an outdoor space. In theory, we should all be spending peaceful, breezy days completing our thought provoking lessons while gathered on the deck or out on a patio. This is the magical version, by the way.

In reality, our school resides on South Main Street, right across from a massive construction project, on a road that is (someday) getting widened, at the front of a neighborhood full of houses with operating lawn mowers and blowers and chainsaws. "Peaceful" is relative.

What does this have to do with starting school?

Well, DGS is home. It is where each of us belongs. Where students' voices aren't just heard, they are honored and lifted. Seriously. As a community, DGS is our safe space, and we strive to give that same gift to our students. In the middle of Davidson, DGS is our Walden.

In the beginning, each middle schooler picks a spot on our campus for the year.

Their little slice of Walden.

So far we've been to our spots twice. Once to claim them. Twice to write. Each middle schooler will visit this same place most weeks all year long. And from experience, I can honestly say that in visiting the same spot, students develop a relationship with that little speck of ground. Its soil. Its view. Its scent. Its feeling of familiarity. It provides an opportunity to ground, to reflect, and to engage.

Week One - Sketch

Week Two - Write: In what ways can stories be medicine?

Sketches are photographed below:

Gallery Wall