Spring Planting

This past Friday, April 11th marked the conclusion of regular Inservice Camps for the 2008 school year. The featured movement art for this camp was Aikido, which was extremely popular among the students. Over the past several camps we have repeatedly touched on motivations behind bullying behavior, and the related martial ideal of averting danger through yielding and compassion (both of which are especially central to Aikido philosophy).

The founder of Mo Duk Pai, Professor Frederick D. King gave a public talk on ethics (as they apply to martial arts) the night prior to this camp. He related to the audience that the highest level of competence in martial arts involves being able to avoid confrontation in the first place. In reflecting on this, I think that the literacy activities, lifeskills focus, and general practice over time has worked well to illustrate to campers that martial arts, or practicing control over mind and body can make one stronger and happier, and that power and strength has more with the ability to readily minimize or avoid distractions altogether than it does with challenging them head-on.

On an “earthier” note, the weather couldn’t have been better…it was a perfect day to take the kids outside to plant, and plant we did! Students transplanted red leaf lettuce and tomato starts into individual containers to take home before finishing out the raised beds we built last year at The Academy. We acknowledge that gardening, and developing the skills necessary to growing and preparing your own food can be quite empowering for children. Learning to distinguish between a tomato and red lettuce start, seeking out weaker stems to pinch off in order to make way for stronger growth, and spacing between plants was seemingly a great place to start.

It looks as if our summer camps may involve a day trip to Orgeon Tilth’s Organic Education Center, Jean’s Urban Forest Farm, and we couldn’t be more excited! JEAN’s is hands-down my favorite green space in Portland city limits; I am always thrilled to be able to share it with others.