"There's Dirt on My Shirt"

There’s dirt on my shirt
And leaves in my hair.
There’s mud on my boots
and I really don’t care.

Playing outside is so much fun
To breathe the clean air
And feel the warm sun.

To stomp in a puddle,
Or climb a big tree,
Makes me quite happy
Just look and you’ll see…

Just like Jeff Foxworthy, the writer of the poem “There’s Dirt on My Shirt” I get it! There is something about being outdoors, digging in the dirt. For me it centers me. It makes me feel like I am home. It brings me to a place that is as close to God as I think I have ever felt. It takes me personally to a space of quietness that I believe is what Mary Rose O’Reilley is talking about in our classrooms. For me being outdoors, working the earth, allows me to connect to the Earth, to my childhood, to my future, to the past. It is a powerful thing. I can only imagine the power it can be for my students if I am able to get them outside working the soil at our elementary school--even if it is as simple as pulling weeds, trimming hedges, planting bulbs, or making a count of all the ladybugs, or preying mantises that we can find. Maybe that they can find a place of learning, a place of quietness in their soul that can bring them the kind of joy that I feel.
There is also something to be said for hard physical labor. It is sad to think that the kind of hard work that we did today is something that seems to be relegated to “farm kids”. Many of the kids that I teach will never even be asked to mow their own lawn, because they have people to do that. When I was growing up, I did not live on a farm (or even anything close) but we worked hard. My parents taught us how to work hard by their example and by what we might call a direct instruction model. We built our first home using sweat-equity, we planted a gigantic garden, and landscaped the rest of the yard ourselves. Then the work had just begun…we weeded, watered, harvested, and canned (or dried) all of the food we did not immediately consume. We worked hard, but those fruits were the sweetest and the veggies were even delicious to pickiest eaters. One of our articles for tomorrow talks about the balance that schools bring into the lives of children. Maybe we can show our students that hard physical labor and getting our hands dirty is a good thing through doing projects like the ones we did today.