Tag Archives: community

Circle time

My wife’s students, ages six to twelve, sit in a circle the first day of class. There is a yarn ball in the middle. Each child shares, holds onto the strand of yarn, and throws what remains of the yarn ball to the next raised hand. A web with twenty-six points, twenty-six strands, forms.

I get an email today from a friend concerned about an extreme statement his friend makes on social media. Should I talk to him about it? he asks. I don’t know, I think. Do you know him outside of social media circles?

Then each child helps wind the yarn back into a ball, sharing something deeper this time, retracing the yarn to the person before her. Doing so, she steps gently across the receding web, which represents the community that will ebb and flow and support life in that room all year.

If my friend’s friend were my friend, I think, I might ask him for some context or explanation. Community itself is context: it’s the whites of your eyes, the bad day I know you’re having, the book we’re reading together, the reaction you have to your brother, whom I also know.

There’s this scene in To Kill a Mockingbird: Jem and Scout find Atticus at the county jail one night defending Tom from a lynch mob. To Scout, the men are only “shadows” and “solid shapes,” hidden in the summer heat under drawn-down hats. Then she breaks into “the circle of light” around Atticus and recognizes one of the men.

“Don’t you remember me, Mr. Cunningham? I’m Jean Louise Finch. You brought us some hickory nuts one time, remember?”

Mr. Cunningham tries to retain his anonymity in the face of Scout’s friendly onslaught, but he eventually gives in, telling Scout that, yes, he would certainly tell his son Walter that Scout said hey. Then Mr. Cunningham and the whole mob melt into the night.

Each morning this way, the ball of yarn exhales and inhales in the children’s hands, then it rests near the heart of the classroom, waiting again for the next day’s circle time. At the end of the year, the students snip pieces from it to tie their hair, mark their books, and decorate their sneakers.

[Photo by suziesparkle. Used by permission through a Creative Commons license. I cropped and brightened it.]