Settling Into Quiet

Thursdays start out with a different rhythm; at 8:30 quiet settles over campus as we all attend Meeting for Worship. Yesterday was our first Meeting for Worship of the school year.

For some of us, this is a new experience. Second graders spent time talking on Wednesday about what Meeting for Worship is like, and talked about strategies that help them adjust to a slower pace. Genevieve shared the book Listen, by Gabi Snyder, which asked students to listen to the quiet and then to listen past the quiet to hear the voice inside themselves. The class then practiced listening past the quiet for about 5 minutes, after which students were invited to share what they heard in the stillness. Students noticed their heartbeat, traffic noises outside, or footsteps overhead. When they headed for Meeting on Thursday, second graders went to the Meetinghouse ready to try out the strategies they had discovered for keeping their bodies still and to listen to their inner voices. Some returning students remembered that they enjoyed this moment of peaceful togetherness in their time at school.