Joseph O’Neill
I recently spent a wonderful Saturday afternoon at Still Waters. My three boys (aged 9-12) tagged along, and immediately on entering they got stuck into chess, Apples to Apples, and (new to me) Mancala–a rather beautiful game that involves moving gobbling green pebbles around a patterned board. As the young Bushwickians began to happily pile in, it was striking how safe they felt in this space–safe to sit down and start scribbling and drawing and reading, safe to approach the very kindly grown-up volunteers for advice and laughter. (There are some really terrific grownups here, if I may respectfully say so.) After we’d all warmed up our brains, I offered the children a story premise, namely a letter that begins as follows: “Dear Mrs Monkey, How are you? I have some good news and bad news. The bad news is that I accidentally swallowed your son/daughter. The good news is that…” There followed a half hour or so of concentrated and happy writing, during which time the young geniuses (and older geniuses, too; everyone took part in the exercise) wrote (and ins some cases illustrated) their version of the finished story. When we were done, those who wished to read out their story did so–and again, it was a sign of the children’s creative and emotional security that very nearly all of the twenty or so present was proud to share their work.
Oh, and lots of pizza was gobbled up. And somebody did skateboarding tricks outside. And Emmanuel lost TWO milk teeth in the course of the afternoon!
My great thanks to Stephen for inviting me. Still Waters is a precious thing.