Under My Roof

by Rachel Bloomquist Grade 1 teacher and senior lower grades teacher

Backyard Birds, Robert Bateman, 1944 (age 14)

What’s been happening under your roof? Have you been experimenting with sourdough or rediscovering puzzles and board games? After school closed abruptly mid-March the students of St. Timothy’s Classical Academy have been studying from home. Although none of us dreamed in September that we would be running a Christian, classical school from home, teachers and students have been thrust into learning how to use technology to teach and to learn. Despite its clear limitations, some of us with a healthy suspicion of too much media have been pleasantly surprised by the rich cultural offerings of art gallery tours, concerts, theatre, and opera streaming to us in our living rooms to supplement our curriculum. Some students have been drawn into science experiments on weather, or the world of castles and knights. When students are not doing math, parsing French and Latin verbs, lost in Mordor or exploring Narnia, artists have been busy at their craft. One student wrote with delight that she has had more time to do things such as baking banana bread, reading Anne of Green Gables, playing, “and annoying her brothers.“ Our grade 3 and 4 students were assigned a challenging little essay on the causes, events, and consequences of the American Revolution. Here is an amusing update from one parent, on things that have recently caught the interest of his son, Japheth, who is in Grade 3. “Japheth was very interested in the American Revolution and seems to really understand the event. He even set up the Battle of Bunker Hill with 150 toy soldiers and explained the battle to me many times - Washington was the General. He also read an 'I Survived' book about the Revolution. I must admit I felt like I was helping him write a first year University paper in 16 sentences. We had a family talent show via Zoom the other day with my wife's family - for his talent he read the report to all his American relatives." From the windows of our homes, chattering squirrels and families of foxes beckon the children outside. Perhaps they will discover there the first wooly caterpillars inching along at their feet or new species of birds to add to their lists. There are delightful reports of noisy merlins nesting in trees close to home, or pairs of Canada Geese showing off their new offspring. Young gardeners are learning how to plan vegetable patches, to plant the beds, and all about the ongoing care for new life, as they water and tend to new shoots.  One of the other beautiful and unexpected things during this unusual time has been the opportunity to worship God in our homes with our school and our church communities and to be drawn from there into the wider world. In both, we enter the profound mystery that Jesus, the divine Word, makes his home with us.  “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word, and my soul shall be healed.” Our Father, we pray that all our awakening curiosities and passions will be channeled into your good purposes for our students and the community of St. Timothy’s and for the healing of our world.