Daily Rituals

Daily Rituals

by Rita Sorrentino

Even in retirement, I am an earlier riser. Weather it’s a biological component or a clever strategy mastered early on to be the first of my siblings to occupy the bathroom; I enjoy being a morning person. I can be quiet, reflective and peaceful or busy as a beaver doing yesterday’s chores, planning for the day ahead, and extracting two hours worth of productivity from 60 slow ticking minutes. When I came across Daily Rituals: How Great Minds Make Time, Find Inspiration, and Get to Work: How Artists Work by Masson Curry, I felt that in some respects I had at least one ‘habitude’ of these brilliant minds. Being a morning person gives me time to mosey around, read myself awake and become ready for the day.

The book is a good read taken in small doses. The idiosyncrasies of these creative geniuses are not meant as models for cultivating our talents, but for establishing the importance of rituals in nurturing our creative side; finding time to do our best work. Walking, sticking to a schedule, and consuming plenty of caffeine heightened artistic expressions for these great minds. Other habits included Ben Franklin’s air bathing, Beethoven’s counting out precisely 60 coffee beans per cup, and Alice Munro’s (2013 Nobel Prize in Literature) ability to write in-between times.

The concept of Daily Rituals got me thinking about our students. Rituals provide them with a sense of purpose and continuity. It offers them a framework for doing their best work, if ritual does not evolve into rigidity. And (drum roll) ritual can and should include play. At a time when our educational system is obsessed with standardization and high stakes testing, many of our students are pressured from all sides: over-scheduled activities, competitive youth sports, social media status, and homework overload, Time to free play, build, color/paint, or daydream a little is noticeably missing even in most kindergarten classes. Yet, play and performance are important components of the learning process and key elements for engaging in today’s society. Whether with a sandbox, painting easel, cardboard box or digital device, play gives students an opportunity to discover, experiment and problem-solve.

It always strikes me as ironic that the success of Finland’s educational system and high rate of literacy attracts interest and inquiry. However, their readiness-to-learn philosophy emphasized in early childhood and kindergarten is largely ignored. In learning through play, formal instruction in reading and math is replaced by instruction on nature, animals, and the world around them. Through play, children learn to carefully use of materials, cooperation and communication. Perhaps if we emulated the emphasis on developing social skills early on, our students will be prepared and eager to learn in more formal environments.

Interestingly, successful business companies endorse “play” time in their employees’ work schedules. Before Google, Apple and Hewlett-Packard, 3M offered employees time off to explore their own projects, and voilà – post-it notes and masking tape were born! This concept of having time to explore, learn, and create is making inroads into educational environments. The “Genius Hour” popularized by author, Daniel Pink, is defined as giving employees (we can translate students) 60 minutes a week to work on new ideas or master new skills. Giving students real time in a classroom to follow their passion can result in kindling curiosity, fostering creativity and encouraging communication. Definitely, worth a try.

So even in retirement with the luxury of no deadlines, the genius hour looks like a ritual worth pursing. Walking the hilly terrain of Drexel Hill will clear my head from overdosing on the news and energize my good intention of researching family history. Then by increasing physical stamina in aging joints and building genealogical background for family tree, I’ll be ready to journey through some of Italy’s historic cities and experience the land and culture of my ancestors from head to toe.

Rita Sorrentino is a recently retired teacher from Overbrook Elementary School. Rita currently facilitates PhilWP’s Tech Tuesday and serves on the PhilWP Journal editorial review board.

Rita joined the Philadelphia Writing Project in 1994 as a teacher consultant.