{"id":132,"date":"2017-11-04T03:06:23","date_gmt":"2017-11-04T03:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/labschool\/?p=132"},"modified":"2017-12-14T02:10:22","modified_gmt":"2017-12-14T02:10:22","slug":"132","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/labschool\/2017\/11\/04\/132\/","title":{"rendered":"The Halls and Walls of SCCS: An Alumni Tour with Brittany Collins ’08"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nA native of the Pioneer Valley, Brittany Collins graduated from the Campus School in 2008 before attending the Williston Northampton School and Smith College. She has published writing with English Journal and Literacy & NCTE, of the National Council of Teachers of English; Insight, of Dana Farber Cancer Institute; The Mighty; and Voices & Visions. The editor-in-chief of the latter, her editorial work was profiled by Ms. magazine and shared by the National Museum of Women in the Arts, as well as Gloria Steinem. She spent a morning wandering the halls of her alma mater and writes, below, of her return.<\/em><\/p>\n

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It feels like returning home after the first semester of college\u2014warm, familiar, and necessarily changed. \u00a0As I drive into the round-about of the Smith College Campus School, I am transported to my days in the backseat\u2014to Radio Disney sing-alongs and afternoons of \u201cSafety Duty\u201d when, in sixth grade, I donned an orange vest and opened van doors for parents and their backpacked children. \u00a0I can almost hear the excitement of those afternoons on the portico as I pull into a parking space.\u00a0 And when I step out of my car, I am greeted by others\u2019 giggles. \u00a0The climax of recess unfolds before me. \u00a0It smells of fallen leaves, and an array of vests and jackets lays strewn across the wooden fence. \u00a0Students call from creaking swings as their friends play flag-football on the lawn. \u00a0The bouncing of rubber balls on blacktop forms a resonant staccato, and I smile as one third grader adjusts her stilts and wobbles toward the basketball net\u2014an activity that I, too, enjoyed when this was my playground ten years ago.<\/p>\n

The doors of the Campus School are still painted a friendly teal. \u00a0As I enter, a handwritten sign offers welcome. \u00a0I am later told that this epistolary greeting is written every morning, inviting students\u2019 responses to a question or fun fact. \u00a0One sign showcased lines from a Mary Oliver poem:<\/p>\n

\u201cPay attention.
\nBe astonished.
\nTell about it\u201d<\/p>\n

–three dictums that seem particularly apt for my returning to the Campus School.<\/p>\n

To gather myself amid the familiar and new, I begin my day with a tour of the halls. \u00a0The walls of this school once held my paintings, once structured my growth, and I am eager to learn what of them has changed– and what has endured.<\/p>\n

Paradox imbues experiences of returning; in her article \u201cReflections on Portraiture: A Dialogue Between Art and Science,\u201d educational portraitist Sara Lawrence Lightfoot writes of \u201cfundamental polarities\u201d and the \u201cconvergence of opposites\u201d (8), a conception echoed by Parker J. Palmer who writes in The Courage to Teach<\/em> that \u201cpracticing paradox\u201d and \u201cholding the tension of opposites\u201d elicits holistic learning opportunities for teachers and students alike. \u00a0I reflect on the pulls of both past and present; tradition and innovation; stasis and fluidity as I round the corners of SCCS, directing my \u201cattention\u201d to that which lends \u201castonish[ment].\u201d<\/p>\n

Keeping Lightfoot\u2019s idea of portraiture in mind, I am pleased to find a wall filled with vibrant cray-pas drawings. \u00a0\u201cAbstraction,\u201d their signage tells me, is the theme of this second grade art unit, inspired by the works of Georgia O\u2019Keefe. \u00a0Yellows and blues form their own paradox, jumping from construction paper in lines curved and rigid.<\/p>\n