Making Tikis in the Classroom

I was back in my son’s classroom, in an after-school effort to help the kids build Tikis as part of their study of Easter Island. His school has an amazing program where the whole school studies one continent a year, each classroom focusing on one country. This culminates in giant classroom projects, a school-wide evening of presentations, song, dance, costumes, food, pen pal letters, and every possible form of learning about different countries as part of the continent. If you stay in the school for 5 years, you’ll have learned something about all 5 major continents.

When I was in elementary school, I learned the names of the continents, but my education predated the current pedagogy of multiculturalism. I didn’t learn anything about Polynesian peoples, and on top of that, I didn’t learn much about volcanoes. So when the information came home that this year’s country of study was Easter Island, I was humbled by ignorance. I did much better when he was in kindergarten, and we got off to a fabulous start studying Europe. I could fake my way through the study of Austria based on the little bit I knew, the role of Vienna and Freud in psychology, my patchy memory of the lyrics to Edelweiss and, of course, one year’s attendance at the Sound of Music sing-along. But there’s nothing for me to fake about Easter Island, so I’ve just had to go out and learn it myself (and hound my son for details of what he’s learned).

Lesson one: I’ve been calling them tikis, when in fact, they should be called moai.

Lesson two: It’s an island, but it’s really the top of a volcano. I don’t even know enough about geography (geology?) to know what that means, but my son tells me the place is tree-less and now, in our 21st century mindset he’s being taught that humans willingly deforest the planet, and this unchecked human greed-run-amok turned the island into a desolate, cannibalistic society that has vanished but for the 70 feet stone statues to gods we in the Western world don’t acknowledge. So he’s being taught politically correct history, which I guess will be evened out by my persistent chirping of, “No Tiki, no laundry.” I can’t help myself.

Something I came across that my son hasn’t yet: the statue-toppling era, where all of the moai that had been erected were toppled face down, necks broken, supposedly part of deadly tribal rivalry. An historic precursor to cow tipping in the Midwest, no doubt, although this might not be a complete parallel.

Anyway, this year it’s Easter Island for us, thus it’s no surprise that the kids are making Tikis. Kids designed them, and parents were invited in to help transfer the 2-dimensional drawing ideas onto four feet high, 10” diameter tubes, which will later be covered over in papier mâché, then painted. What fun it is to scrunch up newspaper and pull long pieces of masking tape and “supervise” a small group of 9 and 10 year olds as they laugh their way through the work. Our Tiki’s eyes were lopsided, the mouth crooked and slightly off center, and its feet were mismatched. This, despite the teacher’s clear instructions that balance was the key to a good Tiki.

It was a treat to laugh with my son’s friends, to share with his new best buddy (this year it’s a girl – hmmmm) the old standby, “you can pick your friends and you can pick your nose but you can’t pick your friend’s nose.” To watch them struggle to tear masking tape, to witness their difficulty translating 2- to 3- dimensions. To see them wander off in conversation, to offer up sincere praise to the teacher for his work on a Tiki (“Good job, Mr. ______”). To watch my son’s young friend bend over in giggles, clap her hands, jump on one foot, pure emotions coursing freely through her body, and to experience her building a relationship with me as a triangle point in her friendship with my son. She offered me her leftover carrots from lunch (yes, I actually asked the kids if they had any snacks since it turns out I still get hungry in the after-school snack hour), and was pleased that if I ate them, she could then tell her Mom she’d finished them. I left one for her, and told her that she should finish it, that way when she told her Mom she had some carrots, it would be true. “Don’t lie to your Mother, even about carrots,” I offered, and she happily munched the last one.

She turned to me at one point and said, “Your hair is . . . curly!”

“You just noticed?!” I replied, with mock seriousness.

She couldn’t stop giggling. Then she turned it into a gender/power game, by not telling my son what it was she had just noticed about me – this became her secret, her temporary hold over him. He could barely contain his frustration at being left out of her inner circle where he had just been reveling. He was begging her to tell him, begging me to tell him. After a few minutes where she clearly was not going to relent, I took pity on him and told him, out of her earshot. As soon as his hunger to know subsided, she flipped position and eagerly told him that she just noticed his Mom has curly hair – she was now without her powerful hold over him, and returned to offering up the gift of sharing, restoring the security of their bond.

In capturing this moment, I have built my own Tiki: a small, digital shrine to the beauty and wonder of childhood, a testament to my deeply stirred belief and faith in the presence of powers so much larger than me. I offer it up for any and all to see, and here it will remain until something/someone comes along and topples the world of written blogs.