Mountain View Friends

The Children and the Life of the Meeting (CALM) committee has continued its work in the past year focusing on several core tasks: maintaining a strong First Day School program on Sunday mornings from September through May that meets the needs of our community's children; participating actively in the Meeting's continuing concern for the safety of all our children; continuing to encourage the participation of parents and especially other adults in planning and helping with programs and activities for children; and keeping before the Meeting a broad concern for recognizing and including our children as an integral part of the life of the Meeting.

First Day School. 24 adults have been part of teaching First Day school this year. This did not include uncounted others who came as invited guests or to be a second (or maybe third or fourth) adult during a First Day morning class. We worked in teams in five age groupings this year, in the nursery, a kindergarten through second grade group, a third to fifth grade group, a resurrected junior young Friends (sixth through eighth grade) group, and the Senior Young Friends or high school group. Several teachers worked in more than one age group. Flexibility continues to be a requirement as attendance fluctuates and different groups of children may be present from week to week. Taking all five age groups together our average First Day attendance is probably sixteen to twenty; but we have a list of children who have attended First Day school this year that numbers at least 37 children.

Nursery Teacher. We continued to benefit from having Marisa Howe as a regular paid teacher in the nursery, with the assistance of a volunteer second adult each Sunday. CALM feels this experiment was a great success, providing a familiar adult presence and a consistent and thoughtful routine pattern of activities each week. We have a new plan for the coming year, however, centered on an understanding that attentive childcare in a warm and loving setting is the primary need in this age group, rather than a high-content Friends curriculum. We hope to hire a regular lead childcare provider, both for Sunday mornings in the nursery and for regular monthly events requiring childcare, such as Meeting for Business, Spiritual Journeys, and Peace and Justice forums. This person could come from outside the Meeting community. We will continue to recruit volunteer "second adults" to assist with the nursery on Sunday mornings, as well as a second childcare person, who could be an adult or teenager, and either volunteer or paid.

Both the Junior and Senior Young Friends have been active groups. The Senior Young Friends have maintained an important peer support group and also continue to favor more structured topics of study, some led by the SYFs and others by adult teachers The newly activated Junior Young Friends have formed close ties.

Story Boxes. We have added to our experience with these teaching materials, both the original story materials based mainly on Bible stories and the newer set of materials developed by a group within Friends General Conference using stories about individual Quakers' lives and witness or core experiences and practices shared by Friends. As a way to continue exploring the possibilities for teaching First Day School using these materials, Susan Bailey, Pepper Goodrich and Jane Cahn are planning to teach the kindergarten through second grade group next year with a major focus on establishing a classroom atmosphere focused on use of the stories, and continuing opportunities for interested teachers to learn and practice how it's done We have continued the recent tradition of holding "intergenerational worship sharing groups" during the 10:30 worship hour whenever there is a fifth Sunday in a month (usually four times a year). Often the Young Friends have prepared queries and helped lead the groups, supplemented when needed by CALM committee members. This year we had some thoughtful discussions about how this process has been working. We know that a few Friends would much rather have our regular Meeting for Worship, especially when caught by surprise arriving to Meeting. We noted that often the small number of children in attendance has made the intergenerational sharing aspect less than successful, and heard concerns from some that the format as we have been following it is not really a comfortable one for most of the children. Some families with children intentionally do not attend Meeting on fifth Sundays. Others on our committee did not want to give up on this effort, valuing both the potential of the worship sharing format and the importance of regular opportunities for encounters between the adult meeting and the children. However, because of the timing of the fifth Sunday coming up on Memorial Day weekend, we agreed not to hold intergenerational worship sharing this time, so May 23 will be the last day of First Day School classes and May 30 the first day of taking children to the park. We would be glad to hear other Friends' experiences or hopes regarding future fifth Sunday plans, and will hope to have some discussion of this with the Worship and Ministry Committee.

Safety of Children in the Meeting has again been a continuing topic of concern in the CALM Committee. We look forward to continuing to work with the Response Committee as we develop more formal procedures and policies in this area, and consider practical areas where more adult attention may be needed.

We continue to treasure our experiences with the children of this Meeting, and invite all of you to find ways to join in with whatever kind of involvement is appropriate for you.

CALM Committee for 2009-2010: Eric Wright, clerk; Jim Hoffman, Dick Louden, Kedar Lutter and Joan Piasecki, at large members; Jackie Short and Susan Bailey, nursery co-clerks; Bente Birkland and Pepper Goodrich, K-2 co-clerks; Judy Danielson and Becky Lennon, 3rd-5th co-clerks; Penny Thron-Weber and Nora Sullivan, Junior Young Friends co-clerrks; Elizabeth Brown and Lisa Motz-Storey, Senior Young Friends co-clerks; Doren Day and Gail Mitchel, Child Care Arrangements Coordinators.