Educating Mindful Minds

Mary Maloy and Kristi Joesting (Oneka Elementary) were awarded a Glasrud Fellowship to attend the Educating Mindful Minds Conference in New York City in the summer of 2018.  The conference focused on the latest brain and learning research and its implications on education.  They gained a great amount of tools and useful information to help their students with anxiety, executive deficits, ADHD and depression.

While in New York City, they had the opportunity to visit the Ground Zero Memorial and took a picture of a tree that survived 9/11 and was nurtured back to health. They likened the tree to their students; with the right amount of care and nurturing they see their students grow and blossom. After a month under rubble, a nearly lifeless callery pear tree was found by 9/11 workers who were determined to save it.

One can only imagine the grim job that 9/11 workers had at Ground Zero, working day in and day out to clean up the wreckage of such devastation. And one can only imagine the surprise they must have felt when, a month into the job, they discovered a bit of life sticking out from the rubble – the charred remains of a callery pear tree. With little more than a few leaves issuing from a single branch – with snapped roots and burned and broken boughs – this perseverant tree was sent to Van Cortlandt Park for convalescence under the care of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. Park workers say they weren’t sure the tree would make it, but the little tree that could, did. In the spring of 2002 she sprouted a riot of leaves; a dove made a nest in her boughs.