Deep Dive: Blocks

and most importantly an update from Kristi in Pasadena

At 5:55 am on Wednesday morning, Kristi and her family received an evacuation alert. They jumped in their car and drove 30 miles away to a hotel, unsure if they’d ever see their house again.

The perimeter of the fire came within blocks of their home. They were able to return home on Sunday evening. And while their home is OK, their neighborhood is devastated. She and her family are so incredibly grateful for their resilient community, the tapestry of helpers, and the firefighters risking their lives right now to fight the wildfires.

Kristi may share more in the weeks to come, but for now we want to offer three resources of ways to help those who lost so much:

• Los Angeles Mutual Aid has compiled a huge doc full of resources

• Another big compilation doc of various ways to help and donate

• How to help Latine families and Black families displaced by the fires

There is perhaps some poetic justice in the fact we chose construction as our first deep dive, an area defined by children’s imagination, creativity, and resilience. As Southern California burns, there are already those on their feet, ready to build, ready to help, ready to make things safer, better, stronger.

As you watch children build this month, as you consider the role of blocks in your room, can you hold in your head and heart that the moments the blocks fall and children feel their feelings, then dive in and rebuild, may be the moments that echo through a lifetime?

Things will be lost, things will be destroyed, things you thought would stay will topple down, and it hurts. But you can rebuild, we will rebuild.

We are keeping with our regular posting schedule, because out there in your classrooms are the children who need love, and care, and a chance to see that you can, with support, with help, with others, rebuild.

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Next week: a look inside a classroom and after that: Ask Us Anything. Submit questions, here.

What are you interested in going deep on next? Let us know in the comments!