Why this blog?

"... Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves ... Do not search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. The point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." - Letters to a Young Artist, R. M. Rilke

Rooted in the promise and challenge of growth ...

these are letters from a young teacher.

Friday, August 27, 2010

Dam.

It's amazing how topics of interest surface in conversation.

There I was, sitting with a student who was playing with Legos when another student came by and picked up a Lego parrot, colored red with green and yellow paint on the wings. She showed it to me, and was telling me a little about it.

"It reminds me of a story," I said, "About a woman in Belize who was trying to protect those parrots from a dam that was being built." (True story. Excellent book by Bruce Barcott, Seattle journalist, called "The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw" - don't let the title deter you)

"Tell us! Tell us!" they said, so I explained a little more ... until I realized that none of them really knew what a dam was and I sure as heck couldn't explain it well enough. But why would you bend over backwards explaining things? Why not make them think a little?

"Think of this," I said, "Think of a long river that doesn't have a lot of water in it, and people want to make a pool to swim in somewhere along the river. How do they stop the water so it collects into a pool, instead of continuing to flow?" The ideas poured out: "Rocks!" "Your hands." (Like at our local beach Golden Gardens) "A wall." [And my favorite:] "A train!" ... So we looked on the Internet to find pictures of dams that had been built in the United States, as well as the beavers who first started the practice.

The next day was a trip to a local park. During free play, I noted that if I poured water down the walkway, it would be kind of like a river. "I wonder if we could practice making a dam here." I started collecting leaves and little rocks and sticks to start the dam, and pretty soon a good four or five kids were helping, so I stepped back. It covered the width of the entire walkway by the end, and I filled up our water jug at the fountain. "Ready?" Down went the water.

The experiment went ... alright. The water did begin to pool a little, but eventually worked its way through, giving the kids the feeling that it had failed. I tried to explain that it's ok for a little water to go through - the question is: did it pool enough at the top? Still no. Hmm.

I could have let it go there and waited to see if any more questions emerged from the kids' thoughts. I could have thought about dams more abstractly, of the science and mathematical thinking at the root of it, and let provocation ideas come from that.

But no. I was a stubborn teacher who got fixated on making a dam.

And that is how I found myself the next day trying to facilitate a dam in the dirt outside the school building, moving kids around so they didn't step on it and controlling who got the spray bottles when and directed each step of the process. No experimentation. No open questions. No exploration. Dam.

Yet, how illustrative it is of a teacher's tendencies in teaching a concept. Instead of digging deeper into the concept to find what there is to explore, we try to teach a concept by illustrating how it is supposed to work, or how we know it work. This is a good illustration of how the concept has been applied in today's world, but it doesn't allow for students to experiment and explore how that concept can be applied to tomorrow's challenges. And that's what education needs to be, and what teaching needs to allow a lot more room for.

With a little distance from it all now, I realize that sometimes what I consider my greatest asset as a teacher can also quickly become my greatest vice: my own sense of wonder and curiosity about the world. At some point this week, I let the student in me overwhelm my role as the observant, patient educator who knows when to change a classroom environment with provocating objects and materials, and when to stand back and let her students engage with that environment. And that is the greatest disappointment of all: I was not the teacher I strive and know myself to be. Dam dam dam.

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