WEDNESDAY, APRIL 7, 2021 - A VIEW ON EDUCATION - PART II

 WEDNESDAY, APRIL 7, 2021 - A VIEW ON EDUCATION - PART II

THE “SPARK”

As mentioned before, I’ve been substitute teaching for a couple of months - and I’m wondering where the “Spark” is.  Yes, the pandemic has separated campus students from remote students, the education is mostly online.  Maybe the “Spark” is harder to see but it can happen.

By the “Spark”, I mean the sparkle in the eyes, the “ah-ha” moment.  I remember a friend who used a motion for the spark.  He put his right hand in the air as if he was screwing in a light bulb, then he turned his hand - AND VOILA -the (virtual) light bulb went on, that was the ‘spark’ - the time we got it!!!

As an educator, I want students to reach that ‘Ah Ha’ moment when I can look in their eyes and I can tell they got it.   Back when I taught more programming when somebody understood a particular method of coding - and when a whole class understood - “Oh - I have to define my variables first”, or “sequence, selection, and repetition” in coding.  Those were the days I didn’t need to get paid - the understanding of my students was my pay!!!

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Off to a tangent (that is not original to me).  Toddlers demonstrate this spark so effectively.  They learn they can self-propel on the swings. They learn they can float in the pool. They discover new food, the spark occurs more frequently.  (Granddaughter Leah didn't want ice cream, but her sister Abby loved ice cream - and soon Leah had the spark that ice cream was delicious. I loved the pictures that my grandchildren did - mostly with scribbles and lots of colors (it seems like purple was a favorite).  They were being creative.

THEN - slam - when they started to love art, started to love an event, adult SLAMMED the door and said (using the coloring example), “Oh honey, you NEED to color inside the lines”, “Oh dear, do you think tree trunks are purple, you should color them brown”, “Sweetie, houses have vertical sides.”   We take the creative nature out of the children.  Correcting children to color “properly” must not have applied to Vincent van Gogh or Pablo Picasso!!

My two local grandchildren love to play (as all kids do).  They played in a 4 and 5-year-old soccer group.  But, the coaches seemed to want to teach them the best practices - and not just to kill the ball.  “This is how we dribble, this is how you control the ball, this is how we shoot”.  

As a child, in our neighborhood, there was a large empty lot.  The kids would gather there and the older kids (I was probably 11 or 12) made up games for the younger kids.  We played “Little Kids Up” in softball.  The older kids played in the field all the time, and the younger kids got to bat and run. (I think at the time, I wanted to bat too, but looking back it was a good and loving process for a mixed age of children).  

At other times, we laid out a track oval and had races - but the slower kids got head starts.  We did relays and throwing the rock (like a shot put), and long jump.  It was kids - and kids only.  No dad came out to tell us how to do track or softball.  And our childhood was better for it.

I know of kids where the parents (especially dad) have pushed the kids at too young of an age to get to be good.  “Dear, you have to be good to get a college scholarship”.  Parents send their kids to soccer camp at the age of seven or eight (with the expectation NOT that they have fun, but that they get good at soccer!!

I have a bias that education tends to take that creativity out of kids.  And, with taking that creativity away, they conform to the rules and expectations.  

As adults, we talk of the “road less taken”, of being “transformed by the renewing of your mind” and yet we languish in formalities.

But, to correct me, yes, rules are important.  But, something you need to break the rules.  The poet e.e. Cummings wrote his poems in all lower-case letters.  As mentioned before, van Gogh didn’t always follow the rules.  BUT, I am willing to state that after a day of painting, the rules of cleaning your brushes were part of van Gogh’s regiment or Cummings had done other writings following the rules (and still spelled things correctly).

So, how do we get the spark into children when we educate?  How can it be programmed in an “Ah-ha” moment?  

To me, there was a point where I accepted that ‘learning is intrinsic’.  I don’t learn because of grades, I learn because I like learning.  I feel good when I open my mind and learn.  Even reading novels - allows us to go outside the lines - and appreciate plots, and characters, and stories.  

I must keep learning (and, I think that year of retirement stifled that learning, so I found deep inside me an alternative that I enjoy greatly!!!)

LOVE WINS

HUGS!!!

Karen