The Right Answer

The memory of a long lost teaching lesson, designed years ago, keeps coming to mind during this historic world-wide pandemic which has closed our schools, shut down restaurants, and ended sporting events, concerts and our life as we knew it.   We are all home, waiting for the curve, hoping for a vaccine, listening to the television for any bit of good news.  Many of us, if we are lucky and are still employed, work from home.  Schooling is now happening at kitchen tables, in home offices and on couches across the country.

Teachers, like me, are sitting in front of laptops posting lessons and responding to student questions through email.  No one is wildly waving his/her hand in the air, hoping to be called on.  No student makes an off-hand remark that throws the lesson off track for a moment but also makes us all laugh.  No one flips a water bottle, tips back in his/her chair, or asks “When does this hour end?”  It’s quiet.  Too quiet.  Teaching has become strange and eerily quiet work.

In the midst of this quiet, I’m prone to daydreaming and pondering.  That is when a memory of a lesson from long ago tugs at me, begging to be reconsidered.   It’s the lesson my former teaching partner and I created back in a time when we designed our own curriculum.  For someone like me, who considers teaching more of an art form than an exact science, I found the task of curriculum design exciting.  I loved imagining which  assignments I could create that would tap into student’s interests and willingness to play while also engaging them in worthwhile reading, writing, and thinking tasks .  For a unit we had done on the elements of science fiction, my teaching partner and I required the students write the exposition for a science fiction narrative and create a shoebox diorama of the futuristic setting as described in their writing.  The students loved this assignment, especially making the diorama scene.

The day the dioramas were due was always a bit of a whirlwind in that there never seemed to be enough counter space to display their works of art or time to fully appreciate each child’s contribution, but we would try.  Each of the kids set his/her diorama and story start on his/her desk while we walked around to “ooh” and “ahh” at the creativity.  One year, I meandered over to a beautifully designed diorama done by Sarah, who had always shown herself to be quite bright.  Her diorama, though artfully completed, baffled me.  Most student dioramas depicted scenes complete with flying cars, robots, and even other planets.  Sarah’s diorama looked like a scene from Little House on the Prairie with little shirts hanging on a clothesline, rows of corn, and a log cabin.  I searched for the right thing to say as Sarah stood alongside her desk.

I started with praise; it’s always good to start there.  I marveled at the little stalks of corn and the tiny fabric t-shirts  she had hot glued to the clothesline, and then I wondered aloud, “Sarah, your imagined scene of the future is so unique.”  Then softly I continued, “Did you notice that?  Did you understand the assignment?”  Her confidence never wavered as she then explained to me she had, indeed, understood the assignment and that “in the future everything will spin so out of control we will have to start over, start fresh.  We will return to the ways of the pioneers.””  She finished explaining and I wanted to hug her.  Maybe I even did–I can’t remember.  I do remember how proud I was of this 12 year old girl who thought for herself, stood tall when her ideas differed from those around her, and explained her thinking with words that were wise beyond her years.

Sarah’s anwer to my assignment was not what I expected.  I had anticipated the flying cars and robots in the dioramas around the room.  It was Sarah’s answer that surprised me and propelled me to consider another way of thinking.   That’s why this memory won’t let me rest.  It’s the realization that distance learning doesn’t allow for those longer, more in-depth conversations that teach both me and my students.   So I’ll teach from a distance for awhile and for the health and well-being of our community, but I certainly hope it’s not the way of the future.