I've "felt" like a teacher all my life and have taught lots of things (various classes, swimming, dance, misc.), homeschooled our 2 children through 6th and 4th grades, and taught a year of school for a special needs class of 8 precious 2nd and 3rd graders.
I just lived (and worked) for the moments when they would light up. In everything we did, I really tried to see how I could approach it so each person would be able to access whatever it was (very different kids have very different learning modalities, abilities, challenges, tastes, etc.).
Granted, they were primary age (we weren't worried about careers yet), but my main thing was if, at the end of the day, they were excited because they had learned or done something (pretty much *anything*) I felt we'd won. (I guess you could say "shining eyes"). Even better was if I saw their parents' clouds beginning to lift and improve their optimism for their child's schooling, because then I felt like maybe the difference might last in their lives.
I also taught a half year of remedial (very) reading to middle schoolers, which was unbeleeevably rewarding. By then they have attitudes and decisions they've made about themselves... I knew I had to teach them reading, but my main purpose was to reignite in them some excitement about themselves and learning at all; just a little optimism - they were so defeated and resigned. I was rewarded by their complaining when we'd have to skip our phonics class - can you imagine!
Barbara.***********************************************************************************
Barbara, my sense is that the work you did with middle school kids in remedial reading may have had a bigger impact than the one you reference in your comment about how they "complained about skipping phonics".
I talk about that sort of impact in my own experience in the "Creativity: The Artist/Coach Within" discussion on the Tribal Leadership group page in a conversation with Lynn Safford. What I hadn't seen in my experience of being so influenced by a few teachers in my life, was the impact of WHO altered the way I saw myself.
I realized while reading your comment, that by middle school age for many children, there's a certain expectation about comments from our parents. For example, I was having a conversation with my 8 year old grandson a while back while building a Knex roller coaster, and mentioned something about what his mom thought about his creative skills, being so natural. I said something like, "mom says you're a natural at building things", and he responded without pause, "well sure, but she's my mom."
Surprised, I asked him what he meant. He said something like, "Well it's not like she's a teacher, or someone. She's my mom. She thinks I'm good at everything. She's supposed to." At the time I wondered about his comment, but forgot about it until I hear the perspective of your comment. It may be that at some point authorities other than our parents move up the scale of importance. In talking to Evan about "being bored" in his Montessori School, I can see the importance of those outside environments/people. He's been expecting the kinds of stimulation he's been used to at home, and in it's missing, he naturally wonders what's wrong with him, rather than being able to discern what's lacking in the environment.
Thinking back to those 2nd grade & 9th grade experiences with those teachers I speak about in my conversation with Lynn, I wonder. Maybe the impact was significant because it was NOT my parents that introduced new possibilities for seeing myself, as you were doing with your remedial reading students.
What if by the ripe old age of say 8, as Pauline's poem jokes, we really do have a different listening for what our parents are saying about us versus the other messages we are getting about ourselves out in the world and from other "experts" - people we believe to hold authority or expertise beyond even that of our parents? And what if those people, systems, and processes don't just educate us - fill us with facts and figures - but also shift our paradigms as we're growing?
The more I think of my experiences with being labeled in 2nd grade as "creative", the clearer it becomes to me that we dwell in a very narrow definition of creativity. Could we not view Pauline's field/cow/mud peak experience as "creation" - not "a creation", nor even as "a creative experience", but as "creation"?
I enjoyed an experience similar to Pauline's in my junior year in college. It went on for 6 months. I didn't know what to call it or how to hold it, it was just there. Later others told me it was a nirvanic experience. Some said it was God talking to me. Several people told me I was just going crazy - remember this was back in 1962. For several years following that experience, I tried to figure out what had happened. I finally chose to let it be. To just have had it and keep it to myself. After all, being one-with-the-universe isn't something people talked about at dinner parties back then.
That experience was triggered following a 4 hour conversation with one of my professors (one of those outside authorities I really respected) , while driving to and from NYC. He said something during that trip that short circuited my perception of myself and life, and sent me into this strange out-of-body and out-of-myself world - he shifted my life paradigm.
Like my 2nd grade teacher, or my professor, you as someone who cared, may have created new paradigms for your remedial reading students. That may be another way "creativity" shows up in the world.
Have you checked back on those remedial reading students of yours? Or maybe, have you seen one of them now working as a teacher? Or TV commentator? Have you thought about what paradigm shifts you may have created for those students?
Good work Barbara.
Brian
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