Nominating 1st Graders for Teacher of the Year
The Secret to their Syllabus? Fluency in the Most Important Language
I took part of the day to serve as one of the WATCH D.O.G.S. at my six-year-old’s school. Mainly, this entails hanging out with his class - which in and of itself is a source of great fascination to parents wondering what their child does between the time they board the bus and the time they return.
It should be noted that my six-year-old is in a dual language class where half of the day their instruction is in English and half of the day it’s in Spanish.
I arrived for the Spanish portion.
At that particular moment, the class was gathered in a circle about to begin passing around a stuffed animal that played music. It was part of a fun, Spanish-vocabulary-learning game.
My son immediately went over to me, took my hand and created a space in the circle for me.
As the teacher was explaining the rules, one girl kept looking over at me and saying, “She’s saying…” and then she would quickly try to translate the teacher’s Spanish for me.
She felt it was quite urgent that I understand the game, and it was readily evident that she saw no reason to believe I understood the Spanish.
A couple boys next to me also watched me closely as the teacher gave instructions. Each of them whispered a lifeline in my direction:
“Do you understand her?”
“Do you know what she said?”
How could they possibly be aware that I know almost no Spanish!?
Ok, fair enough. They were 100% correct. I was genuinely lost.
What amazed me, though, was both the class's immediate recognition that I was out of my element and their immediate desire to build a bridge to bring me in. As much as they wanted to play-and-learn, they were equally focused on making sure everyone in the room felt included, most especially the non-Spanish-speaking adult.
Within minutes, all of my expectations were turned upside.
Here I thought I would come to our local elementary school and help supervise, tutor or provide available help wherever needed. Turns out I was among the many students being taught that day.
Taught that the biggest gift we can give the obvious newcomer or fish-out-of-water is proactive welcome. What would we do differently next time we see that person/people in one of our familiar contexts?
Taught that no matter what we are teaching, presenting, or passing along… if the training is going to prove formative in any meaningful way, people need both the information and a sense of belonging. Relationship is central to learning.1 In what ways do our teaching environments engender a sense of belonging?2
Taught that children are among our very best teachers precisely because they have not lost sight of the priority to welcome, love, and connect - the bedrock of any substantive teaching, coaching, or mentoring. Do we have any opportunities to be in spaces where we might do some fresh learning from children?
(Ok. Making them the teacher in every situation may not quite work. Still, when we put them in the front of the classroom - or cockpit - it’s fascinating to consider just how much is, in fact, being taught)
Granted, when it comes to children teaching, there are no promises on what the lesson will be. They rarely post a syllabus. But since they have notable fluency in the universal language of love, the lesson is guaranteed to stick.
Parker Palmer wrote an entire book about this called To Know as we are Known: A Spirituality of Education. Here is a brief glimpse of how he understands the pursuit of truth as a fundamentally relational endeavor: “The English word "truth" comes from a Germanic root that also gives rise to our word "troth," as in the ancient vow "I pledge thee my troth." With this word one person enters a covenant with another, a pledge to engage in mutually accountable and transforming relationship...to know in truth is to become betrothed, to engage the known with one's whole self...to know in truth is to be known as well.”
Palmer reflecting on conventional learning spaces: “When the chairs are arranged facing the lectern, row upon row, the learning space is confined to a narrow alley of attention between each student and the teacher. Such an arrangement speaks. It says that in this space there is no room for students to relate to teach other and each other’s thoughts; there is no invitation to a community of troth; there is no hospitality.”
Welcome, love, and connect …. A great basis for living life. ‘Let the little children come unto me’