Yesterday a teacher I know shared a link with me, in which Avi, the children's author, told a story from his past of a young girl he'd met. She had great writing ability, but over a period of many years her ability seemed to deteriorate. Here's a link to the story if you're curious. It brought up the question in me: If a child has a love for something, can that enthusiasm and interest be driven out of the child by teachers who are directed to follow a mandated curriculum? Can teachers, who are simply doing their jobs as intended, teach away that love by taking the joy out of it and making it something routine?
I spent the better part of the day processing this idea in the back of my head. It reminded me of a TED talk about education I listened to not long ago. The presenter told the story of a day he encountered a kindergarten girl drawing a picture in class. He asked her what she was drawing, and she responded, "God." He told her that nobody really knows what God looks like. The little girl kept on drawing and replied, "They will in a minute."
I thought of that story because I see so many times during the course of a school year how young kids can think they are great at something simply because they enjoy it. Take drawing for example: I don't think it's a stretch to say that most kids younger than 7 would say they're good at drawing because they like to do it. But as they get older, they begin bowing to cultural norms and comparative standards, and several of them will decide they don't measure up to "good" anymore. At which point drawing becomes a chore. I was always the writer kid growing up, and even though I'm primarily a visual learner, I have to force myself to integrate visual cues into my teaching. Just in the past week I created a poster to hang in my classroom reminding my students of steps involved in problem solving, and the amount of time and energy and thought I put into getting this poster just right was probably ridiculous. I likely could have made a poster in five minutes that would have gotten the job done just as well, but because I don't have a lot of confidence with drawing and I knew how public this would be, I went over the top in my planning because I didn't want it to look stupid and figured that's probably the direction it was headed if I wasn't careful. I had any love of drawing driven out of me while in school.
But what drove it out of me? Or was it something that just naturally faded because I didn't have the desire to develop it? It never really was a love, as in something that had potential to evolve into a defining characteristic of who I would become. Writing was always there in some form, away from school, on its own. I had a handful of teachers over the years that greatly encouraged me as I tried to develop that ability, but I can't think of a teacher that would have brought something to me that was so counterproductive it would have turned me off for good, or even started me down that path.
Therefore, I have concluded (after only sort-of thinking about it for a few hours) that a teacher really can't drive out a love. Even that girl Avi wrote about. She may have had ability, but I don't think she really, truly had a love for it. Or if she did, it was more likely the pressures and dynamics of public school had more of an influence on her deteriorating written voice than anything else, particularly if she began adopting age-appropriate bad habits. Maybe she outgrew the beginnings of a love that never had the chance to take hold of her. And who knows -- maybe if she had the right teacher come along at the right time, that could have made the difference for her and brought her to a whole new level of artistic expression. But it seems that wasn't the case.
But I believe that for the teachers who keep trying, the ones who want to bring out the best in their students, the ones who fight through the frustrations and anxieties of working inside an ever-increasingly complex education system -- they're the ones who could someday make the difference. And I can only hope I'm able to put my own name on that list more days than not.
