This morning, I felt like crap. When I got on the subway, I was so focused on how putrid I felt, I was barely aware of what was happening around me. What brought me back was the familiar whine of a three year old girl who had just been scolded by her mother. The affected child's face, though far cuter than my own, directly reflected my internal feelings.
Then, something interesting happened. The little girl's mother handed her a tube of bubbles with a yellow plastic cat's head for a lid. She grabbed the toy in a huff and let it hang limp in her tiny hand. This only lasted a couple of seconds. Maintaining her scowl, she began to examine the object she now possessed. She soon discovered that the cat head screwed and unscrewed, and her face began to change. Her pursed cheeks softened, and the wrinkles that had formed above her nose relaxed slightly from wrinkles of anger to ones of interest.
This tiny child, who only moments ago had been so distraught, was now enthralled with the simple motion of twisting and tightening that yellow plastic cat head.
I watched her with a mixture of deep adoration and considerable envy. In my mind, I was already starting a blog post about how kids start out with natural curiosity about the world and how that curiosity overrides their negative emotions. In my mind, that would have been followed up by a rant about how that dies overtime because of experiences they have in life and school.
But then I realized that this same little girl had acted as my yellow plastic cat head.
Education is my passion. No matter how terrible my mood, any display of childhood curiosity transfixes me and sets my wheels in motion. I found myself sitting on a subway, no longer feeling like crap, but instead completely enthralled with a small girl and her tube of bubbles.
Student's do not loose their curiosity about the world, it just evolves. Eventually, children figure out why the cat head untwists, and that is no longer a subject that is transfixing. That is why it is so important to help students find a focus for that natural curiosity. In other words, they need to start uncovering their passions.
As a teacher, I feel it is my job to help my students find that thing that gets them so pumped up, so focused, and so dedicated that they forget anything else they are feeling. I want their desire to to explore and discover to override the negative feelings they experience and to give them renewed purpose in moments when things are hard. I want them all to have days like I had today. That is to say, days that start out completely terrible, and end with an exciting revelation.
