Dear You,
If you work it right, each day of life is a lesson. Each person you encounter is your teacher. With my granddaughter Emily visiting from Long Island, I am once again reminded of this.
Emily, like me, loves to read. Unlike me, she reads really, really fast. More importantly, she reads -- and introduces me to -- stuff that would have escaped my notice. This time she brought me her copy of "The Twelve Kingdoms" by Fuyumi Ono. It's fantasy, a narrative and related to other forms from Japan: anime and manga. Not my taste, I would have said two days ago, but now I'm well into the story and its fictional world. Lesson: (excuse the cliche) don't judge books by covers. (How often do I need to learn this lesson? Apparently, on a regular basis.)
Emily has much more to teach me. Indeed, I could write eleven more blogs -- one for each of the children who call me Grandpa. Each one who has crawled into my lap has brought information from a world that no one else but they inhabit, news from places I might otherwise never have visited.
Showing posts with label Life-long Learning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Life-long Learning. Show all posts
Friday, August 17, 2007
Saturday, July 7, 2007
Missing You
Dear You,
As a school teacher I often was greeted at my classroom door by a student who had missed class the previous day. "Did I miss anything?" Sometimes I laughingly responded that, because s/he was absent, we had decided to do nothing that day, so the answer was "No, you didn't miss anything at all." If I had a couple of extra moments, however, my customary answer was more serious, and I explained that whatever s/he had missed, it was far less important than what the rest of us had missed -- "You."
I would explain that a class was the sum of its parts, not just whatever was in my lesson plan for that day. And if anyone was missing, the sum was diminished. So often, a student would ask a question or offer an opinion, and the entire lesson turned a different corner . . . many times to a surprising and remarkable place. I learned to watch for such opportunities.
It seems to me that it's what happens when someone goes missing from my life. Whatever a day might hold for me, it will be less than it was. An easy example is what my parents might still be teaching me if they had been granted longer lives. If one of the purposes is, as I believe, to continue learning, the loss of every potential teacher is profound. I am now old enough to know when I am diminished . . . and why.
As a school teacher I often was greeted at my classroom door by a student who had missed class the previous day. "Did I miss anything?" Sometimes I laughingly responded that, because s/he was absent, we had decided to do nothing that day, so the answer was "No, you didn't miss anything at all." If I had a couple of extra moments, however, my customary answer was more serious, and I explained that whatever s/he had missed, it was far less important than what the rest of us had missed -- "You."
I would explain that a class was the sum of its parts, not just whatever was in my lesson plan for that day. And if anyone was missing, the sum was diminished. So often, a student would ask a question or offer an opinion, and the entire lesson turned a different corner . . . many times to a surprising and remarkable place. I learned to watch for such opportunities.
It seems to me that it's what happens when someone goes missing from my life. Whatever a day might hold for me, it will be less than it was. An easy example is what my parents might still be teaching me if they had been granted longer lives. If one of the purposes is, as I believe, to continue learning, the loss of every potential teacher is profound. I am now old enough to know when I am diminished . . . and why.
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