As a father of three, I am amazed daily at how much my children teach me about life. Children are pretty amazing in that way. My wife and I are at a really awesome point in the growth of our family, and every day we get to experience the world through each of our three children.
There’s a nine year difference between our youngest son, Tate, and oldest son, Noam . . . which makes for an interesting dynamic in our family. First of all, this means I’m nine years older. Obvious, I know. But what seemed less obvious until after Tate was born is the wisdom that I have earned in those nine years (and I do mean earned).
For example, with Tate, I now truly understand the need to appreciate every moment–my other children are proof that he won’t be fourteen months old for long. This nine year span has helped me fully realize the importance of milestones . . . like learning to walk, to roll a ball, or to say “choo choo.” I am fortunate to have these new opportunities with my youngest child. Among other things, Tate’s arrival into our lives has triggered great insight about savoring milestones with all of our children. And, so, I feel a little more prepared to experience and appreciate every moment as he and his two older siblings undertake the challenges of growing up.
Being fourteen months old, Tate has already achieved a variety of milestones. He can walk . . . scratch that. . . he can run! He can dance. He can say a few words. He understands simple directions. If I ask him if he wants a snack he toddles over to his highchair, arms raised. And he has become a prolific explorer of everything in our house and beyond.
His newest activity is to reach for things, most of the time blindly. For instance, he likes to open one of our kitchen drawers in particular, but he is still too short to see into it. So he throws his arm over the top and feels around till he finds something. Then he’ll pull out an object (usually a pancake flipper or whisk), stare at it for a couple of seconds, and then toss it across the floor. He’ll repeat this procedure wherever possible. He’ll reach up onto the kitchen table, fingers moving furiously in a grasping motion, hoping to nab something. He’ll reach up onto the t.v. stand, just feeling around to see what he might find. Often things are just right out of his grasp, like the t.v. remote or a book. He’ll brush an object with the tips of his fingers, prompting an extended stretch, maybe even tiptoes. Most of the time he finds nothing. Still he reaches.
Watching him one evening, it occurred to me that his behavior is original to the human condition, our continual need to reach out into the world, often blindly, just to see what we can find or what we might learn. It’s amazing how that’s programmed into us early on, always the explorers, always on a quest for something new.
This insight about reaching blindly creates a fundamental challenge for any educator: how do you tap into and take advantage of the innate explorer/researcher/investigator/learner that exists in all of us (when I say educator, I mean teacher, professor, parent, grandparent, or whoever)? As an educator, when you are able to tap into a student’s innate mechanics, those mechanics that make the desire for learning a necessity, I think you might ultimately increase the possibility that learning will occur. This, I believe, is the quest for most good teachers . . . what keeps them reaching is their own passion for continued learning, to be a part of the process when learning takes place, and to become enlightened, themselves, by the human condition of reaching blindly into the unknown.
As a parent, I want all of my children to experience teachers who can make learning transformative and fun, who can latch onto my children’s natural tendencies of inquiry and harness the magical powers innate in their need to be inspired through new interactions with the people, places, and things of this universe. I think all parents want that. I think all teachers are challenged by that. And I think that all civilizations are shaped by that, in one way or another. . . reaching blindly like a fourteen month old toward dreams that are just beyond our reach. What do you think?