Remarkably Bright Creatures
Last Day of the School Year
For me, as a teacher, the end of the school year is bittersweet. I’m glad the school year is over. I look forward to a 60-day weekend ahead. Yet, I also miss the kids.
This past year, I have been running the Gifted Education program at an elementary school. Four waves of students each day, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th graders. One class after another, seemingly nonstop.
My approach to Gifted Education is to activate curiosity and then follow it wherever it goes, as I provide whole-class guidance and many one-to-one microinteractions of encouragement and inspiration. Rocks & Minerals, Space, Black Holes, Quantum Worlds, Ecology, Ecosystem Change, Plant Biology, Creative Writing, Unabridged Dictionaries, Playwriting, Performance of Original Plays— a whole lot of everything! Doing my best to stay one step ahead, while following their insatiable curiosities.
The kids finished the year with a boisterous field day of games and goodbyes.
As I cleaned out the classroom on the last day, empty of students and their still-echoing chatter, I thought about all the different ways I had configured the room. During the school year, I frequently changed things around to accommodate the shifting focal points of learning– multiple universes converging and time traveling through the cosmos of their amazing minds.
The 5th graders took an interest in remarkable creatures– the stranger, the better. Instead of JUST doing a science report, I had them select a creature, do the research, and then present THEMSELVES as the creature, so we, as a class, could interview them. “So, Golden Lion Tamarin, you cute little long-tailed primate, is it true that your habitats in the Brazilian rain forest have been shrinking?” This approach morphed into the creation of a full-blown play, in the format of a game show in which we invited the audience to decide whether each creature was FEROCIOUS or LOVABLE! The students went to town, creating costumes and props. Armed with mime and comedy acting techniques, they created and memorized an original script. Mostly they discovered how fascinating these creatures were: the Death-Stalker Scorpion, the Black Spitting Cobra, the Peacock Mantis Shrimp, the Venus Fly Trap, and the remarkably bright creature, the Giant Pacific Octopus. The play went marvelously well in a run of three days for different classes, all of which found the creatures BOTH ferocious AND lovable!
The school where I teach has a half-acre desert habitat, which I used as an outdoor collaboratory, that is, with students working in collaborative research squads. It was a rich resource for ecology, plant biology, rocks and minerals, and the joys of being outside. There’s a large canopy with benches to seat a classroom-full of kids. I installed a giant whiteboard for teaching purposes. It became a nexus for a fusion of scientific and artistic creativity. We mapped the habitat with all its flora and fauna. We drew a flow chart of how energy moves through an ecosystem. I had them shout out with glee: “Energy Energizes! Matter Matters! Life Lives!” This to remind them of the three measurable features that define an ecosystem: energy transformations moving through; effects of changes of matter in the system; and the presence of many varieties of life– trees, cacti, wildflowers, lizards, butterflies, and bunnies. A praying mantis even landed on my shoulder one day. The kids gathered round with roused curiosity. It gave me the chance to amuse everyone with my amateurish ventriloquism.
There’s a wonderful movie streaming on Netflix, Remarkably Bright Creatures, starring Sally Fields as Tova, who works nightly, cleaning the glass of a huge Aquarium where resides the leading “man” Marcellus– a Giant Pacific Octopus, known for his marvelous intelligence. A young man becomes her apprentice, but cleans the aquarium glass in a rather haphazard manner. Tova mentors him saying adamantly, “There’s a right way and a wrong way do things!” She urges him to use a circular motion so as not to leave streaks. In educationese, we would call that a classic example of a teachable moment, to guide the student in the moment they are most engaged.
On this last day, I stood there in the school’s desert habitat, in front of the whiteboard. The sixth graders had drawn an illustration of the energy flow through the habitat– Sun, Wind, evapotranspiration; the third graders had added little pictures of cactus plants, the desert willow tree, and the bunnies. I stood there with the dry-erase spray and a cloth. I began wiping the board, rather haphazardly, leaving streaks. Suddenly, Tova’s voice chastised me: “Hey, there’s a right way and a wrong way… circular motion!”
I stopped, took a breath, realized my own learnable moment, then resumed my task more mindfully, using circular motions to remove the tell-tale dry-erase streaks. I was not cleaning the transparent glass of an aquarium, looking into the eyes of Marcellus, the Giant Pacific Octopus, but for me, in that moment, the whiteboard became a transparent portal. I relived in a flash, all the encounters I had throughout the year with each of my 70-plus students, with all of their quirks of personality and nonstop unfolding of curiosity.
Then the epiphany struck me: indeed, my own life was deeply enriched, as I swam in the sea and careened through spacetime with my students– ALL Remarkably Bright Creatures!