I was teaching a visiting class a science lesson and a kid raised his hand and asked what happened to my head. I asked what’s wrong with my head and he said there’s a huge bump on it.
You never have such rapt attention from a class as when there might be something wrong or embarrassing happening. So every eye is on my forehead and more kids are nodding agreement that there’s something wrong with my forehead. I run over and looked in my little mirror to see if I could see anything and get that hypochondriac feeling that something is wrong. Little chills going down my body. I begin to sense a fever coming on. Was that a strange twinge in my brain?
I don’t know the average height of an elementary school teacher, but I’m pretty sure it’s about six inches shorter than the height at which they install the small closet mirrors. From my perch on the top of my toes, swaying back and forth, I can’t see anything wrong. More kids were agreeing that something was wrong – like the good kids I’m confident aren’t spinning tales to get out of doing science. Trying to be the responsible, unflusterable adult, we continue on with states of matter. When the kids went out to recess I ran to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Still nothing, just a forehead. I did notice that the way my head is shaped, there’s a portion that rises up on my forehead that could be perceived as a massive, head-sized bump.
The next day we discussed it again and we came to agreement that I didn’t have a huge bump on my head, that it was just the shape of my head.
Thank you children.
I talked about it with my boyfriend at the time and he said, “Oh yeah, well that one time when you said you’d look terrible bald because your head is all lumpy, I just assumed that’s what you meant.”
It’s not what I meant.
I meant the part of my head that is covered with hair is lumpy.
But apparently the world sees a Neanderthal bump.
People always talk about how kids are sweet and tender and innocent. And in some ways they are. But that same innocence leads them to sometimes be brutally honest. You’ll know exactly where you stand with kids.
Do you look fat? Yep.
Does my hair look weird? Oh yeah.
Was that lesson boring? Uh-huh.
Some of them don’t always naturally think of others. It needs to be cultivated, drawn out of them.
One of the most important outcomes of any education is how the student behaves. A good employee, citizen, spouse, friend, parent, and human is kind, honest, selfless, and empathetic.
This summer I took a class on philosophy and we read ideas from Plato, Locke, Rousseau, and others. We discussed their purposes for educating children and many were far more interested in the character of their students than the academic outcomes. Their students were being prepared as whole people, with genuine morals. I It struck me as being somewhat backwards from the way we often train kids to be good in school. They get a pencil or a sticker for being kind or honest. Teachers are bugged to turn in their student of the week or month with vague reasons for what the student is being honored for. At what point does the student give serious reflection on what they want to be and their desire switch to being an intrinsic desire and true characteristic of a person?
I wanted to try something this year. Instead of rewarding the person doing the good deed I wanted to hear exclusively from recipients of goodness. I’d like to create brief videos of students who have been on the receiving end of someone else’s good deed. We’ll learn what the need was, how it was filled, and how they feel about it.
Maybe seeing positive consequences of thoughtful actions will make them think twice before mentioning their teacher’s neanderthal head.