I am assigned to them and they are assigned to me. We meet at the same time every week day for almost nine months, rain or shine. I am supposed to help them; they are supposed to profit from my help. I tell them what to do and they do; kind of. More to the point, I learn what they can do and then design ways to help them to do more and do it better. Day after day we dance this dance of teaching and learning together. Seems simple enough, doesn’t it? But, what is it that keeps this transaction from being sterile and rote and an assembly line environment.
Today I will be Moonlight Graham, the reminiscent baseball player in Field of Dreams who played one inning in the outfield for the New York Giants but never got an at-bat in the major leagues. In his old age dreams all he wants is to have one chance to stare down a major league pitcher. Just when the pitcher began his wind-up, Moonlight wants to wink at him and make the pitcher think that Moonlight knows something the pitcher does not.
That’s it. I need something like a wink, but not a wink because a male teacher winking at school-age children today may not be perceived as a latter day Moonlight Graham. A smile should do the trick.
There is something simple and inviting about a smile. There also is something contagious about a smile. Actually, a smile is a lot like a wink; when you see a person smiling, you wonder what the person is smiling about. Mona Lisa taught us this.
This is my plight. I am supposed to be the informed man destined to educate children. I organize and plan and build structures that will lead these children toward their understanding of things they do not know today. I teach and they learn; I learn from their learning and they help me to teach them tomorrow. Like the winking Moonlight Graham, I actually do know things that they don’t know. Tomorrow, I will greet them with my smile, because “An honest smile is an icebreaker” (Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity) and I will have difficulty restraining my excitement for causing them to learn.
Learning revolves around two smiles; the smile of teaching and the smile of learning. However, the reality is that it only is their smile that counts. In the end, when they smile, we all smile. One smile is mine and the other smile is theirs, an entire room of Moonlight Grahams.
“The joy and smile of even one child is worth more than the prancing intellects of a thousand men…” (Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason).