Bird Droppings November 4, 2024

Do we teach, or are we taught

I went up into the mountains of North Georgia Saturday to visit some of my favorite areas in Rabun County. Along the way, we stopped at our traditional Tallulah Gorge Lookout point. The old tourist store and location are closed, but it’s still a beautiful site to look down into the gorge and see the water flowing through the bottom of the gorge. As we stood there taking pictures and just looking at the view, two bald eagles flew by. I didn’t get a chance to take a picture. Those are the first eagles I’ve seen in North Georgia.

Today, as I was out on my travels, looking for a sunrise on a gloomy day, an opossum scurried in front of me. I was going 20 mph as I was the only car on the road, so there was plenty of time for him to scurry back and get off the road. I sort of never know what’s going to happen in the mornings. Sometimes, I’ll be surprised by three or four deer across my path, sometimes a squirrel or sometimes a chipmunk, the Bob White that surprised me the most on that one day, or perhaps a deer appearing through the fence line. I never know what to expect in my outings. I guess my point is that we need to be more observant and more aware of what is around us in our natural world.

“The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.” Albert Einstein

So many times, when discussing students who are having difficult times, an individual teacher’s perspective is all that matters. Recently, I was about to thump another teacher in the head, listening to comments about whether this student had a better work ethic. I have heard a lot about work ethic lately. This or that student needs a better work ethic. But what if you do not like that teacher and or subject, and better yet, what if you have a disability that inhibits you? Every day, I see square pegs hammered into round holes. It is the way our education system works. I am always amused that Mr. Einstein did not have a great work ethic in school. He failed math a time or two, and then he rewrote the books.

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Albert Einstein

We rely so much on prepackaged, prewritten, preformed, pre-cooked, pretested, pre-read, and pre-understood everything that creativity, imagination, and uniqueness get left on the shelf. I recall giving make-up Georgia High School Graduation tests and End, of Course, Tests over the years in high school. In theory, tests of content with a smattering of cognitive questions were thrown in; however, several questions, while multiple-choice, could be answered in numerous ways. Here are high school students trying to analyze and answer questions, for example, a science teacher’s question. What if you miss one of those questions and get a 499 and a 500 is passing? A good friend who graduated nearly ten years ago had taken the science test four times and failed by a total of eight points and has not graduated. What if this person answered that one question the same way, which is either incorrect or not answerable? This person was an A and B student and, after four tries, was too frustrated to try again.

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.” Albert Einstein

How, why, and what should be taught are always at the crux of curriculum and instructional administrators’ challenges. However, one of the most challenging aspects of education is instilling a desire to learn, as Einstein states, wanting to seek the mysterious. Too few students genuinely want to learn and not just pass and get on. One of my greatest moments was being asked who wrote the poem when I read Dylan Thomas in class one day. I was asked by a kid who most thought could not read, and he read the entire book that weekend. The mysterious is a mysterious thing. Would you please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and in your heart’s namaste?

My family and friends, I do not say this lightly,

Mitakuye Oyasin

(We are all related)

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