No this is not a posting about recycling and causing less pollution. This about something more important. Today’s writing will is about the joy, excitement, and enthusiasm of a child, and how she got there.
One of the things that I love to do is attempt to look at the world through the eyes of a child. I am fortunate that our eight year old constantly keeps me on my toes. She makes sure that I am engaged with the world not as an old, grumpy adult, but as a young person seeing so many things for the first time. I am excited that we get drive time in the morning when she can verbalize her thoughts and visions. I am thrilled that she loves to learn, embraces trying new things, and can ignore, for the most part, the criticisms when she is different. I would like to think that this is due to my wife and me. However, there are so many others in her life that show her this, some so much better than we could ever do. It all came about from a plea I received while picking her up from school on St. Patrick’s Day.
“Daddy. I need to be green tomorrow. Can you help me be green?”
At first I thought that she had her days confused. Then I remembered that her school was doing a green day on the 18th. I am not sure why, but I do know that this was decided on by the students’ ASB. The kids had decided to make the 18th green day. I can remember the all call we received on Sunday. “Please remind your student to wear green on Friday.”
“Okay. I will wash your shirt,” really my Notre Dame shirt, but somehow I had lost ownership of it.
“No, Daddy. I want to turn my hair green,” slight pause. “I mean, yes, you need to wash the shirt, but I also want green hair.” Ugh.
We ran to CVS in hopes of finding some temporary green hair dye. We were told that only beauty salons have it during the year. The other stores only have it on Halloween. We looked at eye shadow and lipstick, but I could not justify spending $20 for a one-time event. I googled it, and found the food coloring works for temporary hair color. I had that at home. Score.
We then spent time after dinner preparing the mixture and brushing the dye into her hair. We had a great time with this project. Though I must say with my color deficiencies I could not see anything but darker hair. It all looked the same to me. Thankfully her face, arms, and old t-shirt showed me that we really working with green. After blow drying the hair, we showed it off to mom and got approval. The nice thing was that it cleaned up easily.
This morning our green child went skipping into her day care. She wanted to show off her color. As I walked behind her watching her, I realized that this was her M.O. most days. There are rare occasions that we sort of drag ourselves down the walk into the building, but this has more to do with tiredness and not for lack of wanting to go to school.
I kept thinking about this after drop off while walking back to the car. Our daughter likes loves school. I started thinking of all of the times she repeated back lessons from the day before. I once had a 45 minute lecture on the difference between minerals and rocks. Each lesson sounded just like a teacher talking to a student; she even questioned me for understanding. Again, this is due to others.
We are very fortunate in our district to have great teachers. While I will not use names, if they are reading this they know who they are. Please note that I am not speaking of just the ones in her classroom or past. I am talking about the entire school. She constantly talks about the teachers who walk the playground at lunch and talk them. There is one teacher in particular from an upper class that she constantly lets me know when he comes and talks with the second graders. These teachers do more than teach they instill a want to be at school and do their best.
Since my wife and I are part of education, we know the work that teachers put in. We are well aware of the fact that hours upon hours are put in at home. The plan, they grade, they worry, and they care. However, in the last couple of years, we get to see it from the side of the parent. As a teacher, I used to think what do the kids say when they go home. Now as the father of a student, I get to hear what our daughter says about the teachers. Yes, we do hear about how her teacher can get upset with the kids, but those are rare. We hear about the cool way they talk about the lessons. We hear about the way they teach through dancing, we hear about them hatching chickens, and we hear about the way the students are given the freedom to paint their hair green and feel great about it.
The cool thing though is that she gets it from more than her teachers. I used to make fun of the comment about it taking a village. Now, I am not so sure. I see the other people at her school and how they interact with the students. I see our friends and how they make sure that our daughter is included in conversations. I see the good in people as they work with the kids of our nation. How do I know it works? I know because our daughter thinks of others, she is excited to learn, she wants to change the world, and she loves. Finally, I know because she wants to go green to show how much she cares about what is happening at school.
I know that teachers like ours are all over the country, the world. I know that the people who work with kids, for the most part, care about the children and our future. We are lucky to have people like this to make sure we do have a tomorrow. This is how I ended up with a daughter wanting to turn her hair green. This is why our daughter runs up the walk to school. This why I have high hopes for her future.
Okay. I have written and erased the ending a number of times. I want the world to be this happy-go-lucky place. I want to be able to write how all of the children have the love for school and want to learn. I want to write about how they all come from loving homes. I can’t and this tears me apart. I had students in my class who would share stories with me. They told me about struggles at home. The mentioned how they have parents that love them, and yet they don’t know what they will be eating that night. They told me of the pains of living with people suffering terminal illnesses, sometimes siblings. This is what teachers deal with.
I am sorry. I meant for this to be a happy story, but alas when I allow my mind to meander I do not control its path. We are currently at odds as a nation. Side against side when what we really should be doing is coming together as one to ensure that our future, our children, have what they need to grow, learn, and be successful. Perhaps if the adults of this country stopped arguing and fighting we could set a better example for our kids. I wish that we could solve all of the problems for these kids, but we cannot. So instead all I can do is pray. I pray that the children of our country and world can find at least one person to be their role model. For most kids, they can look to their parents for this, but for some it must come from outside of the house. Let each child have that teacher that brings them to love to learn.
So thank you to every adult who has in some way shape or form has helped to create the young person that shares our house. Thank you to those who teach, those who care, those who take their time to just talk with her. I now hope and wish that each and every one of us can do the same for other kids. Let’s out our energy into the future. Let us all be teachers in one way or another.