Our Most Teachable Moments

I started teaching the French Revolution on Monday to my students in Social Studies.

A visual timeline on which they were working on before we knew what had happened during the day on January 6 and to which they must add their pictures of LEGO builds ended with Bastille Day.

Nightmares returned in waves this week as people shouted their opinions and interpretations over the events of January 6. People started friend and family purges on social media. Everyone had their opinion …

but the biggest kicker of all is:

No one felt heard.

As a teacher and mother, I’m very careful about anything I say connected with politics. I think people in general know where I stand. I support the peaceful protests of Black Lives Matter. I believe we need to have discussions.

But, how can we have discussions when everyone shouts?

Nightmare after nightmare from New Year’s Day to Wednesday night consumed my mind even with the self-care tools I put in place, such as drinking water, Yoga, going to therapy and medication. They came back with a vengeance after I saw the brief blurry video of the woman who was shot, and most mornings, I had to take two minutes to figure out where I was.

Since my daughter, Corrie, earned her wings on May 27, 2020; I’ve had to readjust to a life without her physical presence. After a year that saw a tornado destroy parts of our farm in February 2020, the loss of our daughter, the loss of one of our puppies, my mother’s injury, and my aunt; I wondered how:

As a society we talk about the greater understanding for mental and physical illness in the twenty-first century, but we have also lost the ability to have discussions with those with whom we disagree. We’re losing the ability to walk in another person’s shoes …

if we ever did at all.

On Thursday, one student explained to a new kid how the LEGO Education helped her understand concepts. She explained to my student how LEGO works in a LEGO Master Educator’s classroom during COVID-19 in which every student has their own bag. She told the new student the difference the LEGO education made in her life.

In another class, two more students told me how they got LEGOs for Christmas. One emailed pictures of her builds throughout the holidays. They both told me how they built throughout their two-week break.

What, I thought, my twelve and thirteen-year-old students were creating with LEGOs instead of playing video games or being immersed in SnapChat and Instagram!

On Thursday afternoon, one of those very students built a guillotine with a moving part. With social distance between my students and masks on, I used this as a teachable moment.

I said, with the student’s build in front of me and the poor LEGO man looking up at me about to sacrificed to the blade, “This is what STEAM is all about. You solve problems. You build and find a way to make something work.”

What the students did not know is that it was a teachable moment with me as the student, too.

In all the yelling, shouting, and interpretations of what happened on January 6, I was reminded why I still have a purpose in this world. When I want to become a hermit and live far away from people, they remind me why I still belong out in the world. I still have a voice to use even if it is a little rusty.

At the heart of all of it, exists Corrie’s spirit. Without her love for me and her push in her lifetime for me to step outside my shell, I’d probably be a paranoid writer in a basement somewhere.

There is actually a teachable moment for all of us when it comes to January 6 and everyone shouting their opinions.

Before you shout, learn about another person. Learn about a different culture. I read books to help me understand more after I left inner city schools. I had conversations with my daughter you don’t picture four and five-year-olds having. My daughter knew about Maya Angelou and Malcom X because I was reading and listening through audible on my walks during the COVID-19 shut down. It is not that I agree with everything another person says.

It is an action to educate yourself about cultures different than your own in order to communicate and create a better world. To say white privilege does not exist is a punch to students I’ve taught and loved deeply before. I’ll share something I’ve never shared before.

As you may or may not know, I was identified early in my life as atypical. My mother gave me the paperwork of my year long testing in April. My parents did not want me tested for autism in 1990-1991 because of the social concerns of having a child, especially a girl, with this new term for the time. I could not name it.

I felt strange and odd in my white girl skin. I sat at tables where I didn’t feel I belonged, and was sometimes told I didn’t belong there because I was too socially awkward or did not pick up social clues.

What I do know is this …

As a child and teen, I did have a few white girl friends. More often, people of different backgrounds, skin color, and religions became my friends. They were able to look past my atypicality. In sixth grade, one of my worst years in childhood, I had six friends. Only one was white. I barely saw my friends because we were all separated on different teams.

Now …

As an adult, I’m fortunate to have family, friends, and co-workers with all different beliefs. What I cannot do is purge them if I disagree with them. It doesn’t mean I agree them.

It isn’t political.

It is love because I …

remember who brought dinners after we lost Corrie. I remember who sat with me by her the night she was pronounced dead. I remember those who have brought me back to life, and sometimes more than once when I wanted to run the other direction. I remember those who brought gifts to take to Corrie’s grave and the graves of the other children for whom I care on my Kinder Memorial Walk.

My students and son remind me daily of my why.

My daughter’s spirit reminds me in my darkest hours of my why.

What is your why?

By Rebecca T. Dickinson