Kids Teaching

Yesterday I watched a brother (3rd grader) and sister (1st grader) drawing robots. The sister drew hers first and it was fairly impressive work for a 1st grader. The brother quickly started to draw his which was very similar to his sister's, except that his had what I think is called "dimension". The head of the boy's robot looked something like this.


As soon as the girl saw it she got excited. It was fantastic to see the admiration and joy on her face when she realized that she could learn something new. It looked like she literally saw the robot popping off of the page because of the dimensional aspect. She said, with a bit of urgency, "show me how to do that!" He drew another "head" and showed her each step of the way. It was amazing to see not only the focus both of these children had, but also the excitement shown by both the teacher and the learner. This kind of excitement was the reason that I initially went into education.

I love to see this type of excitement any time, but especially between young people. As a teacher I didn't get to see it as often as I would like, but it was one of the motivators that kept me going. Unfortunately I don't get to experience it as often now that I'm out of the classroom. This leads me to wonder why. Perhaps it is simply because I'm not in the classroom as often so I miss these great moments. A more important question is, "How can we make them happen more often?"

There are several elements that I think are important. The "teacher" should be excited to teach. This 3rd grader loved explaining to his sister how to make a dimensional robot. I think it is safe to say that they also had a developed relationship. They were comfortable with each other. I don't think that "learners" should always be comfortable, but I do believe that learners should feel safe within our public schools. We want students to feel free to take risks and even to fail on occasion. One very important element that should receive more focus is to get students to produce things that are authentic and relevant.

I'll work to help foster more dimensional robot moments because even though I'm not in classrooms as often as I used to be, these moments are still one of my greatest motivators.