Learning is Neat, Grasshopper

I love when my kids teach me.

I am a teacher. I teach English and coach football at Buhler High School, and I truly love my job. Every day, I have the opportunity to teach young people. Sometimes I get the chance to try and pen a world of wonder that is literature, and some daysI am fortunate enough to teach one or two students to see that world, to want to explore it for themselves, and to develop that part of their minds that allows them to learn on their own. On those special days, I am blessed to see a quiet kid put pencil to paper or digit to keyboard as she learns that there is something worth saying somewhere inside her, even if it hides behind some cloud of doubt or fear. On other days, I am able to teach a young man that he has more inside him than he ever thought he could muster up, or I have the chance to teach a technique that will allow him to overcome an opponent in the future. I get to play a small role in teaching young men that sometimes there is something bigger than themselves, and that being a part of that whole is meaningful.

The opportunities to teach are nearly infinite, and sometimes I regret that I let some of them pass by or actually stifle them in some way; you see, sometimes trying to be what so many seem to expect from being a "teacher" gets in the way of being a teacher. There are those times when I am not very good at what I do. I am trying to reduce the frequency of those times.

The most important chances to teach occur with my own children.  Emily and Dylan are amazing students. They learn quickly, and sometimes the lessons are not the ones that I really wanted them to grasp onto, but they do learn.

Now, don't worry; this is not one of those sappy "These are the lessons I have passed on to my seed" posts. It could be. I am not above that, and some nights, sappy is acceptable. But not tonight!

No, this is more of an "I am amazed by my kids" pride type of thing.

This weekend, we made a trek north to Ellsworth. There was a detour on Highway 14, so we had a little more time than usual. During this time, Dylan, for some reason that is not immediately clear, informed us that the masks that have long, beak-like noses were not developed to be scary in any way. They were actually worn by doctors who attempted to aid the victims of the plague in the late Middles Ages. The part that covered the mouth, much like modern surgical masks, was intended to protect the doctor from breathing in the disease. The long beaks were stuffed with flower petals. This provided a modicum of relief from the stench of the dying and dead. I did not know that. I love learning about that time period, but I had never learned that.

BOOM! Learning. Thank you, Son.

Prior to that conversation, during a brief respite from rocking out, hard, to a CD she had burned for me, Emily revealed that the artist who had created the cover art for Green Day's Insomniac painted under the name of Winston Smith. For those of you who should be ashamed of yourselves, Winston Smith is the protagonist of the George Orwell's 1984. At the time, she was not sure exactly why he had selected that pseudonym.  However, this evening, as I was cleaning up after supper, Emily came into the kitchen with the actually album cover art and explained that the artist had moved to Italy for several years, and upon returning to the United States in the early 1970s, he was appalled by the political and social climate in this country. As a response, he began to create artwork under the name of Winston Smith, who grew increasingly dissatisfied with the party and society of which he was a part. He rebelled in thought and deed, risking punishment for thoughtcrime while spending time with a woman for whom his feelings teetered somewhere between a desire to share carnal passion and a desire to pound her face bloody with his fists. Yeah, it is a great book. Read it.

Emily and Dylan each researched something, not because they had to write a paper over it or needed to know it for a unit test or the ACT. They researched a couple of little details because they found them interesting and wanted to know more about them. They WANT to LEARN. How can I not be ecstatic about that? How can I not swell up with pride, not only in their desire to learn, but also in the ability to uncover the answer they seek? How can I not marvel that Emily can make and elaborate on a connection between the band that sings "American Idiot" and "Jaded" and the dystopian novel that is firmly seated in my top six favorite pieces of literature? And how can I not be a little concerned that my son is exploring the Black Death?

My Mom told me a few years ago that she had to laugh about how much my son is like me at his age. I did not have the advantage of being able to pull up a seemingly endless number of webpages offering information, or misinformation, about a  plethora of topics, but I did love to learn about "stuff". I took some things apart, although it was usually not a machine as expensive as some of the appliances and electronics that my brother dismantled and failed to reassemble. We learned to learn from great teachers, and at the top of that list were our Mom and Dad. They read constantly, and they watched the news and "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom". They listened when people spoke. They thought about things, and discussed them.

Regardless of how my kids choose to learn, I am glad in the simple fact that they want to learn. They read, they watch videos, they listen to people speak, and they think and talk about things. I love that. I love even more when they decide that they need to teach me something they have learned.

I love learning, especially from such cool teachers.