April 5, 2007

Yesterday, I was in a meeting with a parent and one of my students, (why do teachers have parent meetings about a teenage student’s education and not have the student there too?)

The parent observantly noted that although her son could be physically in a room, he could often ‘disconnect’ and be elsewhere in his mind. For him to be more successful, he would need to engage more in what was going on. I told him, with all honesty, that I too had that problem to the point that my parents worried that I might have been on drugs (I wasn’t). It took until my Grade 13 year (Ontario, Canada) to recognize that I needed to be a participant in the classroom in order to ‘stay connected’.

As I was talking my student interrupted and said, “I just had a flash of insight, I’m a mop not a sponge!”

He got it! And today he proved it. He was a fully engaged participant in my Math lesson. I can hear myself in upcoming classes, “Remember to be the mop”.

———–

That was from my Pair-a-Dimes blog post, “I’m a mop not a sponge”: Metaphors all the way down. Last night I found out that this young man passed away unexpectedly. It’s so sad to hear news like this about a former student. I immediately remembered this incident, this moment in time when I saw a light bulb light up in a young kid’s mind.

This was my last year as a Grade 8 teacher. There are other memories of this student, but they are more distant, faded… it was over 14 years ago. However this memory, I remember like it was yesterday.