Amazement

I learned many things in elementary school, but the biggest one was how to get my mother to do my homework.  Manipulating a woman, who saw grades as the proof that she was doing all the right things and her children were bright and successful, was easy.  Even for a six year old!

Of course neither one of us was aware that this was what was happening, but it still set the course for the rest of my life.  I was a bright child.  I quickly learned that most adults can do elementary school work better than elementary school children.   Unfortunately, it also undermined my belief in my own ability.

Eventually I reached the point where my mother was no longer capable of doing my work.  Unfortunately I was not really prepared to do it either so there were some real rocky years ahead for me.  I learned from all of this and I think I did much better with my own children.

I am, just now, really working WITH someone for the very first time!  In the past, the closest I could usually come was a division of labor.  You do this.  I’ll do that.  And if we are lucky it will come together in the end.  When my three-year-old students did this, I said they were working side by side.  It is the very first stage of playing together.

Watching different perspectives come together, weaving themselves in and out of each other, creating a finished product that is not simply two parts pasted together, has been a revelation for me!  I am amazed at how uniquely beautiful such a project can be.