Ebullience


I was in an in-service today, and the presenters finished with a clip of a toddler learning to walk.  Of all the things I learned today, this stuck with me the most.  It reminded me of the joy of learning, which seems to foreign to schools sometimes.

I see joy in education as an ebullience.  Think of a 11 month old learning to walk.  Wobbly, almost drunk, the child manages to leverage herself up and lumber forward.  When she makes it across the room and grabs the couch for support, she breaks into this all body, screaming celebration.  Then she falls, crawls back to the start and tries again.  

What is important is the child did it herself and experienced this overwhelming sense of accomplishment such that she must scream laughter in delight.  Although an 11 month old can’t talk, she’s saying, ‘I did it!’  It is also important that what she did is nearly impossible.  Seriously?  Walking?  It took humankind thousands of years to design a robot that can sort of walk.  Walking is really complicated, but this kid figured it out in 11 months?  Even so, she fell countless times before she pulled it off.  Furthermore, an integral component of joy is self.  Learning is an individual accomplishment.  While the best learning takes a group, we each must individually learn.  So, learning must matter to the person.  I cannot experience joy if what I am doing doesn’t affect my soul.  I don’t care how many times you asked me to read Romeo and Juliet, I desperately wanted to read Rotters (I highly recommend the book!).

Walking is freedom, is independence, is the image of our parents we love so deeply, but it is also ourselves in a more efficient form.  Have you tried crawling lately?  It is painful and slow.  When we learn to walk, we learn to be a better version of ourselves.  When we learn, we are a better version of ourselves.  When we learn something incredible, who can avoid doing that fist pump of accomplishment?

I think a joyful day would be any day that I learn to be a better version of myself.  This is the difficulty of education.  How do I have a classroom of 25 students and find a way to help each one be a better version of themselves?  As an educator, I find joy when I can pull that off.  When no one is looking, I do the dance of ebullience.