Come On, Take My Hand

The Yuba, the river I love

This summer I was at my favorite "beach" spot at my favorite river with one of my favorite people.  We were lucky that day; the sun was shining, the water was clear and abundant, and the fish were our only competition for swimming space. He and I were discussing life and our frustrations at not being able to do more to help...just in the vaguest, most general sense of the word.  We asked ourselves what could we do to make our world, wherever we are at the moment, a better place?  Our solution: act like a five year old.  My thinking behind this during that discussion was that kids, up to a certain age, generally don't discriminate against one another based on one another's background or personal beliefs or if they do or don't have money.  Sure, kids get upset about someone not sharing a favorite toy or someone cutting them in line or using the eraser they wanted to use "because that color of eraser works the best."  Usually, though, after a few minutes of sulking they are ready to be friends with the offender.  We wondered that day, "What if we all treated each other with the kind of unconditional love and admiration we so often see children exhibit to other children?"

My belief that acting like five year olds would make the world a happier and overall better place has been strengthened in my time thus far while working nine hours a day with elementary age students.  The best times are when they think no adults are watching.  This past week I heard many of the third grade students talking about their classmate who fell and knocked out some of his teeth.  They were worried that he was still in pain late into the afternoon because "hitting your mouth on metal hurts a lot."  Another time I saw two boys who are in the same grade walking down the hall.  One boy was much taller than the other one, but the shorter boy was the one helping the other one down the hall.  The tall boy had a wad of paper towels pressed against his face and the shorter boy had one arm around his classmate helping to steer him in the right direction all the while with the sweetest, and most genuine, look of concern on his face.  Then there was the time in the afterschool program I work in where one child was throwing a temper tantrum about the color of folder he was given.  One of the sweetest girls in the program saw what was going on, came up to him and said "It's ok, you can have my blue folder, and I'll take your orange one."  The fact that she saw the opportunity to make someone's life better by doing a simple, heartfelt action left me with a swell of hope.  One more example: a couple of students I work with daily on math had just received their math test scores.  Both of the students had similar scores, but one did score a little higher than the other one.  Both of the students though congratulated the other one on a job well done and made some comments about how hard they knew they had each worked and that they could always try harder on the next test.  My heart just about burst.

I remind my students of lessons they have learned on a daily basis.  The silent "e" on the end of a word makes the vowel in the word make the long vowel sound.  Borrowing from the tens place requires you to essentially take away one number from the tens place to make it so you actually can subtract eight from three.  But really, my students are the ones who remind me of how to live out a good and happy life - act like a five year old.