Hello friends,

It’s been a while – lots of exciting events happening down here in Tennessee: summer tours being planned, new stories being put together, a time of self discovery, trying to keep up with my homework… But there’s one exciting moment in particular that I’d like to relate.

As you may know, I’ve been affording school by being a Graduate Assistant.  I was also fortunate to be hired as assistant for the University School – a K-12 school run on campus that university students are often active with.  As an assistant for this school, I have been working to teach Tennessee history to the 3^rd and 4^th grade through storytelling and to help the students put together their own stories about Tennessee history.  It has been a wonderful experience, but it is hard at times.

Today, it was beginning to get difficult working with the group I was focused on today – one child was upset because we had to trim the story he wrote, involving Tennessee history, so that it could be performed.  The upset child began to throw a temper tantrum and refused to listen as I tried to explain that we weren’t destroying his story, but trying to work to make the best project possible for the entire group.  This child refused to listen, and, becoming unsure of the situation, I was preparing to approach the teacher and ask her to intervene when one of the other children, a child who typically seemed to have trouble focusing, stepped in and explained to the upset child how they would work with his story – and it calmed the upset child down.  After nearly half-an-hour of trying to calm this child and get him to work with the group, the second child saved the day with remarkable wisdom, peace, and efficiency.

I can’t give the names of the children, for protection of privacy, but I ask you all to hold both children in your thoughts.  The upset child so that we can hope that he will find ways to work with other people; and the negotiator child so that we can remember to praise children when they show a maturity that too often eludes adults: a maturity to recognize that the peaceful way is best and that, by listening and talking, we can work out difficult arguments.

May your day bring similar joyful surprises.

Best,
Lethan

This entry was posted on Friday, February 15th, 2008 at 7:41 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.