And Just Like That, I'm Back At It Again (As If It's All Been Fluid and I've Never Come Ashore)

I slid right into my graduate course last night (a full house) and thought to myself, "Wait. Didn't we just finish last semester, and wasn't I just doing this?"

Of course, I looked out at my students (some familiar faces from last semester and courses over the years, but so many new minds and brilliant thinkers).

There was a Frog once, and the Dragonfly believed in him. She was new with her sparkling wings and she wanted the Frog to help her make sense of the pond where she landed on a cattail. 

Thus began a piece written in 1997, my first year at the Brown School, when one of my students with an affinity for dragonflies dropped me a note. The pond was born (a metaphor for the teaching thing) and the creatures came at this frog-backpack-carrying, long-haired hippie who began his career in  Louisville, Kentucky.

The Frog didn't know what this dragonfly wanted, but she whirled about him, dipping at his lily pad, and fluttering about with curiosity, questions and wonder. "What is this? Oh, but what is that? How about this? Why is this like this?"

The Frog at the time began to listen. For over a decade he listened to the pond creatures that came his way and they educated him more and more about the Great Whatever and what this pond thing actually was.

Creatures are like that. They come from everywhere and they each have metaphors to pay attention to and wisdom that help them to make more sense of the pond.

And he wanted to leave. In fact, he left, and while he was gone he thought, "I wonder what to make of those pond days? What was it all supposed to mean?"

He thought about answers to that question the entire time he worked on a doctorate and he thought, "One day, maybe I'll have an answer."

The Frog left for a long time. He was a curmudgeon and didn't necessarily think that pond life was what he wanted any more. He disappeared, but the dragonfly came after him. "What is this? Oh, but what is that? How about this? Why is this like this?"

She never left.

And last night, introducing Developmental Reading to another crop of graduate students, I did an activity, spur of the moment, and decided to take a photo. I didn't know that in the background, if I looked closer, there wasn't a despondent community of miserable students; rather, there were smiles, laughter, enjoyment, and involvement.

The Frog realized he never approached the pond the way he was supposed to. He did it his own way. It was about the creatures, not him. That made him different from the other animals that wanted to squawk, howl, yap, and growl. 

The Frog isn't central to what needs to be learned. No, it is teaching creatures who find him on the pond and how they interact with each other and ask questions that bring them to their own self-awareness.

There's a story I've wanted to write, but haven't quite figured it out entirely. For years, I felt I betrayed the Great Whatever when I left the K-12 classroom, especially the beautiful creatures that came my way. In afternoon jogs and morning walks, I always thought about Frog (and his dragonfly) and what it was all supposed to mean. I always knew that Dragonfly would be in the back of my mind saying, "Come back to us. The Pond needs you." 

But I realized while teaching last night, that The Pond is larger than what I once knew at 546 S. First Street and there's a bigger story with more creatures to consider. The journey is/has been surreal.

A graduate student, during a four word vocabulary quiz (modeling a new strategy for assessment) quickly composed the following connections between words:

Poetry    | Language

———————— —

Reading | Fluidity

Reading is to enter into a consensual hallucination brought about by the poetry and fluidity of language.

It was unintentionally brilliant, but when he sent it to me I had to reread the statement over and over. If not for a whacky, spur of the moment activity in my class, such a nugget of awesome would never have been born. Loved it.

Ah, but for now, however, there's 18 undergraduates awaiting an instructor to come their way (it won't be like Snape, although I wish I could be). We will do a 3-hour Turbo course, Brown School style. That's what the pond has always been about.