I love to watch Tucker when he is learning. His eyes widen, his face lights up, and he cannot contain himself, shouting out answers—no, not answers but ideas and concepts and "ah has"—and he often gets in trouble for being insensitive to his peers who are still struggling to do their work, for being self-centered, and there are times he is frustrated by the trouble he gets into, and other times he seems to accept it as the price he is paying for his education. He grimaces for a moment and then reinvests his energies into his school work. He is eleven years old.
One of my first mentors believed, and so have I, that education is healing.
When I have expressed frustration to my friend Adam that life for so many seems mean and filled with pain, when it could be filled with so much more joy and kinship, he says he admires my idealism. He is a doctor who works with the elderly poor. He says that life is that mean and painful—not that it seems so—but that it is so, which is why he marvels and takes solace that humans can achieve great moments of transcendence in the midst of our suffering as a species. He and I share the exuberant sweat-filled passion of basketball, the rock band that hits a groove and sends an entire bar into a pulsing mass, the books we are reading that are
2-11-14 THE WHOLE CHILD BLOG - ED Pulse Poll Results: What Is Most Important in Building School Morale?
ED Pulse Poll Results: What Is Most Important in Building School Morale? — Whole Child Education: THE WHOLE CHILD BLOGED Pulse Poll Results: What Is Most Important in Building School Morale?February 11, 2014 by Kit Harris, ASCD ResearchASCD continually seeks to provide solutions to the challenges that face educators of all levels. A recentASCD SmartBrief ED Pulse poll asked readers asked readers w