A brilliant teacher I used to work with explained a critical difference between learners. It helped me wrap my head around the importance of outside-the-classroom experiences. She said kids who were exposed to things- trips to the library, walks at the park, books at home, conversations over the dinner table, time with art, science, history, cooking- had all these things to connect to classroom learning. If we showed them something at school, chances were good they had some sort of something to connect it to from their own experiences and memories. Throw anything at them and it would stick. Velcro.
Then there were kids that had been raised without as much time and care. Those kids struggled with basic needs and didn’t have adults near them who exposed them to thoughts, ideas, things. Their experiences weren’t as broad or as deep. If we showed them something at school, chances were good they probably didn’t have much to connect it to from their own experiences or memories. Throw stuff at them and it slid right off. Teflon.
And this began my mission as their teacher to make kids as sticky as possible, to arrange their classroom experiences to be more dynamic than a flat lesson or rote memorization. We planned and hunted (pre-internet, pre-Pinterest, pre-Teachers Pay Teachers, gasp), altered and created to fit the needs of our students, determined to send them on stickier than they were when they came in.
Think prickly pears and pufferfish,
porcupines and
a poodle fluffed with
six months of winter growth.
It’s not just kids that need the stickiness.
How many times have I heard something and it’s slid right off? It’s just hard to say. But I like to think that every time I hear something new, a little is left behind- unbeknownst to me in me Telfon-like state- and that little bit left just might snag that idea and make it stay the next time it’s thrown at me.
I don’t pretend to have great Bible knowledge. At a church dinner recently I was asked why I serve in the preschool ministry. My honest answer: my Bible knowledge caps out at about second grade. Take away the fluffy stories (or the fluffy versions of stories) from Sunday School- Noah, Daniel, David, Christmas, creation, the loaves and fishes- and I’m left with precious little.
When I am feeling lost and don’t know how to think, I turn not to my study Bible, not to the concordance in the ESV Bible I bought a few years ago (because it is evidently the closest English translation of the original texts) but to the Jesus Storybook Bible, because that’s about all my simple mind can handle.
With these repeated exposures, am I adding hooks and loops that will grab more thoughts- make more connections- as time passes? Will I one day be able to quote scripture that might soothe my aching soul, or comfort a weary friend? Will I be able to pray fervently, words lifted from verses meant to share the Truth?
Will I eventually know my Father
as deeply as He desires?
I sure hope so.
Until then I’ll deny my Teflon as much as possible and ruffle up as much Velcro as I can.