Ezine Article by Shelley Rubinstein
photo by tosaytheleast
If I were to write an article for the Ezine, what would I write about? Would my words be as pokey as molasses in January? Would anyone be interested in the huge cache of ache in my head pressing against my skull like a lumpy, overfilled sandbag?
Perhaps I could tell the dental floss story…I love hot water, especially at the end of the day. Because I am acutely aware of the need to be conservative of natural resources, I justify extra time in the shower by doing my tooth brushing and flossing there, too. Last night I threw the floss over the shower door, as is my custom, to be picked up immediately upon exiting the shower. To my delight, it took, perfectly, the shape of a basset hound. It was such a life-like gesture line that I wrapped my towel around me, went to my desk to get paper and pencil, and drew the dog before I picked up the floss. A serendipity of magnanimous proportions!
The powers that be switched me from teaching visual arts-a task which I have had minimal direct training-to teaching performance arts-a task which I have trained for most of my life. While the stretch into visual arts teacher was quite painful at times, I find in retrospect that it was also amazingly satisfying and exhilarating. Working with elementary children is and has always been the bomb! They are such masters at taking the little given to them and infusing it with outrageous playfulness, wit, and imagination.
It is a theory I have developed over time that perhaps all students are capable of such powers of playful wit and imagination if only one can “trick” them into setting aside their “cool” in order to play with their powers fully as I have often seen elementary children do. I tried to put this theory to the test the summer of 2005 when missionary friends living in Uganda invited me to teach at two residential college prep schools in the bush. It was not a valid experiment because the students were incredibly motivated to learn and participate fully in their education. For them it was the only way out of the starvation and extreme poverty they had all experienced as orphans in a ferociously war torn area horribly beset with AIDS, malaria, yellow fever, minimal healthcare, and extreme poverty.
I had been asked to teach Bible and history classes according to the dittoed “scripts” the faculty used for their texts. While I was living at the girls’ campus, I went in to the headmistress and requested a time slot to teach a creative writing class. She rather severely informed me that the students’ coursework was so rigorous there just wasn’t time for such “fluff.” However, as I was leaving her office another teacher entered to inform her the history teacher was still ill with malaria so I was pressed into service to cover her classes that day. The teacher who was ill was living off campus and had her teaching materials with her so I was allowed to teach a 90 minute creative writing class to 60 intelligent, focused, and beautiful east African women!
Every teacher should have the privilege of teaching such a group of students! It would inspire us to continue on in our quest to wake our students up to their powers: their incredible intelligence, incisive wit, outrageous creativity, and glorious imagination!
The headache is beginning to shrink…the thaw has begun as the creative juices start flowing…Creative writing – fluff? I think NOT!
shelley Rubinstein August 12, 2009
