Little Mirrors

I think that everyone who works with kids has moments where they look into a child's face and suddenly everything is stripped away. Every time this happens, I am caught off guard. I am suddenly transported back to my childhood and I not only remember what it was like, I feel that faint beating of my childhood heart and the ticking of my childhood brain as it was then.

This morning in the kindergarten, I of course got the skinny on the sub:

We played some games. He's really good at crafts! I couldn't play anymore because I know all of the colors and kept telling everyone instead of letting them figure it out. He didn't know your hello song.

And then I was a child again:

He can't speak German and I didn't understand everything.

I know that feeling of wanting to understand everything - and settling for nothing less. In her earnest eyes, I found a little mirror. I think language learning will be hard for her. It was (is) for me. It is embarrassing to admit you don't know something. Or even worse, using the wrong word (I just wanted to comment that the weather is quite humid. What? I said it was gay? Oh how embarrassing!) It takes a lot of courage and a lot more "getting over yourself" to walk into a room, pick up a phone, stand up in front of a group and know that you probably won't understand everything. Some people get over that quickly. I know, I've met them. I teach them. But many of us struggle with not knowing. I hope that I can help teach these precious souls that it is ok, even good, to not understand everything and to embrace that scary unknown. In doing so, I hope that I can continue to learn that lesson myself. ~love~