| The Other Side |
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| Written by Martha Wegner | |
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Martha Wegner’s son illustrates where the real joy lies. Last week my son invited me to visit his Grade 1 classroom. I imagine that all over the country children proudly show off their spelling tests and newly solved maths problems to their parents with some regularity. But it’s different for my son. For him, school is just an interruption to his train of thought. He may be thinking about what causes the hands of a clock to turn, when suddenly his teacher is asking him to write the alphabet. He might be engaged in a secret war between the earthlings and the aliens, when his fantasy is interrupted by the teacher saying “Hand in your worksheets now”. School is a burden for this young dreamer, I’m afraid. So imagine my surprise and joy when this little thinker invited me to visit his classroom – he had something to show me. I arrived at the end of the school day. He pulled out a piece of paper on which he’d drawn a superhero, coloured in with blue, red and yellow crayon. I realised the source of his pleasure – this superhero was not only cool, it was actually schoolwork. Imagine being told to draw a superhero at school! At this point, the teacher jumped in on the act: “Would you like to show your mum your art folder?” A quick imperceptible roll of the eyes, said that, actually, he would rather not, but who’s going to say no to their teacher? After much digging through two weeks of accumulated (and unfinished) papers, he extracted the folder. The first (and only) page had a drawing with the description, “I see a blue ocean”. Hardly the type of phrase that would pop out of this child’s mouth. He said, “The teacher told us to write that”. Then, turning ever so slightly, so as to exclude the hovering teacher, he whispered, “Look what I made on the back”. On the back of the page containing that stilted sentence he had drawn a tiny picture. He explained, “This is an octopus, and these are the tentacles. One has zoomed off, and is a rocket ship. It’s landing on the moon.” Excitement and joy filled his face. On one side of the page was the requisite blue ocean, drawn in perfectly measured waves. On the other side was fantasy, fun and joy. I’ve been thinking about this lately. This little war that occurs in my son’s daily life. His internal need to create, to dream and to imagine, versus the external need to learn the tools that will help him succeed. He needs to learn to read, to add up the numbers, to follow the rules. Trying to help him balance his internal world with the demands of the external will be a constant struggle. I’ve been thinking about this in relation to myself too. Like so many people, I feel that same tension. We know we have to live by the rules and regulations. We show up for work on time, eat our vegetables and pay our bills. But there’s always the other side of the page… As always, our children have a lot to tell us. This incident with my son tells me, go ahead, do what you’re supposed to do: colour inside the lines, and put the capitals and full stops in all the right places. But when you’ve finished that, don’t be afraid to turn over the page and draw an octopus floating to the moon, or whatever else your imagination conjures up. That’s where the real joy lies. |
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