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This little
vignette is about Martin, our son, about a swimming pool, about diving --
and about education.
Some years ago
Robert Fulghum wrote a book called All I Really Need to Know I Learned in
Kindergarten. I am tempted to call the book on gifted education that I
am writing All I Really Need to Know I Learned One Winter at the YMCA
Swimming Pool.
We introduced
Martin to swimming at the age of seven months, and he took to it with the
exuberance he brought to every new adventure in his young life.
Then, when he
was about two-and-a-half, I decided to teach him to dive. But I made a
conscious decision not to do the traditional drill:
“Now, Martin,
stand at the edge of the pool. There, that’s right, now curl your toes over
the edge. Yes, yes, now hands over your head. Bring them together.
Excellent, now….”
Nor did I ever
ask Martin to dive. I simply started to talk about diving. I dived and we
occasionally stopped to watch when people dived off the board. And all the
while we talked about this very neat thing called “diving.”
Meantime,
Martin would sit on the side, hold my fingers, and jump in. After a time he
stood on the side, held my fingers and jumped in. Pretty soon he was jumping
in without needing my fingers for confidence.
Then began a
process – I don’t know how long, a couple of months, maybe longer – where a
part of every trip to the Y was talking about diving, watching diving … and
jumping in. Martin sometimes spent 10 minutes or more of our swimming time
jumping in/climbing out, jumping in/climbing out, jumping in/climbing out.
It was almost obsessive-compulsive behavior. But he was having fun.
Never once did
he attempt a dive. Never once did I ask him to dive.
I began to
think that maybe Martin wasn’t ready for diving, and that we should go on to
something else.
Then there
came, while I was debating what to do, a really cold February night, one of
those nights when the winter chill seemed to seep through the cinder blocks
at the Y and invade every body that wasn’t actually in the water. After
Martin had done his jump in/climb out thing for 10 minutes or so, he climbed
out of the water one last time and stood by the side of the pool, arms
tucked into his body and fists clenched hard against his chin – the classic
position of little children who are very cold. I was out of the water and
cold myself, with goose-bumps to prove it.
“Are you cold,
Martin?” I asked. “Do you want to get out?”
“No,” he
said, and continued to stand like an orphan on a cold night under a street
lamp.
And then he
raised his hands above his head and launched himself into a first-attempt
technically perfect dive. He simply dived in.
It was one of
those very special moments that as a father you remember, with crystal
clarity, forever.
The next week,
without my asking or suggesting, he dived off the one-meter board.
That sequence
– from the first word I spoke about diving to the first dive – is the solid
rock foundation of my educational philosophy.
Martin – a
gifted kid – was in the environment he needed, we had a
direction, he had absolute ownership of the process,
and he had the time he needed. I don’t know what was going on
in Martin’s head as he repeatedly jumped into the water and climbed back out
– and as I systematically violated the accepted rules of “teaching a child
to dive.” But I do know that all the while he was jumping, Martin was
figuring out this diving thing that he was watching other people do and that
his father was demonstrating and talking about. And when he had it figured
out, he dived.
Environment.
Direction. Ownership. Time. Oh,
and also faith and fun. Martin and I had a good time together (what, in the
classroom I call an “intellectually stimulating” time. I must admit that my
faith in the process was mixed with doubt, but Martin seemed to have no
doubts. He knew what he was doing, and that first dive drowned out the
Doubting Thomas in me.
Now the
question I usually ask teachers when I have finished telling them this story
is: “If at any time from the moment I started to talk with Martin about
diving up until the split second before he made his first dive – if at any
point on that continuum – I had been compelled to give Martin a diving
grade, what would that grade have had to be, he never having even attempted
a dive? And what would that “F” or “0” have meant?
Education is
about E-DOT – Environment. Direction.
Ownership. Time.
Oh yes, and
it’s also a matter of faith and fun. When you’re a little kid, things aren’t
worth doing unless they’re fun (substitute “stimulating,” “exciting” …
whatever word works for you). And when it comes to learning, we’re all of us
little kids – we learn best when we’re enjoying the process and being
appropriately challenged by it.
We don’t have
a swimming pool at John Scott Academy – not yet anyway.
But we do
absolutely believe in environment, direction,
ownership, and time – because it works, whether the
class is diving, calculus, microbiology or American literature.
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