Teachable Moment

Teachers spend so much time trying to teach their students that we hardly ever sit back and consider how much our students are teaching us.

This week I had a moment with one of my first graders that almost brought tears to my eyes.  I teach fifth grade, but I tutor a group of K-3rd graders three days per week.  We will call this first grader Nell.

I was helping Nell with her reading homework.  First Grade is a lot about sight words and sounding things out.  Nell was reading a paragraph about germs and viruses.  Those are hard words for a first grader, but she was doing really well!  She came to the sentence "Really bad viruses can kill people."  She read the first part of the sentence just fine, but she got to the word "kill" and stopped.  She looked up at me with her huge brown eyes and said, "I've never seen that word before."

Can you imagine a world where you've never seen the word "kill"? I'm not usually overly-emotional, but she was just so innocent and pure.  It made the moment all the more poignant because Nell happens to be from Afghanistan.  She's a little middle eastern girl who doesn't know the word kill.  It was a beautiful picture.

We started talking a little bit about Afghanistan after she was done reading, and Nell told me, "I've heard that there were some wars there.  I don't know why anyone would want to fight in my country - it's so beautiful there!"  I bet it is, Nell.  I wish more people saw the beauty instead of the pain.