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Friday, August 13, 2010

Learning through traveling...together

One of my greatest blessings is having a daughter whose company I enjoy--and who has turned out to be a wonderful travel partner.  We've taken road trips since she was too young to remember in order to ride refurbished rail cars, marvel at aquatic creatures, dig our toes into sand, or watch minor league baseball.  We've flown across oceans, driven through hail, and walked seemingly endless miles .  We've learned about history, geography, arithmetic, planning, other people...and ourselves.

I no longer have to do all the driving (the worrying, yes, but not the driving) or all the planning.  And asking a teenager to make a budget for a trip?  Best lesson I never had to teach.

It's time for another road trip to watch a minor league team we haven't seen, visit two museums of interest to us both, and introduce old friends of mine to my daughter.  And we'll take a Mother-Daughter walking tour of the campus where I did my undergraduate work.

It never occurred to me when I was an undergraduate student (and just a couple of years older than my daughter is now) that I would visit the campus some day with my teenage daughter.  Or that my own journey would bring me full circle to teaching college students.  And though my students see mostly the differences between us, I do remember how it feels to be in their shoes...and seats.  The memory is so clear, in fact, that it drives me to be the kind of teacher I wanted...and to emulate the teachers I admired, some of whom taught me on the campus we'll be visiting.

1 comment:

  1. "The wheel is come full circle, I am here." William Shakespeare

    The good ones, the best teachers, allow us to go with them on their journeys in the classroom and outside of it. Their curiosity is disconcerting and contagious. No expectations, no pre scripts, only what's in the moment and needed, and what's in the companionship. When it's your daughter, your child, there is much for them to teach the teacher and much for the teacher to re- member across time, oceans, and through hail storms. Old friends and new ones in the guise of your daughter, touching all the bases; sounds like a hit that will allow you and her to come back to home base with a renewed sense of what it is to teach....and to learn. Good things to have for another academic year.

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