We're Going on a Treasure Hunt

       "Today was an adventure!" Those were the words that ended my day of field work on Wednesday. A little boy in the kindergarten class I had been observing said this to me right before I was about to leave. And it got me thinking. That is exactly what I want all the students I ever teach to walk out of my classroom everyday saying. Learning should be a process; a roller coaster of ups and downs. It should take the student on a ride and make him or her be frustrated enough to turn that into motivation and fall in love with the art of learning. I want my students to approach every day as if they are searching for buried treasure off the coast of some remote island that they have just sailed to with their ship and crew. I want them to be open to change, flexibility and discovery.
        Interesting isn't it? To think that some of the greatest things we will ever learn as teachers will often be taught to us by non-other-than our very own students. However, this is precisely why his comment echoed so loudly in my ears for the following few days. Our journeys as teachers should also be adventures. They should reach outside the limits of average teaching and pull students into the information. It should make them want to learn. Take writing for example. It can be one of the students' weakest (or strongest) skills. Yet if we approach it as an adventure waiting to happen, just think of the possibilities that could jump off your students' pages! We could use the metaphor of "having an adventure," as a platform for building up weak writers and encouraging strong ones to go further with their talent. It's the simple idea of adding a familiar yet interesting concept (adventures) into the daily routines of the classroom experience, that could be the students ticket to success.
       On another note, you could go even farther with the adventure idea. Build your entire class around it. The rug in the classroom could be the ship and the different learning centers could be different islands. You could be the captain and they could be the crew. Activities could even be centered around this concept.
       My point is that I truly believe it is important and crucial to our success as teachers to take every little bit of inspiration we come across and run with it in the classroom. It could be the one thing that makes students believe in learning again.