Children are extremely sensitive throughout their growing up to others' expectations. I'm talking not only about noticing what reading group they get assigned to, or where in the pecking order they are when teams are being formed, I'm talking about children's ability to read our minds.
I've seen fascinating studies about the seemingly supernatural abilities of dogs and even houseplants to sense our intentions and our needs. How could our children not be constantly picking up on the subtlest of signals? For the over forty years that I have been teaching young people, one of the most common reactions I've heard from parents and other teachers comes down to, "Wow. How did you do this? I never thought my daughter, my son, my pupil had that in them!"
At first, when I heard this question being posed, I was puzzled. First off, it wasn't I who did the doing, it was the child. That much I could say directly in response. But underneath, I was thinking (and as I gained understanding, saying out loud), "How could I NOT see this potential for this kind of growth in this child?"
I often characterize myself as a rose-colored glasses kind of guy. But right now, I'm talking about being present with a student, with each and every child, so that we can together stretch and reach with our imaginations, leaving behind yesterday's transcript and this morning's squabble. Because our imaginations have wings and endow us with the freedom to soar above all the dummies' desires to stuff us in a pigeonhole, we must nurture and cherish each flight. It is my prime purpose to encourage positive imagining, to validate in word and deed the individual and collective flights of all with whom I interact. In the classroom and on the stage, something absolutely wonderful happens when one take-off encourages another and another, until the breeze can become the wind under even the most timid of wings.
Every time we categorize another according to the previously perceived limitations or shortcomings of the other, we are clipping their wings. And, as I've said, after awhile the other starts doing the pre-clipping to themselves.
When I say that we are meant to have the highest expectations of those who trust us or who are dependent on us, that means starting with ourselves. Self-confidence is not the learned skill to elbow oneself to the front of the line. It is the trust in one's imagination and the knowing that we create our updraft all together. May we each soar freely, marveling at all the flutter, all the new skies that surround us.