My Momma Don't Say That

This morning I am thinking about the day I spent helping out in a kindergarten classroom.  At Read-Aloud time, the eighteen students gathered on a colorful rug, where they sat cross-legged in front of their teacher.  The story she had selected was about a little boy who was lonely at school because he didn’t have any friends.  As the story unfolded, it became apparent that the primary reason why he wasn’t making friends was that he spent all of his free time inside his house watching television and playing video games.  At one point in the story, the little boy’s mother tells him to turn off the TV and go outside to play.  Here, the teacher paused and asked, “How many of your moms say that?”  Only two hands went up.  The teacher seemed a bit surprised.  She then probed a bit.  “Doesn’t your mom tell you to go outside and play sometimes?”  Eighteen sweet little faces stared back at her in silence.  A few shook their heads, indicating a “no.”  The teacher just smiled and went on reading the rest of the story.  One little boy really caught my attention, though.  When those two questions were posed by the teacher, he looked around at his classmates.  The expression on his face was almost pained, reflecting absolute puzzlement.  Finally, he made eye contact with me.  I smiled and gave him a wink.  He scooted over and sat next to me on the rug, and he whispered, “My momma don’t say that.”  I just rubbed his back and whispered back, “Okay.”  But inside I wasn’t okay.  I was so hoping the teacher might stop and say or do something to help the children make meaning of this part of a story, which clearly was not consonant with their own experience.  I was hoping she might start by asking, “Why do you think his mom might want him to go outside and play?”  Then the dialogue and learning could go from there.  Certainly I understand the risk of asking questions like that with little children.  Asking questions like that can take a lesson completely off script.  The answers children give sometimes uncover things a teacher, quite frankly, doesn’t know.  Other times, their answers reveal things a teacher really doesn’t want to know.  But their answers can also raise awareness of things a teacher really needs to know…things she may have never considered…things that might give insight into more effective ways to help students learn and understand.  Anyway, this is causing me to examine the ways I sometimes “stick to a script” in my dealings with people, too.  I sometimes operate from mental lesson plans that I expect to go a certain way.  In doing so, I act or speak with an expectation of the “appropriate” way others should act or speak in response, based on my experience and my agenda.  I don’t always approach interactions and conversations with a mindset that I might actually have something to learn that will radically challenge (or perhaps change) my perceptions, and maybe even my agenda.  Certainly I understand the risk of approaching life this way.  Not everyone thinks the way I think.  And not everyone’s momma says the things my momma would say.  Being open to understanding and learning from the diverse experiences and perspectives of others can really take me off my script.  Yet, my best relationships—whether as a mother, a sister, a teacher, a colleague, or a friend—are those in which I recognize that I am not the only one with a lesson to teach or a story to tell.  My best relationships are the ones in which I recognize that I must sometimes assume the posture and perspective of another so that respect, appreciation, enlightenment, and mutual understanding can be ever flourishing.  I’ll take that over a script any time.