It’s all about the colors, or so I thought. I spent the last twelve or so minutes sorting diminutive sparkly bits and pieces in a rainbow of colors into clusters. No designated groups, just arrangements I deemed as important. Immediately I gravitated toward the individual colors and made piles of various shades of crimson, blonde, cerulean, and fuchsia. There were the lone pieces of black and cream that didn’t fit with any particular group so it became an entity unto itself. Once all my chunks were in their appropriate places I maneuvered the unit in the shape of a rainbow spread out before me.
It was stunning and appealing to the eye and I surmised a self-congratulatory bid of a task well done. At that moment my mind averted to the kids in my classroom; isn’t that what we do to our children upon seeing them for the first time? Perhaps not consciously, but we inadvertently position them into groups; boys and girls, black, white or Hispanic, low level children and high level children and noting the ADD kids….and it wasn’t until I manipulated the pieces into a rainbow that I discovered their true value and worth and stopped seeing them strictly for the group function but for the intent of making a rainbow of gorgeous colors.
All my children are beautiful beings; orange or red, tall or short and there is a place for each human being amongst my fine-looking spectrum. And once done with the activity, they were swept and gathered back into the bowl to be distributed to another group, another day, and another time. My students will move upward and onward to be present with a new teacher year after year, only to be positioned once again into a collection until their true color is worth the view.
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