Of Dishes and Dreams
I’m happy to have the chance to be the one to write you some weekly thoughts this Friday!
I thought I would share on a topic that is close to my heart, and is one of the first things I look at when I am observing in a classroom: real dishes!
A week or so ago, I had a chance to observe in one of our toddler classrooms, and here is what I saw:
A child was rinsing berries with great independence and concentration. As he finished, he placed his dishes on the dish rack by the dish washing stand.
Another child was doing a different food preparation exercise. She also placed her dishes on the dish rack.
A third child, meanwhile, was there at the dish washing stand, washing dishes, taking the dishes that his friends left for him, and patiently, carefully, scrubbing them in soapy water, then rinsing them in clean water, and leaving them to dry.
To see the life of the classroom reflected in this beautiful way, with children performing different functions to meet the general needs of the community, made my heart sing. It never ceases to amaze me when I see this kind of thing in our classrooms, and most especially with children under the age of 2, since it is so far beyond what we as a society traditionally believe children are capable of doing.
I often think about and present lectures on the importance of real dishes. They symbolize an ideal for us. The ideal that children should get to interact with the real world, in real ways, and that children are worthy and capable of doing that. To give a child real dishes is to say to that child: “I trust you with real and beautiful things”. That is something very well worth communicating.
On this particular occasion, as I observed, I was reflecting on this from a bit of a different perspective. I was reflecting on what it really represents when we use real, breakable dishes. Is it just the pure fact that they are breakable?
My first thought was: yes, in a way. We think about the idea of teaching cause and effect, and the value of a child learning that if you don’t take care with something or handle it gently, it might have a consequence. It’s giving children the feedback from reality that helps inspire them to develop self-control, which is a huge part of their work at this age.
But then I kept watching, and my heart kept singing. And you know what? I realized that’s not why we do it. We don’t use real dishes because they break.
We use them because they are beautiful. Because the look and texture and experience of eating with real dishes is more joyously human. And the fact that they might break is just an inescapable part of their beauty. We want to offer children a beautiful world, and the risk is worth that value.
If you think about that as a metaphor for adult life, or human life as such, it’s pretty apt and it’s pretty inspiring. As human beings, there’s no doubt we get value from taking risks, that we learn from doing so, that we develop resilience and so on.
But at the end of the day, life isn’t about being resilient just for the sake of being resilient. Life is about having something we care about, having something we believe in, having something that gives us joy and fills our lives with sunlight. And we take risks because of those things. Risk is just a byproduct of loving the world and having big dreams.
Every time we hit a bump in the road as an organization, that is something that I think of. For me at least, the “risk”, or the thing that hurts the most, is when we disappoint people that we care about. For example, when a parent, or even a group of parents, is upset at our organization. I feel sick inside when that happens, and sometimes that swirl of other people’s negative emotions makes me question the work I’ve chosen to do.
But observing a toddler wash a dish reminds me why I do it. I still don’t enjoy the hard times, or the moments when I fall short. Sometimes I hate them and want to do anything to get away from them. But in those moments, I’ve just lost sight of the fact that risk is a byproduct of having big dreams. And then I remember how deeply I care about our dream.
Enjoy your weekend.
Yours,
Rebecca