What Will Your Verse Be?

The recent passing of Robin Williams prompted me to watch Dead Poet's Society again. When the movie first came out, I was at the end of my teacher training. I remember the inspiration so many great lines of that movie gave me. After watching the movie again, I realized that the whole message of the movie is what so many of us are trying to teach our children, realized or not, to be "free thinkers."

So often the individuals who make a difference in this world are individuals who look at the world differently — not necessarily the individuals who sit in a room with four walls, memorizing facts, doing what they are told and nothing more. They aren't necessarily people-pleasers. They challenge the norm; they want to experience the world and all it has to offer outside of typical rules and routines. They question the way the world works. They are curious; they want to explore the "whys" of the world.

Although your children may be creative in a different way than others, they ARE creative thinkers! I find that many students coming out of the traditional classroom have a challenge in re-learning how to be creative. We were born to think creatively; we have the ability to problem-solve. In Dead Poet's Society, there are characters who run the gamut — the student who needed only a small push to be given permission to realize his passion to pursue acting, a talent that had been stifled and pushed down for fear that that talent would be perceived as foolish. There was the student who wanted to please, had been programmed to write down everything that was being said, hanging on every word, without connecting to the lesson emotionally — it was an attempt to parrot back anything that was said without connecting on any kind of deeper level. There was the shy boy who was afraid of not being accepted by his peers. He had a creative mind but was not willing to share his creative genius with others until Robin William's character pushed him and found the stifled creativeness that the student may not have even known he possessed. The students had to be pushed and pulled outside of the box they had been programmed to perform in for most of their lives.

As Robin Williams's character (Mr. Keating) stated when speaking to the Headmaster of the school:

"I always thought the idea of education was to learn to think for yourself."

Moving Beyond the Page allows for this type of thinking, not a canned, one-size-fits-all type of response. Thinking for one's self allows our children to connect to what is being learned by drawing on their own experiences. We produce problem solvers who can think creatively.

Here is another quote to close with — from a Walt Whitman poem that Williams's character recites to his students — that will hopefully provide some inspiration and thought to take to the teaching of your children:

"O me! O life! of the questions of these recurring,
of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill'd with the foolish,
...
What good amid these, O me, O life?"

Answer.
That you are here — that life exists, and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

What will your verse be?