#memorablemomentsineducation #8:

#memorablemomentsineducation #8:
Some may already know parts of this moment, but I’ll share again since this moment in my education led me to taking up harmonica lessons again this fall. Our high school calculus teacher, Ari Bavel, used to play the harmonica on bus rides to debate tournaments. We all admired the convenience and cool sound of the harmonica, so much so that Mr. Bavel gave each of us a harmonica at graduation.
Now, here’s what’s most interesting about that moment–he taught us calculus during the day, but he also recognized that teaching and learning went beyond formulas and functions. He sponsored the school Calculus Club, but I’m pretty sure every one of our meetings centered around watching movies starring celebrities who’d recently died (John Candy, Vincent Price to name two) and eating a fancy cake that had been decorated by Mr. Bavel himself. Every year, the highlight of club membership was creating a new shirt that employed some sort of silly math pun, something like “what’s the difference between an asymptote and a hole in the function?” (Please don’t ask me to explain the pun; I barely understood it at 17.)
Those harmonicas, our Calculus Club shenanigans, were never something to be assessed on a standardized test. There’s no way to measure the impact of that moment on any of us, but I can tell you that it mattered. Not because I’ve become some blues giant (that is my secret dream), but because it fueled an interest beyond that expedient necessary to get from point A to point B. Too many of our students are led to believe school is a means to an end–a better college, a better job, a better life (whatever “better” means)–rather than seeing school as a way to open doors, to create new experiences, to explore what might be out there. We talk a lot about “pathways to college and career,” but what does that even mean? How about a pathway towards something even more fascinating? Our superintendent referred to it recently as preparing students for a “pathway to purpose.” I like that phrase–it means I can be so many different things all at once, like an English-teaching, multitasking, blues-playing, blog-writing, children-raising, 40-something woman who still hasn’t decided what she wants to be when she grows up!