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Some individuals have the innate ability to capture and create teachable moments. Tom Hunter is one of those individuals. In his recent Exchange article, "Black Asphalt: Visits to the Heart of Education" (which can be viewed in its entirety in the Exchange Ideas for You: FREE! section of our web site) he describes an incident in which a classroom bully hung outside the edge of the group participating in a singing session led by Hunter, a visitor to the kindergarten class...

"In the middle of all that, the boy stood up. It was like he was emerging from the stillness rather than interrupting it. He folded his arms and with a big smile, he said, “That’s me, I’m the one.” Even as a visitor, I knew right away something important had happened. I immediately glanced back at the teacher and saw big tears as if his words had flicked a switch somewhere in her. I started to ask what the tears were about and she stopped me. 'I’ll tell you later,' she said.

"We sang probably five more songs and that boy stayed there kneeling behind the other children. He sang, too, and had more good ideas. I was still curious about the teacher’s tears so after school I found her in the kindergarten room. 'That boy is the best bully I’ve ever had,' she said. 'In 23 years of teaching, he’s far and away the best.' She told me how he often walks across the classroom to make a child cry or runs across the playground to pick on another child. She said she knows where and how he lives, and the chaos breaks her heart.

"Then she quietly reviewed what had happened during the singing — the boy against the wall 'where he usually is,' slowly joining the group 'and on his own, too,' more children making suggestions for the songs, such energetic singing, then his suggestion and all of us singing what he said. She was remembering details the way people do when they want to hold onto a moment a little longer, as if remembering might help her hold the boy, too. 'And you celebrated his idea,' she said. 'That’s what got me. You didn’t say anything about how he said it. You just celebrated what he said. I haven’t figured out how to celebrate that boy in this classroom and until I do, he’s going to have trouble and so am I.'

"She had gotten a glimpse of something beyond helping a boy behave appropriately, and ‘celebrate’ was her word for it — not just getting along with him or co-existing, but celebrating. She had glimpsed how interactive singing can lead to that kind of celebration, even in the most chaotic and hard-bitten of people. No one had planned it. It was not an outcome hoped for from a lesson plan. It had emerged instead from a structured experience of asking questions and singing the answers. It had emerged from listening to the children, and from the complicated stillness listening often creates."

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Tom Hunter, who has inspired and guided early childhood educators in the Northwest for decades, was recently diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, which is rapidly destroying his beautiful brain. He has a short life expectancy. To learn more about Tom Hunter and to see how you can help support his medical expenses, visit the Tom Hunter blog.

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