Friday, July 31, 2009

teachable moment

my geeky secret is that i love talk radio- and not just talk radio, but the sirius-xm station POTUS that is all politics, all the time. they play full press conferences from the white house briefing room (so you can hear just how obnoxious the press can really be).

driving to work this morning i listened to yesterday's conference on the "teachable moment" aka beer summit. as the press attacked the press secretary for the TM phrase, i had to admit i totally got they said it was a teachable moment. the first grade teacher in me got momentarily giddy with the ideas of how to incorporate this message from the president into our beginning of the school year community building.

i mean, the president of the united states is sitting down and discussing problems with people who were mad at each other. certainly you and your fight over the blue crayon can do the same.

but then i got stuck. what am i going to do- hold up a big picture in a first grade room of the president and beer with a sign that says "talk it out"? have our own little white picnic table for conflict resolution (which would be super cute) but how do i explain the meaning behind it without the beer? i feel the beer a very important piece of this. it is the great "man to man" symbol- but i can't exactly convey that to 6 year olds. i don't want kiddos thinking the only way we can problem solve is with beer. besides, most of them associate beer with the craziness that happens afterward, a parent being arrested, and their pastors have told their parents to "go with God" and "not drink the beers".

hmmmm.

maybe it wont be a teachable moment for us after all. sadness, because, according to the press, we would have been the only ones who would have gotten the message.

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