There is a lot written out there about butterflies. Lots of nice, sweet, fluffy stuff about butterflies. I watched the insect episode of "Life" where monarch butterflies were highlighted. They travel thousands of miles to hibernate, and never make it back to where they were born - but their offspring do. That's not such a fluffy tidbit of information, and that's my point. At one time, every butterfly was a caterpillar - often times doing serious damage to crops and plants in order to become that flitting creature that seems not to have a care.
Our children are caterpillars. Okay, I'm not saying that they're damage-causing creatures, but they are relatively misunderstood, as caterpillars sometimes are. I'm also saying that their life's journey is not done - that they won't stay the same creature, really, even, as they are as children - that they will grow and morph, as caterpillars do... given the right set of circumstances. As Richard Buckminster Fuller once wrote, "There's nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly." Yet, that's an educator's job - his or her responsibility, really - to find that butterfly in each caterpillar, and prepare that child for the metamorphosis that will eventually take place, given the right circumstances and the chance to morph. In our emphasis on MCA scores, other standardized testing, and curriculum, curriculum, curriculum (always the right curriculum, as in "What curriculum do you teach?"), we sometimes miss the forest 'fore the trees. Our students, our children, have emotional needs, challenges from within and without that sometimes get the best of them, despite the smile and perceived attitude that nothing really is wrong. In other words, are our children "performing" for someone else, or becoming true to themselves in preparation for their own adult life?
Take the metaphor of a cheetah. What do we think of first when we think of a cheetah? (I for one think of the cool markings under their eyes, like the journey of tears... but I digress.) When we think of a cheetah, we think of speed. What they can do. It's awesome to watch. It's flashy. But its impressive speed can only be achieved under certain circumstances, and some of those circumstances come from within the cheetah itself. It has to be healthy and rested. It must have enough room, and it must have fast prey. It has to be an adult in order to run at top speed (juvenile cheetahs don't run as fast.) Will it run 65-70 miles per hour if it was chasing a slower animal? Maybe, if it wanted to impress... what, National Geographic cameras, or nearby zebra, or a cute girl cheetah... but most likely, it wouldn't run that fast if the prey wasn't as fast. But is it still a cheetah without the flash? Is a caterpillar still a butterfly without the flash?
Can we continue to remember that our children, our students, are still people without the test scores? I think so - I think we NEED to remember that, in order to serve all our students they way they thirst to be served. Get to know me, they scream inside. Get to know who I am as a person, not just what I can do in school. And they are right. Our students are more than what they show on the outside. They may not be showing you much about their insides at all, and that can be a scary thought, frankly, because all of their decisions affect their whole life, even though they are still juveniles. If we look only for the flash, the do, the performance, we will miss who they really, really are - and can become. We must be prepared to see it all - the whole person - the journey of tears, the caterpillar in each one.
Where have those butterflies and flowers all gone
That science may have staked the future on?
He seems to say the reason why so much
Should come to nothing must be fairly faced.
- Robert Frost, "Pod of the Milkweed"
