How To: Make an Acorn Whistle by Kayla

How To: Make an Acorn Whistle by Kayla - July 2016 Scholarship Essay

Early education was a blur to me. It was a whirlwind of emotions, changes, and information. I must have learned things, because I survived high school and subsequently an undergraduate degree without feeling like I had missed anything, but I don't remember specific things that I learned. Also, I am not entirely sure how accurate my memory of events is anymore given that I saw them only through the skewed perspective of a young kid whose mind was more preoccupied with crushing on her best friend and riding horses than on the quality of her education. That's my disclaimer. The things I learned from Mr. Tucker might have happened differently than I remember, but unfortunately my only reference is how I remember them.

Mr. Tucker was my fifth grade teacher at Robert PT Coffin Elementary school a million years ago. I don't know what his first name was and I can't remember what he looked like. I searched the school web page and he wasn't there. Hopefully he parted ways on good terms. Coffin school didn't have a website when I went there. Things were so different. We grew salmon fry and mustard plants to learn about biology. We never googled anything. It makes me feel old: "Back in my day..." like I'm longing for this idyllic past where we had to walk ten miles in the snow uphill to get to school. We didn't.

We were on the cusp of this great standardized testing revolution. We weren't quite there yet, but a pressure to meet certain guidelines and to compare students across schools was looming. From what I've heard, teachers are now so pressured to adhere to the CURRICULUM that there isn't time for anything else. I don't know this first hand, but my friends who have kids feel overwhelmed with the quantity of information that kids are now responsible for. This might not be true for everywhere.

Anyway, Mr. Tucker was a special teacher in his curiosity and especially in his interest in nature. For some reason it stands out in my mind that Mr. Tucker took the time to stop and consider the present moment as a learning opportunity, rather than charge ahead with curriculum blinders on. The most important thing I learned from Mr. Tucker was how to whistle with an acorn cap. In my memory we were outside on the perimeter of the fifth grade playground. I'm not sure why. He had brought us out there for something--maybe to collect water from the little creek in the woods, maybe for fresh air. Who knows. At some point in the excursion he picked up an acorn cap that was lying on the ground and whistled into it. The whistle was so loud that we, as fifth graders, were impressed. So he showed us how to do it: how to press your thumb knuckles over the bowl of the cap and how to blow air across them. When we had mastered the acorn he started experimenting with grasses. You can make grass whistle too! I don't know what we were supposed to be learning and I don't remember learning any other thing in that class, but I remember this. It stands out for two reasons: 1. learning is not always curriculum, but about interacting with your environment and taking advantage of what the present moment can teach you and 2. nature and creativity will always be important.

Another time we had a student who had moved to Maine from Puerto Rico. He brought in a coconut to show it to the class. One thing led to another and before long Mr. Tucker had us outside on the playground with a hammer smashing away at the coconut and proving, very clearly, that coconuts were hard to open if you had no experience with them. We also learned what coconut meat looks like when it is still inside the coconut. Maybe it was an interruption of a spelling lesson, but why not take the opportunity to learn where food comes from?

I think ultimately the take home message was always to seize learning opportunities and to stay curious, and I appreciate that message so much. I know that these days kids are getting further from nature as screen time increases. Do kids even NOTICE acorn caps on the ground anymore? I hope so. I appreciate Mr. Tucker for taking the time to show us that it was okay to take time. It's an important lesson for adult life when the to-do list grows so long that you cease to be curious. If he's retired now, I assume he's using it well.