Schools do so much formal planning to try to make learning happen. Charting standards, writing tests, rewriting tests, creating pages and pages of documents to record learning, developing lengthy lists of standards that are covered and recovered. Writing what is being learned on boards and walls. Then, people in tiny offices across the state judge us on a score. They try to reduce learning to a number. Developing point scales to check what has been learned and what is to be learned. So much. It’s so formal. So expensive and so time consuming.
Then? A kid goes into yard and blows a bubble and asks, “Why does it pop?” “What will happen if I poke a stick into it while it’s growing?” “How come some of the bubbles stick together?” “Is the bubble strong enough to carry a caterpillar away in the wind?” An exploration of surface tension, gravity, spheres, and air. It’s informal, but it’s real. And it’s free. Discovery doesn’t cost a dime. Okay, the bubbles were a dollar. The time? It was well spent. Because real, authentic wonder and learning? It’s priceless.
