Submerged in the sunrise of wonder

“At the back of our brains, so to speak, there was a forgotten blaze or burst of astonishment at our own existence. The object of the artistic and spiritual life was to dig for this submerged sunrise of wonder.” 
-G.K. Chesterton


I think G.K. Chesterton would have made a terrific teacher...or at least he would have centered his educational experience around a pedagogy that possessed great value; the very object of education, after all, should be to dig for this submerged sunrise of wonder.

Shouldn't it?

I wonder, then, whether our spiritual and artistic selves--however we identify them--might actually be closely tied to our own identities as learners, too. I've always appreciated the word "learner" more than "student" because, while we're always learning, we don't always identify ourselves as "students."

For years, I had this Post-It note sitting on my desk:




This served as both my reminder to retain empathy for my students, while also ensuring that I didn't forget to be a learner, fueled by curiosity and an absolute sense of wonder at the "burst of astonishment" in my own mind.

Right now, my students are embarking on the "WHOA" Project, an assignment I created to invite them to study something that made them say Whoa!, but that we wouldn't be studying in world cultures this year. It's also an acronym for Worldly Histories, Oddities, & Anthropology. But the root of what I love about these two weeks of exploration is the chance I get to come alongside my students as research assistants. No matter what they are studying, I get to be just as curious and inspired as they are.

I feed off their energy.

I research with them the relationship to feet in various cultures.
...or the origins and interpretations of Santa Claus around the world... or the varying ways that children are named.

Side-by-side, I question the cultural appropriation of EPCOT's World Showcase with a student, and I listen to the stories of Argentinian corruption that another student learned from their parents the night before.

It is a magical ride, and all I've done is open a door.

And it is this that I love about middle school, about my students who are so fully children and so fully emerging into adulthood. They are fascinated and scholarly.

Their brains are awake. They are alive.
They are submerged in the sunrise of wonder.