Notes From Public School - Day 128

I teach my students to write small moments from their lives.

They think of a moment that was meaningful to them and write about.

I love to read their small moments.

“One day, you’ll realize that the small moments are really BIG moments,” I said.

I like dropping teacher knowledge every now and then.

Here is a small moment from my life that I shared with them.

We were walking down the beach on the sand as the tide was moving out toward the ocean. 

I was holding Zeke's hand, talking with him about sea things. 

"I didn't know jelly fish swam this close to the shore during the spring.

I bet that drift wood is as old as The Old Man and the Sea.

I heard a horseshoe crab's blood can be used to treat cancer.

Wow! Look," I said.

"What is it?" he asked.

I picked up a shell out of the deep, hot sand and held it in my open hand.

It was unlike any shell we had ever seen. 

There were two shells, one on the top and its twin on the bottom, connected at the back, and clammed up tightly in the front.

"It's a clam!" I said.

"Is it alive?" he asked.

"I don't know," I answered. 

"Let's find out."

We returned to our chairs, took our shovel, and made our way to the shore line where the waves come to an end in the sand and ran back into the sea. 

I dug a small hole, Zeke scratched out a little trench, and we placed the clam back into a sandy water habitat.

We sat and watched. 

Children played around us. 

Families swam in the surf. 

People relaxed in the sun.

The clam opened and closed itself, almost imperceptibly, leaving only a small bubble to show us it was still alive.

"Did you see that? It's still living!" I exclaimed.

"We did something nice for that clam," said Zeke. 

"I wonder what nice thing it's going to do for us?

 

Maybe it'll make a pearl for us!"

In a way, the little clam did give us a pearl. 

It reminded me of something I learned from the great writer George Bernard Shaw. 

He taught me that in a world where survival of the fittest is in effect, where only the strong survive, there is an art in life where the smallest and most forgotten things are of utmost importance, where there is a survival of the kindest.

Life is in that art.

We saw that today.