Lessons I learned from teaching hand-writing to basic-four students.
Hand-writing is typically meant to be an introductory class to children between 5–10 years. They are allowed to write a quote or some sentences in an eligible form.
But this week, while it was fun for me as a child, it became a lesson for me as an adult and as a teacher. The hand-writing topic was “born to rule”.
The care it took to explain the rules of eligible writing became a note of reflection for me.
It got me thinking that hand-writing is the earliest form, apart from talking, of affirmations for children.
This was simply the earliest form of confirming something about yourself or learning a lesson too. The words are written intricately, in a light-feather way, carefully and purposively. As I patiently wrote those words, I felt a swell in my heart, my ribcage expanding to accommodate the feeling. The pupils I taught eagerly wrote those words, following the downflow of my hands, copying the way I licked my lips in concentration, warning their seat-mates not to distract them.
As if to say “I am born to rule”, don’t distract me as I run my kingdom!
As a teacher, and an adult, this sentence sounded so different to me, in a refreshing light and a determinative way.
I have been so used to understanding written words as a means of validation, not as a means of affirming. My adult-clustered mind pictured affirmations in dialogues and in achievements, my adult mind sees writing neatly as simply following basic rules of carefulness.
Writing tests, examinations, write-ups, love letters, gossip letters, and notes kills the powerful spirit of writing. how many times writing ‘e’ as an upside-down six has costed me? People…A LOT! Maybe rightly so too. But the point of writing we miss, only discovering it anew as a conscious writer.
How beautiful would it be to write words with so much concentration as my pupils, shunning every distraction left and right, believing it.
All these I thought between writing on the board and shouting “you have 10 minutes!”
Reality.
But here, in the quiet of my dining room, I type, digitally,
“I AM BORN TO RULE, DON’T DISTRACT ME”.
