Spreading a Feast of Ideas

From the desk of Leigh Ann…

“Our fault, our exceeding great fault, is that we keep our own minds and the minds of our children shamefully underfed.”  – Charlotte Mason

This summer I became inspired by the work of educator Charlotte Mason.  Her life was dedicated to improving the quality of education for children at the beginning of the twentieth century.  At first I thought she was simply ahead of her time, but now I think her ideas are timeless.  Mason encouraged teachers to set a banquet of living ideas before their children and that is the atmosphere I want in my classroom.  I want there to be an abundance of living ideas – in a class filled with inspired students – whose minds are truly being nourished.  The enthusiasm for learning should be evident (in me and my students), contagious, and spark new discoveries.

Spread a feast of ideas – the kind that inspires a joy for learning.  Our children spend such a huge percentage of each day at school.  This needs to be time spent consuming quality information that creates learning for life, not just learning for school.  Mason said, just like the stomach was designed to digest food, the mind was created to digest knowledge.  If I am going to provide nourishment, I have to plan opportunities that matter and are meaningful.  Setting the table with nourishment on which to build and help my students grow as lifelong learners will be the goal.

The analogy of feasting on ideas is inspiring to me because I am pretty enthusiastic about food. I love to eat, but want the calories I take in to be well worth it.  Dr. Mike Clark says that the human brain burns about twenty percent of the calories the body takes in each day.  That got me thinking about good food for thought.  If my students and I are going to burn 1/5 of our calories thinking, shouldn’t we be inspired?  How big will our feast of ideas be as we set the table to inspire not only a great school year, but a lifetime of learning?