Sometimes you learn a lot when you have PERMISSION TO LET GO (literally), such as in this fabulous lab that I accidentally walked into last month in Rolando’s fourth grade science class. The room quite literally surged with controlled excitement, students posed in eager anticipation to release their group’s marble down a ramp.
One the other side of the room, students with clipboards stood poised, ready to document the exact moment their group’s marble passed a line. I looked to the side of the room: tennis balls and golf balls collected neatly in buckets indicated this was round 3. The clipboards were already filled with documentation.
3-2-1, and release! The room erupted in cheering.
Students then moved into groups while Rolando skillfully asked questions to get students to calculate the “average number” for each of the ball launches. The math was just hard enough, so firmly in the right Vygotskian zone of proximal development. Each group huddled around their marker boards, while the recorder furiously wrote down the answers they agreed upon on the officially clipboard lab sheet.
It occurred to me then I was watching a great lesson, sure, but I was also seeing a metaphor for “letting go” unfold before my very eyes. Without the dropping of the tennis ball, golf ball, marbles, what even would there be on those lab sheets? What if we paid more attention to the things we let go. What if we analyzed and reflected upon them with the precision of a science lab or math problem? What if we saw our letting go as sites for learning, for exploration? What if we did this all in small groups, in communities, in villages that we trusted?
I think we’d all learn a lot. I think we’d have fun doing it.