The day I made an egg fly

IN THE END, when I retired, I realised that the 26 years I spent in education all boiled down to the day I made an egg fly. Over the years, there had been so many memorable moments that I thought would be the defining point in my career, but the flying egg proved to be the pinnacle.

My first few years as an English teacher I enjoyed seeing quiet students transform into stars for the Christmas plays we wrote in class. I saw students who struggled with writing turn into the best writers in the class just by discovering their strengths as visual learners. I got to use my background in journalism and my anthropology when I taught English and the Media and Ancient World History classes.

From my teaching experiences I devised a method of visual writing that the University of California at Berkeley and Bedford St Martins included in a textbook called Seeing and Writing.

I introduced my students to magical realism, and they discovered Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. They read Caribbean writers Roger Mais, Jean Rhys, Olive Senior and VS Naipaul. I introduced them to the work of Arundhati Roy and Chinua Achebe.

We read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and discussed Achebe’s essay about why Conrad’s novel about that trip up the Congo was the most dangerous piece of literature ever written.

In my classroom, we ventured to South Africa to discuss anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko’s essay on why white people should stay out of Black people’s struggles for equality and Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer’s essay on why standing up for equality is everyone’s duty.

As a librarian, I sparked students' passion for reading. We discovered so many great books. Children laughed at Brown Sugar and Spice by Betty Peter, a light-hearted, historical novel set in the Caribbean during World War II, and they were enthralled by The War That Saved My Life, a novel by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley set in World War II.

I took my love for books and education out of my library and into the Youth Training Centre (YTC) and in our nation’s prisons and saw young men discover the joys of reading.

In the end, my time in education is best symbolised by an exercise that took place a year ago in a teacher training session at my school. We were divided into groups that had to find a way to drop a raw egg from ten-foot-high steps and prevent the egg from breaking. My group consisted of a kindergarten teacher, a math teacher, a computer specialist, a physical education teacher, a student support teacher and me.

With some newspaper, straws, tape and paper towels, we designed a vehicle for our raw egg to fly. Everyone contributed to the construction of the egg’s flying machine. We created a structure that resembled a hot air balloon with a well padded basket lined with newspaper for the egg's nest. Straw legs extended below the basket so the egg would not touch the ground. A cover of paper towels taped to protruding straws secured to the basket served as the egg's parachute.

Every other group’s egg fell with a splatter to the cement below, but our egg drifted slowly through the air and landed on its straw legs. Our egg survived.

Working together with teachers from different disciplines on what seemed to be an impossible task gave me the opportunity to feel success at something I would never have tried alone. I got to feel like an engineer and a protector of an egg.

Education is about daring to dream of accomplishing the impossible, collaboration and stepping out of your comfort zone to tackle a problem with a support system.

Education should be fun and exciting. It should be about taking creative chances, trying new methods of learning and tackling tasks you never dreamed of trying. I learned that over all of my years of teaching, and I felt it the most on the day I helped to make an egg fly.

I hope all students and teachers will find creative ways to learn in these challenging times. Collect memories that will be meaningful along your journey through life. Hang in there. Use your imagination more than ever. Maybe we all just need to find a way to make an egg fly.