A Gift of Wonder A True Story Showing School as It Should Be by Kim Allsup Foreword by Patrice Maynard
240 pp.
6" x 9"
Lindisfarne Books
Paperback
Published: September 2017
Can you remember the world of movement, wonder, and
intense sensation that you lived in when you were six years old? Does
education mean filling a bucket or does it mean lighting a fire?
In
today’s predominant educational environment, where high-stakes testing
and anxiety reign, it’s clear that the goal, though implicit, is to fill
buckets. Kim Allsup would like us to start lighting fires—to stop
treating children like empty buckets. She sees that the vital essence of
education has been sucked out of most schools today; that we must
strive, above all, to it bring back, and that the situation is indeed
urgent. Nevertheless, this book contains no arguments; it is not a
change-of-policy proposal, nor is it a polemical treatise.
Kim
Allsup is a teacher and a teller of stories, and so this book, looking
only at the surface, tells the story of the six years she spent as a
teacher with her class. However, it does much more than that. Funny,
poignant, moving, relatable, and, finally, life-affirming and hopeful,
this memoir gently shows the way to an educational approach worthy of
childhood—education rooted in wonder.
Wonder is a
challenging word. It has been overused, abused, and commercialized, and
its true definition is perhaps endangered. Yet, wonder is a uniquely
human experience, and to stifle or remove it from the lives of our
children is to court a barren and dismal future. Wonder remains alive,
but we may need to be reminded of it. This story is a living reminder of
the simple beauty of childhood wonder and our responsibility to the
future—Never give it up!
CONTENTS:Working with Wonder