Years ago, I went to Mexico with a friend on a caving trip. Our goal was to fund a yet undiscovered and unmapped cave, and to explore and record our findings. After hauling water and gear up a two thousand-foot mountain and spending a few days scrambling through thorny bushes, we finally found the entrance to a small cave, which then led to a medium-sized cave. We had to rappel down underground in order to explore.

 

What a great feeling to know that we were in a place where no one else had ever walked before. It was the feeling of discovery. While discovery can happen in ways large and small, it’s a feeling we can re-create all the time, and not always in ways that require an expedition to new lands.  

 

We can experience discovery when we go to the library and find a book that speaks to our souls, or in the car listening to a song that grabs our attention. Intellectually, we know that we haven’t really “discovered” someone or something, but we are able to ride the thrill of getting to know something new. For children, it happens all the time, opening the minds of students to new possibilities and opportunities.

 

 

When my kids were little, I loved those moments when they would “discover” or understand a new concept or idea. For me, that happened when one of my twins was 9 and came to breakfast to announce: “I know the Tooth Fairy doesn’t exist.” My wife and I looked at each other anxiously.  Curious about how she came to this revelation, we asked her about it. “Well, I conducted an experiment,” she described.  “I lost a tooth and I didn’t tell you to see if the Tooth Fairy would come. She didn’t, and now I know that you guys are the Tooth Fairy.”  It  was the power and beauty of a young mind at work: they work things through and make discoveries. To her credit, she never told her twin sister or her little brother. They had to figure it out on their own.

 

This week in CA’s Kindergarten classes, students made their own discoveries when  “Zero the Hero” (AKA Drama Teacher Stephen Scherer) came to visit.  Dressed in a red cape and a silver mask, it was the 100th day of school,  and he came to surprise the children. The students had been writing letters to Zero the Hero. Throughout the school year, Zero the Hero, had written back, incorporating lessons they were learning in the classroom.

 

“You have been in school for 50 days! That is nifty!” he wrote in one letter. “You are half way to the 100th day of school.  Do you know how many ten frames you have filled?”

 

In another letter, he wrote: “I heard you are learning about attributes. When I come visit, will you teach me about attributes?”

 

Needless to say, the children bought in—hook, line, and sinker. It was a lot of fun. “Zero the Hero is my neighbor,” exclaimed one child after class. “Really, it’s true.”While they wanted to know all kinds of things about his costume and mask, they also learned a thing or two about numbers. In their own small way, they made their very own discoveries and became excited about learning in their age of imagination, where both the Tooth Fairy and Zero the Hero are real.

In the words of Albert Einstein, “Logic will get you from A to Z. Imagination will take you everywhere!”