On this Day of the Dead, I'm contemplating what we leave behind. In the context of working with children, I'm thinking about the memories and impressions I leave with the children that I interact with each day.
When I was a child, I went to preschool. We were not a family that could afford preschool every day, so I think I only went one or two days per week. And I remember very little about it. In fact, I have only two memories. One is being told that circletime has begun and I needed to come out of the play kitchen. My memory is not of the words, but of the feeling that I had gotten in trouble. Guilt. The other memory is of me crying at the door. Or maybe I was seeing someone else cry and taking on the emotions around it. It's foggy.
I remember small snippets of my childhood, brief interactions and the way I felt during those moments.
When I interact with children, I often reflect on what memory I will leave with them. What if this is that one memory that they carry away from preschool? What if this moment is my one chance to leave their lifelong impression of their first teacher? What if they don't remember my words, but remember instead the feeling that our interaction invoked within them?
Today's post, this post after years of absence from this blog, is a question...a reflection. Not a statement, nor an answer.
What can I do to take each moment as an opportunity to leave behind a legacy worth remembering?
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