"Let us learn"

When we got to school this morning we were joined by Julie, who Stephanie had called the night before. I don’t know why but I had given no thought to what the kids were going to do for the day – there had been such excitement the night before that it had never occurred to me that it was up to me. The first couple of hours passed quickly as the kids spent the time getting to know each other. Julie was 16 and David was obviously smitten at first sight.

I spent this time completing my last phone calls to staff and then started to enter my handwritten notes onto a database. In the middle of the morning Libby came to me and said they wanted to learn something. They felt that if they were coming to school they should be learning. It was strange request and not one that I had ever encountered in my 24 years of teaching. It wasn’t that they were asking to be taught, just allowed to learn. They all gathered round me expecting me to come up with something inspirational. Imagination has never been a strength so I immediately threw it back to them. They argued for while and then Julie came up with something quite brilliant. “I’d like to turn salt water into drinking water”. She didn’t take science and thought it would be fun to work out how to do it. I was so proud of David when he described the process of water distillation – I didn’t have clue how to do it so simply joined in as one of the group.

They scavenged round the lab and collected the necessary equipment: tubing; stands, clamps, bottles, etc. Having never done this before I tried to stay out of it but I was of some use by asking questions when we seemed to get stuck. It took us nearly three hours to get it right but the sense of achievement we all felt later that afternoon as we drank the distilled water was something I’ll never forget.

Perhaps we can get through this?