A Trip to the Hoover Dam: Go US!

“…yeah, they translated “pre-school” as ‘kindergarten.’ ”

“Well that’s normal; in Germany they start school at 4. I actually went to kindergarten in Germany.”

“Oh yeah, how was that?”

“A lot different. Much more about learning critical thinking and concepts. Not like the rote memorization with flashcards in America.”

“We actually do a lot of that where I work at the preschool for Google employees. It’s much more focused on building critical thinking and socio-emotional skills. Like, instead of teaching them the alphabet we give the kids cameras and have them take lots of pictures of things they’re interested and then we teach them about the things they want to learn about. So maybe they haven’t memorized what shapes the letters of the alphabet look like, but they can tell you about the parts of a car and why they’re there. And we put their pictures on the wall with quotes so that they’re invested in the words they learn. Like the other day we were working making things out of paper and one of my students said, ‘I love paper! There are so many things you can make out of paper. I’d like to make a costume out of paper.” So I wrote that down and made it the caption of his paper project. And we do a lot of socio-emotional skills, like mediating and helping them learn how to settle disputes. They’ll pick up the alphabet at some point, but these are skills they’ll need for the rest of their lives that other teachers might not take the time to teach. And honestly my students teach me. Like I have one student who’s really into space and he’s always talking about the Sombrero Galaxy or how a rocket ship is different from a space shuttle—”

“The Sombrero Galaxy?”

“I know, I had to Wikipedia it. But that’s his area of expertise, and he knows more than me on his area of expertise, even if I know more about every other subject. You know, teachers always are thrilled when the administration gives them more liberties, they always feel like they finally have the flexibility to really teach, but why don’t they give that liberty to the students? Help the students learn what they’re interested in instead of forcing a curriculum on them. A lot of teachers say they learn more from their students than their students learn from them, but that’s always outside of the classroom, how many actually apply that in the classroom? And, granted, it's difficult to be a teacher and figure out how to best suit your students’ needs, but that's no reason not to. My only concern is that once my students leave, they’re stuck in a regular school. I talked to the parents of a former student who told me their son’s 1st grade teacher assigned a family portrait assignment and their son drew his family driving in a car on a highway and his teacher told him he was wrong, that his family should’ve been sitting in a garden.”

By now we’re pulling up to the empty parking lot. I remember as he read aloud that afternoon: “The Hoover dam controls the Colorado River and provides electricity and water to nearly 20 million people…for the dam to be built the river had to be inverted. The cooling process of the concrete was sped by pumping ice cold water through pipes in the dam. It’s the largest singly poured concrete structure in the world.”

 Night has already fallen. A shock of frigid wind claws at our coats as we step from the car. We shuffle under the stale cast of yellow streetlamps. Black water licks the jagged cliffs, the only sign of life an occasional yellow glint on a wave. To the right, a powerful river, greater than most lakes I know. To the left, a gash, a wasteland, a stark nothing. Lean over the edge and behold the splendor of America’s great concrete cathedral: not a seam, such perfect conformity.