Finding the Keys to a Teachable Moment

I was reading the blog of a fellow author On the Write Path and as I thought about making a comment I realized my answer would be too long and decided to post instead. Her questions were:

"So, have you had a teachable moment recently? Was it due to an expectation not being fulfilled? What is it that you want your readers to gain by reading your stories?"




How profound they were to me. My most teachable moment happened last week. As you may have read in previous posts I have had issues with the child care center I was working in. My main thing is the quality of care given to children in care centers. This has been a problem with me for years, but the difference this time is that on my last day on the job I realized that 'I' as an individual did not matter in the main scheme of another person's opinion on how they value another person's life. In this center I basically worked with the infants. In my heart I believe the grasp and the clawing for knowledge begins with the very first heartbeat in the womb. In that child care center the owner believed babies were lumps of crying unteachable lumps of flesh. Where she had promised parents (to their faces)educational, emotional,mental and physical hoopla in reality she only wanted the infants fed and in bed. This really hit home when I was sitting on the floor sing a song about an elephant on a spiders web and tapping a stuffed elephant on the floor to the beat. I had five babies around me. They were smiling and happy. I gave the toy to a 12 month old and as I sang she tapped the elephant. I was tickled at how fast she had been able to mimic. The owner (whom I didn't know was at the door) walked into the room, flicked on the cd player and said turn on the cd they like that and then walked out. This was my teachable moment. I realized I was not going to make a difference there.

My experience taught me that my expectations are not being met and that was because I had handed my dreams into another person's hands.

Rather it be mental or physical, in all of my writings I want the world to get the understanding that no matter what we say or do, our actions and reactions have an affect on someone and it can have the effect of changing the world.