Hamid's big balloon

 

I taught Primary School in England for about ten years and I found it very interesting, satisfying and moving.  I have a story about and assembly which I would like to pass on. 

The best part of Primary teaching is that you have such interesting people to work with, whether they are five-year-olds or ten-year-olds (Oh, and the other teachers can be very nice too). And at this age they generally let their true feelings show. So fascination, annoyance, delight, boredom or excitement are all right there on the surface. It is so much easier than with adults, where you have to think hard about how someone is really feeling. With children of Primary age, it is more of an open book. 

The other thing that really struck me, and that is what this post is about, is how intelligent and resourceful and damn clever children are, even though we adults may sometimes be too dumb to notice. I think adults regard children as fun and nice and interesting, but a lot of us don't take their ideas or concerns seriously, on the mistaken notion that 'you will know this all properly when you grow up'.

So seven or eight years ago I was teaching a class or 7 and 8 year olds in North West London. They were some of the poorest children in the Borough, on average, but they were also very motivated to learn, because the great majority had parents who had come from South Asia, from Africa or the Middle East. They did very well at school and at the end of Primary were ahead of the children in other local schools. We had plenty of families who had come in from conflict zones and I the child I want to tell you about is Hamid. His family had come from Afhghanistan and Hamid was able to tell us what an earthquake felt like because he had been in Kabul when one happened.

He was quiet and friendly and self-assured, and seemed to know how to get on well with other children. He was also very good at all his studies and had a fine sense of humour. But remember also that he was only 8.

We had planned a huge and impressive assembly for a couple of months later in the year. It was all about magnetism and one of the things the children had come up with was to build a big papier mache model of the Earth so that we could open it up and show the metallic, magnetic core that drives our compasses. We bought some huge balloons  more than two feet across and started to cover one in papier mache in the weeks before Christmas, with a group of children going to add new layers when we had time. It was coming along well when we left, but when we returned in January, it had burst and deflated!

We all looked sadly at our slumped planet, and - as you should - I asked the children to work out what we could do. I had no other idea but to start again, and that was what we were planning until Hamid put his hand up: "Sir, if you cut off the end of the old balloon and put a new one inside and blew it up...."

We tried his plan and it worked, reinflating all our existing work and saving all those lost days, as well as cheering up the whole class. And, as the adult who hadn't thought of the excellent solution that the eight year old had thought of, I was impressed but not surprised. Children don't have to limit themselves by what we think they can do. They are smart enough to leave limits for when they are grown up, if then.

I am confident that by now Hamid has probably started his first company and I'd love to find out how he has done with that mind full of good ideas.