Going Beyond Tumblers of Milk

*An excerpt from Airam Libutaque's Philosophy of Teaching

I was five years old and my sister was four when we would regularly go to school together as Kinder Graders.  We both had just been weaned from having our milk in formula bottles to having them in glasses.  Mama and Papa had both warned us to finish our drinks and proof of that would be to go home with not a drop of milk in our tumblers.  However, there was this day when neither my younger sister nor I could finish our milk and we were not even halfway our milk tumblers. I did not know what to do, but I found myself in front of our Teacher Assistant (TA).  I extended my hand to her offering my tumbler of milk then I started crying quietly.  My sister cried with me quietly and extended also her tumbler to the TA. For a second I thought there was a puzzled look on our dear TA’s face, then she smiled and hugged both of us.  And…to our great delight, our sweet TA took the tumblers with both of her hands and drank our milk until she left our tumblers empty.

This is a classic story that would tell of how good I was …of how good children are at getting what they want! However, this story also takes me back to the tumblers of milk that were drank to pacify the little truant that I was, my sister and who knows how many others!  Would I dare note that our TA was a great teacher? Would I dare note, that she has gone beyond the blackboard? or the tumbler?

pix: http://www.neimanmarcus.com/hand-wash-glass-server-th.html