Security

The other day, I was watching a science lesson in a first grade class of the private education corporation I work for. They were learning about the way animals modify their habitats for survival, using the beaver dam as an illustration.

So the teacher has dug a trench in potting soil in a plastic tub, and the kids have helped her make a popsicle stick and clay dam to simulate beaver activity and placed it in the middle of the trench. One of the kids tilts the bin slightly as she pours the water, and they squeal and moan as it flows right through the dam and pools on the wrong side of it.
“Oh no! It didn’t work? What would you do, if you were a beaver?”
Most of the class raises their hands. “Oooh, oooh, I know, I know!”
The girl she calls on says, “Edit it!”
“Edit it?”
“Yeah, like when you do your sentence wrong, you edit it, so beavers, if they do a dam wrong, they can edit it.”
Pause. “Riiiight. Right! Good!” We make impressed eye contact, trying not to laugh. “So how could a beaver edit his dam, or fix his dam?”

In another first grade classroom, the students were learning about Connecticut.
“Why would it be important for people in Connecticut that they live near a coast?”
“Ooh, ooh, ooh! I know, I know!”
“Because their economy! Because they- because if- because, for economy, they have fish!”
“Good! And what would fish be considered, if they can use them in their economy?”
“Resources! Fish is- fish are resources!”

Raise your hand if you could talk about resources when you were in first grade. Yeah. Change it is a'comin'.