Lessons from the Eclipse
Wow, did you see yesterday’s Solar Eclipse? I spent some time outside in the afternoon with my special glasses and was able to witness this amazing event. I really enjoyed seeing the change in light in the yard, the change in the behavior of the animals around even for that short window of time, so cool. We live relatively close to my childrens’ school and I could hear them counting down to the minute of the most covered the sun would be!
The school even implemented inclement weather dismissal protocol - meaning that instead of the kids waiting outside as they normally do, they hold them inside and call them out once a parent pulls up. They did this because the eclipse was technically not fully over before school released for the day. Some kids came out looking down at the ground. I even just got off the phone with a friend who lives even further off the path of totality than we do - and she reported that her child’s school was closed!
After we got home today, my daughter asked if it was safe now to look at the sun. So we had a discussion about how we should NEVER look directly at the sun and why.
And all of this got me thinking. Today was a special day for sure, an event people all over the world were celebrating together which was so cool, as was experiencing it. And we (hopefully) all were aware of and able to obtain the special glasses to wear in order to safely look at the sun. Before school, my husband and I had several conversations about how important it was to wear the glasses and to not look at the sun without them. But this was all in relation to just the eclipse, which made me realize we missed the basic lesson of how we just never look directly at the sun and why.
And this got my wheels turning even more. What happens when we tell our kids what not to do? We often do this for safety reasons. But I believe strongly that indicating what not to do in isolation increases our kids’ interest in the why…and then in testing those boundaries. What I mean by this is that if we are only telling them what not to do, it might peak their curiosity about that not. They may fixate more on that not. They also might just not know what they should do since they were only told what not to do. As a teacher, I had a ‘reminder’ system in my room to alert kids what they should be doing to assist them in self-correcting their behavior. For instance, if a student was calling out, their attention would be drawn to the reminder ‘raise your hand’. And I do try to remind myself often that I should be telling my kids what I expect, not just tell them what I don’t like. So phrases like ‘inside voices’ and ‘remember to share with your sister’ or ‘snack time will be after we clean up our game’ and other situation specific examples.
So I had a conversation with my 2 elementary kids about what we should do when outside to keep our eyes safe. Walking looking at the ground can be unsafe, and looking directly at the sun is also unsafe. So a better way to help shape their behavior might be to say ‘look straight head when you are walking around’. In regards to the warning about looking at the sun, something so specific, I see this as a teaching moment. I’m sticking with ‘When you look at the sky, look at the clouds and the birds (etc), but be careful to not look right at the sun because you can hurt your eyes and not be able to see as well anymore’. We talked a little bit about the biology of your eye and why you might not realize they are hurting, and we talked about all the other good choices we can make, and that using special glasses to look right at the sun is not isolated to an eclipse.
And from all of this, I am reminded to use what we should way more often than just what we should not do. Teaching moments all around, and I am going to do my best to take advantage of them.
