Meet Mr. Slinger [2]

 

[Google images]

As you, dear readers, are no doubt aware, there are teachers, and then again there are Teachers. The first fosters learning; the second fosters learning and often leads us to places of understanding.

Occasionally, there are Teachers who teach both learning and understanding…and something else. Something quite often indescribable, but usually a something that most discerning students recognize [wordlessly].

Consider the above—especially that last sentence-- by way of introductions to our teacher and reluctant blogman, Mr. Slinger.

     Now, it’s not that Mr. Slinger is ‘the glass of fashion, and the mold of form’ [as Ophelia was wont to exclaim], wearing artsy shirts, funky ties and spectacles that hung around his neck by a fancy chain. No, all of that is externally pleasing to the eye, but not quite IT.

Nor is it that he eschewed typical teacherly greetings to his students every morning, with a beatific ‘Howdy’ accompanied by a low high five for each and every one.

Or those tasty snacks that he would conjure up  in his kitchen, different every day and delicious to the tastebuds of young learners. And he would—at the drop of a Wow! --break into an improvised, interpretative dance and mesmerize his young charges.

Mr. Slinger was all about ‘sleight of hand’ learning and understanding and life hacks for young people. Most of us didn’t even notice…we were too busy having fun to realise that we were also learning and understanding.

    At the back of his classroom was his Light Bulb Lab, an oasis of creativity where we could draw, write, create, build, experiment [a different one every day], and most importantly use our intelligences creatively.

So, one day, while basking at the Light Bulb Lab, three of us came up with the idea of Mr. Slinger’s BlogBook of Days, a compendium of interesting topics wherever his whimsical senses took him.   We drafted the proposal in a short paragraph, added a couple of illustrations and presented it to Mr. Slinger at group sharing time.

       Mr. Slinger removed his spectacles from around his neck and  placed them on his face, bit into a Crunchie snack bar, read over our proposal not once, but twice, sat back in his chair and exclaimed: “Wow! That’s all Mr. Slinger could say. Wow!”