Teachable moment

Posted on July 30, 2009 by Dave Bonta

The teachable moment arrives in its dollar-store shoes & hand-me-down corduroys and takes a front-row seat. We properly interred citizens shift uneasily on our plush velvet beds. Why is the blackboard green now? Who hung that Muslim star map over our heads? The teachable moment brings laughter into the classroom, and never wants to do anything but play with the fingerpaints, which are edible now, they say, & taste like corn syrup. Look, a face! Red mouth, open, open. Angry hot grill. But the blue doesn’t taste as good as the others, so pour it on thick: jeering bluejay, jailbait, merchant marine. Swirl the primary colors together until they all turn to mud. Only the corners of the paper stay dry. Teachable in what way, we’d like to know. Comfort in one’s own skin is the mark of a mongrel. We are all strangers & sojourners in the earth; our name is Legion. American Legion. Why can’t the road crews spray that feral patch of prairie against the fence, that growth the plough’s steel scalpel could never reach? What have they done with our cypress spurge, which smelled so much like lilacs in lilac-time? Quickly now, before the paint dries! But the moment is gone. The millipedes go back to their homework, its evil twin.

About Dave Bonta

Dave Bonta (bio) crowd-sources his problems by following his gut, which he shares with one quadrillion of his closest microbial friends --- a tight-knit, symbiotic community comprising some 500 different species of bacteria, fungi, and protozoa.
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7 Responses to Teachable moment

  1. lucas says:
    July 30, 2009 at 10:34 pm

    The teachable moment is as cold and virtuous as a Bud Light. The teachable moment went to a yard sale and bought racial reconciliation on the cheap.

    “Tikkun, my black ass,” the teachable moment heard someone spit from the hedgerows. But when it looked up there was nobody there.

  2. Laura says:
    July 30, 2009 at 11:02 pm

    Damn, this is great.
    I will never want to be a “teacher leader.”
    I might mess around with this idea, Dave. The teachable moment is sick to death of primary colors and wants me to have my students freewrite in response to View of Toledo the very first thing on Monday.

    • Dave says:
      July 30, 2009 at 11:59 pm

      Mess around all you want, Laura. I’m flattered. (You’re teaching summer school? Surely the regular school year can’t be starting already!)

  3. Laura says:
    July 31, 2009 at 12:13 am

    Yes, it is. At least I’ll be prodded a bit into writing regularly now. Not by motivational posters, though.

  4. elizabeth says:
    August 1, 2009 at 8:31 am

    the teachable moment does not translate well. in foreign ears, it is garbled and inconsolable.

    (and this? is brilliant. thanks)