Learned

All day long the teacher scrolls words up on the board. Through her vocal transmission the words become lessons to her pupils. Some students listen with all their attention they can muster. Others sit back and dream of the boy across the room, dinner after school, and the world when they are grown. Yet, others sit half-listening; they pick up the key words and ideas as their minds also wander elsewhere.

The chalk settles into the black slate hanging omnipotent on the wall. She hopes her students grasp the lessons as the board does the chalk. Looking back at the class, she can read their faces. Some will just never get it in this format and her hands are tied. The minutes tick by like hours and the restless students shift in their seats.

The bell tolls the end of the day. She made it through another one. The air in the classroom suddenly feels light and free. Happy students rise from their seats and begin their end of the day activities – cleaning desks, putting their chairs up, getting their homework together, talking to their best friend or the boy across the room, helping the teacher to close the room until tomorrow. The relieved teacher sits at her desk for a breath.

She erases the chalk off the blackboard. The young boy takes the erasers outside to clap the dust out of them. The erasers will be nice and clean for tomorrow's class. As the dust settles on the grass beneath, he knows his job is done. He reenters the classroom and he places the foam blocks on the lip of the board and looks up. A jilted reminisce of all the day's work is still clinging to the slate, despite his best efforts to have erased it. He feels anger and confusion.

Mesmerized the boy just stands on the cool tile with the outside door still ajar. He pays attention in class intensely and attempts to make sense of it all. Exponents and timelines, flower parts and sentence diagrams hang combined on the board. During class he did not realize how much he had absorbed from today's lesson. He did not realize how the lessons stayed with the board either. When the teacher wiped the board clean, he thought the lessons went with it.

He can see clearly now that the lessons do not disappear. They are written over and they are connected. What ended on the right piece begins again on the left. The middle is the most jumbled. Like a collision, he thinks. The dust from his day in front of him tells the tale of that which happened. The mangled mess of dust reminds him of a puzzle. He stands in awe of it for 10 minutes.

Yet now, he can piece it all together. He no longer looks with confusion at the black slate. He looks with knowledge, intensity, and understanding. He knows he's truly learned his lesson. A part of him holds onto this sight. He enjoys the physical representation of his learnings.

The teacher observes his revelation. She waits until all the students have left to wipe the dust off the board with a damp cloth. A new blackboard for tomorrow's new lessons shines on the wall.