What you can learn from a banana

My favorite lesson that I learned about teaching from working with BB was the banana lesson. After BB learned that I would be there when he really needed him, (secure attachment; I hope to write some other time about how this was important as I began working with BB) I began to look for opportunities to leave him to solve simple problems. While looking back I write about this as something that I understand clearly as the next step, at the time it was part intuition and partly inspired by a fellow scout leader's mention of Baden Powell's affirmation that you should not do anything for an 11 year old that he can do himself.

At that time BB had just started picking a place to eat lunch with students of his choice with little assistance from me. I always asked him what he needed as we went through the lunch line and as we checked out I asked him if he needed anything else. After he selected a spot to sit, I would ask him if he needed me to do anything for him, then I would circulate around the lunch room. From nearly the beginning of the year I tried to encourage him to ask me to help him with anything he needed. While I am quite capable of waiting on him, anticipating all his needs much as I had perfected in my years of waiting on tables, I increasingly encouraged and on this day required him to ask explicitly for the assistance that he needed from me. So on this day as I walked away, I figuratively rubbed my hands as my trap was set... he was left with an unopened banana. I glowed as a father does while his sun rides away, training wheels on the ground and watched from afar while discussing my plot with a fellow teacher. I watched him as he took on the challenge and tried to withhold how pleased I was as I casually mentioned the banana as we left for class.

Reflecting on Baden Powell's words offered me a clearer way of differentiating my approach to working with students than I had been able to articulate up to that point. Before this experience the best I could do was to say that I was nurturing in a male way in contrast to the way I had seen some female teachers fulfill student's immediate needs (much like the waiter) the way an infant should be nurtured. This analogy was inadequate because I saw many male teachers following more of a military "break-remake" approach and I saw many female teachers who did not nurture this way. As I tested and learned how to apply this concept to encourage BB to discover his abilities despite his disabilities, the banana became my analogy. In time I began to share the analogy with BB, describing tasks as bananas, ones that I would leave him to do without me looking over his shoulder.