One of the reasons my life took a turn down the Elementary Education path is that I never outgrew my love for kid stuff. I wear Lego earrings and play video games, I still get kid-level excitement walking into a toy store; but most of all I love cartoons.
Sitting down to write this post, one particular cartoon sprang to mind. A Nickelodeon show, The Legend of Korra, premiered last week. It’s set in a world where people can harness the power of the four elements: earth, fire, air and water. Our hero, Korra, has mastered three of the four, and in the series premiere she goes to find a master to teach her Airbending.
Korra reminds me of most of the kids in my 2nd grade class. She is impulsive, compassionate and confident. She can’t sit still and is easily bored, thus she tends to get into a lot of trouble. Her teacher is a spiritual old man, well-respected and experienced in guiding young people through to mastery, but he cannot handle Korra. She can’t sit still long enough to meditate, she destroys most of the training equipment because she loses first her patience and then her temper, and she repeatedly disobeys his commands.