A Retroactive Dedication and Happy Holidays
My last post of this year is a retroactive dedication. I got this idea partly from my daughter’s love of the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, with which many readers are likely familiar. It is a short children’s book about the journey of one organism from egg to ravenous caterpillar to cocoon to butterfly. The “very hungry” part is based on a reality of herbivory (plant eating) which is that herbivores need to eat a very large amount of food partly because plant matter is not very energy dense. This fact plays into a previous negative experience with this book which I will get to shortly. Here are a few pictures and descriptions if you haven’t thought about this book in a while or don’t know it at all.
Below is the cover of the book. The words “The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle” are in the top right of the cover, and an illustrated caterpillar with many green segments, a red head, and yellow and green eyes is pictured.
Below is the title and dedication page of the book. On the left side there is an illustrated orange sun and the words “For my sister Christa”. On the right side the title and author are reprinted. Across the bottom of both pages is an array of different-colored illustrated dots.
When I was an undergraduate student, I took a course in community ecology with a professor who sparked my interest in learning and made me feel like science was something I could do. I hope that most people have had at least one learning experience like this. After feeling energized by that class, I enrolled in a more advanced one that was open to both undergraduate and graduate students. Going to class was intimidating, and I remember being pretty nervous to raise my hand to answer the instructor’s frequent questions. I recall on one occasion that we discussed the proportion of an organism’s time spent searching for food and eating based on trophic level. Herbivores tend to spend a lot all their time foraging and eating, and I remember the teacher in my previous class using the example of caterpillars to illustrate this.
So when the instructor asked a question asking to give an example in this category, I raised my hand for the first time during the semester and said “a caterpillar.” The instructor laughed and made a joke at my expense, saying “Oh, you mean like The Very Hungry Caterpillar?” The class laughed for a pretty long time about it. It so happens that I was not thinking of the book at all, and probably had not thought about it for years. My guess is that the instructor was a parent of young children himself, and did think about The Very Hungry Caterpillar pretty often (as I now do). It is based on experiences like this that I presently try to reflect on my use of humor in the classroom to make sure that it is not at any individual person’s expense.
Additionally, many of my students are parents, and I have increasingly tried to make an effort to mention that texts intended for children are often useful to discuss in our class. For example, I do a “media critique” assignment in many of my classes where students analyze the portrayal of disability in a book or film. I try to mention that it would be a perfectly good option to analyze a book or movie that their kids like, which might also help them talk about disability with their kids. I find that looking back on difficult moments I had as a learner always helps me as a teacher, and this anecdote is a good example of that.
Back to my daughter and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. She and I both have some aptitude for memorizing things and recognizing when a specific detail is wrong or left out. If I ever try to read this book without reading the title page (and the dedication), my daughter immediately says “you skipped ‘Christa’!” When my daughter reminds me that the dedication is in fact part of the book and that I shouldn’t skip it, I realize that my first thought is that it is a different part of the book, but she makes a good point that it still is important. This got me thinking about dedications. I had been wondering if I could come up with a good way to end this first year of my newsletter and it occurred to me that it could be with a retroactive dedication. Dedications are common enough in books, academic and other, but in my experience are pretty rare for articles and blogging. But, in this situation it seems to be a good way to reflect on the experience of writing and express my gratitude to different people. Here are my retroactive dedications for the writing I have done here since May.
To my partner, family, and friends who are not in the field of education but who encourage me to write and take the time to read this sometimes esoteric writing, thank you for your constant support!
To the generous group of colleagues and mentors who have read this work, responded to it, offered feedback, and even cited it. Going back to the story from my undergrad years, this newsletter was definitely an experiment in sharing some thoughts I was nervous to share, and I so appreciate the warm and curious reception you have given them.
To my students who extend back to me the grace and flexibility I try to offer to you, I am so grateful for the learning communities we create together.
Happy holidays to those that celebrate, and for those in higher ed who take a break this time of year, I hope it is restorative!