“Dopaminergic projections from the ventral tegmental area to the nucleus accumbens are responsible for reward processing,” I used to explain to my tutees. Boarding a plane to India, I fooled myself into feeling fully equipped to teach based off of my years of experience tutoring neuroscience, chemistry, and biology. While the ability to contextualize quantum energy levels to university students was a valuable skill, I realized quickly that teaching at the Tushita Foundation would be quite different than any of my past experiences.

Nothing would be as different as the day I walked into the Sunflower Class. I entered mid-November jet-lagged and completely unsure how to teach the twenty-eight beaming faces looking up at me. I knew I loved kids and would thrive off of the boundless energy that six-year-olds possess, but I knew almost nothing about how to manage and educate them. To be honest, I floundered the first week. I didn’t know how to structure or pace the class – there was little learning and a lot of mayhem. I left that first Friday completely overwhelmed.

That weekend I began to reflect on how to approach my eager and rambunctious students, and I realized that to teach the little ones I needed to leave behind almost every tendency I’d developed in my western education. There were to be no desks, no tests, and no lectures. Instead there needed to be patience, instead of efficiency. Coloring, instead of outlines. More adaptability than structure. More singing than testing.

It is now three months later and I’m heartbroken to be rotating out of the Sunflower class. I’ll miss the way Sabreena leaps into my arms each day, the way Kohinoor always fights to sit next to me, the way Zoya rushes to help me sharpen pencils for the class while attendance is being taken, and the way Alfaz fist pumps to himself when he gets the answer correct. The little ones’ affection has certainly enraptured me, but what has made these past few months so special with them is much deeper than their infectious personalities.

I’ve stumbled across the quote, “In learning, you will teach, and in teaching, you will learn” a few times, but it wasn’t until working with the Sunflower Class that I fully understood its meaning. It is easy to objectively measure how my students have grown by the number of full sentences they can now say, but it is quite difficult to measure the ways they have changed me. The lessons I teach them have concrete names but the lessons they teach me are subtler, and yet likely much more profound. I’ll try my best to describe some of these lessons, but I worry that words will not do them justice.

You can always become more patient.

Few of us remember learning to read. The years we spent memorizing phonics and slowly stringing together syllables are not well encoded into our memories. Thus, when we sit with those just learning to read in a new language, the urge to blurt out the correct pronunciation is strong. The first couple of times we sat in a circle with Green Eggs and Ham, I had to forcibly hold my lips closed to not read out each line. The best Sunflower children are slow at reading, the worst may take an entire minute to string together a-n-d. But, I’ve found that if you stay quiet and stay with them, most children can read the words. They need time and they need space. I wonder how much talent and skill we’d see in each other if we always gave one another enough time and space. Each Friday dedicated to reading challenges me to develop deeper patience and thus shapes me into a better teacher and friend.

Somedays, playing is the most important task.

Days dedicated to writing and memorizing new vocabulary are important, certainly. But some days, the sun is shining, the children bound into class with loud giggles, and the classroom feels a little too cold and dark. Those days, we play. My previous plan-loving and efficiency seeking self would have worried that we were falling behind. As I watch the children run, laugh, and work together, I remember how important it is sometimes to just be free. We’re so often told to be quiet, be still, and be alone. The little ones playing are a perfect reminder of the power and importance of being loud, being active, and being together.

Little victories are often the most rewarding.

I’m used to measuring success by the percentage correct on a test or the letter grade marked on a transcript. In the Foundation, where tests are not given and success is demonstrated through elevated confidence, I felt unsure how to measure my students’ progress. The Sunflowers have taught me that growth can appear in small, unexpected moments. I’ll never forget one of these moments with a quieter student named Pooja. We had spent the week learning about the five senses, first learning the names of key body parts and then pairing simple verbs to the sensory organs. For example, we practiced sayings, “I see a cow” or “I taste a peanut”. Fast forward to a sunny Saturday, when the speaker has just begun to blast a recent Bollywood hit. I saw Pooja running across the playground and, as she stopped in front of me, a look of intense concentration spread across her face. “I….hear….a….a song…I hear a song!”. Just 4 words, 10 letters, but immense pride swelled in both of us. While the victory may be small, its meaning is often great.

Persistence, persistence, persistence.

Sometimes review questions at the beginning of class are met with blank stares. There have been days when I’ve left unsure that the little ones had absorbed anything we had learned in the past two weeks. I am tempted on these days to succumb to the doubt that they will never remember, but I remind myself that while little ones absorb quickly, they forget just as quickly as they learn. During our unit on the body, I’ve asked them every day what the heart and lungs do, and each day one more child has chimed into the collective, “The heart beats!”. Three weeks later and there is a chorus of thirty little ones responding with confidence. Yes, that meant three weeks of reviewing the same question. Three weeks of not giving up on them, of believing that even the quietest ones were capable of speaking full sentences about the body. I think sometimes we all need someone to stick with us for weeks and to remind us that forgetting is okay. I’m starting to understand how to be that person.

Perfection draws barriers, mistakes bring us together.

Almost everyone tells us to be perfect. We all try to put our best foot forward. Usually, this results in high grades or success at work but it also builds walls. I think we all inherently know we aren’t perfect, and yet our frantic drive to correct mistakes suggests that we are adamant to prove that we are. The problem is that this drive to set ourselves apart by perfection leaves us isolated. Halfway through my time with the Sunflowers, we began to draw very simple anatomy of the major organs (keep in mind here that these are six-year-olds). In our first picture, I attempted to draw the heart with perfectly proportioned valves and ventricles. I saw the children intently trying to mimic the shapes I drew, and the excitement in my voice when the most talented children showed me their success was undeniable. But, there were many children who struggled with drawing and whose pictures resembled a blob with tubes. They stayed quiet and closed their notebooks quickly when the bell rang. The next day as I was drawing the lungs on our large body outline, I made one lobe a completely different size than the other. My instinct was to erase the line and fix it, but I remembered the sheepish kids from the day before. So, I outlined my mistake in a bright purple and embraced the imperfect lungs. From then on, I saw the little ones draw more freely. Perfectionism has long defined me but I’ve seen that laughing off and accepting our own mistakes allows others to feel safe to make their own. I’m starting to think we could all use a little more imperfection in our lives.

Affection actually is key.

During a teacher’s motivation workshop several months ago, we listened to a speech by Rita Pearson called, “Every Kid Needs a Champion”. Much of this talk has transformed the way we have taught these past few months, but one line, in particular, has stuck with me. Rita jokes, “You know, kids don’t learn from people they don’t like”. Affection matters, friendship matters. Perhaps surprisingly, being able to speak the same language doesn’t. After the first couple of weeks in the Sunflower Class, I began to feel connections building with my students. They began to smile when they caught my eye and if there was an extra minute at the end of class we would dance, toss a ball around, or play rock-paper-scissors. The increasing warmth between us translated into children fighting over who would sit next to me in our circle each day. At first, only the most vocal and confident students would sit next to me but soon even the quietest students, like Asad, ran to my side. I have realized that when a child feels seen, the trust they build grows an openness within them to learn, to evolve, and to flourish. It is in this space that we as teachers can create a lasting influence. Loving those infectious personalities was the key all along.

Every day in India has taught me something new and every person I have met has shown me a depth of welcoming, kindness, and generosity greater than I ever expected. I knew this year would teach me and push me to grow, but I never imagined my greatest teachers would be these little ones.