Teachers, I believe, should reflect periodically on what they do. When we examine our own thinking, our own mental models of the world and that which is in it, we become aware. Perhaps even more importantly, we become open to possibilities.

With this in mind, I decided to spend some quiet time reading, remembering, and reflecting. (All right, I'll admit it. I sprained my knee and was stuck in bed. We don't have television in my house so there wasn't a whole lot else I could do.) With a stack of educational theory books, a pen, some paper, and tub of pistachios, I set about my task.

Halfway through the pistachios I came across a section in one of my dog-eared college textbooks dealing with Jean Piaget. According to Piaget, a child’s growth and development occurs in stages, i.e., periods in which children understand their world in a particular way. (You will probably remember from your undergraduate days the stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operations, and formal operations.)

Ah yes, the concrete operations stage. Those were the days. My mind drifted back to that simpler time. Somehow, when I was eight, I got the idea that as I learned new things, my brain stored the new knowledge the way I stored toys in my toy box. I began to worry that my brain may not be big enough to hold all the stuff I wanted to learn. After all, I was now in the third grade, my head was relatively small, and I had many, many more years of schooling left. Would my brain begin to overflow in the future? My third-grade teacher, Mrs. Dyer, assured me that it most certainly would not, but still, I wasn't wholly convinced, so I came up with a plan to limit what I learned. I would store only the most vitally important information in my brain. Unfortunately, my teacher and I had differing opinions as to what was vitally important and I nearly flunked the third grade.

I finished the pistachios and Piaget at the same time and reached for another book: The Evolving Self by Robert Kegan. Now there's an interesting read. I found that Kegan, out of all the education theorists I've read, seems to describe best what I see in my classroom and in my life year after year. Kegan refers to the "stage" as a "capacity." When one thinks of a child’s capacity the possibilities seem much deeper, much richer.

What happens at these points in a child’s life? The child begins to develop a new set of assumptions about herself and the world around her. She does this, writes Kegan, through a process of assimilation and accommodation—in other words, "meaning making."

How can teachers encourage this? By creating learning opportunities for students where they are (support) and then gently nudging them to a point just beyond where they are (challenge). If the teacher is able to accomplish this, then she has created an environment in which valuable learning can occur.

If one believes this, and I do, then teachers cannot "get" children to develop. Rather, this activity must come from the child. The teacher’s primary function is to support and challenge growth on the part of the learner. Kegan warns, however, that the learning environment should not be weighted too heavily in either direction. There needs to be balance—only then will the learning environment lead to what Kegan refers to as "vital engagement."

Vital engagement—what a hopeful sounding phrase. Full of memories, theories, and pistachios, I pulled out a legal pad and wrote my plan of action for the remainder of the school year: A classroom filled with caring and compassion, stimulating lessons, and vital engagement. I know, of course, this is no easy feat. But the excitement, frustration, and challenge of trying to create this environment is, for me, what teaching is all about.