That conversation

Perhaps we all imitate our teachers - in manners both obvious and oblique. As an art history professor, I still hand out outlines of the day's lecture, complete with the basic details of every image to be shown, just as my professors at Williams College distributed monuments lists in darkened classrooms in the late 1980s. In doing so, though, I'm only repeating the tendencies of Bela Bartok's students, who were often profoundly influenced by their teacher's approach; as David Yeoman has noted, in fact, some of them later confessed to inadvertently imitating the playing style that he employed in lessons in their own later performances. Heck, even Kobe Bryant sometimes summons his inner Zen master, as he draws on the lessons he learned from Phil Jackson. 'When the student is ready,' holds the proverb, 'the teacher will appear.' But the teacher often appears, as well, in the subsequent behaviors, gestures, and words of the student.

And that's happening among the Yellowbirds right now. It's not uncommon to find one of Cleo's classmates reassuringly parting his arms, hands down, and telling his parents, 'Don't freak out' - which is one of the many endearing habits of one of their classroom teachers. Given the amount of time she spends with our children, it's hardly surprising to discern her influence in them. But I still had to laugh out loud today when, after Cleo and I spent a few seconds bickering over the correct term for pinwheel (Cleo calls them spinwheels, which is cool with me, but she unfairly chides me each time I use the supposedly incorrect form pinwheel), Cleo suddenly announced, "I am not having this conversation."

I wasn't even sure, to be honest, where that phrase came from. L. doesn't say it, I don't think, and I've never heard any of Cleo's teachers employ it. So, after I stopped laughing, I asked my little girl. 'Um, Cleo, who says that? Where did you learn that sentence?' Oh, she said, and quickly named two of her classmates. They say it all the time, she added.

We learn from our teachers. But our teachers, it seems, are many, and everywhere.