Snow Gloves

Sideways snow,  I run from car to school blinded by stinging ice pellets. I'm greeted by the red blinking message alert: my student teacher sits awaiting rescue, car trapped in a ditch on her first day, poor thing. A rough start to a new term. It's January in Michigan. We burrow deeper into our parkas trying to avoid the pain of winter.

My family is gloveless this week  Lesson plans trump comfort. Cold hands a small sacrifice for an art project. I'm teaching the basics. Line defines shape, shading reveals form....we're drawing gloves. Learning to see. 

Outside it's a whiteout, cars crawl by in the snowy dark, red tail lights barely visible. Inside, my students, one eye closed against depth perception, are ants crawling along the contour of gloves, finding the mountains, valleys and cliffs of the outside line. It is a slow journey. We are trying to whiteout their mental picture of a glove: four fingers and a thumb. Although they can not actually 'see' all the fingers, they are smart. They know they're there. Not trusting my method, those extra fingers sometimes appear anyway. Amputation solves the problem.

As ants they forget about fingers. The landscape of a glove takes on a whole new geography. They begin to see the line, the line reveals the shape. The blob of a glove they've created seems disappointing at first. "I messed up" a common cry, looking at the odd shape on their paper, nothing like their idea of a glove. 

But now, half blind, I urge them onto the inner continent adding detail lines, texture and shading. Across the room someone utters a hushed, "wow" in awe as a glove pops from the white surface.

The blizzard is forgotten as we all consider this new reality of an ant's view. Somewhere down a dark snowy road my student teacher breathes a sigh of relief watching the tow truck lights approach. Tomorrow will be a great first day.