One of my favorite things about being an elementary school teacher is talking with my students about their dreams for what they will become as they grow up. I find that children have the most innocent and endearing dreams and ambitions. So each fall I spend a couple of afternoons discussing different professions with my students and bringing professionals in several common fields into the classroom to get the kids excited about careers. Not a year goes by when I am not surprised by the ambition of at least one of my students, and this past fall was no exception. One of my sweetest students, Annie, proudly told me that she wanted to grow up and be an acrobat.
An acrobat is one profession (if it even is a profession) that I had never heard from my students before. I loved sitting down with Annie and hearing about why she wanted to be an acrobat. Her story of ambition contained several elements that are common to almost all childrens’ stories that I have encountered in the past twenty years. There were three main reasons that Annie wanted to be an acrobat when she grew up.
The first reason that Annie wanted to be an acrobat as an adult was because her own...