“There was a day, in my second or third year of teaching, when I saw the light-bulb go off for one of my students. Not the usual “Now I get it” kind of light-bulb, but a bigger idea showing up – a new curiosity. Suddenly the clouds parted for this girl, and she wanted to learn something different, something bigger.”
– Third-grade teacher, Florida.

This teacher describes a profound moment – the moment when a student has done more than learn something new, more than answer a question, and instead has discovered a higher curiosity. The student has taken a leap in desire to learn.

 
It’s a funny kind of aha! moment. Instead of finding the main idea of a character’s motivation, the literature student suddenly wants to know why a character in a story might be unhappy and disappointed in the world. It’s the moment a science student understands that Einstein’s theory of relativity – E=mc2 – means that matter actually turns into energy, and is therefore no long there. Beyond “getting” that fact, when the student asks “How in the world could that be possible?” the teacher has leapt, hand-in-hand with the student, to a new level of learning.

 
The moment a student looks up from his notebook – in which he may have written a perfectly clear and insightful answer to an assigned question about what a character in a book thinks and feels – and says to his teacher, “But why, why is he so sad?,” the teacher knows that a new ambition to learn and understand has shown itself – a great day for the teacher, and a great day for the student.