Last year I taught art at the middle school level. I love working with kids at that level because they are still young enough to listen yet old enough to create great art. And anyone who is a teacher will know that kids teach you as much as you teach them. One of the crazy things I learned last year from my students had to do with sound. We've all heard of dog whistles but I had never heard of kids whistles. Well, not whistles exactly, apparently there are high sound frequencies that people under twenty years old can hear and people over twenty years old cannot.
One of my students pulled out his phone, showed me the app, then pushed play. Three or four students around us snapped at him and told him to turn it off. I could not hear a thing. I guess students annoy each other with this app in the hallways and in class and the faculty is unaware anything is going on.
This information helped me make sense to an incident that happened while my kids and I were biking to the park.
Miles is a speed demon, so he is usually ahead of Nola and me. And on this particular adventure, Nola fell off of the path so I stopped to help her. Miles continued biking. When Nola finally got situated we looked up in search of Miles and he was about two blocks ahead of us. With my low, adult voice, I yelled to him. He did not turn around. I yelled again and nothing. Nola tried to get his attention, still nothing.
Then with the highest pitch scream a kid can conjure up, Nola exhaled, "MILES!!!" He instantly stopped and turned around. At the same time, I grabbed my ears wishing that the frequency of her scream had been just a bit higher. Maybe there is something to high pitch noises and kids ears.
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