To walk on water, get out of the boat.
By Allen A. Raymond, Publisher

The phrase, walking on water, comes from the Bible where, in the book of Matthew – the first book of the Bible's New Testament (don't be impressed; I looked it up) – we're told that Jesus' disciples, crossing the Sea of Gallilee in a small boat during a storm, were saved by Jesus, who walked out on the water and rescued them.

I'm not a biblical scholar, but if Jesus could walk on water, how about you and me – can we do it, too?

The answer is apparently "no," although there have been valiant, perhaps tongue-in-cheek efforts by biologists at Harvard, plus researchers at MIT and scientists at the University of California – as well as staff and students at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China – who have been diligently searching for ways you and I can walk on water. They've come up empty.

In 1966 Thomas McMahon, a professor at Harvard, commented (with his tongue really in his cheek), "We think humans could run on water for a few steps – if they had feet the size of snowshoes or open umbrellas."

Graduate students have built mechanical water-walkers using Coke® cans, with feet working like paddle wheels. The result, as they thrashed over the water's surface, has been described as "looking like a person about to drown."

In August 2003, a headline on MIT's website announced: "MIT leaps to solution of walking-on-water mystery." Yes, MIT came up with a new theory on how water striders – not lizards – walk on water, but no word on how humans could do it.

Three years later, in August 2006, an evangelist pastor in Liberville, the capital of Gabon, leap-frogged all these scientific theories and told his congregation he'd "had a revelation that if he had enough faith, he could, like Jesus, walk on water."

He took his congregation to the beach, and they watched while he walked into the water; sadly, he never came back.

The only known creature that seems to be able to walk on water is the six-legged basiliscus lizard, also called the Jesus lizard.

If you're a camper, you've probably seen tiny "water striders" gracefully whisking across the surfaces of lakes and ponds everywhere. Their propulsion is considered similar to the way lizards walk on water, but they're bugs, not lizards.

Scientists, using high speed photographic equipment, have caught the lizards (and water striders, too) in action and the beauty and precision with which they speed across the water – as fast as six miles an hour – is breathtaking to watch.

When describing this walking-on-water phenomenon, we're talking about living creatures that are delicate, highly-skilled in what they do, beautiful to watch.

Just like those frightened disciples in the boat, who were helpless, a basiliscus lizard in a boat would be helpless, too. But when it gets out of the boat, magic happens.
So it is with teachers – and with you (or why read Teaching K-8?).

You excel at what you do because you have gotten out of the boat – and with a loving heart and total commitment, you have taken children by the hand and, together, you indeed walk on water.

Allen Raymond is the Editor/Publisher for Teaching Pre K-8.

November/December, 2006, Vol.37, No.3