Learning is a woman’s account of a single Monday working in a progressive New York City day care. The narrator, Courtney, spends her days in The Blue Room guiding her three-year-old students through the early lessons of their lives. Her consciousness flickers between the children—full of generosity, wonder, accidental brilliance, and infinite questions—and her life outside the classroom. While tying shoes and peeling clementines, Courtney returns to grief over the death of a hometown friend; her recent divorce; the hope of a new relationship; her family back in Mississippi; and thoughts on forgiveness, empathy, and her own capacity for cruelty. As the day goes on, a threat from the school director’s ex-boyfriend introduces real danger, tilting the fragile order of the classroom toward chaos.

Deeply felt and bracingly honest, Learning enacts the complexity of consciousness, itself a balance of presence, memory, risk-calculation, observation, imagination, and emergency.

COURTNEY BUSH is a writer and filmmaker from Mississippi who lives in New York and works in childcare.