Columbus, Magellan, and. . .Armstrong

   It's that time of year again, when almost every newspaper and news program recounts the lists of famous people who died this year. CBS Sunday Morning did a particularly good job with theirs (truthfully, they do a good job with almost everything) and, as I watched it, I came to a sudden realization.
   I teach fifth grade and part of what I teach, whether my supervisors like it or not, is explorers. Columbus, Magellan - the guys that roamed the seas in search of what was really unknown. My kids come to know Columbus through stories, paintings and porrly animated shorts. Same for the others - merely pictures in an otherwise useless textbook.
   But Sunday I finally took notice of Neil Armstrong. Not that I wasn't aware of who he is or what he did. But I came to think of him as an explorer - just as significant as the others that came hundreds of years before him. The last man to truly be the first to set foot on a completely foreign land - or planet for that matter.   And, thanks to technology, future generations won't have to rely on distorted paintings or bad animation. They will have the real deal - Neil Armstrong himself - to tell the story and to be celebrated.
   We celebrate so many things - we remember so many people - that I think it gets harder to separate the truly important from the far-less-significant. Not that anybody's life is insignificant, especially to those that love them. But to be blunt, when I see a celebration of Whitney Houston's life - a life not cut short through illness or accident but rather a life consciously thrown away - and I don't see the star-studded celebration of the life of Neil Armstrong, I have to come to the conclusion that we've lost all historical perspective.
   One hundred years from now, when perhaps there is a colony living on the Moon, perhaps one of their holidays will be Neil Armstrong Day to mark that day in July when their home was "discovered." Celebrate with a parade and a day off from work and school. Remember Armstrong for the significance of his achievement - much like those explorers that came before him.
   By then, I figure, both Whitney Houston and I will have faded from memory. And that, perhaps, is how it should be.

Possibilities. . .and a notebook

I wrote the following on the first page of one of the best gifts I've ever gotten from a student - a new notebook.


I told a story once. Most of it was made up. It was meant to get my kids excited about writing. I had asked them to bring in a notebook - a writer's notebook, I called it. And we were going to fill it with all sorts of things.
   And then I told the story - a story of how excited I got at the sight of a new, fresh notebook. How I couldn't wait to open it. To write in it. To create things in it.
   Most of the story was probably nicked from other things I'd heard writers say about notebooks. I didn't care. I made their stories mine.
   It must have been pretty believable. At least to one student. Because, three days before Christmas break, she gave me this present. A fresh, clean, never-written-in notebook. And I had no choice but to be excited.
   But the excitement was genuine. Not necessarily for the notebook, but rather for the look on her face when she gave it to me. The look that said "Here. Here is what you told us you love the most."
   What she couldn't have known was that it's not notebooks that I love the most. It's possibilities. A notebook can become anything. And so can a student.
   Maybe, in the end, that's why I teach. Not for the tangible rewards but for the possibilities - of what might be.
   And so that's how I came to possess this notebook. And, as much as possible, I will try to fill it with stories of school and students. And possibilities.

Newtown

Being that I'm an elementary school teacher, I have taken the events at the school in Newtown, CT very personally. None of us who are teachers can ever be fully prepared for everything that might happen on any given day, but I have always hoped that the most tragic thing I'd have to prepare for was a child throwing up in my classroom. Seems that that has gone out the window now.
     I work with children every day. I see their good days and their bad days. I make them laugh and I dry their tears. I find their missing notebooks and textbooks, make sure they have lunch and try to make their day as fun and meaningful as possible. And now I thank God that I don't have to explain to my students why their classmates won't be in school on Monday. Or Tuesday. Or ever.
    If there is any justice in the afterlife, this shooter will burn in the fires of Hell for ever and ever. And those that were taken from us so quickly will look down on those that are left behind and somehow give us the strength to get through each day. And we in turn will pray for their souls and pray for those that have the power to act to limit the access to guns and look for some way to make sense of the events of this day.