Each Fall, I can vividly recall getting my new textbooks and new pencils and paper and the smells of newness that would trigger a new level of excitement about school. Even as a little boy those thoughts are so ingrained into my memory. I felt that same sense of excitement and exhilaration in the last two days as I finally got to meet and speak with my four classes for the Fall semester. Silly perhaps but I still get so excited about a new semester and all the challenges that lay ahead. I tingle in finally getting to execute countless hours of planning, syllabi's preparation, logistical coordination, establishing communications nets with my students; you know, the smell of new textbooks!
Now I realize that my energy and passion just sort of blows all over the room when the students are coming in and I am shaking hands in welcoming them. It is the first time they have met this person, that would be me, that has made contact via an elaborate email with several attachments they received many times within minutes of them enrolling in my classes. That would be me that fills their In Box with daily articles I select and comment on as I seek to "ignite a hunger for them to want to understand" this world. It is always interesting when I call on one of these newbies to answer the question, "so what did you think, really, when you opened that first email from me?" I realize that is quite out of the ordinary but then teaching should be quite out of the ordinary I believe. I seek to establish new heights of creativity and new levels of connectivity with my students long before we even meet. I want them to feel the energy, the strength of passion about the work and the new terrain that looms before them. I want them to smell the new textbooks of education.
The nearly 180 students I have this semester, after the drops and adds, are great people. They range in age from 17 to 79. I have an unusually high number of males versus females. I have very few military veterans versus what I usually. But really what I have is a large group of opportunities that need to be developed, challenged, stretched and pushed to reach levels of learning perhaps new and thus frightening for them. That is the part I love most, frankly, for that energizes me even more. The power of learning is a potent, unstoppable force I can, more and more, understand why, throughout history, when a dictator comes to power, the first thing they do is have the teachers killed for teachers breathe new life into stale, fragmented minds and paradigms.
So my blog message this morning to my students, old and new, and to the parents and grandparents of these young minds I say, they are in good hands and covered by daily prayer for their well being, their stretched minds they are about to experience as they prepare for life in a new, frighteningly scary and every changing world. It is going to be fun so hang on!
It is a great generation and what a blessing to get to touch the future and their unborn children and grandchildren. Yes, I view what I GET TO DO through that prism meaning it much more than just time in class for it is about changing a generation. That is powerful stuff isn't it?
Knowledge is power!
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