Scar Tissue

The following was written by Kristin Leclaire, a wonderful Language Arts teacher at my school and a friend. She initially sent this to our principal, who then suggested she share with the entire staff. With permission from Kristin, I share it with you.

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Hello, Warrior Family. Below is a letter I sent to Natalie on Saturday. She suggested that I share it with all of you. Please don't feel obligated to read it, but I thought I'd offer it to you just it in case it helps a little.

I love you and am proud to be part of your family. Here it is:


Dear Natalie,

As a survivor of apocalyptic moments, I thought I might share with you my thoughts on Friday’s horrific events.

I was living and teaching in Manhattan, as you know, on September 11, 2001. Watching the world fall apart on the corner of 90th and Amsterdam, I was protected by some kind of surreal aura. Jet bombers ripped open the sky as grown men in business suits cried and waitresses fled their restaurants, locking the doors with plates half full of food left on the tables. Nobody seemed able to find their wives, sons, and friends. Our safe world--our home--had shattered, and whatever familiar pieces of it remained were warped and blackened. I, like many others, watched all of this from inside a muted bubble that wouldn’t burst until I saw the news alone in my apartment later that evening, when I cried so hard that my shirt soaked through to my skin.

The next morning, however, I cried from a different place in my heart. Looking out my window on the 20th floor, I could see a growing line of women and men down on the street stretching for blocks and blocks. They were lining up to give blood to the Red Cross.

Restaurants were still closed, but not out of fear; they posted signs informing the public that all the food for the day was being donated to those in need. In the elevator, strangers asked each other, “Is your family okay? Do you need anything?” A guy sitting next to me on the subway showed me photos of ground zero and told me about his nephew, who had escaped from the first tower.

A woman sang, “O Holy Night” in the middle of the midtown subway platform, and a hundred of us stopped rushing for a moment, put down our bags, and just listened, tears rolling down our faces as her voice reverberated off the tile walls, spreading and soaring and filling up the spaces left by lost sisters and husbands and fathers. I thought maybe she was an angel.

In a city known for its rude inhabitants, where people thought nothing of letting doors slam in my face and cutting in front of me at Zabars, something unexpected was happening: New Yorkers were becoming family.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and you see, the evil that blew up those buildings was being pushed away by the good in the hearts of the survivors. In the same way, I believe the hate and desperation that exploded in our school on Friday will be pushed back by our love and hope. We will heal together, taking care of each other as a family. Like the survivors of 9-11, we are the only ones who really know what it was like at ground zero, and the same force that had us huddled in the dark corners of our classrooms will help us put our arms around each other.

Scar tissue, it turns out, may be uglier than unassaulted skin, but it’s also thicker and tougher, and man, does it run deep.

Much, much love to all Warriors,

Kristin

It Was Amazing

Kristin Leclaire (who needs to blog more often) just posted about her 10th graders reading The Kite Runner. I wrote about this last year, but this year she knew about Rob ahead of time so could plan a little better. As Kristin writes:

I explained that our contact, Rob Dodson, had contacted me last year after reading my class blogs, and that he was a military officer stationed in Afghanistan. I had invited him to become a part of our discussion this year, and he immediately accepted the invitation.

Kristin goes on to describe the interaction Rob had with her class, and the effect it had:

For the first time in my teaching of The Kite Runner, students were genuinely, authentically interested in the cultural background of this book.

. . . Ask any of my 4th hour students how they liked The Kite Runner, and their faces actually light up as they respond with an enthusiastic, “It was amazing.” And it was.

Go read her post for more details, and here's one post on her class blog where Rob addresses some student questions.

As I've said many times before, why aren't we doing more things like this?

From Afghanistan

Kristin Leclaire’s sophomores are finishing up their study of The Kite Runner. They’ve had a series of in-class fishbowl discussions about the book, but on their next-to-last one over Chapter 23 they had some additional input to consider.

If you take a look at that post, you’ll see the above picture sent to them from Afghanistan by Rob, an American who’s currently serving as Senior Military Adviser to the Afghan Army’s National Threat Warning Center in Kabul. Then if you scroll through the comments you’ll come to this one by Rob, where he gives them a little bit of his perspective, and then asks them a question about whether social class – in light of their study of Kite Runner – is still important. Many students respond to the question, and then Rob comes back one more time with some additional information.

Nothing earth shattering here, but this is what I’d like to see much more of in all of our classes. We should be reaching out to folks in different locations and with different perspectives, including “experts” but also just people with different life experiences. It’s so easy to do, whether it’s asynchronous like this example, or the use of something like Skype for synchronous conversation. I guess I’m wondering why it doesn’t happen more often.

What’s holding you back?

Wordle the (Yellow) Wallpaper

Kristin Leclaire shares a recent day in her classroom:

So how do we work through the story in a constructivist way without sacrificing efficient interpretation-seeking?

First, we made a list as a class of all of our questions. They had...a lot.

Then, every student picked one question that intrigued him/her and spent a few minutes brainstorming possible responses and follow-up questions. At the end of this brainstorming, they seemed even angrier and more confused. Some of them were holding their foreheads as if their brains physically hurt.

What happened next? Wordle to the rescue, and this is no exaggeration . . . So, we took "The Yellow Wallpaper," page by page, and wordled it. And here’s what happened . . .

Head on over and read what happened, but here’s her summation:

It wasn’t just fun and fluffy; it sparked intense discussion and allowed us a concrete way to analyze abstract, elusive themes. Just as the design of the wallpaper emerged to the narrator, the design of the story revealed itself to us.

I Hear Arapahoe Singing

Last night Kristin Leclaire asked her American Literature class to write their own version of Walt Whitman's poem, "I Hear America Singing." Their poem is called "I Hear Arapahoe Singing," and each student in the class contributed his or her own verse using the class blog. In an email, Kristin shared that "in class today, we analyzed our poem, and many students realized that all of their verses emphasized the insecurity of the individual but the strong, driving force of our pride as a united school."

Please consider heading over to their class blog and leaving them some constructive feedback.