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Showing posts from January, 2017

On the Eve of the Inauguration

As both a father and teacher, I feel like a Depression era farmer on the eve of the Dust Bowl.  The farmer has done everything to ensure his crops will grow.  For years he has worked the soil to make it as fertile as he can, but a hard world has overpowered his good intentions.  Day after day he watches helplessly as all he has tried to build blows away with the grains of dirt howling across the flaking paint of his front porch.  He wants control, but he has none.  He wants to heal the earth he has tended so carefully, but he can't.  All he can do is hope. Tomorrow Donald Trump becomes the next President of The United States.  As a teacher and father I find that deeply troubling.  For twenty years, I have tried to use literature to teach students the importance of this country’s core beliefs.  Atticus Finch defending Tom Robinson despite the racist forces of society working against him.  Toni Bambara’s “The Lesson” in which a girl living in poverty stands before FAO Schwartz w