letters to my class

Dear Humans,

My daughter likes pigs and hot chocolate. And she has a special pig mug whose handle broke off in the dishwasher. So I got some superglue and patched it back on.

And even though there’s still a crack in it. And even though I told her to use two hands while drinking hot chocolate from it. I know she’ll cherish that mug.

Because the best things in life are those things that have been broken and mended. Broken mugs, broken lives, and broken hearts. Because they’re the things someone cared about enough to fix. And they’re the things we’re a little extra careful with when we see their scars.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

We’re learning about technology. From the wheel to the space shuttle. And every one of those technologies is the same in one way: they exist to make human life better.

And they do. We live longer, move faster, communicate more widely, and know more because of technology. And each of those technologies has changed how we organize ourselves, and even think of ourselves, as human beings.

But technology also changes our lives in ways we didn’t expect. 

Nothing is really all good or bad. Life doesn’t work that way. There are costs and benefits, upsides and downsides, pros and cons. And we live our lives wedged in between them, trying to figure out what we should do next.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

Some people think that cursive is an outdated skill. And that schools shouldn’t spend time teaching it. Instead, they argue, you should learn “current” skills like typing with your thumbs, writing code, or programming robots to write code for you. 

The thing about “current” skills, however, is that they quickly go out of style. But one thing that will never go out of style is learning a new skill, practicing it, and mastering it–no matter what the skill may be.

So today we’re going to spend 20 minutes making loopy letters on lined paper. Because I promise you, if you use the “old-fashioned” skills of time, focus, and patience to master cursive, then you’ll have no problem mastering whatever the next “current” skill may be.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

I hate taking out the trash. It’s full and it stinks, so it’s important that I do it. And it takes less than 5 minutes. So why do I dread it?

Because I have to put my shoes on.

Putting on our shoes keeps us from doing lots of things. Because it requires us to change. And change is scary. When our shoes are off, we’re comfortable. We’re in for the night and we’re not going to go outside. Because outside conjures evolutionary memories of beasts of the night that will tear us limb from limb.

Think of all we could accomplish if we weren’t so afraid of putting on our shoes.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

My New Year’s resolution is to stop procrastinating. To do that I have a simple rule: if something takes less than 5 minutes to do, I do it immediately.

And it turns out that almost everything in this world can be done in less than 5 minutes. Take out the trash? Done. Unload the dishwasher? Finished. Grade these math assignments? Presto!

And once you have the 5 minute tasks finished, time opens up for those tasks that take more than 5 minutes. Like helping my daughter with her 7th grade math homework. Like grading those writing assignments. Or like getting lost in a good book.

Everyone has the same amount of time. What matters is how we use it.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

Last week we wrote haiku. Counting syllables to fill each line was easy enough, but setting a scene and then turning to a specific image proved a bit trickier. Even more difficult was making that image surprising, yet somehow still familiar to your readers. 

But that’s the writer’s job: to notice the little spots of beauty and surprise in this world and point them out. And for readers nothing is more pleasurable than being shown something you’ve seen, but may not have noticed. Or that you’re seeing again in a different way.

Literature humanizes us because it reminds us that we are not alone in this world. We share it, and it is possible to see it through another’s eyes.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

My daughter put together a lot of LEGO sets over the break. And while she was putting together a garbage truck, she pointed to one piece and said, “It’s a roller skate.” And then she used it as a door handle.

Because LEGO uses the same pieces for many different things and many different sets. I looked up the piece on the internet (because each LEGO piece has a specific number) and it’s used in over 170 sets, and as a roller skate in only a few of them.

When we break things down into their parts, we understand the whole a little bit better. But we also see that those parts can be used to create as many different things as we can imagine.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

Education is all about changing ourselves. Changing our minds, changing our habits, changing our outlooks. We take what we used to be and transform it into something new.

And nothing is more difficult in this world than changing ourselves. Just like it takes a hot furnace to forge a piece of iron into a useful tool, it takes a lot of effort to change ourselves into something useful for this world.

And nobody can do it for us. Not our teachers, not our friends, not our moms, not our grandparents, and not the influencers in our social media feeds. They can inspire us and motivate us and encourage us.

But in this life, we only ever learn the things we want to learn.

Or we learn them too late.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

Yesterday we read a poem. But not just any poem–a sonnet. Way back in the 13th century, Italian poets decided that 14 lines of metered, rhyming verse was the perfect way to express their love. 

A few centuries later, English poets continued to use 14 lines to woo their beloved, but they also included political themes. And they changed the structure a bit.

And today, poets still use the sonnet form to explore modern ideas, but they’ve pushed the form to its limit. (See the “Mooshot” sonnet that Mary Ellen Solt wrote in 1964 after seeing photos of the moon.)

Humans tell our best stories in verse. And though it will look different in the future, we’ll probably keep doing it 14 lines at a time.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

We’ve been learning about Zone Improvement Plan Codes. But we just call them ZIP Codes. The purpose of ZIP Codes was to make mail delivery more efficient. When we put things into code, they’re easier to share, move, and categorize.

When ZIP Codes first appeared in 1963, the postal service knew people wouldn’t want to write those five extra digits on their envelopes. So the postal service put on a big song and dance (even with a cartoon character named Mr. ZIP) to encourage people to use it.

And it was successful. And now, a ZIP Code isn’t just a five-digit number that helps get the mail out faster; it’s a number that roots us in the places that we live.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt