letters to my class

Dear Humans,

Yesterday I handed you a sealed black box with a marble and some foam pieces in it and asked you what it looked like inside. You couldn’t look, so you had to roll, listen, feel and imagine what it looked like.

Yesterday you solved a story problem about 800 oranges in baskets and bins. We didn’t have 800 oranges in the classroom, so you had to imagine what that many oranges would look like.

Yesterday you wrote personal essays about objects that are important to you. You knew those objects intimately and knew exactly why they were important, but you had to imagine you were in your unknown reader’s shoes and reading about it for the first time.

Most of what we do in school (and in life) is imaginary, because the important stuff is too big, too small, or too complex to know in any other way.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

I learned about the American Revolution in 3rd grade and 5th grade and 8th grade and 11th grade and as a freshman in college and then again as a senior in college. And when I was out of college I got on a kick where I read a bunch of Joseph Ellis and David McCullough books. 

You could say I’ve spent my whole life learning about the American Revolution. And I still feel like I hardly know anything.

But, because I’ve spent an entire lifetime learning how to learn about the American Revolution, I have a pretty good idea how to learn new things, connect them to old things, and use them to explain something about this complex world we live in.

So, if you ask me trivia questions about the Battle of Saratoga, I probably won’t know the answer. But I will know how to find it out.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

I’m sure you’ve heard it before–and it’s true–people are more important than things. The Marshall Fire that burned just a few miles away from us was a tragic event–two people died and nearly a thousand homes were lost. But it was also a miracle that more lives were not lost. 

And yet we know that things are important. We surround ourselves with stuff that reminds us of the people who are important to us. The objects in our homes hold memories from our past and hopes for our future. Just like great-grandfather’s matchboxes, our possessions–simple as they are–are haunted by the people and memories that make us who we are.

But they can always be replaced. Our memories can survive travel, moving, loss, and tragedy. And that’s why people have raised over $25 million to help the victims do just that.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

Yesterday we made origami boxes. And your first box might not have been very good. But your second box was a little better. And each box afterwards was a little better than the last.

No matter what job you’ll have when you get older (and you might have many) most of it will be doing the same thing over and over. And you’ll be good at your job if you are always getting better at doing that thing. You might do that thing with your hands or with words or by putting numbers in a computer. But the main job of any job is figuring out how to do it faster, better, and more efficiently.

So that’s really what we’re practicing at school. Everything we do–not just reading, writing, and arithmetic, but keeping our desks clean, having conversations with classmates, folding origami boxes–is about doing it better than we did it yesterday.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

A plant catalog came to our house the other day. It has seeds, bulbs, and plants for mail order, each with a short rundown, each with a code that tells you where and in what conditions to plant it. 

I’m not a big gardener, but I can see its appeal. Because it sure is fun to sit inside on a dark, cold winter night and think about the plants that you’ll bloom in the spring and summer. I’m sure there are many people who use that catalog to plan out what their entire yards will look like, all while those yards are currently covered in snow. They might even look out their frost-covered window and be able to perfectly see what those yards will look like in late June.

Because a whole lot of life–and maybe its best parts–happens mostly in our imagination.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

All my life I’ve been told that education is the key to a better life. If I paid attention in school, worked hard, and got good grades, I would get the things I wanted. And it’s true! If you learn what you’re supposed to learn in school, you are more likely to get a better job, a bigger house, a nicer car, and a more comfortable life. 

But those things, of course, are not the point of learning. They’re nice by-products. It’s very nice to keep ourselves free from material worry or strife. But the point of learning is freedom. The point of learning is coming up with your own ideas about what the world should be like and having the means to make the world (or at least a little bit of it) a reality. 

So that’s the lesson plan for today.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

I’ve never been to Nepal. Heck, I’ve never even been to Asia. So I’ve never seen Mt. Everest and I most probably never will. And I most certainly will never climb Mt. Everest or even attempt to climb it. Heck, I’ve never even climbed a 14er.

But I still feel like Mt. Everest belongs to me. Because I remember seeing the number 29,032 at the top of the list of World’s Tallest Peaks in the World Almanac when I was in 4th grade, because I read Into Thin Air when I was in high school.

In the same way, Mt. Everest belongs to you. Not for you to climb and litter up with spent oxygen bottles, but it belongs to you in the same way that everything in the world belongs to all curious people: to know about, to think about, to fit into the unsolvable puzzle of this strange world that you belong to.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

The classroom is a special place. It’s unlike any other you’ll inhabit in your lives. It’s not the home, it’s not the workplace. It’s a learning place where you have to take risks and be vulnerable. And that’s a really scary thing to do in front of your peers. 

And you can only do that if you have each others’ backs. That means you do the things you say you’ll do and give each other the grace and space to make mistakes and learn from them.

It doesn’t mean you have to be besties. I don’t talk to very many of my old classmates. But when I do run into them, we have a whole lot to talk about because we’ve spent so much time together. And I know they’ll always have my back.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

I guess it’s going to be quite windy today. So I brought our  inflatable polar bear into the garage. I’m prepared  to lose power if the wind snaps the power lines. I’m ready to pull over to the side of the road when the visibility becomes zero because of blowing dirt and debris.

Even though meteorologists know the conditions are ripe for some crazy wind today, we can’t know exactly when or where those gusts are going to hit. We just have to be as ready for them as possible. 

I hate the wind, and I know I’m not the only one. I think we hate wind so much because it’s unpredictable. It’s something that is beyond our control. That’s true with most weather, but with snow we can shovel it and with rain we can take an umbrella. With wind, we just have to prepare and wait.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

This weekend I had to fix my sliding screen door. Again. Because it came off its track. Again. And when it’s not on its track, no matter how much you push and pull on it, it just won’t work right. You have to take the door completely off and make sure those little wheels at the bottom are correctly aligned on the track. 

And you’ll know you’ve got it when even the slightest push glides that screen door all the way back home. And it’s a very beautiful thing

In life it’s easy to get off track. And when you are, nothing seems to work right. And pushing and pulling don’t help. The only thing you can do is take the screen door off and reset it back on track correctly. 

And then you’ll have smooth gliding. At least for a while.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt