letters to my class

Dear Humans,

The it’s/its problem is out of control. Last week, I saw a Denver Post headline with the wrong it’s/its.

I understand the problem. The first lesson we get when we’re learning grammar is that to make a word possessive we add an ‘s. But, of course, the possessive its does not have an apostrophe in it. So it’s a little confusing.

Dear Humans,

A few months ago it seemed we never had bowls in our house. Anytime anyone wanted cereal, they had to take a bowl out of the dishwasher and hand wash it. But then we found some bowls at Ross that were plain white and almost perfectly matched our dishes.

And now, we have a whole bunch of dirty bowls, but we still don’t seem to have clean ones when we need them. It turns out the problem wasn’t the number of bowls we had. The problem was that I wasn’t washing them quickly enough.

It’s nice to have stuff. And I’m lucky that I can buy new bowls when I need them. But stuff doesn’t change who we are. Only we can do that.

Sincerely,

Mr. Heimbuck

Dear Humans,

On garbage day, one of my neighbors puts out their recycling can even though it’s not a recycling week. And then another neighbor does because someone else did. And soon there’s a whole bunch of recycling cans out that will never be picked up.

First I laugh. Then I look at my trash/recycling calendar. And, even though I can see that this is most definitely not a recycling day, I think, “How can all of these people be wrong?” and I put my recycling can out just in case.

But a lot of people are wrong all the time. And though putting my recycling can out on the wrong day isn’t that big a deal, blindly following my neighbors can turn out to be a big deal.

Sincerely,

Mr. Heimbuck

Dear Humans,

I like to know what kind of car a person drives; it tells you a lot about them. When you buy a car, you think about the kind of persona you’ll take on when you’re behind the wheel. So it’s a pretty good method for figuring people out.

But then sometimes I’m surprised. I’ll think, how can a person who drives a 2009 Toyota Camry do or say something like that? That doesn’t make any sense at all!

But that’s people for you. About the time you think you have them figured out, they’ll surprise you. And it’s important that we let them, even if we know the kind of car they drive.

Sincerely,

Mr. Heimbuck

Dear Humans,

When I’m folding laundry or washing a bunch of dishes, I want the job to be over as quickly as possible. There’s other things I’d rather be doing. But all I can do is take it one pair of pants or one crusted-on pot at a time.

I understand the saying “work smarter, not harder” but sometimes the smartest thing you can do is just take a task one step at a time. Sometimes the smartest thing you can do is put all of your focus into the task in front of you. It may not make the task go faster, but it will make the time feel well-spent.

Sincerely,

Mr. Heimbuck

Dear Humans,

I’m no green thumb. I haven’t spent much time gardening, and I’ve never before tried to vermicompost. So these worms in our classroom are a learning experience for me as well.

And when we’re done with this unit, and we dump the compost we’ve made into the garden, I might go back to throwing my coffee filters in the garbage can.

But my hope is that some of you won’t. My hope is that some of you will see something good and true and beautiful in these cute little decomposers that you can center your life around. Because that’s what learning is–a serious of turns and detours that end us up where we never expected.

Sincerely,

Mr. Heimbuck

Dear Humans,

Saturday had quite a sunset. And I saw people  pull over their cars, get out, and just stared at it for a few minutes.

Those people understand that we have to take the time to recognize the special moments in our lives. If we don’t tell ourselves that they’re important, then they’ll easily wash away like most of our memories do.

I had that moment yesterday morning as I was driving to the new donut shop down the street to pick up half a dozen for my family. A beautiful February morning, and when Bob Seger came on the radio, I knew that life couldn’t get much better than that. So I made sure I told myself.

Sincerely,

Mr. Heimbuck

Dear Humans,

The other day one of you solved 55 x 64 in your head. And the people around you were so impressed that someone exclaimed, “Your brain is a calculator!”

But that is not true. The human brain is nothing like a calculator. A calculator very quickly “crunches” numbers, but the calculator doesn’t “think” about numbers.

The whiz who quickly multiplied 55 by 64 had a strategy, based on the numbers, and the property of multiplication. And, even better, the 5th grade math whiz can talk to us about their strategy. Calculators don’t do much talking.

Machines can give us a lot of information, but they can’t make sense of it. Luckily, we carry around in our skulls the best sense-making machine ever invented.

Sincerely,

Mr. Heimbuck

Dear Skywatchers,

Astronomers and amateur skywatchers have their telescopes aimed at Betelgeuse, the second brightest star in the Orion constellation. And they’ve noticed it’s been dimming. And they think that might mean it will explode–turn into a supernova–any day now.

Or, they say, it could take another 100,000 years. We can’t really tell because we live our lives on human time. The universe is bigger, longer, and slower than we can even imagine.

We’ve been pointing our telescopes into the heavens for the last 500 years, but that’s hardly a nanosecond in the universe’s. Who knows what kind of changes the star has undergone in its long history?

All we can do is keep watching and keep waiting.

Sincerely,

Mr. Heimbuck

Dear Humans,

When someone cuts me off in traffic or leaves one of those floss picks laying on the ground by the front door of Target, I think, “What the heck is wrong with people?” And then, if I’m feeling particularly angry, I might even think, “Wouldn’t the world be great if everyone was more like me?”

But it doesn’t take too much second-guessing to imagine what a terrible world that would be.

The world is the world. It exists before me, beyond me, and without me. While I like to think I might have some things to teach it, it has a whole lot more to teach me. I should most definitely let it.

Sincerely,

Mr. Heimbuck