letters to my class

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

Dear Humans,

We’ve talked about algorithms being human inventions, but the truth is that everything we learn about has been discovered by human minds and explained with human language.

And since each of us is human, we have both the ability to understand and the right to explore that precious vault of human knowledge–no matter who we are or where we come from.

Dear Humans,

When I go to the grocery store, I always get the cart with the bad wheel. Dozens of carts nestled together and waiting, and I pick the cart that buzzes, screeches, and takes all of my strength to wheel around the corner.

Or at least it seems that way. What really happens is that I only remember the times when I have  the bad wheel. When I’m rolling smooth on all four wheels–which is most shopping trips–I just don’t think about it.

So now I’m trying to appreciate the mundane moments when things go well–when my car starts right up, when my commute is quick, and when my shopping cart rolls smoothly.

Sincerely,

Mr. Heimbuck

Dear Humans,

At my grandma’s funeral last month, nobody talked about what kind of grades she got in 5th grade. And nobody talked much about what a great employee she was or how clean she kept her kitchen or how popular she was.

Maybe it was because she outlived most of the people who had that kind of dirt on her.

Instead, people talked about how she lived her life with style and boldness. They talked about the things she did that made her the one and only person who ever has and ever will be like her.

There’s a lot in life that makes us the same. But what matters is what makes us unique. And that is completely up to us.

Sincerely,

Mr. Heimbuck

Dear Humans,

Without language, the world wouldn’t make much sense. But often times (especially when you’re a kid), words can be confusing.

When I was a kid, the news bombarded me with words, names, and places that I didn’t even half-understand: Watergate and Whitewater, Mogadishu and Montenegro, Tienanmen Square and the Berlin Wall.

You’re probably in the same boat (but with way more news sources than just Tom Brokaw), confused about Quds and Kurds, Iran and Iraq, and Burisma and Butina.

Well, it doesn’t get any easier. But looking for the big picture helps. If you think of reality as a giant jigsaw puzzle (with lots of different pictures) and each of these words as a piece, then you can start to snap them into place.

Sincerely,

Mr. Heimbuck

Dear Humans,

One time I was riding in a car with someone, and they let slip that they’d been in six car accidents, but “none of them were [their] fault.” At the next stop sign I went ahead and got out of the car and walked to my destination.

Sure, bad things can happen. But a lot of living (and most of driving) is taking the responsibility to avoid “accidents.”

So if you come in from recess after “accidentally” hurting someone, I’m not going to be very sympathetic. I’ll probably ask you what exactly you were doing that led to the “accident.”

Sincerely,

Mr. Heimbuck