letters to my class

Dear Learners,

When I was a kid I spent a lot of time looking at maps, atlases, and almanacs. And I loved tracing my finger along the shapes of the states. I memorized them, drew them, and bit cheese slices into their shapes. And now my blood flows through veins that make the shape of that meandering border between Kentucky and Ohio.

It’s better to know something than not know it. And it’s really good to know something really, really well. Then it becomes a part of you.

What we’re learning matters. It will determine who you are in the future.

Sincerely,

Mr. Heimbuck

Dear Readers,

The stories we’re reading are made up. They might be based on true stories, they might include real events, and they may include real people or places, but the books we’re reading are fiction.

Therefore, the authors are more interested in telling the “big truths” about what it’s like to live in a certain time rather than the little facts about a particular person. So as readers, we have to be on the lookout for those “big truths” or themes. We have to use them as a lens for reading.

Good readers know what’s important–the ideas!

Sincerely,

Mr. Heimbuck

Dear Readers,

I stayed up late finishing A Long Walk to Water last night. But I stayed up even later because that book sent me off on a journey to learn more about Sudan. First I read about other books about the Sudanese Civil War and the Lost Boys. Then I read an article about South Sudanese basketball players in Australia and about South Sudanese players in the NBA. And, of course, that led me to reading about the tallest player in NBA history–Manute Bol.

A book is just the start. Good books, even fiction, open the world up to us and lead us into the world, showing us what an incredible place it is, and more importantly, showing us that we have a place in it.

Sincerely, 

Mr. Heimbuck

Dear Renaissance Humans,

Today we’ll see the world through the eyes of Leonardo DaVinci. He was a person who paid close attention. He devoted  his life to studying the natural world and from those keen observations he imagines many incredible inventions. While many of those inventions never left the pages of his journals, today we see that DaVinci was a visionary.

Your job is to study the stuff of the world. Figure out how it works and imagine new ways of using it for humanity’s benefit.

Sincerely,

Mr. Heimbuck

Dear Earthlings,

It’s hard to think about the long term. We want what we want right away. We want to be happy and comfortable now, and it’s easy to forget about that same us who we will be in the future. We like to imagine we’ll always have time to fix the things we’ve been meaning to fix.

But it’s really important that we think about the future. It’s important that we think about how our actions will affect (or won’t affect) the world later in our own lives and also after our lives. 

We don’t remember people from history because they were successful, happy, and comfortable in the present. We remember them because of what they left behind. What will you leave behind?

Sincerely,

Mr. Heimbuck

Dear Marhematicians,

We have learned many ways to multiply. We teach you so many methods because we want you to learn to be strategic in your thinking. Depending on the numbers, you will choose a different multiplication strategy. And you will learn to make the numbers make sense.

If you only learn one method to multiply numbers, then you’ll probably get really good at that one method, but you can only ever use it to multiply numbers. But if you learn to think strategically, and you learn to think about your thinking, then you can apply that to any problem you face in the world.

It’s like having a banana slicer versus a chef’s knife.

Sincerely,

Mr. Heimbuck

Dear Learners,

Knowledge is all around you. In the back of our classroom, the whole world resides inside the pages of those books. In the chrome books at the front of the room, the world world is accessible to you. We live in a world of abundance. 

But just having access to knowledge is not enough. You have to take that knowledge and make it a part of your life. You have to use the knowledge to make connections across time and space and to make meaning about the world. If the knowledge is not a part of you, then it’s not much use.

That’s hard work. And that’s life-changing work.

Sincerely,

Mr. Heimbuck

Dear Citizens,

This is your regularly-scheduled reminder that your neighbors and fellow citizens pay a lot of tax money to make sure you get a quality education. They don’t do this because they like you personally or because they want you to find a good job. They do it because they want the future to be created by well-educated citizens.

They expect you to make good decisions for their children and their grandchildren. They expect you to discover cures and inventions that will benefit humanity.

So remember that as you’re learning today. It’s not just for your own benefit. It’s for the benefit of all of us.

Sincerely,

Mr. Heimbuck

Dear Humans,

Your test score doesn’t have anything you to say about what kind of person you are. The effort you put into it and your attitude about it do, but the score itself is just a number.

You show what kind of person you are by how you treat people who have less than you–less money, less power, and less opportunity. That cannot be captured by filling in bubbles and writing essays.

But believe in yourself. Everyone of you is capable of greatness. I’ve seen what kind of people you are because I’ve seen each of you succeed on the tests that really matter.

Sincerely,

Mr. Heimbuck

Dear Performers,

A test is like a puzzle. Another human designed it and you have to figure out their thought process. You have to try to read their mind. And like a puzzle, that other person is trying to trick you. Don’t let them.

Also like a puzzle, persistence and effort is key. You won’t now every answer on the test.  But you do have the tools to figure each one out. You do have the tools to write persuasive and complete responses. Knowledge is overrated. What really matters is your ability to figure things out.

Sincerely,

Mr. Heimbuck