'And we're walking.....Follow the red umbrella.....And we're here.'

Not directly related, yet so related, random intro....

I like when things like this show up and stop you in your tracks.  This was one of the things I saw in Washington D.C.

I'm back to Nimrod again, except that now I'm not drawn to it because of fatigue.  Always, always I think this song is beautiful, and I am amazed by the fact that the composer wrote it because someone influenced him and made him think differently about his world.  People in London play it on Remembrance Day which is synonymous with Veterans Day here.   You can tell that there is heart in this song.

When I looked over the last few entries I had written, I could see the obsessively reflective teacher making the end of the year feel like the end of the year for a lot of people (and myself).  My brain was whirring.  I kept using the word 'systematic', which was annoying.  Last I checked, I didn't love when my life was systematic.  There is more!   But I'm not required to fill the classroom with history until September again.  So I'm excited to listen more often for longer periods of time, and see what comes up in people I know and love.  Usually when I make some room for this, it is one of the most interesting angles on the world.



Outside of classroom thinking, I must say a few things about group travel to Washington D.C.  We did it!  It was a good trip.  Our students were classy, and we had fun with them.  I did walk down Constitution Avenue with them, just like I knew I would when I thought about the trip in April.    I even think our tour guide was helpful in making transitions for me from school to the trip to summer because of the way he talked with us.  This guy would literally say, 'And we're walking...' and start walking.  He would say 'Stand by...' when he needed to stop giving announcements and talk to me about something.  The kids got it.  Communication worked.  I got it too. 


Last year I saw this person leading another group through D.C. and remembered him because he carries a red umbrella with him and shouts out "Follow the red umbrella!" wherever he goes, especially on busy sidewalks.  I thought to myself, "This is a guy you can follow."  The first day the kids thought it was funny, and by the third day they were loving it.  He even predicted it would be this way.  He knows how to lead kids without being, as he said, the 'sage on the stage', and he was professional.  My students even came up to me to tell me it felt like he was just a regular guy who was talking to them (read: not an annoying tour guide that they expected).   This style of communication was a complete 180 compared to the trip last year.  I was grateful.

That said, I lived the trip a second time with different people and walked through the same places with a different perspective.  I laughed a lot about ridiculous things.  The kids were funny, and my friends, the chaperones, were funny too.  It was always almost raining but never exceptionally hot, which made us less likely to be crabby.  I saw for the first time the magical place called the Library of Congress and totally forgot about the kids there and had to catch up to my own group.  We were taken care of. 

In addition to this, I often acted like I was 14 myself. In all seriousness, I bought a friendship ring at one of the Smithsonian museums with Maddie, who is teaching high school next year across the river in Hudson. I won't show pictures of students, but I will show the friendship ring picture. This is obviously appropriate closure that honors the subculture we have been a part of while teaching. And we really did buy the rings to honor the 14 year old girl in us, not to mock our students. They of course though could appreciate the gesture. 

Jessi and Mads (ha ha - never actually use those nicknames)

More than I expected, this trip gave a resounding settled feeling to the entire year of teaching.  It was a great surprise.

Monuments and memorials.  Last year I was struck by the Jefferson and FDR memorials, and Mount Vernon.  It was the same for me this year too.  Why?  FDR said very quotable things and his memorial highlights it. FDR's quote in the picture is my favorite.
Jefferson just looks awesome when you see his memorial across the Tidal Basin.  And Mount Vernon really does feel like home base.  

Here was our experience at Mount Vernon.

The intro....

Pat Sajak, from 'Wheel of Fortune', is the host for an introduction in a big theater at Mount Vernon (why??), and this always makes the kids laugh.  This year I quit being a role model and burst out laughing too.  I couldn't help it.  He's wearing colonial gentleman clothing with a tricorn hat, and talking about Mount Vernon with puns.  That was hilarious, especially because the coffee was wearing off, and it was day 4 of the class trip with disjointed sleep. 

Anyway, I'm not sure if it is because Washington really was a visionary, or because at Mount Vernon America's beginning really does feel like a great experiment, but there is heavy peace there and I felt that once again.


The rest of it...

When you're there, you get to walk around and marvel at things like the color of the walls (ordered from Europe, very expensive and very green), the mirrors you look into that you know Martha and George looked into too, the reality of Southern hospitality and what it really meant in the course of the year for people curious about their president, and the key to the Bastille in Paris. 

It's there! 

I love this because history is so connected.  SO connected!  We talk about the Marquis de Lafayette in Chapter 7 of our text, and when we go to Mount Vernon, we see the key to the Bastille from the French Revolution.  How did it get there?  Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette were friends, and to honor radical beliefs about freedom, Lafayette gave the key to this prison to Washington.  It's still there.  Somehow seeing that giant key on the wall always makes everything feel very real about the Revolution.  Probably because it links two revolutions across the ocean.  

Peace by the Potomac

But the very best part though of Mount Vernon is the view from the porch.  The porch is giant, and the view is too.  You see the Potomac and the sky, and that's about all you see because the house is set on a large hill.   Sitting in a big, surprisingly cozy wooden chair with my friends, the chaperones, was the most peaceful moment of the trip.  When we were there, and the students were nowhere to be seen, one of the chaperones looked at the tree near the edge of the hill and said,

'That tree knows George Washington.' 

What an interesting way to look at the view.  (It made me see again that when he sees a view, usually he first notices the trees.)   This stuck with me because it was a beautiful thought, and because the tree is old and used to be young when George Washington was there.
   
When I woke up this morning, I made coffee and wondered what I would first like to do in a day full of the promise of winding turns. As it turns out, I am meeting Corynn for lunch in St. Paul, and before that I am sitting down to the desk to write about things that come to mind. I think I would also like to read books and write letters. It's a definite mental shift to remember to read books without mining for key ideas in the text and structuring outlines for linear thinking toward historical concepts. And then in addition to that, making it exciting and approachable. I'm used to doing that, but I don't have to do that (or at least teach like this) until September again. This is a shift. Some argue that you are always a teacher. I'm not talking about the role itself. I'm talking about removal from this way of thinking to restore and repair it.

In the spirit of repair, I happily acquiesce.