Pandora's Box Continues To Empty Its Content, But I Have Hope

I'm not sure we're ever supposed to know what Nick find's in the dragonfly box, Freedom, that was left to him, but I was thinking about this while reading responses from my graduate students on developing reading in secondary schools. One of my students reminded me of a time I sat down and wrote a list of all the truths that I knew (and advice I'd give to struggling individuals). I'm not sure what prompted it, but it was a lengthy document that I printed out and then put into a shredder. I took all the shredded pieces and stuffed them into a glass jar with a cork top. I gave it to a student, Meggie, who incidentally was nicknamed D-Fly (for dragonfly).

"What's this?" she asked. "It's everything you've ever wanted to know about life," I told her. "But I can't read it. It's chopped int millions of pieces."

That was my point. Would you really want all the answers?

Politically, I am trying to keep my cool and to remain neutral with my thinking. Obviously education is a number one priority for me and I'm in utter awe that the new Secretary of Education was put through. I've never seen such unification of parents, administrators, and teachers fighting together for a cause. I thought there was a chance it would be stop, but I kept thinking, "Oh, another predictable disappointment." Educational leaders have failed pubic schools for a long time. Politicians have DEFINITELY failed teachers and students for a VERY long time. Why would anyone get it right this time.

PTSD. But what else is new in education?

So, last night I did an activity where my students wrote statements about the meaning of life. They did this on strips of paper and turned them in. I told them they wouldn't be discussed, but rather we'd come back to them at the end of class.

We explored Common Core State Standards, made connections to Jeff Wilhelm and Kelly Gallagher, explore a little more Kwame Alexander, and did a mini-reading of Pandora's Box with an extra special You Tube cartoon variation of the story. While the lessons were occurring, I was under my desk tearing apart the advice strips with a pair of scissors and making confetti out of their meanings for life. I also prepared boxes of candy before class began, and when no one was looking, I added the shredded paper to each.

Whereas it's almost Valentine's Day, I couldn't find Dragonfly boxes, but i did get small heart-shaped ones.

We reread the last poem of Booked and pontificated what may have been left to Nick in that box he was left. My point to my graduate students is that sometimes we may never know the answer to why things happen the way they do - Zeus wanted the evils in the world to punish us for having fire given to us. The only thing left to any of us (to touch our hearts) is to have hope. Hope is all left to Pandora.

Perhaps that's what Nick was given, too.

I know it's all I've been able to rely on as I wake up and continue the battle to make the world a fairer, safer, more equitable place for the young people and teachers I work with. Yesterday, the balloon of public education was brought into a room of needles, darts, blowguns, and razor blades. There was little chance it would come out inflated.

Now, time tells. It's been rather horrific for teachers and schools for quite sometime, and it looks like all the players that Dewey, Addams, and Dubois warned us about have finally joined forces to completely prove how disconnected from reality they are.

But for today, my students got heart-shaped boxes with all the best advice I could give them. When they open the boxes, I hope that hope will remain.