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  • I have a little class of 3rd to 6th graders in my Little House Literature Class. We are reading Little House in the Big Woods, one chapter a week. I try to help them understand the times (circa 1870) and the people we are reading about. This week we read about Uncle George, who “was wild” since he got back from the Civil War. Uncle George was going to be at the grandparents’ house on the night of the big dance that Laura Ingalls was so excited about attending as a little girl. So my plan was to tell them a little bit about the Civil War and about some of the severe conditions soldiers endured. Then, so we wouldn’t be all doom and gloom, we would do some square dancing at the end of class.
  • Miss C. helped me select the pictures to show the class. A wonderful librarian at our local library helped me find picture books about the Civil War. I wanted to introduce the kids to the reality of war without being too traumatizing. I found two pictures of the battlefield of Gettysburg that Miss C. said didn’t bother her. I also found some on the destruction of Charlottsville, SC. We talked about the horrors of war and about the realities of what the soldiers saw and why that might have made Uncle George seem, “wild.” The children very somberly and respectfully viewed the pictures and listened to my short lecture.
  • And then it was time to square dance. You would’ve thought I told them to line up for civil war-styled amputations. The boys groaned, and the girls demurred. It took me 10 minutes just to get them up and organized and they never did learn a single dance.
  • So who would ever think that in a class that touched on Gettysburg, Andersonville, and Sherman’s march to the sea, the most traumatic part of the class for my students would be square dancing with members of the opposite sex!?
  • This is almost the end of Rosie’s high school cross-country journey and I think she and I are both just done with it. The positive side is, she made it through the entire season, her senior year, without an injury, and she ran every single race.
Districts 2022
  • But she’s not running up to the potential she had four or even six years ago. So before I go through the rigors of getting her NCAA eligible for running in college, she’s going to have to show me a true desire to continue. It’s okay with me if she takes a gap year. In fact, if she takes a year off, she can still be NCAA eligible and I won’t have to do a thing – they’ll use her grades from her first year of college. It’s just that it has to be her goal for herself, and not driven by me.
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