Rowing A Boat to School?!

I'm just returning from the awesome Anaheim Teachers Pay Teachers conference.  Yes, this southern gal left the south for Sunny Cali to learn amazing tips and tricks from other teachers pay teachers sellers.  But this post isn't about that....

This is about the episodes I watched on the airplane.  (While we are talking about airplanes, I must ask---why in the world can't the back of the plane load first instead of last?  Wouldn't it make sense to work from the back to the front; wouldn't it save time in the line of people trying to put their carry-on bags in the overhead storage?)

Alas, I digress.

While I was on my flight, I watched episodes of a documentary of the most dangerous ways students get to school.  I saw kids, bundled up in multiple layers of clothing, leaving their homes in Siberia to walk to the bus stop---only to have their little eyelashes covered with ice.

I watched as little girls rowed a boat to school for an hour, stopping only to eat some reeds.

I've always known that other places in the world have it much harder than most American schools when it comes to transportation to school.  I know that my sponsor girl in Honduras walks home alone at dark (high schoolers go to school in the evening in her area of Honduras) and the thought of her walking in the dark terrifies me.

But she does it because education is that important to her.
Those Peruvian girls on that TV show rowed over an hour each day because education was THAT IMPORTANT.
The little boy with the frozen eyelashes battles the cold because learning is the deepest well he wants to drink from.

I wish we could bottle whatever intrinsic desire these children have for education and let everyone drink from it.  But that type of love for learning cannot be bottled and sold (wouldn't I make millions if it could be?).  It is the truest yearning of the soul.

The teachers in those shows I watched were so understanding of the plight of the students.  Hot meals were given to the freezing Siberian students.  Understanding was given to the tired Peruvian students who had rowed for hours.

Your American students may not have those plights--but they have plights.  Some of them are coming to us hungry, some are coming with deep wounds in their soul.  Are we understanding?  Are we accomodating?  Are we meeting them where they are?

Deep thoughts from what was merely supposed to be my "in-flight entertainment."