I am spending some more time back in the classroom recently. Last week I taught social studies to fourth graders at Lake Anne Elementary School. The students were courteous and well behaved, clearly eager to learn, and as diverse as the world around them. Separation of powers in state government is not the hottest topic for fourth graders, but they were responsive to the conversation we had and the questions I posed. After all, you need to know this stuff; it is on the infamous SOL tests required by the legislature.
My experience renews the admiration I have for the men and women who teach in our classrooms every day. It is hard work. A recent study indicates that teachers work more than 50 hours per week. Back in the 1970s I taught history and government in the high schools for nearly three years. I remember well the weekly preparation that started on Sunday afternoons and continued each evening with papers to grade and lesson plans to prepare. There are no slow days in the classroom; you always need to be prepared.
Being back in a fourth grade classroom talking about Virginia is especially meaningful to me, for that was the grade level at which I discovered how interesting history and government could be. Our class field trip to Jamestown Island had a great impact on me to come to realize that you could get to know the people of the past and to stand on the soil on which they stood. That excitement has never left me.
This week I start teaching a once-weekly class for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at the Jo Ann Rose Gallery at Lake Anne in Reston. I will be exploring some of the highlights of Virginia’s history with the 78 eager-to-learn retirees who have signed up for the course. While I appreciate the origins of Virginia’s institutions, I am also one of her sharpest critics. While I am caught up in some of the pride felt by native Virginians, I also teach about our low points, for they sometimes represent the best ways we can learn from the past. I am not an apologist. I tell the story the best I can as to how events happened. And I try to clear up some mistaken notions held by some who have migrated here from other states.
Unfortunately, there are too many examples of the repeat of past mistakes and shortcomings: discrimination, voter suppression, timidity, lack of vision, not learning from the past. Maybe that’s the reason I return to the classroom periodically with young people as well as adults. For as I prepare to teach, I learn. As I and others present our interpretation of the past, the way of the future might be clearer. Those who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are apt to repeat them.