Tag: student

‘Storied lives’ program helps students learn what it truly means to “live life”

The deepest learning often happens when students are able to connect the classroom experience with the “real world.”  Our winter-term partnership with Manatawny Manor for a project called “Storied Lives” allowed my students to put a face to our learning and make it personal.

My students and their residents cried together and laughed together; they exchanged personal stories, shared life advice, and sat in thoughtful silence together; they held hands and emotionally embraced each other. Their interactions were emblematic of a deep connection that these partnerships built over the course of seven weeks.

Tougher than public speaking: Not taking the opportunity

“A gentleman – and a gentle man.

“A gentle man. He never drank a beer and never touched a cigarette, in his entire life. He was proud of that. He rarely swore and I remember only a few times when I was a child that he lost his temper.

“And a gentleman. He would awake in the middle of the night to provide medicine for a sick child—compare that with today’s health care—and though he grumbled a bit, he would get up from supper many, many evenings to fill prescriptions when a clerk in the drug store attached to our home would ring a bell.”

I wrote—and said—the above about my father.