MR. HAGEN'S CLASS

“The past is never dead.  It isn't even past.”                                                                                            -William Faulkner You can only talk and listen to the radio on a road trip for so long before the boredom lulls you into silence.  If you’re not careful you might just be forced to think. We pulled into the Missouri visitor center for a road map and a little advice.  We’d driven over a thousand miles - Milwaukee to Dallas and part way back - relying solely on GPS but now we w...

Long before someone introduced Bango the Milwaukee Bucks mascot to steroids and we all learned to “fear the deer,” there was another equally ferocious character terrorizing the city’s north side.  Now I'm not saying I grew up in a sketchy part of town but apparently my grade school mascot was a mouse. Behold “The Mouse’s Roar,” my school newspaper from spring of 1976. A word of advice for parents:  if you’re looking into schools for junior you may want to inquire about the mascot.  If it’s a mouse, vole, rat, or any other potentially Black Plague/hantavirus spreading mammal just move on.  Your kids will thank you for it. My high school mascot wasn't much better.  I attended Custer High School (now Barack Obama Academy) home of the Custer Indians.  The school wasn't actually named after George Armstrong Custer of the infamous Little Big Horn massacre.  It was named for a different Custer. I'm not sure what the Indians did to him. Apparent...

A young stranger to the Alps was making his first climb accompanied by two experienced guides. It was a steep, hazardous ascent. But he felt secure with one guide ahead and one following. For hours they climbed, and now, breathless, they reached for the rocks protruding through the snow above them - The Summit. The guide ahead wanted to let the stranger have the first glorious view of Heaven and Earth, and moved aside to let him go first. Forgetting the winds that blow across those Summit rocks, the man leaped to his feet. But the chief guide dragged him down. “On your knees, sir!”  he shouted. “You are never safe here except on your knees. . .” I swiped this from a book called “Illustrations for Preaching and Teaching.”  It was in a section about reverence and humility.

The Grapes of Wrath, The Old Man and the Sea, To Kill a Mockingbird.  These are just a few of the books everyone should read.  They're rites of passage.  In my elementary school classroom I had my own standbys.  I read Charlotte's Web aloud to my kids every year and it never got old.  Then there was the ridiculous Sideways Stories From Wayside School, Hatchet and my all time favorite kids book:  Stone Fox.   There was another book that I read with my students every year not because it was a great work of literature but because it had a hook.  Part of the challenge of teaching children is getting them to WANT to read.  To do that you have to appeal to their curiosity.  Generally speaking grade school age girls are more interested in reading than boys. That’s where the children’s classic “How to Eat Fried Worms” came in.  The title alone was enough to make the girls shriek and that’s all it took to get the boys to want to r...