~Kansans~

I was just a little 5 1/2 year old kindergarten kid when my home state of Kansas celebrated the 100th birthday of its statehood back in January of 1961.  My memories of having a child's size portion of a piece of birthday cake are still vivid, and I can just about taste that sweet and creamy frosting that was layered upon it even today.  Some things are burned into the memory I guess, and that particular birthday party is one of them.

As a teacher, I have always tried to make a big deal of January 29th each year.  It was important to me to be able to teach my students some things about their state and hopefully instill pride in them as they called themselves "Kansans" to the rest of the world.  Some years I did only a little, while other years I did quite a lot.  One of my favorite celebrations revolved around the practice of turning my classroom into one of Kansas in the days of long ago.  We would dress up in pioneer clothing, turn off the lights in the classroom for the day, bring a cold sack lunch to eat together in our room at the noontime, play different kinds of games, and a variety of other things that only a child on the Kansas prairies of the late 1800's would have done.  It was a different way to learn and that's one of the reasons I enjoyed doing it so much.
36 years and 3 states later after the photograph shown above was taken, I am still a teacher.  

 Next week my 2nd grade boys and girls at Grandfield Elementary, here in southwestern Oklahoma, will honor the great state of Kansas on its 158th birthday.  We will sing "Home on the Range" and the "Happy Birthday" song as well as finish making our Kansas books.  I'll bring a birthday cake to school as a treat to enjoy after lunch, and I hope it is a day that they remember with fond memories.  

 You know, this old world of ours can sometimes seem like a pretty mixed up and hateful place.  We try to keep the unsettling stories of the day's events away from our children's tender ears and hearts, but I'm not sure just how much good that does.  Kids are very smart and don't you ever count them out on that. They see the television news on or hear their parents and others talking about our current state of affairs.  So many times the news revolves around people who are mean spirited and hurtful towards others.  For every "good news" story, it seems as if there are a dozen others that are not so good.

 That is unfortunate.

 There's not much I can do to change this entire world around.  I'm just one person with a classroom full of very bright children who are ready to soak up any knowledge that I can pass their way.  Their experiences in places other than this part of Oklahoma are limited thus far.  Most of them have never been to Kansas but they know of it because their teacher talks about it all the time, not just in the month of January.  The way I figure, the more they know about places and people they have never seen before, the better off they will be.  There are so many good groups of folks out there, just waiting to become friends with one another.

 Kansans are one of them.

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