Lessons for Life: Placing the Loss of a Teacher to 9/11 in Perspective

Even watching NFL kickoff weekend and seeing tributes around the league, I had no plans to write anything extensive to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the September 11th attacks of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.  However, when I watched the "September 11th" episode of NFL Network's The Timeline, the recollections of that dark and fateful day in American history stirred up emotions I repressed for years.  Although seeing the video of the two planes strike the Twin Towers brought back memories of being awakened out of my sound sleep to witness the horror only 166 miles down Interstate 87 from where I was, it was the sight of the Pentagon that sent the biggest chill through my spirit because it was more personal for me.  On her way to a National Geographic field trip in California, Hilda Taylor, a sixth grade teacher at Madeleine V. Leckie Elementary School in Southwest D.C., lost her life along with her 11-year-old student Bernard Brown II on American Airlines Flight 77 ten years after my last days as a student there.  When Momma Scribbler--a teacher's aide at Leckie for 13 years--shared the news with me, I was absolutely stunned and heartbroken that the teacher who helped to guide the trajectory of my academic career the most was no longer here.  So in an effort to finally address my sentiments about 9/11, I dedicate this to one of my favorite teachers...

The American President: Donald Trump & The Societal Exposé, Part 3

As a tenth grader at School Without Walls Senior High School in Northwest D.C., my exceptionally brilliant humanities teacher steered us away from generic textbooks and encouraged us to consult primary source information first when it came to understanding social, political and historical events.  Her thinking was that general and secondary sources allowed for less detail and more cultural bias whereas primary source information was directly from the people with the experience(s) being researched.  Apparently, Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump doesn't believe in that as he is a constant violator of former New York Jets and Kansas City Chiefs coach Herman Edwards' "Don't Hit Send" warning.  Whether it's via social media or just opening his mouth, Trump says whatever he wants whenever he desires without any defendable form of mental preparedness, verification or fact checking until someone corrects him.  As problematic as this is for a presidential candidate, he is representative of an even larger dilemma in American society: taking information as presented from questionable sources to make an argument without enough supporting facts from more reliable sources.  Hence, in this third installment of "The American President: Donald Trump & The Societal Exposé", I will get into Trump potentially being the poster child of America's miseducation...