Harvest Time
As I
have driven around Northeast Nebraska this week, I have been inspired by
nature’s beauty and the warm weather that feels like summer is finally
arriving. I see farmers in their fields
preparing to sow their seeds, planting their crops by doing whatever it is they do to unleash their
seeds’ inner code to grow and produce abundantly. The fields begin to awaken and the irony is
not lost on me as we finish the last days of school for the year, my Seniors
cross the stage to bloom into their futures that await, our sons come home from
college and three brave juniors with laptops and an extemp bin climb into a SUV
and journey with me across the prairie to the National Catholic Forensics’
League Grand National Tournament in Chicago. For us, it’s harvest time.
For the
past week and a half while the rest of the Hartington students started their summer
vacations and the building renovation crews moved in, three of our speech team
members were hold up in the 3rd floor computer lab for 8 hours a day
reading, researching and expanding their knowledge (and extemp files); writing, presenting and critiquing speeches,
while debating economic and foreign policies.
I learned so much. We explored these
issues in relation to the tenets of our Faith, the education they are
consumers of on a daily basis and why all of this matters to them and the
judges they would meet in Chicago. It
felt like Harvest time. We had worked
all year to help them find and refine their voices, while discerning where
their roads might lead them. Most of the
time, I just listen in amazement. In my
most revolutionary moments, I am not sure the schools we need to construct or
renovate have to do with walls or trophies, but rather ideas and attitudes. Sometimes I think if I could give my students a
set of extemp questions and a weekend in Chicago, their education, voice and vocation would
emerge. As our extempers go out into the world to fight for justice, serve others and make meaning, they...
