Presidential Inauguration

What a historic day!!! I'd love to hear how other schools celebrated this event.

Our school changed up the schedule a little to allow the students to watch the ceremony. It was really interesting to watch the young watch a part of history--while I truly watched my first inaugural ceremony. At the beginning, I had tears in my eyes and tried very hard not to let them fall. I felt better when one of my students wiped her eyes. After a while, I was ready for them to leave. I received several questions and fielded several comments throughout the day that I found very scary--and, they made me realize that our schools are failing our students as President Obama stated. Here were a few questions/comments that were made.

--Is that the White House? (It was the U.S. Capitol Building.)
--Who is that man? (This happened to be Former Vice President Dick Cheney...I have to forgive them a little--how much did we really SEE of him the last 8 years?)
--That must be a cemetery because of the fog. (Because, all cemeteries have fog all of the time. Actually, I don't know where it was--maybe you can help. We were looking at a shot of the cannons at the time.)
--Why is there glass around him? (To protect him.)
--Couldn't they turn on him and shoot him? (This was in reference to the dignitaries and VIP's sitting immediately in front of the Capitol. My reply: This isn't an adventure movie.)
--President Kennedy? (When asked which presidents were in office during the student's life-time. They were born from 1995-1997.)
--They were voted for twice. (We found the average number of years each president (person) served. Using 43 people--we included President Obama and didn't count President Cleveland twice since he is only one person--and 220 years--the number of years since President Washington took office--each person served 5 and 5/43 years. I asked how this could be when each term is 4 years.)

I can only hope my kids do better with math than they do history! I guess it's a good thing I'm certified to do both...I can incorporate it into the math lessons.

When reading the local paper today, I found that a former student--who is a freshman in high school--was at the ceremony in Washington, D.C. He made a very intelligent comment to the reporter and made me proud to say I taught him.