It's the end of the school year, and my PLC team, Team Awesomeness, reads a choice novel in our classes. The choices were Tears of a Tiger, The Things They Carried, and Tuesdays With Morrie. I chose Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom for my classes.
The reasoning, at first, for choosing this book was because I'd read it before. I don't like to teach things I've never been exposed to. I feel lost, and that I can't do my best for my students when that happens. As I was reading it myself as a refresher, I realized that I want to expose my students to the acts of compassion contained in this book.
The first time I read this book was in the spring of 2009. I was in my methods classes on campus at Caney Creek High School, and my reading block teacher, Lisa Finch, had us read it. She even bought a copy of the book for us. We met twice a week, and every week, we'd be assigned a section to read. We weren't allowed to read beyond the selection, and that drove me crazy. Not because this is a suspenseful book, and I couldn't put it down, but because in Morrie, I saw my grandpa-even though they had different afflictions.
Reading the book this time, a year and a half after losing my grandpa, was a little harder. In many ways, my grandpa was a teacher to me in the same way Morrie was a teacher to Mitch. It was nice to be able to relate to someone who knew the pain of losing someone without having to actually talk to someone about it.
Lessons abound in this book. I won't go into to it in detail, but there is something to gain on every page. My favorite quote, then and now, is at the top of page 174:
As long as we can love each other, and remember the feeling of love we had, we can die without ever really going away. All the love you created is still there. All the memories are still there. You live on--in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here (Albom).
I hope this is true for myself. I know it's true for people I have loved and lost. I want to be like Morrie.
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