By Herb Brambley
Target 2010 Teacher on the Trail Finalist
This is not the most beautiful picture I took during my experience in Alaska during the Winter Teacher’s Conference, and it is certainly not the most exciting. But, I believe it does portray an important aspect of teaching and learning.
If you look in the foreground you see people lining the streets of the city of Anchorage. The tall buildings on each side are like a fortress that protects them. They find safety within their shadow. To others, the buildings are like a wall that keeps them out.
In the background between the buildings, you can see the mountains. To some people, the mountains beckon. They are there to be conquered, to be climbed and skied, and crossed. To other people they say, you can go no further. You must stop here.
The mushers know not what awaits them, but they go anyway. It might be triumph, or it might be tragedy. But, it is their courage and spirit of adventure that propels them forward.
This spirit of adventure to go places they haven’t gone before, and the courage to reach for dreams is what I try to give the students in my classroom. Their dreams might lie within the towering sky scrapers of a city, or they might lie far from civilization in the deep hollows of steep mountain ranges. Where ever they may dream of going, my desire is to give them the wings to fly there.
