Early Tues Update (about Monday, typed early Tues, posted late Tues).

Good morning! I’m typing as the sun rises, whilst riding into DC solo on the Metro. This early morning exploration might well be described as “a-nothing-ventured-nothing-gained-long-shot.” See, our tour company was unable to procure advance tickets for us to take the kids up to the top of the Washington Monument. Remembering how much last year’s kids enjoyed that tour, and knowing that the Nat’l Park Service holds back a number of slots every day for people who queue up early, I’m gonna try to score the tickets by getting in line as DC awakes. The craziness of this gambit is clear once one reads the official website's warning that no one in line is ever given more than six tickets at a time. So it could be a trip for naught, but knowing that for some of our kids this is a once-in-a-lifetime trip, it seemed to me that I had no choice but to try. And besides, I love riding the Metro.

So Ms. Dunk and Ms. Weatherholt are back at the hotel — in fact the clock on my laptop just turned 6:01AM, meaning that at this very minute they are bleary eyed and perhaps regretting our offer last night to take any kids who so desired out jogging this morning. I gotta say, the seriousness with which a number of our group seem to approach their sports conditioning is impressive. Three separate groups came to us last night, asking if there was any way they could use the hotel gym. The front desk was adamant that no one under age 18 is allowed to do so, so we offered up the jog as an alternative. Given how little sleep most of us got coming out on the bus (I’m guessing an average of a couple hours), and recalling the excitement — and subsequent late nights — so endemic with staying in hotel room with other teens, sans parents, it’ll be interesting to see just how many of the kids manage to actually drag themselves out of bed so early, but I wouldn’t be surprised if 4 or 5 show up.

I should point out that we do everything we can to encourage the kids to sleep. Looking ahead to today’s full schedule, Last night we required them to be in their rooms thirty minutes early (at 9:30PM), with lights out an hour later. At 10PM a security guard is posted to insure that kids stay in their rooms, and to monitor for noise levels. We told the kids to turn off their lights at 10:30PM. Beyond these measures, though, there’s not much else we can do, and I’m sure more than one room will tell stories of late night video games and television.

One silver lining to my early start is that I’ve got some time to share highlights from yesterday:

The bus ride to Gettysburg was uneventful, though I think more than a number of kids were by surprised just how little sleep they managed to get in the bouncing, swaying, cramped uncomfortability of the trip. We chaperones thought that — whoops, we’re at my stop — time to pack up for now.

Back now, this time typing on a bench while in line for tickets. I had taken the earliest possible Metro, hoping to be first in line, but no go, there are about ten people ahead of me. And my hopes of getting tickets are sinking, as those around me reiterate how fast the tickets go and that only six are given per person. Time will tell, back to telling you about yesterday. We chaperones thought that this year’s bus was more comfortable than last, but maybe that was wishful thinking. Either way, the kids were well-behaved, watching movies and running their various electronic devices till the batteries died (and lo and behold a couple actually brought books — how cool is that?!).

We rolled into the Gettysburg McDonalds with plenty of time to eat, freshen up and begin exploring the grounds before our 8:30AM tour. Just about all the kids took me up on my offer to go for a short walk around the cemetery with me; it was gratifying to see how excited they were by many monuments. Personally, I found it meaningful to read the words of the Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address right there on the spot where he delivered the famous speech.

If you’ve never toured Gettysburg, take note of what a terrific national site it is. Its tour guides are amazing — full of dramatic stories and more details and facts that they can even begin to convey in the two allotted hours. Our kids did a reasonably good job of giving our guide Fred Hawthorne their attention as he spoke to us using the bus’s PA mic while the bus drove from one spot to another. We stopped to explore the battlefield several times, including at the Indiana brigade monument, and at the Eternal Light Peace Memorial, as well as at a super-tall lookout tower built in the late 1800s, and at two mountains called Little Round Top and Big Round Top. As in the classroom, I kept wondering to what degree theses adolescent brains — naturally lacking perspective given their tender youth — are able to absorb the enormity of history. It’s tough for 14 and 15 year -olds to realize the magnitude of so many facts that would cause adults too somberly sit back and think. We happened to be visiting on the 144^th anniversary of the second day of battle at Gettysburg, back on July 2 of 1863. In the scope of about four hours of battle, 20,000 Americans were killed, wounded or MIA. It’s the second-most deadly day in American history (according to our guide, the battle of Antietam holds that dubious record). Even we older folks probably struggle to realistically imagine the horror of such a day, and we’ve got the perspective of living as adults through recent modern dark days like 9–11; it’s no big surprise that kids sometimes miss the gravity of what they are learning.

Ultimately the benefit of yesterday’s visit — like many of our activities this week — is less to teach recallable facts than it is to plant seeds of interest and markers of personal connection. Even if we only scratched the surface of Gettysburg, my hope is that our kids will perk up and pay closer attention when the topic arises throughout their lifetimes, thinking back to our visit as they acquire more information, maturity and perspective. This is a good reminder for me to keep forefront mentally vis-a-vis our visit in just three hours to the Holocaust Museum. That was one of the more disappointing visits for us chaperones last year; it was frustrating to see kids who we know are bright, thoughtful and full of conscience breeze through as rapidly and shallowly as if at the RV Hall of Fame. So we’ve made some changes this year to hopefully make the experience more impacting; we scheduled the visit earlier in the week and in the morning rather than afternoon to combat the ever-encompassing fatigue of this week of non-stop learning, exploring and fun. And we’re splitting the kids into smaller groups, each with a chaperone, rather than allowing them to stroll through en masse.

Given my propensity for serious inner thoughts about the weight of history, I suppose it’s healthy that the kids balance me out. Like when we marched up to top of the century-old lookout tower at Gettysburg, on a rare crystal-clear day free of the normal oppressive humidity and hot temps. Maybe a kid or two amongst the group was interested in getting the bird’s eye view of the battlefield layout, but I’m sure the vast majority were thinking along the lines of the Concord boy who I heard say to his side-kick, “I just want to spit off it!”

But the really quotable moment of the morning came a little while later, about an hour and a half into the tour. We were off the bus, having scrambled up the rocky surface of Little Round Top. Our guide Mr. Hawthorne had done a first-rate job of conveying the grim realities of Gettysburg — the 51,000 dead, missing or wounded in three days, the bloodbath of 19^th century warfare as illustrated by anecdotes about piles of waist-high amputated arms and legs, the stench of sulfur and soon enough under the sweltering heat the rotting corpses of human and horse alike. I’d been quietly encouraging kids to jump in and and ask him the questions that they were whispering to me — thoughtful points that spoke to how sharp our kids are and why I’m so proud to know them. “Would that culvert have been there back then, and if so would soldiers have tried to hide in it?’ “What sort of accuracy did muskets and cannons have?” “Was this really the turning point in the Civil War?” So when Mr. Hawthorne paused and one of our young men quickly raised his hand, my chest began to swell with pride, knowing beyond doubt that we were about to hear some keen query about battle or warfare, or maybe even dare I hope an existential question about the notion of civil war — of brother fighting brother, of Americans brutally clubbing each other to death, each convinced in the justice and righteousness of his cause. (If I seem naive, let me defend myself by pointing out that kids have frequently amazed and inspired me over the last seven years of teaching with just such questions in the classroom). But like a popped balloon, my hopes were dashed when I heard the actual question: “What kind of berries are those? Can I eat them?” I’ll protect the youth’s identity in this public arena, but if you want to know if it was your son, simply ask if he’s the one who for the rest of the trip I called Berry-Boy.

***BREAKING NEWS BULLETIN***

I just left the ticket kiosk, where my pretty-much torpedoed hopes were resurrected and fulfilled by the 40 tickets I’m now clutching in my paws like an overjoyed toddler with a Christmas stocking full of candy. In just a bit, the kids will join me (they’ve been touring the W. W. II Memorial with Ms. Weatherholt and Ms. Dunk and Bob, our Classic Tours guide); our tickets to scale the Washington Monument are for 9:30AM, which should give us just enough time to walk from there to our 10:30AM appointment at the Holocaust Museum. Hopefully I’ll have time to post this from the museum cafe... (turns out I didn’t have access to wi-fi till here at the Nationals/Cubs game — who’d u thunk that there’d be free wi-fi at a baseball game?)

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