A Real “‘Reality Show’—Mommy, You’re Giving Me a Headache”

You need to be timely when you “blog”, so this should not qualify. After all, it is about the aftermath of “Katrina”. Could there be anything left to say and if so, how relevant is it to education?

Like so many others, not to mention the victims themselves, we would all like to put it all behind us. But everyday something happens to remind us.

I remember the little girl in the news who said to her mother, who was distressed about what Katrina had done to her family and as she recounted it for the umpteenth time, “Mommy, you are giving me a headache.” Then recently, I read about the young college student, a developing poet, whose preschool teachers had said to her mother, “Mrs. Robinson, this child can write.” And so she did, all through elementary, high school, and college. Then Katrina came on her 21st birthday and she lost “every bit of her writing from childhood on. If she sat and thought about it for a long time [she] says she’d cry. So she doesn’t” (Washington Post, 8/8/06, p. A2). Instead, she writes poems. She continues to do what she has been gifted with.

Two different scenarios. Just as that preschool teacher recognized and acknowledged a talent, I hope some other teacher has found and recognized the talent in the little girl who was so sensitive to her mother’s pain that it hurt her also. Now that would be a worthy real “reality”.