I did a lot of daydreaming when I was a student at Holy Family School (Class of ‘94).
Most of the time it involved Chuck Norris and me saving hostages from a hijacked Israeli airplane, or me as a 6’8 forward dunking – with authority – over every member of the Utah Jazz to win the NBA finals. (As part of the fantasy, Karl Malone would retire during a tearful post-game press conference because he was so embarrassed.)
Not much has changed. I still daydream (mostly about Chuck Norris, except now we’re demonstrating his Total Gym workout machine on the beach and hundreds of people have gathered around to behold our rock-hard abs).
Aside from a few minor adjustments – a new library, a few new class rooms and, almost forgot, a middle school! – Holy Family is the same as I remember it, too.
“A lot of it is the same,” confirmed Katie Conron, a Holy Family alum (Class of ’95) who now teaches 4th grade there. “There’s been some changes, but the beliefs and the fundamentals are still there.”
The fundamentals were then and are now: be polite, be respectful and be yourself. And follow the golden rule!
If only I could’ve remembered the fundamentals of long division so easily when it came time to do math problems on the board with a dozen of Conron’s 4th graders (give yourself a gold star if you know or remember what quotients, dividends and divisors are).
But when it comes to teaching, knowing all the answers is the easy part. The challenge is being able to communicate knowledge in a way kids – in this case 9 and 10-year-olds – will understand.
