Our Stories, Their Stories

I am just back from a conference in San Antonio.
I wanted to let my readers know that the tragedy at Virginia Tech has been felt very deeply by people all over the country.
I spoke with educators and parents from Michigan, Boston, San Antonio, Indiana, Alabama etc. etc.
Everyone expressed their deepest regret for what occurred last Monday and acknowledged the pain that Virginians, educators, parents and children are feeling now.

My heart goes out to all of us who experienced this terrible event through real connections to the university.
There are several opportunities to participate in the healing process happening across the country. Here are two:

There will be a One Day of Blog Silence on April 30th.

The second is this one which is probably more helpful to parents, teachers, and children.

I recieved this through the Teacher Leaders Network. It seems like it could be an important link in healing of Virginia' children.
AwesomeStories is a website created by Carole Bos, a trial lawyer who created the site to provide a forum for teachers and students to access historic narratives and primary source materials on the web.

http://www.awesomestories.com/

Carole Bos at AwesomeStories wrote this to the moderator of the Teacher Leaders Network and I am posting a portion for you.

"We want to let educators throughout the country know that we are producing a story about student response to the Virginia Tech tragedy. We will digitize every student-produced picture, essay, story, letter or other creative effort which is sent to us. It doesn'tmatter if it is class-produced or individually created. After we digitize what we receive, we will send the entire archive to the Library of Congress. We will begin production on the story right away. We will place it online as soon as we have enough materials to make it meaningful - hopefully by late next week. If the project catches on, and we continueto receive student creations, we'll keep adding to the story. We will, in short:

1. Give teachers a positive way to talk about this week's awful events;

2. Give students a place where their expression of support, fear and sadness can be displayed to the rest of the country; and

3. Use the student contributions to create an online memorial honoringthe faculty and students who died at Virginia Tech. If you think this is a good idea, please let me know and please start to spread the word.

All contributions should be sent to my attention,
as follows:"
Carole Bos
AwesomeStories
990 Monroe
Grand Rapids, Michigan
49503-1423
cbos@bosglazier.com
Warmest regards,
Carole--