A Little Veterans Day Story

Back when I was a fourth grade teacher, in the first few years I was teaching, we had no school on Veterans Day.

About my third year of teaching, the school district made a change, and Veterans Day was no longer a holiday for students.

The veterans in town were pretty offended by this.

The school claimed they were having school in order to teach the kids about Veterans Day.

They argued that if the kids had the day off, they’d really not learn anything about why it was actually a holiday in the first place.

While I think the school district was initially just covering its ass with that justification and was trying to find days to add in to the calendar without adding more on the end or taking away from other vacations, they ended up being right.

I think it’s safe to say that many parents don’t spend a whole lot of time discussing what it means to be a veteran with their kids.

So anyway, around this time when we started having school on November 11, I took the position of the social studies instructional leader (IL) in my building.

This meant that in addition to my regular teaching duties, I was in charge of making sure all the teachers had everything they needed to teach social studies.

I was in charge of ordering maps and globes and other materials and for curriculum development.

I was also in charge of the Veterans Day assembly.

The first year I was the social studies IL was the first year we had a big assembly for Veterans Day.

The whole school would attend.

It was a pain in the ass and the most stressful time of year for the social studies IL.

My principal at the time pretty much hated me, so I was determined to make it good.

I wrote a kick ass poem about Veterans Day to start off the assembly.

It was so good my principal decided she wanted to read it to the audience herself.

After that I had some songs and other patriotic stuff planned.

And then, I would bring out the big guns.

Our neighbor across the street was a veteran.

He was a retired high school French teacher and he was good friends with my great aunt and uncle.

More than once I had heard him tell some really great stories over at my aunt and uncle’s house.

So I invited him to come and be my guest speaker.

He was a teacher.

He was a great story teller.

He was perfect.

He would really wow the principal who hated me.

And my goal wasn’t to make her like me.

It was to have such an awesome assembly that she hated me even more.

So after the poem and the songs and whatever else I had planned, my neighbor took the stage.

He spoke to a packed gym full of third, fourth and fifth graders.

Now I hadn’t given him a topic or asked him what he’d be saying.

I trusted him.

Which might have been a mistake.

Because he took the stage and started to tell these 7, 8, 9, and 10-year-olds about how he had been a prisoner of war.

Which wouldn’t have been so bad had he stopped there.

But he kept going.

He told the kids how he and his friend escaped from Germany to France by train.

How he hid a razor blade inside his mouth.

Ugh.

How his buddy hid something else in another place.

Yikes.

A place that doesn’t see the light of day.

Shit.

How they killed and ate a fucking horse in order to survive.

Oh. My. God.

With each sentence, I sank a tiny bit lower into my chair.

My principal was leering at me.

And then, my neighbor wrapped up his speech by telling all the boys and girls that while people consider veterans to be admirable and courageous,

he had seen many grown men, wounded and lying on the ground, crying, and calling out for their mothers.

And he didn’t think that was very brave.

And that concluded my Veterans Day Assembly Extravaganza.

I had succeeded in traumatizing every single kid in the school.

My principal definitely  hated me even more.

And that was my first and last year as the social studies instructional leader.

 

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