ACS Common Read: The Tiger's Wife

“So Luka grew up with the feeling of a world that was larger than the one he knew.”

That sentence begins a paragraph that leads us through the backstory of a character who decides to reject one parent’s village ambition in favor of the other parent’s “stories of travel, insistence on education, on the importance of history, the sanctity of the written word.”

I stopped reading at that point as it was closing in on my bedtime, but that sentence accompanied me to my pillow. It made me wonder about the students in our district. Are they growing up with a feeling of a world larger than the one they know? And more importantly, do they feel that it is theirs to reach out for and shape?

We have so much on our plates. So many check-boxes to notch. So many benchmarks to level-up. Having a go-to-work-each-day incentive often becomes a necessity; at least for some bleaker weeks.

I’m thinking - if I can cultivate that image of “a world larger than the one they know” and be sure that they see themselves as part of that image, then  my day-to-day challenges fall into line; one pointing them out into their world.