It has taken a while to process the summer of 2023. And truth be told, I don’t know that I have processed it, but processed or not, the summer has come to an end as tomorrow, I return to work and to my students. In that regard I do not lament the end of summer, for I really do love my job. What summer means to me is time with my own children and my family and that is the loss I feel as we move from summer to fall. But I digress…
Summer 2023 was as exciting as it was unique and it really started in the late winter/early spring when I found out I had been invited to take part in a fellowship which would bring me and fourteen other teachers to Armenia to study the genocide of the Armenians as well as Armenian culture - and what a vibrant, beautiful culture it is. The immediate excitement at the news that I was accepted into the fellowship quickly faded as I immediately was unsure if I could actually go. At that point my wife was still in recovery from reconstructive surgery from her two year battle with breast cancer and while she was doing well, she was still very fatigued and I did not think it was a good idea leaving her alone with my two wonderful, but warp-drive fueled children (ages 9 and 5). I shared the news with my wife and she insisted that I go. She reassured me she would be well enough for take the reins and told me not to worry. I worried, but I relented and accepted the fellowship. There was also the issue that following the fellowship, I was set to lead a student tour to Eastern Europe taking 19 high schoolers to Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, and Hungary. I would have about 10 days in between these two trips. I began running student tours in 2007 and from 2007 through 2019 I took students abroad. Pandemic and then my wife’s diagnosis ended the trips for three years, 2023 would be the return to what had been an annual event. My wife understood how much these trips mean to me and my students and so she also insisted that I go on this trip.
These two trips were not easy to take and they were certainly not vacations. Both had moments of levity and fun, but the true focus of both was the study of the darkest corners of humanity. In Armenia we studied the genocide, its lingering effects on Armenian identity, as well as the contemporary conflicts Armenia’s neighbors bring to their doorstep. On the student tour we studied the horrors of the Holocaust which included a visit to Auschwitz, a place I have vowed several times to never visit again.
I could write about the atrocities committed by the Ottoman Empire and the Nazis here, and I will at some point, but instead, right now I choose to focus on the better parts of humanity. In Armenia I met fourteen beautiful humans. These incredible teachers are all devoted to the idea that the world can be better, and they all work for that better world by devoting themselves to their students. And of course the folks who made the fellowship possible from the Genocide Education Project - I don’t have the words.
On my student tour I was reminded why I am a teacher and why these trips are so important. Walking back to our hotel one evening, a student said to me, “Thank you for doing this. I would never have come to any of these places. This has changed my life.” The director of this tour was a wonderful man name Miloc, a true professional and just another beautiful soul of a person who spends his time introducing strangers to a much wider world. It was Miloc, along with my students, who helped me realize the importance of these trips and ultimately convinced me to continue running them.
I am extraordinarily grateful for the experiences of this summer and I think I am a better person for having shared these experiences with such incredible people.