Our virtual tour of the Oklahoma City Memorial on Tuesday was a captivating follow-up to my personal presentation on the 19th.  Lynn Porter, Director of Educational Experience at the memorial, personally led students through portions of the museum and aptly told the story of the bombing and the investigation that followed in 1995.  Porter helped us understand the reasoning behind the attack, as well as the trials of Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols, and others who were involved in the crime or did not report their knowledge of the plan.

Seeing any progress yet?  The class is getting used to having an afternoon in this alternative space as we actively create and build our projects for the World's Fair 2.0.

When we watched our Positive Behavior Conversation video, last week, we just had to try an experiment of our own.  The video is called Street Compliments.  In it, people encountered a booth with a microphone sitting next to a giant pair of headphones.  They were invited to give each other compliments - something we are not use to doing in real life.

Boy and girls, tall and small, participated in the same activity, calling each other out to sit on the hot seat and be showered with kind words before trading places and repaying kindness for kindness.  It is very sweet to listen to such expressions.

The current decoration should last through the rest of the school year - especially as we move much of our attention.  State MAP testing comes in May, so to accommodate our learning and testing, the active lessons will now be located in "the annex" area in the hallway outside the gymnasium.

Missouri Southern State University Instructor Amber Mintert, representing our partnership with Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, introduced herself to the class, yesterday.  She also introduced the concept of American art to tell a story.  Following her first presentation and based upon one of the art pieces she shared, students were able to make their own art, based on their own attributes and interests.  Dr. Mintert will return to spend an hour with our class each day this week.

​April 19, 1995.  Twenty-six years from today.

Twenty-six years ago, a young man named McVeigh parked his rented moving truck on the street behind the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Inside the truck, a bomb would soon detonate and change the lives of countless people.

One hundred sixty-eight people dead.

I taught second graders just four miles away.  We heard the explosion.  We felt the concussion.  We experienced the emotions.

Confusion.  Fear.  Confusion.  ​Twenty-six years ago.

I will relay my story - my personal experiences with the 1995 terrorist attack - today.  My experience with being the one responsible for leading the school into a red alert, locking the outside doors.  My wife's experience of holding the one-year-old who was famously photographed in the firefighter's arms.  My grandmother's experience of panic, thinking "they" were "blowing up Oklahoma City".

It is a history that needs to be remembered, studied, and learned from - one evil act counteracted by hundreds of thousands of generous responses in return.  This, like Joplin's response to the tornado, eight years ago, was a defining moment - a moment when we found out who we were.  In Oklahoma City, they call that response "The Oklahoma Standard".

We will look at my pictures of the Oklahoma City National Memorial, today.  I'll take our fourth graders inside one of the best museums I've ever experienced.  And next week, the folks at the memorial have offered us a free virtual tour.