It's very nice and warm outside. The leaves on birches and aspens are just beginning to turn red and yellow. As the local history has it, when the first settlers came here in 1957 to found our Academic Town, someone exclaimed: "Look, it's the Golden Valley!" The Golden Valley is where our school is situated, to this day.
The school building was built on the crossing of two streets, Uchenyh (Scientists) and Golden Valley. It's very beautiful! A thousand kids come to school every day, a hundred teachers. On September 1, about a hundred parents accompany their children to first grade. It's a festive day, with lots of happiness, laughter and a little tension in the air. I have four new classes this year, 9th grade, age 14-15. "We all know you!" they inform me. "You do projects, you know how to use the computers and the Web! Will you teach us? Can we take part in some international activities?"
Yes, this is definitely a new beginning for me: when I got new classes three years ago, I had to explain a lot about ICT and its connection with the lessons of English. Now my pupils are ready, eager to begin doing something. I tell them about EUN and IEARN, show our school site. Luckily for me, there are messages from Petru Dumitru with the news about myEUROPE and other EUN projects; there's EUN News from Brigitte Parry. Thank you, friends, for helping me to begin my new school year in such an interesting way!
And during the first three days of September, I constantly see those horrible images in my mind's eye. I hear my pupils talk during breaks, and they ask me questions. "They are not Russian, they are very far away, but do you think such a thing could happen here?" To explain: true, we know that Osetia is not a Russian, nor a Slavic nation. Their faces are different, they speak a very strange language which sounds much stranger than, say, Czech or Slovak or Polish. Their religion is different, their culture is often incomprehensible. But it's one of many small nations living on the territory of Russia. Can we say the tragedy doesn't concern us, can we assure Siberian children that nothing like that can happen here?
No. It's all about Humanity fighting inhumanity, tolerance against intolerance. For whom the bell tolls? It tolls for thee. No man is an island. I would love to be able to say these familiar words and show only EUN, IEARN, UN, open up all the Windows into the World and help my pupils become part of the world community. I will do that. And I will explain, again and again, that any tragedy on our planet concerns all of us. I confess I never expected to feel that I, teacher, am in the line of fire. Yet I feel it today.
