The Tribe Rocks My World!!

Ack, I don't want to type too much about the Tribe right now, since the game is still in progress, not like I really have the power to jinx them...even if I believed in jinxes...(but they're pounding the Redsox right now!!)
School was all right today. One of the students was absent, so I don't have any good social studies stories. No, wait, I'm lying, I can share a story from last week. True Story: There are seventh grade students in this world who do not realize the difference between Zeus and Jesus. And when I say this, I mean, one of the teachers was trying to tell the students that Greek mythology was a bit like religion because there were gods and goddesses and people worshipped and prayed to them. But Zeus was not a real person. Jesus was. (Or as the billboard I pass on my way home to Mom and Dad's proclaims: "Jesus is real.") For some reason, this concept was really difficult for some of the kids to understand. Jesus was a real person. He really lived on this Earth. He walked around. He spoke, ate, slept, etc. Zeus (and the other Greek gods/esses) were never living, breathing beings. Some of the kids couldn't quite grasp this difference. And then, some of the kids kind of understood this, but they kept asking how the teacher could say, "Jesus was real," when you're not allowed to teach religion in school. So then the teacher had to explain that she was not preaching religion, that she was merely stating a truth. Regardless of your religious convictions, people like Jesus, Siddhartha, and Muhammad really lived. And it's okay to talk about them in a historical context when we are in school. This was an intriguing conversation for the kids. It was a good social studies class, because the kids were really thinking critically about how you can speak about religions without preaching and that (at least) three of the world's major religions were founded by the ideals and teachings of people who really lived.
It was good, too, because so much of social studies class is so distant for the kids. Meaning, they know that when we discuss Pericles or Julius Caesar, that these were real people. But they can't relate to stories about the Peloponnesian War or life in Sparta. This is how I hear students ask how the ancient Romans connected to their MySpace page if there was no electricity back then. The events that we discuss have no personal meaning for them. These are kids who have never known a lack of technology. But, for some reason, the teacher emphasizing the realness of Jesus forged a connection with some of the kids. Perhaps it is that they have so separated church and school, that for these kids, to take someone from the church realm and insert Him into the school realm made it real. I don't know. It was like the Helen Keller "water" experience. The light bulb came on for some of the students.