Today is Opening Day at Fenway Park

by Greg Cunningham, Blended Learning Specialist

It’s the worst-kept secret in offices, boardrooms and schools anywhere within striking distance of Fenway Park: people play hooky the day of the home opener. And why not?

In early April, young baseball fans find more to learn at the ballpark than in a classroom, and older ones more to do than in an office. In schools students are told to dream big, to imagine the impossible. Walt Whitman in Song of the Open Road sings “These are the days that must happen to you.” Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland asks “’Who in the world am I?’ Ah, that’s the great puzzle.” Exploring Wonderland, Alice realizes it is she who’s changing, not the world around her. She grasps to hold on to the innocence of childhood, a yearning all adults can relate to on opening day. What is the ballpark but a scene of eternal childhood?

by Eileen Wedegartner, Blended Learning SPECIALIST

It’s that time of year again when beach balls are traded for book bags. For many students, fall is a season of excitement: a new term, a clean slate and an opportunity to make new entries in the growing ledger of successes. But for others it’s a time of angst with the shadows of past failures dimming their vision and shrouding their hopes and expectations in nervous gloom. My task is to help these students acknowledge the past but find a way to embrace the new school year as an opportunity to write a new narrative on that fresh slate.