Trans-Pacifica, Part III: Wednesday, July 13, 2017
After waiting in an excruciatingly slow line to get our alternate tickets, we had to work our way through Security again. We made it all the way through and discovered we had forgotten to empty our water bottles. I had completely forgotten, because I hadn’t thought I’d need to go through Security again. So I volunteered to go back out, dump out our bottles, and go back through. Fortunately, it was faster the second time
Alicia and Mike had gone on to Gate 92 for our 10:50 flight and had gotten some supper already. After plugging in my laptop to start re-charging it, I went upstairs and stood in line at a marketplace to get some fresh pizza. I was about to order when I heard someone calling “Dave! Dave!” I turned around and saw it was a former student of mine from Walden School named Libby. She graduated about four years ago, and has since finished her associate degree and is traveling to Bali through China to celebrate. Although I’m going to Bali, too, we won’t be there at the same time. She told me of others from the school that I had taught, and that she hopes to go on the one of the University of California schools and eventually get a law degree
It was great to see her, and what a coincidence to run into her here of all places, on her way to the same place I’m going. I got thinking about the influence I’ve had over 26 years of teaching, the number of students I’ve taught directly, the number I’ve impacted indirectly through workshops and other professional development activities I’ve done for their teachers, and how many people have read my blog posts and at least been slightly influenced. I tried to calculate this altogether and came up with somewhere between 750,000 and 1,000,000 people whose lives I’ve at least touched to a small degree, and thousands of people I’ve taught directly. This blog has been visited by hundreds of thousands of people itself, and my videos on YouTube have been seen by tens of thousands more. Now I’m traveling half way around the world in the hope that I can spread a bit of global perspective. Ultimately, however, it comes down to one student at a time, one day after another, one more chance to influence someone for good.
The Elements Unearthed 