ABSTRACT
A sign reading “Enter the school of your life” was affixed to my classroom door during the last couple of my years at West Springfield High School. It was a riff on some words I had read by Thomas Merton, the twentieth-century American monastic and writer. School is a place where life unfolds, and the students in front of us every day are having an experience. In 1854, Abraham Lincoln gave an important speech in Peoria, in which he famously said, “I was losing interest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise roused my interests again.” Here is a local story that had national implications. It put Lincoln on the road to the White House. The winds of the last twenty years of standardized testing may finally be waning, which provides hope for teachers.
