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6 OUR YUCAIPA | JULY 2016 The Middle of the Road: By Randy Peters, a middle-aged, middle-income, middle-school teacher Appreciating Our History One of my responsibilities as a United States history teacher is to teach my eighth-graders about the United States government. We study its origins and the way the government works today. This includes the election process for the major political parties. This year, two of our classroom walls became a large array of states and candidates as we kept track of the primaries, the earned delegates, and the candidates' tenure in the races. Some students began to watch every debate and continued those discussions with other students on campus. Others came in with questions and news articles to discuss. Students started to predict the outcomes and political decisions that the national candidates made. For most of these students, they will be voting in four years. That means the next president may be up for re-election at that time. The decisions being made across the country this year will affect them when they enter adulthood and have to go to college, get jobs, and pay taxes. United States history started to become real for these teenagers. On the Fourth of July, we Americans take time to reflect on our United States history. Perhaps many Americans don't know who was on the committee to write the Declaration of Independence (Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, Robert R. Livingston, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson) or that it took weeks to argue, politicize, and finally compromise to get the document we currently have. Since some of the ideas in the document were based on John Locke's ideas of God-given rights and freedom, the writers wanted to include the freedom of all slaves. Several states said they would never support the Declaration if that was in there. (The same states blocked this same idea 11 years later when the U. S. Constitution was adopted. They were also the first states to secede from the country during the Civil War.) So now we Americans gather on the streets and watch parades. We wear the most outlandish red, white, and blue outfits we can put together to watch fireworks explode across the sky. We stand a little taller and feel a little more connected to our neighbors across the street and across the nation. We feel more pride for our brothers and sisters who have sacrificed their time, skills, and sometimes their lives so that we can have a sense of peace as we barbecue with our families. I believe the last few months leading up to this particular anniversary of our independence have brought some unique and defining events to light. We've heard many candidates from across the political spectrum give their opinions on how they think America should look in the future. Many of us support some of the policies and candidates, and are also working to keep others out of the leadership positions. As a middle-aged man and middle- school teacher, I am taking time during this holiday to be grateful for the opportunities, choices, and freedoms that I have had as an American. In fact, I am in Washington D. C. for the Fourth of July. I am representing local teachers as a delegate at the National Educators' Association's annual convention. It will just be me and about 10,000 teachers from across the country trying to explore the issues of national education. I'm looking forward to a sense of belonging and patriotism during the trip. The most frequently asked question in my history classes is, "Why do we have to know all of this? These guys are dead now!" This is true. But I explain that these people in history made choices based on their circumstances. They were fathers, mothers, sisters, and brothers. They loved. They laughed. They cried. They felt pain, and they felt joy. They had times to be silly and times to despair. Some were religious; some were not. Some were straight; some were gay. Some were rich; some were not. I then tell my students that these Americans made history, but so do the Americans alive today. Americans today are making decisions based on our circumstances. We can choose patriotism over politics. We can choose involvement over complacency. We can choose education over ignorance. We can choose acceptance over hate. The choices we make during our time will be the history we leave for the next generations of Americans. Keep your eyes on the road.

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