Pioneers at Trinity

Just came from the second grade classes, who were celebrating pioneer day in their gingham and coonskin. They sang "Old Dan Tucker" and re-enacted two dramas I've seen for several years now. One of those was an imagined writers' group in Mansfield, MO, with Laura Ingalls Wilder. The students, as writers, are talking about being pioneers. The contrast is between the mid-twentieth century and the century, the one Wilder wrote about. They are recounting all the inventions that have come since 1869, from the railroad to ice cream sodas. Someone says, "the railroad put an end to the pioneers."

These are big ideas and important questions: What is a pioneer? Where do new ideas come from? How do they change our world? Are there still pioneers?

I think of the start of Trinity and how in those early years it seemed like a little school on the prairie. We might be more like settlers now than pioneers. But that doesn't mean the frontier vanishes. It just shifts to another realm. Just this week the faculty were together sharing examples of how new technologies have afforded us new and unexpected learning experiences for students.