The Dust Man is unique because he creates worlds from chalk dust. He draws pictures on the chalk board in colored chalks, sometimes massive full-board murals. He is a natural at telling stories, whether they are pieces of great literature read aloud (he used to do Rikki Tikki Tavi by Rudyard Kipling, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, Joey Pigza Loses Control by Jack Gantos, and The Reptile Room by Lemony Snicket), or they were incidental slice-of-life stories about his own experiences, or even re-tellings of historical figures and the events in their lives (one student used to sum up all of these stories by saying “first you tell us what wonderful things he or she did, then you tell us how that person died a horrible or painful death”… and I often found humor in that). The Dust Man was a natural teacher of boys, able to connect their silly and hormonal little lives to a great wide world of significant experiences. He could teach girls too, even though he found them much harder to understand. But now, in 2014, he will lay the chalk down for a final time. The dust will race across the blackboard no more. The stories will go from oral to written form. And something will be, regrettably, forever lost. (And, yes, pathos is humor too, a fond but bittersweet memory… so I did not miss-tag this post!)
Catch a Falling Star 