15 Days in Can Tho, Vietnam Experience Is Sweet, Memories Are Bittersweet faculty sabbatical program CATHEDRAL SCHOOL’S FACULTY SABBATICAL PROGRAM: For over two decades, Cathedral School for Boys has paid a significant stipend to reward teaching faculty who have completed seven years of service. The purpose of the stipend is to allow faculty to pursue a course of travel or study that is meaningful to that individual teacher and that helps advance his or her work in the classrooms of Cathedral School. Past sabbatical experiences have included: Galapagos Island ecology study, travel to the Great Wall of China, pursuit of advanced degrees at Harvard, visits to schools in Europe, Asia, and Africa, backpacking and ecotourism trips to Europe, and language acquisition trips to Spain and Central America.
By Christopher Corrigan, Upper School English Teacher
their son struggling to walk. Forty years later, a father now myself. My heart aches for the man on the gurney being examined. His ankle pushed and prodded, bent and twisted. “Noi dau?” they ask him, “Pain?” Pain Noi dau. My heart breaks for his parents … their sobs across the generations drown out the voices of the doctors conferring … recommending … surgery … to reconstruct their boy’s ankle … to dry their 40-year-old tears. Outside the exam room, in the waiting room … I see my daughter … her first trip outside the States … she leads a five- year-old girl with a clubfoot into the adjoining screening room. I remember a fever she had when she was five. I hug her and call for the next patient.
Wednesday, December 27, 2023 “I t’s been this way for 40 years …. He had a fever when he was five years old.” He had a fever when he was five years old … When I was five years old and had a fever, I climbed into bed with my parents … no place was safer … for any of us. Nestled in between them, I didn’t worry about my fever. And they didn’t … worry about … polio … exposure to heavy metals … groundwater contamination … Agent Orange … He had a fever when he was five years old. His parents worried … as mine did … different worries. Their son, his foot turning inward … the struggles ahead … my parents watching their son from the sidelines at a basketball game … his parents watching
22 | cathedral school for boys
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