As I was reading this blog post, I was putting ‘soldiers’, ‘workers’, and nomads in the context of my middle years’ classes, both past and present. I would say that in my classes, 95% of the students are soldiers and workers (maybe more) with a few nomads interspersed here and there. Is this an innate desire to belong and maintain the status quo? Or do we engender this in our students? I think it’s a little of both. Certainly the ‘nomads’ are much more difficult to teach. They ask questions that we don’t know the answers to. Their minds move in directions that ours maybe don’t. If we are not ‘nomads’ ourselves, how do we teach others to be that way?