On Teaching: CHOOSE A FEW DIAMONDS

Yesterday, as I was teaching one of my 9th grade English classes, this wonderful truth suddenly came to me: I can’t teach my students everything there is to know about high school English. The truth was utterly clear in its simplicity and power. I realized that there are a thousand, or maybe a million, possible items related to English that a teacher could select for his students to learn, and that, given just 48 minutes per day for 170 days, I can only hope to successfully teach a small number of them. It’s an unavoidable fact, and the truth of it appeared to me in stark clarity as I was talking with my students about A Tale of Two Cities. This realization had an immediate calming effect on me. After all, if I can’t teach all 2,546 important English items to my students, then it doesn’t really matter how many I teach. If I successfully teach them 421 items – great. Or if I only teach them 86 – great too. What I realized, sitting there with my students, is that what’s important is how thoroughly I teach each item to my students. If I teach 86 items all year, but teach them in a loving, meticulous, painstaking, detailed and exhaustive manner, perhaps I will have been a successful teacher. Or if I only teach 28 items, even then I will have done my students a large favor, because I taught the items with precision and thoroughness. As I thought about it, a helpful analogy occurred to me. A high school English teacher is like a person surrounded by a million diamonds, but he has only a short period of time to select some to give to his students. He knows all of the diamonds will be available to the students in their future years, if and when they need them. He knows he doesn’t have time to give all of them to his students in one short year, so he relaxes, chooses a few of his favorite diamonds, and spends the time happily bestowing them upon the lucky young people in his class.