On Teaching: "The End of a Journey through a Great Book

Yesterday I had one of the most amazing days I have ever had as a teacher. My 9th grade students and I reached the end of our long journey through Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, and we concluded in a fittingly poignant way. The night before, I had picked out two rock songs I thought connected well with the final chapter, and I played one ("Lean on Me" by Bill Withers) at the start of class and the other ("Heart of Gold" by Neil Young) at the end. In between, I read the final chapter of the novel aloud to the students. The songs, full of the emotion of friendship, love, and longing, brought tears to my eyes, and the reading aloud thoroughly choked me up. In fact, I had to stop a few times to gather my composure in order to make it through to the end. The chapter is a powerful culmination of a very powerful novel, and I felt the full force of it as I read -- and I think a fair number of my students did, also. I recall thinking, as I read with tears gathering in my eyes, "This is why literature has been so important for so many centuries." After school, I reflected back on our Dickens adventure. We took a full three months to read his book, which might have been the secret of our success. We didn't rush through the vast world of A Tale; rather, we took our time, because we wanted to relish and absorb it, not just read it. We traveled through that magnificent book in an alert and patient manner, and yesterday we brought it to a moving and near-perfect conclusion.