Q is for Quiet Teaching
Monday, June 30, 2008
ONE TEACHER’S ALPHABET
Q is for Quiet Teaching
There are days in the school year when I don’t actually “teach”, but am still very much a teacher. These are the days when my students write essays during class – days when I don’t really present any lessons. I give the instructions for the essays and then usually sit at my desk while the students labor over the assignment. I must admit to feeling a bit blameworthy on these days, as if I’m earning my paycheck too effortlessly, just sitting in a corner of the classroom grading papers while my students toil away. However, as the minutes pass, it usually becomes clear to me, again, that, even though I’m not front-and-center, even though I’m not conducting my students as if they were an orchestra, I am still being a teacher. After all, under my guidance and supervision, the students in my care are spending 45 minutes developing complicated ideas and putting them forward on paper in a reasoned and lucid manner. Because I require them to, they are working with concentration and efficiency to produce essays which exhibit their best thinking and writing skills. What this helps me remember is the old, enduring truth that good teaching can have as much to do with sitting back and permitting as with holding forth and pushing. On in-class essay days, I quietly permit my students to demonstrate their talents. I keep myself silent and out of the way and make it possible for them to show me, and themselves, just how much they can accomplish in a short period of time. On those days, I am without doubt a teacher, though a quiet one simply sitting at a big desk in a corner.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
ONE TEACHER’S ALPHABET
N is for Nap
Perhaps I should allow my middle school students a brief “nap time” during class. As preposterous as that may sound, it would seem to make perfect sense, when I remember that we spend roughly one-third of the twenty-four hours of each day sleeping. Nature has made it clear that we need that much rest on a regular basis. In order to function as proficient human beings, our bodies and minds need to turn off, or at least way down, for about eight hours each day. During that time, we escape from demands and deadlines in order to rejuvenate and restore ourselves. From 8:30 to 3:00, my students work with a fair amount of industry in each class, including mine, and it seems reasonable that they should take time out now and then to rest and recuperate. Just as they sleep about one-third of each day, perhaps they should be allowed to rest for a period of time in my class. And just as we often awaken in the morning with new-found energy, perhaps my students would awaken from their brief rest with a burst of zeal for English work. It seems sensible: We couldn’t go a full twenty-four hours without a good rest, and my students perhaps can’t be expected to go a full forty-eight minutes in English class without a relaxing break. Hmmm...What would my principal think if he walked into my classroom and found my students serenely napping?
Saturday, June 28, 2008
ONE TEACHER’S ALPHABET
L is for Law
Not too many years ago, I had a very self-centered view of “law” in my classroom: I was it. In fact, I occasionally would remind my students that my classes were not democracies, but dictatorships. I was front-and-center, autocratic, and supreme. I made the rules, I enforced them, and I disciplined any imprudent student who contravened them. As the years have passed, though, my attitude has radically altered. I now see classroom law not as a list of subjective rules based on my personal inclinations, but rather as a code of principles based on morality, conscience, and nature. The law in my room is not founded on what behaviors I like and dislike, but what behaviors are right and wrong. I have come to believe that my students (all of them, all the time) are thoroughly good people, that they know what is right and wrong, that they want to do what is right, and that, given an orderly but loving environment, they will do what is right. In this way, I have resigned my role as supreme law-giver and executor, and have become instead a colleague and collaborator with my students as we try our best to see and do the right thing. We let our consciences, instead of “Mr. Salsich’s rules”, guide us. Mind you, this is not to say that I don’t have clear guidelines for demeanor and behavior in my classes. From the first day, my students clearly understand the kind of deportment that is expected of them, but it’s an expectation, not a commandment – and there’s a significant difference. I expect them to behave like the good people they are, and because my expectation is so strong and, I might say, irresistible, the need to issue arbitrary commandments has disappeared. I expect my students to behave properly in each class in much the same way that I expect the sun to rise each morning. The sun behaves the way it does because it’s natural for it to do so, and my students try to do what’s right for the same reason. In my young scholars, there’s always way more good than evil, way more right than wrong – and that’s why all signs of dictatorial law have disappeared in my classroom.
Friday, June 27, 2008
A MADCAP MIND
I realize more and more that my mind sometimes behaves like a wild runner. At certain times of the day, it races around helter-skelter, thinking about this, that, and the other, jumping from one thought to the other for no discernible reason. When I need to focus my thoughts, I can do it quite well, but in a free moment (as when I’m preparing dinner, for instance) my mind might go from planning my vacation next summer to regretting a remark I made earlier in the day to wondering who my new neighbor across the street is. Like some zany, madcap individual, my brain occasionally seems to spring around in a completely illogical manner. I’m not worried about this, because it’s the way all minds work a considerable part of the time. What bothers me, though, is that I sometimes fall into an old habit of getting carried away by these undisciplined thoughts. Instead of standing back and observing them as amusing but harmless mental shenanigans, I often get entirely captured by this unruly kind of thinking. I can spend many minutes mindlessly swept up in my thoughts, and then “wake up” and wonder where the time went. I guess what I need to learn to do is simply stay objective about my own thoughts. After all, my thoughts aren’t “me”. They’re simply passing phenomena, like the breezes, like birds flitting by, and the best approach to them would be simply observing and appreciating. Instead of getting “lost” in the stray thoughts that come my way, I should just watch and be amused by them. Like a sailor at sea, I should learn to enjoy the “waves” of thoughts that come my way without being controlled by them.
(first draft written 8.25.07)
ONE TEACHER’S ALPHABET
W is for Wary but Wide-open
“Be wary and wise as serpents, and be innocent (harmless guileless, and without falsity) as doves.”
-- Matthew 10:16 (New Amplified Bible)
I’ve often contemplated how Jesus’s advice to his disciples might apply to my work as a middle school English teacher. What’s especially interesting is that he seems to be recommending two contradictory behaviors: he wants his followers (who were, in effect, training to be teachers) to be both clever and naive, both shrewd and ingenuous. A thoughtful reader might ask whether Jesus is demanding the impossible from his student-teachers. How can someone be, at the same time, cunning and candid? How can a teacher be both strong and harmless?
As I’ve thought about it over the years, I’ve concluded that Jesus (a pretty fair teacher in his own right) was offering some of the best advice a teacher can receive. Yes, it is important that, as a teacher of young adults, I be wary, cautious, and on guard at all times, because youthful lives are thoroughly complex and inscrutable, and only steady vigilance will enable me to even begin to understand the miracles that sit before me in the classroom. However, at the same time, I must be trusting and unsuspicious toward my students -- almost, I might say, naive. The word “naive” originally derived from the Latin word “nativus”, meaning “natural”, and thus, as a naive teacher, I would just be myself -- wide-open, self-effacing, and honest. For sure, I must always be alert and clued-in, but I must also be willing to let down my guard, relax, and learn the lessons my young students are ready to teach me. It’s a two-edged sword that I must bring to my work as a middle school teacher. I must be harmless and honest, and at the same time crafty and subtle (as the serpent is described in the first chapter of Genesis). I must love my students, but it must be a tough and severe love. I must be sincere and straightforward, and also sly and shrewd. I must be both wary and wide-open.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
PERFECT BALANCE
I’ve been having a difficult time with the various balancing positions in my yoga exercises, but the Universe itself certainly knows to keep its balance. If balancing is defined as a state of equilibrium where all forces are cancelled by equal opposing forces, then the Universe is a master of the art of balancing. There are countless forces at work in the cosmos, but they all seem to cancel each other out perfectly. There’s sadness, but there’s an equal amount of happiness. There’s the sorrow of death everywhere we turn, but life is always there too, flourishing and indomitable. There’s sickness, but health enduringly moves forward all around it. For every gloomy nightfall there’s an inspiring sunrise. What all this means is that the Universe is perfectly balanced, flawlessly poised, unconquerably steady and stable. What this, in turn, means is that there is actually no discord, no turmoil, no evil in the world. There seems to be plenty of evil in the world, but if we pay close attention, we see that good always annuls it with its own powerful pull. All that really exists, at the end of the day, are perfectly balanced forces cancelling each other out, thereby maintaining the eternal harmony of things. If the Universe were doing yoga exercises with me each morning, it could unquestionably teach me a few things about balancing.
(first draft written on August 28, 2007)
ONE TEACHER’S ALPHABET
Y is for Yeast
Over the years I’ve enjoyed contemplating various analogies for teaching, and one of my favorites is “the teacher as yeast”. I sometimes compare my students to smooth and perfectly rounded lumps of dough, and I am the tiny amount of miniscule grains of yeast that will help the students transform themselves into beautiful “loaves of bread”. The word “transform” is appropriate here, because yeast does, in fact, aid in the total makeover of sugar to carbon dioxide and alcohol. Sugar literally disappears and two new creations take its place, enabling the dough to rise and be “reborn” as bread. Something similar happens in a good middle school classroom (and occasionally, I hope, in mine): through the gradual fermentation of teaching and learning, self-centered children slowly disappear, and empathetic, unbiased young adults are born anew. One of the interesting facts about the chemical fermentation process is that it splits complex organic compounds into relatively simple substances, and the same, in a way, is true of the education process. Students can often appear to be a jumble of intricate and inscrutable qualities, but the measured and irresistible processes that take place in a good classroom can slowly reveal the actual simplicity of their natures. Thanks to the quiet but steady effervescence that is present in some classrooms, students can be slowly reborn as relatively uncomplicated, straightforward, and fervent learners. In a way, I guess I want to be, like yeast, the foam and froth in my classroom. I want to be an agent of ferment or activity, someone who -- quietly and in the background and with almost total anonymity -- effects a significant transformation in his students. Revolutions for good are happening inside my students during their middle school years, and I want to be a small part of the yeast that drives those revolutions.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
AN AUTO-PILOT LIFE
It’s become fairly clear to me that I have spent a sizeable portion of my life in a somewhat “mindless” state. I’ve been running mostly on auto-pilot, doing a thousand things each day with very little genuine awareness. I’ve gone from task to task like a robot. Day after day I’ve worked through the to-do list like a factory machine produces products. That may sound a little harsh, but I think it’s accurate. The truth of it hit me especially hard recently when I realized how very little awareness I have of my own body. I’ve had this body for 66 years, and in all that time I have paid little or no attention to how it feels or what it’s doing. When I’ve been sick or in pain, my awareness has kicked in, but otherwise I’ve carried my body around like a strange, unknown burden. How peculiar, that a person should be an almost total stranger to the body that keeps him alive! How odd, that a man should live a good part of his life with a virtual blindfold on, rarely seeing exactly what he’s doing, why he’s doing it, and what it all means!
(first draft written on August 31, 2007)
ONE TEACHER’S ALPHABET
T is for TEXT
As an English teacher, I’ve been dealing with texts of many kinds for many years, but only recently did I discover that, in a way, I’ve also been dealing with textiles. The American Heritage dictionary tells me that our word “text” derives from the Latin “texere”, meaning to weave or fabricate, and certainly that applies to any literature text my students and I might read. An artistic writer carefully intertwines many diverse elements into a satisfying whole, much as a textile worker weaves threads of varying thicknesses and colors into a finished pattern. As we read and study a poem or a novel, we are attempting to appreciate the fabric of the writing – the way the subtle components of the text are laced together to present a beguiling final product to the reader. I use the word “subtle” advisedly, because it’s related, in its etymology, to the word “text”. Like “text”, it comes originally from the Latin “texere”, but more particularly from “subtilis”, meaning thin, fine, and precise, and referring specifically to the finest thread that passes under the warp in the weaving process. This is the thread that few of us would notice in a fabric, as hidden (or subtle) as it is, but it’s the thread that perhaps adds the most to the attractiveness of the cloth. When my students and I are probing a play or a short story, we’re looking carefully for these subtle “threads”, these concealed components that knit the work into something worthy of appreciation. We know that, like an expensive piece of textile, a work of literature contains countless strands woven together with care, and our task as literary scholars is to value and be glad about the artistry of the weaver-writer. As a final etymological note, it’s interesting to realize that the rarely used noun, “toil”, meaning a trap or snare, also derives from the same Latin root as “text”. This actually makes perfect sense, because a good literature text is a trap for the innocent reader. As we booklovers make our way through life, we are often (thankfully) ensnared by a great text, caught in the “toils” of its threads. When this happens in my English classes, we try not to fuss or fret, for some kinds of entrapment are purely delightful. When we’re caught in a story or a poem, my students and I are likely to spend our time examining the intricacy of the weaving rather than trying to escape.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
ONE TEACHER’S ALPHABET
C is for Confusion
I have always hoped that confusion would be a staple part of my English classes. I don’t mean chaos and disorder, just vigorous and instructive mental confusion, the kind of condition that can generate serious learning. Someone once said that the only truly wise people are those who have both the ability and the willingness to be confused, and I encourage that ability and willingness in my young students. Any worthwhile truth is only reached through the forest of confusion, and often the darker the forest, the brighter the truth when it’s finally reached. The books I require my students to read are blatantly confusing, as are the writing projects I assign. My students are more often in a muddle than a place of tranquility, more often squinting their eyes in puzzlement than opening them wide in effortless understanding. I arrange for confusion to happen in my classes because it helps my students’ humility, a virtue that often seems sadly missing in
ONE-NESS
I’m relaxing tonight, partly because I’m beginning to understand an important fact about life. I grew up with the idea that the nature of reality was what might be called “many-ness”, but now I see that it’s much closer to “one-ness”. From my earliest memory, it was impressed upon me (by family, friends, the media, and the overall culture) that life consists of many different people, many different situations, and many different ideas, all of which are struggling with each other. Life, as I learned it growing up, was a tug-of-war between countless elements. My job, I grew to believe, was to protect myself from harm and try to win as many of the daily contests as possible. Now, however, in my 7th decade of trying to figure things out, I’ve come to understand that the many-ness approach to reality is simply wrong. Instead of being many, the Universe is just one. It’s not a confused collection of disparate material entities, but rather a single, unified, and harmonious expression of itself. The entire Universe, I see now, is as unified as a single cell. As in a cell, everything that happens in the Universe happens for the good of itself. What this means for me is that I should give up struggling and worrying, because there’s no other person or other thing that’s out to hurt “me”. In fact, there’s no “other”, period, and no separate “me”. There’s just the one united and eternally successful Universe, of which I and everyone and all of our so-called problems are a part. We’re all part of a single grand enterprise called Life (of which death is just another part), as closely knit with each other as the molecules in a cell. This realization, to me, calls for a lot more relaxing than struggling.
ONE TEACHER’S ALPHABET
P is for Passive
It might seem strange to suggest that a teacher should foster a passive atmosphere in class, but over the years I’ve increasingly seen the wisdom of this approach to teaching and learning. It’s instructive to realize that the word “passive” comes from the same Latin root that gives us “compassion” and “patience”, suggesting that passivity might have significant positive qualities. A passive student, for instance, might be one who can wait quietly for the truth to unfold during a discussion, and a passive teacher might be the one who sits back and observes the discussion with a compassionate understanding. Activity can certainly be an admirable feature of a high school English class, but there is ample room, too, for the kind of benevolent passivity that allows teachers to slow down, loosen up, and fully experience the scholarly gifts their students bring to class each day. When teachers employ a “wise passivity” (to quote the poet William Wordsworth), they are willing and able to receive the ideas and actions of the students without necessarily responding. Passive teachers, we might say, are not so much reactive and immediate as deliberate and purposeful. Of course, this kind of mild, wholehearted tolerance is not always possible in the classroom, but it’s an attitude I strive to cultivate in my teaching. Instead of always “doing something” during my classes, I often like to stand back and simply observe -- just allow the learning to happen without my constant and bustling interference. As Wordsworth knew, learning doesn’t always have to be sought after, chased down, and captured. It often comes most easily to those teachers and students who turn away from never-ending activity and experience the quiet pleasures of intelligent passivity.
Monday, June 23, 2008
ONE TEACHER’S ALPHABET
M is for Maze
I have come to believe that it is good for my students to feel lost in my class. After all, if they feel lost, then they will be able, eventually, to experience the wonderful joy of being found. I think of mazes in this regard, and of the pleasure it gives most of us to finally discover the “way out”, especially if we have been wandering through the pathways for a great length of time. In fact, the longer we are lost, the more satisfying and thrilling is the sighting of the welcome exit. A well-designed maze offers, paradoxically, both serious frustration and immense satisfaction. One dictionary defines a maze as “an intricate, usually confusing network of interconnecting pathways”, and, to me, this would be an accurate description of a good high school English class. My classes should be “intricate” because the study of words and ideas is a thoroughly complex and elaborate enterprise, and the classes should at least occasionally be “confusing” because a healthy confusion is what intricacy naturally creates. (Yes, in the learning process, confusion can be exceedingly healthy.) However, for me, the most important word in the definition is “interconnecting”. The students may sometimes feel lost as we study Dickens or participles or the uses of irony, but the great underlying and reassuring truth is that everything in English class is interconnected, and therefore there is always a way out. This interconnectedness is not created by any careful planning on my part, but is simply there, in the same way that it’s present in all of nature, and in all of the universe. Everything is interconnected – Dickens with participles, irony with Dickens, participles with George Eliot, the sun with Dickens and all the planets, the stars with Eliot and each other, and on and on. If English class is often bewildering and frustrating, I say Good! for now my students have the opportunity to discover the grand interconnectedness that ties the maze of English class – and the universe – together.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
A NEW POWER
“A new power is in operation.” --Romans 8:2
The above quote is the only truth I need to remember today, because it concerns the only important quality in the universe – power. If I can come to an understanding of the nature of real power, and stay in touch with this power, I can be constantly satisfied with life. When I think about it carefully, it’s clear that dissatisfaction always springs from a sense of a lack of power, and so if I understand what power really is, and stay near it, then it’s obvious that I will never be dissatisfied. (Unhappy, perhaps, but not dissatisfied -- and there's a huge difference.) This quote tells me wonderful news. Power is where all good originates. It’s not so much that the power at work in the universe is “new”, but that it is new to me. It’s the power of thought, of infinite Mind – a power that, despite my spiritual studies, I still don’t thoroughly believe in. It’s a power that calls out to me to turn away from the ultimately ineffectual power of matter and material things and toward the ever-present power of Spirit. It’s a power that creates everything and runs everything. Nothing happens without this marvelous power of Mind, God, Allah. It’s a power that will be present with me all day today – this cool, clear day in autumn.
--written in October, 2007
THE EVER-PRESENCE OF PERFECTION
Most people believe that perfection can never be a reality, but I believe that it’s always the reality. It seems to me that every present moment is utterly perfect, simply because it is what it has to be. As this current reality right now, the present moment is entirely without fault or defect, which is the definition of “perfection”. I personally may not like this moment the way it is, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is exactly what it must be. I may wish this moment was a “happier” one for me or for others, but that doesn’t make the moment any less complete the way it is. This moment, and any moment, can’t be anything but what it is, which makes it perfect. This may sound somewhat insensitive, because we all know that a moment can be full of intense pain and suffering, which would seem to surely not be a perfect situation. But I would say, rather, that it’s not a happy situation. I personally may not enjoy a particular present moment, may not be happy with what’s happening at that moment, but I can still recognize and accept the fact that the moment, right now, is exactly the way it must be. I may not be pleased with this moment, but I can be at peace with it. I can even, perhaps, honor it as another perfect moment in a universe everlastingly full of them. I guess I’m talking about seeing the big picture instead of the small, “personal” picture. To me, personally, many moments are annoying, unsatisfactory, and painful, but in the big picture of the 15 billion-year-old universe, I try to see that each moment is a necessary part of a measureless and harmonious system that has kept itself running smoothly for eons. My personal situation may be sad and agonizing, but the situation of the universe as a whole is always perfect, and I am part of that general perfection. I just have to step back – way back – and get the big, perfect picture.
Written on October 14, 2007
I awoke this morning with this thought: every moment today will be perfect. I went directly to my dictionary and found that one definition for “perfect” is “excellent or complete beyond practical or theoretical improvement”, which will be true of each moment today. No moment will be able to be improved. The universe has spent untold billions of years preparing each of today’s moments, and each one will be precisely what it is required to be. Some moments may not be exactly the way I want them to be, may seem troublesome, inconvenient, even sad or tragic, but even those moments will be perfect -- exactly fitting the need in a certain situation and for a certain purpose. With my self-centered short-sightedness, I probably won’t be able to perceive how all the moments perfectly suit a need, but in some far-reaching way, they definitely will. Every moment will be the only reality that exists, which means it will be entirely faultless, which means it will carry immeasurable good for me and the entire universe. My job today will be to accept and embrace each moment exactly as it is, and to look for the rightness of that moment. I guess you could say my task today is to willingly receive the gift each moment brings me – which should be cheerful work, since each gift will be unflawed and ideal. Sounds like a good deal to me– accepting approximately 57,000 gifts. Sounds like I’m in for a fairly nice day.
-- Written on Monday, December 03, 2007
From now on, whenever I get into one of my ‘controlling’ moods, I should try to keep in mind some rather astonishing facts I uncovered in my reading yesterday. As I was searching the internet, I happened to stumble upon the fact that the earth rotates on its axis at a speed of about 1,000 miles per hour, and that it travels around the sun at the astounding speed of 67,000 miles per hour. When I read that, I sat back in my chair and tried to take in the idea that I’m living on a ball that’s traveling at unthinkable speeds. While I’m sitting in my quiet apartment staring at my computer screen, the ‘ship’ on which I’m a passenger is tearing through space in a breakneck way, both twirling and zooming – and it’s been doing this for at least 15 billion years. Now, in the future, when I get bogged down with thoughts of controlling any and everything in my life, I need to remember these marvelous truths about this universe that I’m part of. Billions of years ago, the cosmos created itself and started stars and planets spinning and rocketing, and it has been successfully engineering its own life ever since. The universe controls everything, from the pumping of my heart to the rotations of planets, and it does it in a smooth and harmonious manner. My question for myself should be, “Where do you come off thinking you have to control anything?” I am an infinitely miniscule (but nonetheless vital) member of the immeasurable team called the universe, but I am not the coach or the manager. I am like a wave in an endless ocean, and can a single wave control what the great ocean does? In the future, when the urge comes over me to “get things under control”, I hope I can recall the great facts of reality, and just relax and enjoy the unbelievably rapid ride the universe is providing for me.
-- written on December 25, 2007
I awoke this morning with the familiar and somewhat anxious feeling that I “must” do many things today, but, thankfully, before too many minutes passed, I remembered that there is only one thing I must do – and that is be entirely open to and accepting of each present moment. Each instant today will be an infinitely powerful miracle, a unique unfolding of life that has never happened before in the history of the universe. Each moment will be entirely unavoidable (which makes resisting it foolish, even insane) and will reveal itself exactly as it must. It will literally be all there is and will be utterly perfect as it is. So (I said to myself as I brushed my teeth) why not relax, drop all resistance, dismiss all worries about whether I will get 10,000 things or 0 things accomplished today, and happily embrace the only moment there will ever be – the flawless and all-powerful present?
--written on January 4, 2008
LIVING LIKE A SPECTATOR
What I believe about life controls everything I do. My beliefs are like riders controlling the reins, and I am the horse. If my belief says that the world is a matter-based, scary place, every thought and action will be guided by that belief. Even the smallest, most insignificant act will be steered by my belief in the threatening nature of life. It’s impossible to overstate the power of beliefs. All the billions of people on the earth are operating, right now, under the guidance of their beliefs. If you could somehow harness all the power of these beliefs, it would easily be the strongest power in the universe. The wonderful truth hidden in all this is that I don’t have to believe in the matter-based, menacing nature of life. There is another way of seeing – believing in – life, and that is that life is spirit-based and harmonious. If I approach each day guided by that belief, I experience a very different kind of power and a totally different kind of life. Life becomes an enjoyable game instead of a fight to the death. Nonstop struggle is replaced by eternal harmony. It’s as simple as changing riders on a horse.
FIREWORKS AND
I am no longer thrilled by fireworks displays. I no longer get goose bumps of patriotism when the huge bombs of 4th of July celebrations rock my house. In fact, it sickens me somewhat. All I could think of last night, as I listened to the thundering explosions of the annual celebration in the park two blocks away from where I live, was the cheerless city of Baghdad – a city that has been brought to devastation by bombs that no doubt sound similar to the rockets being detonated down in the park. No one in
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Written on Thursday, March 06, 2008
This morning, shortly after I awoke at my usual 4:00 a.m., I was moping around my apartment, berating myself for not getting organized, not getting enough accomplished, not getting any brilliant ideas. I was feeling like a failure already -- someone with no direction, no inspiring thoughts, no special qualities. I was beating up on myself with great ferocity. Fortunately, however, I came to my senses fairly quickly and realized the silliness of my thinking. I realized that, once again, I had fallen into the trap of seeing the universe in the totally wrong way. I was thinking of it as composed of isolated 'me' and a zillion other isolated entities, when in truth it is all one, all unified, all harmonious. There isn't actually a separate 'me' that has to get organized, get things accomplished, and get brilliant ideas. There's only the one infinite ocean of life, of which 'I' am an integral part. I can no more be separately responsible for accomplishing things than a wave can be separately responsible for getting things done in the ocean. The vast ocean, not the individual waves, performs all the work, and the infinite universe, not an isolated 'me', does all the necessary tasks.
As I slowly realized this comforting truth, I relaxed, let go, and started simply watching this miraculous universe carry out its wishes. I saw that, for the rest of the day, I could be a spectator, moment by moment, at an utterly astonishing performance.
ONE TEACHER’S ALPHABET
P is for Pretend
While I think there is never a place for deceit or artificiality in teaching, there is often a purposeful role for pretending. It interests me that the word “pretend” derives from the Latin “tendere”, meaning to stretch or extend, because in my classroom work I definitely want to stretch and extend both myself and my students. If my students feel like they are not very sophisticated readers, perhaps I can help them stretch their confidence. By encouraging them to extend their beliefs in their abilities – to “pretend” they are vigilant and astute readers before they begin a difficult chapter or story – perhaps I can help the fantasy become, to some degree, a reality. The same could be true for me as their teacher. To be perfectly frank, I feel like I know almost nothing about teaching, despite having practiced the craft for over forty years. As some of my students do when they begin reading a chapter in Dickens, I often feel utterly bewildered when I begin teaching a class, no matter how thoroughly I have prepared. Like an enigmatic short story, the art of teaching other human beings remains an impenetrable mystery to me, but I’ve found it helps if I at least pretend that it isn’t. I know that all of my students are more measureless and inscrutable than the grandest galaxy, but, for expediency’s sake, I can pretend that they are relatively understandable and modifiable creatures. What’s strange about this pretending, for both my students and me, is that it often works. By putting on the manner of a sophisticated reader, the students often find that they become better readers – more urbane, more able to extend their understanding of a work of literature. Likewise, by making believe that I know precisely what I’m doing in my classroom, I seem to actually become a better teacher – more organized, more perceptive, more able to stretch my students’ reading and writing horizons. It may well be that, in an utterly mystifying universe like ours, both teaching and learning are best treated as games to be played rather than battles to be won or expeditions to be completed. We teachers and students might as well relax and enjoy the educational process for what it is -- an always entertaining and occasionally startling pastime, a risk-free game of "let's pretend".
Friday, June 20, 2008
ONE TEACHER’S ALPHABET
I is for Innocence
Thursday, June 19, 2008
HOW DOES IT HAPPEN?
In the park
they came out from some trees,
two kids holding hands.
How did this happen?
And the bird
that brought itself down
to the grass close by,
by what mysterious means
did it find itself there,
feeling the grass against its legs,
listening to the world wandering by?
And the trees nearby,
turning their arms to relax,
can anyone say
if something special
said they should do this?
And my legs just crossed themselves.
Does anyone know how or why?
June 19, 2008
Yesterday I sat on the beach for a while, enjoying both the refreshing sea breezes and a few bracing pages in a short story by Carson McCullers. I can’t imagine a more perfect day for the beach – temperatures in the 70’s, the best kind of soft sunshine, and clear visibility for what seemed like miles out to sea. I read a few sentences, looked up to enjoy the flawlessness of the day, read a few more of her brisk paragraphs, and so on. Life, I knew, doesn’t get much better.
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Walked the hills in the park again this morning – up and down the black paved path in the mist and silence, my walking stick tapping its way by my side. On the way home, I stopped to snap some pictures of the pond after an overnight rain. (See above.)
My morning walk brought to mind this poem by the British poet Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967):
Idyll
| IN the grey summer garden I shall find you | |
| With day-break and the morning hills behind you. | |
| There will be rain-wet roses; stir of wings; | |
| And down the wood a thrush that wakes and sings. | |
| Not from the past you’ll come, but from that deep | |
| Where beauty murmurs to the soul asleep: | |
| And I shall know the sense of life re-born | |
| From dreams into the mystery of morn | |
| Where gloom and brightness meet. And standing there | |
| Till that calm song is done, at last we’ll share | |
| The league-spread, quiring symphonies that are | |
| Joy in the world, and peace, and dawn’s one star. | |
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I’ve been thinking lately about how easy it is to gradually accept certain points of view that seem obviously accurate, and how shocking it is when someone points out the incorrectness of that view. A prime example, of course, is what happened centuries ago when people started to realize, to their astonishment, that the sun does not revolve around the earth. For countless generations, the belief had been passed down that the earth is the center of the universe, and it seemed an obvious truth to one and all. To prove its truthfulness, all anyone had to do was watch the sun travel across the sky, then disappear, then rise again in the east. The facts seemed clear and palpable. Imagine, then, how difficult and unsettling it must have been to accept a theory that completely overturned those facts – that described a reality the exact opposite of what had so long been believed. I’ve been thinking about this especially in relation to teaching, and wondering how many long-accepted educational beliefs might be utterly wrong. For instance, it has always generally been accepted that the teacher does the teaching and the students do the learning. Could that be entirely incorrect? Could it be that the students actually do as much teaching as the teacher? Could it be that the teacher, through teaching, learns at least as much as the students? It’s also been a time-honored axiom that each student and each teacher is a separate and unique individual, requiring exclusive and particularized attention. Could that actually be wrong? Could it be that all students and teachers are inseparable parts of a single infinite process called learning? Could it be that the best approach to education is not individualized instruction, but rather the instruction that comes from realizing that teachers and students are actually a single emergent organism that moves in a cooperative and supportive way along the paths of learning? And finally, most teachers have traditionally acknowledged that students’ ideas can be good or bad, helpful or harmful, right or wrong. I wonder, though ... could this assumption be like believing the sun revolves around the earth? Could we be absolutely incorrect in this viewpoint? Is it possible that all the ideas that occur to our students are, in some unique though perhaps hidden way, good and helpful and right? Is it possible that we have been missing the grandeur of our students’ ideas simply by accepting a false viewpoint, a patently incorrect belief?
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
GETTING THE “ME” OUT OF TEACHING
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
TIME OUT
One day he decided
to stop getting new feeds,
favorites, and services.
Instead, he sent himself
down to the roses in the park.
He promised the sunshine
he would stay silent.
He listened to the wind’s words.
The roses were resting,
as was the planet itself,
as was the whole soothing universe.
So he sat on the grass
that gave its services
as softly as the roses.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
I’ve been reading short stories this summer, and it’s helping me realize, once again, how vast the universe of life really is. This is good for me, because all too often I fall into a very myopic view of life – a view that says everything is basically centered around diminutive and insignifcant “me”. This narrow-minded outlook makes the universe seem tiny instead of vast. It’s as if I’m the only entity that is really important, and the rest of the cosmos is merely a collection of minute particles to be either resisted or used for my advantage and then cast aside. Reading stories can dramatically transform this perspective. When I read about the poor, careworn men and women in Joyce’s “The Boarding House”, the universe slowly expands. It gradually changes from an undersized “me centered” place to a stretched out area containing these peculiar people in Joyce’s story. Slowly, as I keep reading, I realize there are countless people on earth – my brother and sister humans – who are laboring with grim lives just like the characters in the story. I begin to identify with these people as I turn the pages – begin to leave my narrow “self” behind and merge with the immense and teeming human race of which I have always been an inseparable part. It’s a strangely liberating experience, sort of like laying down an enormous burden I’ve been carrying – the burden of the colossal and vulnerable ego. Each time I start a new story, I feel lighter, freer, more ready to become acquainted with the vastness of life rather than to resist and turn away from it.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Among other pedagogical discoveries of the first week of my summer vacation, I realized just this morning that I no longer have to buy textbooks for my classes, because everything I could possibly want my students to learn is available on the internet. This was an astounding realization for me. I think I actually shouted with excitement in my apartment when it became clear to me. After all, in my decades of teaching I have always assumed that ordering books for my students was an indispensable summer ritual, an essential part of the process of teaching. If I wanted the students to read Dickens, understand the process of writing, and learn the current grammar conventions, then I would have to procure books for them -- books they could store in their lockers, bring to class each day, and tote home in their backpacks after school. This morning, though, as I was browsing educational sites on the web, it suddenly came to me that a new era was dawning – an era when physical textbooks may become obsolete. For every concept, skill, or author I wish to introduce my students to next year, there are literally thousands of websites ready to provide instant and orderly information. For instance, every aspect of grammar can now be easily taught and learned by referring to the countless teacher-prepared websites. Additionally, for the kinds of classic literature I normally teach, whole stories, novels, and plays are available to the students on their computer screens. They could read Joyce’s short story “The Boarding House” on-line at home, make notations in a notebook, and then discuss the story during class while I project it on the screen from the internet. I find this to be amazing – even revolutionary. It’s as astonishing a change as the concept of the “open classroom” was back in the 70’s when I was a young teacher. I was energized about teaching back then, and even more so now. I feel like a green, keyed up graduate starting on a new adventure in a thoroughly new kind of classroom.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
This week I’ve been getting very excited about the numerous “Web 2.0” tools I hope to use in my teaching next year, but at the same time, I’ve been trying to keep things in perspective. After all, these new internet applications that are so enticing to teachers are simply another set of tools, another bundle of devices (some might say gimmicks) that might – or might not – be helpful in the teaching-learning process. In that sense, they fall into the same category as the overhead projector when it was first introduced, or the old mimeograph machine, which suddenly made it possible for teachers to give up using carbon paper. (Can’t you imagine teachers in the early part of the 20th century shouting for joy when they realized they could mass-produce their own lessons and worksheets?) Yes, it’s true that blogs and wikis and podcasts will be extremely beneficial to teachers in the future, but they are only tools to help the engine of education run a little more smoothly and quickly. They would be of no use whatsoever if there was no engine to do the actual work, and, to me, the engine that drives all good teaching and learning is old-fashioned face-to-face kindness and respect. A teacher and student sitting at a table and talking and listening to each other with attentiveness and shared admiration will never be replaced as the center-piece of the learning process. Face to face giving and taking, heart to heart speaking and listening, is what education is ultimately all about, and no breathtaking technological inventions will change that. Podcasts and wikis will surely alter the way I teach and the way my students learn, but it won’t, I believe, necessarily improve it. My classroom teaching will be different next year, but not automatically better. The students and I can wiki, blog, and podcast all day long, but it won’t inevitably make us more considerate or selfless in our relations with each other, more able to help each other grow wiser and more compassionate, which is the only thing that teaching and learning should be about.
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This morning I did my usual hill-walking down in our lovely
Friday, June 13, 2008
THE GIFT OF DEATH
The lead story in the afternoon news today is the sudden death of the beloved television correspondent, Tim Russert. As I listened to the radio commentator reporting the death in somber and shocked tones, I found myself feeling a touch of sorrow. A man who was, by all accounts, a loving and dignified human being had died, and he would be missed by many. There would surely be tears among his family and friends, and news stories tonight would mourn his passing. Surprisingly, though, my thoughts slowly shifted from this single death in
THE GIFT OF DEATH
The lead story in the afternoon news today is the sudden death of the beloved television correspondent, Tim Russert. As I listened to the radio commentator reporting the death in somber and shocked tones, I found myself feeling a touch of sorrow. A man who was, by all accounts, a loving and dignified human being had died, and he would be missed by many. There would surely be tears among his family and friends, and news stories tonight would mourn his passing. Surprisingly, though, my thoughts slowly shifted from this single death in
HEALING
He knows that to heal
he has to be able to hold things
in an effortless way.
The sky holds its stars
with ease, the sands of all shores
hold sunbathers benevolently,
and please
holds a thank you in its hands.
He has to learn
to let himself relax
when he holds a word in his mind,
or a proud pencil in his hands.
He knows
what’s wrong will be right
when he holds
by loosening his grasp,
like the land does
when it lets him skip
and spring in happiness.
.
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