ACQUIESCENCE

The word “acquiescence”, at least in my experience, has usually carried a negative connotation – a sense that a person is reluctantly giving in – but this morning my dictionary reminded me that it derives from the Latin word for “quiet”, which offered a new perspective on the word. When students in my class acquiesce to my efforts on their behalf (my lessons, assignments, demands, suggestions, etc.), perhaps they’ve simply decided to settle into a place of peace and quiet for themselves. Rather than necessarily implying a submissive and defeated attitude, their acquiescence may actually originate in their hope that accepting my plans for them may give rise to the feeling of concord that new knowledge and understanding sometimes creates. They may not love being in English class, but they may bow to my wishes because they’re hoping for the inner quietness that learning something new occasionally produces. We might even drop the ‘a’ in the word. Perhaps the kids yearn, without even realizing it, for a more quiescent life, a life marked, not by indolence but by simple peacefulness, which sometimes can come from just understanding a school subject better. The students may protest within themselves when the lesson on commas drags on, but they usually comply, perhaps because acceptance is more peaceable than resistance, but also because maybe these silly punctuation rules could make their school lives a bit more successful, and therefore more relaxed. Maybe they’ve grown temporarily tired of feeling stressed and frenzied, and see in old Mr. Salsich’s quiet (though sometimes tiresome) lessons an opening into at least a few minutes of serenity.

MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE

Sometimes, my eye doesn’t seem to meet much in my classroom – some windows, a few pictures on the wall, some books and papers, and some often weary adolescent scholars. It’s easy for me to get sort of blinded by the minutiae of classroom life – the fussy goals of my lesson plans, the little behaviors and deeds of the kids. Occasionally my English classes appear to me, and perhaps my students, to be merely a group of people entering, sitting down, talking, listening, musing, probably sometimes daydreaming, and then quietly exiting. I guess the kids and I sometimes see the surface of things in Room 2 as fairly run-of-the-mill and unsophisticated. However, what we need to remember is that it is the surface, just the topmost layer of a substantially deep and complex reality. During class there are more thoughts swirling in the classroom than we could possibly count, more feelings floating around than leaves on the trees outside the windows. There are young lives (and one old one) being lived as strongly and successfully as winds blow in autumn. Right in front of me, universes of teenagedom are incessantly unfolding and speeding around, even if my eye sometimes sees just the faces of some middle school students, and maybe an itinerant bird passing by outside.

IT'S GOOD FOR ME TO BE HERE

When I was a student, I rarely thought, as I sat in class, “Ah, it is good for me to be here.” In fact, I was usually thinking it would be good if I were anywhere but this classroom. When I entered a classroom, I don’t recall ever thinking that I had fortuitously arrive at a magnificent place, or that magical intellectual makeovers could happen to me while I’m in this room, or that I might never forget what occurs in this upcoming class. However, what’s odd is that now, at the well-seasoned age of 68, I do think this way. After spending most of my life in a school of some sort, 44 of them as a teacher, I have at long last reached a point where school is, indeed, an extraordinary adventure for me. What I used to dream about when I sat bored and indolent in classroom after classroom as a student has finally come true: school has become a place of exhilaration and renovation for me. I can’t wait to get to school each morning. I can’t wait to see my students walk into my classroom for 8th grade English. I’m often actually downcast when the school day is over. Of course, I do have my bad days at school – many of them – but they’re like rainy days in a year at the Grand Canyon: I'm fairly sure it will be beautiful tomorrow. How did I get to this satisfying place in my professional life? How have I become a more excited, ambitious, and resourceful teacher in my senior years than I was as a foolhardy young instructor? Why do I feel younger than probably many of my youthful colleagues? Why do I feel like I’m playing in a sandbox when I’m teaching the poetry of Mary Oliver or the proper use of semicolons? I don’t know, but I do know that, when I’m in Room 2 on Barnes Road, it’s good for me to be there.

WANDERING AND CHATTERING IN AN ESSAY

This morning, as I was walking down the hall at school, I heard a teacher in another classroom say to her students, “No wandering or chattering”, and, oddly enough, it got me thinking about teaching writing. As I continued walking, I wondered whether that is actually the main message my students get from me in writing class: Don’t wander in your writing. Don’t chatter in your sentences. Just follow the directions, get to the point, and do the assignment. Do my instructions for writing a high school essay sound like a bossy teacher trying to keep recalcitrant students in line? Do my students feel like their written sentences have to quietly march in a straight line like a class of 3rd graders going down a hall? It’s true that I do give explicit instructions for how to organize and construct an essay, and many specific rules have to be followed, but I hope the students also feel comfortable enough to let their words relax and smile a little in the sentences. I hope my students realize that a little carefree “chattering” among phrases and sentences can lend an enriching amount of seasoning to a prim and proper academic essay. A writer, no matter how formal the project might be, must always feel freer and more spontaneous than students under the rule of a stern teacher. No matter how many guidelines my students are required to follow, I want them to know that allowing their thoughts and words to amble and prattle a bit as they’re writing could spread some needed life through the paragraphs.

A STILL SMALL VOICE

When I started as a teacher many years ago, I did not use a still small voice. My teaching voice back then was more piercing than still, more full-size and confrontational than modest and self-effacing. I was a blurter, sometimes a shouter, almost always a loud and strident talker. My teaching was like strong winds and earthquakes and fires. I didn’t understand about the power of a still small voice. Now, after four decades in the classroom, things are very different. I find myself talking to my teenage students almost in a whisper. There’s no clamor, no rough speaking, no blurts and outcries and sudden booming words from me. I walk softly and carry no big sticks. There’s a lot more stillness than clatter. Given the quietness and gravity of the atmosphere in my classroom, visitors might think they’re entering a shrine -- or maybe even a mausoleum. However, despite (or perhaps because of) the relatively peaceful ambiance, we do, I think, get a lot accomplished in my classes. It’s just that my voice is much quieter than it used to be. My noisy words have turned into something more like butterflies than crows. What I say to the students floats among them, and perhaps right past them and out the windows. No matter. It makes more room for the students’ unsullied and liberated words.

ROAMING IN WRITING

“Then let winged Fancy wander
Through the thought still spread beyond her:
Open wide the mind’s cage door,
She’ll dart forth, and cloudward soar.”
--Keats, in “Fancy”

In teaching writing, I have always enjoyed the daunting challenge of helping the students be both disciplined and free in their writing, both organized and untamed. Surely my students must learn to present their thoughts in an orderly fashion, but just as surely they must allow those thoughts to do a little skipping and cavorting among the paragraphs. The students must write in tidy sentences, but those tidy sentences must have the freedom to occasionally roam around – to be extra long now and then, or to make astonishing statements, or to go off in a group of consecutive short sentences if that seems suitable. Their writing must wear form-fitting clothes, but it must also be free to occasionally throw them all off and dance. In the poem by Keats, the word “fancy” probably most closely translates as “imagination”, and, as the poet suggests, I would like to encourage my students to let their imaginations “wander” a bit as they write, though always keeping a firm hold on the reins. There are uncharted territories of thought “spread beyond” my students, and writing is all about roaming out among those far-flung thoughts. When writing even the most formal of essays, the students must “open wide the mind’s cage door” and travel out among the unexplored ideas in the outer reaches of their lives. They must always keep control of their youthful thoughts during the writing process, but that doesn’t imply staying close to home. There’s a world of ideas to wander in out there, and that’s where I send my students each time I assign an essay.

WRITING BY WRINGING

This morning, thinking of my students’ struggles with their current essay assignment, I took my copy of Keats from the shelf and went back to this phrase from “Ode to Psyche”: “… wrung / By sweet enforcement”. I guess I was led to those words because it does seem like my often convoluted and scholarly assignments often require words to be “wrung” from the students, somewhat like my grandmother used to wring the moisture out of freshly washed clothes before hanging them to dry. I recall watching her send the wet clothes through the “wringer” to press the water out, and as I thought about my anxious students toiling over their sentences, I pictured them sending their ideas through mental wringers in order to twist out a few good words. It’s true that there has to be a bit of squashing, smashing, pushing, compressing, and crushing when young writers (or any writers) attempt to force their unfettered and undisciplined thoughts into comprehensible paragraphs. It’s not easy to wring out a presentable essay. It requires some sturdy “enforcement” by my students, but the good news is that the enforcement can be “sweet”, as Keats puts it – can be as easy on the students as the old-fashioned wringer was on my grandmother’s delicate blouses. She watched the wringer carefully to make sure the pressure was distributed evenly, and the students must regulate the pressure they place on themselves as they slowly roll out their essays. Not too much, not too little – just the right amount of sweet wringing to produce paragraphs as sparkling as washed clothes.

The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

I'm enjoying my second consecutive novel by George Eliot (following Adam Bede this summer). This, so far, is a humorous, down-home type of story, filled with the gossipy kind of talk that small towns everywhere engage in. In fact, it's kind of surprising that it's holding my interest, since nothing that you would call exciting has happened -- just the ups and downs of everyday life among the young and not so young. I do continue to love Eliot's use of language. She is an absolute master at constructing sentences that sound like both lyric poems and professorial lectures.

SOLACE IN ENGLISH CLASS

“The only alleviating circumstance in a tête-à-tête with uncle Pullet was that he kept a variety of lozenges and peppermint-drops about his person, and when at a loss for conversation, he filled up the void by proposing a mutual solace of this kind.”
-- George Eliot, in The Mill on the Floss

This quote refers to a teenage boy who is bored silly by a visit to his relatives, and it reminded me, as I read it this afternoon, that my youthful, restive students must often be afflicted with a similar sense of tedium in my classes. In his audacious and adventurous stage of life, Tom Tulliver finds his uncle ridiculously insignificant, and I’m sure my students sometimes wonder what in the world a dawdling grandfather like me can offer them in the way of stimulating experiences. Tom can’t wait to escape from his uncle’s dreary company to get on with the natural pleasures of boyhood, and I’ll wager that the kids in my class would gladly trade a discussion about a short story by Fitzgerald for some rousing banter on a zillion topics with friends. However, Uncle Pullet does offer something to soothe Tom’s ennui (peppermint drops and lozenges), and perhaps I also, without realizing it, supply some occasional solace during a tiresome class. After all, I do smile a lot when I’m teaching, and now and then I pull a joke (admittedly always preposterous) out of my mental bag. I also laugh, on impulse, probably 20 times in a 48 minute class – wholehearted, honest laughter that possibly makes the mood less burdensome and offers some relief to the students (and me) in the midst of a wearisome lesson. In addition, I have an ample supply of sincere compliments ready to bestow on this or that student, or on all of us as an industrious group of learners, and honest praise is probably at least as heartening as peppermint drops.

AMAZEMENT

I must remember – and help my students remember – that human miracles are sitting at the tables during each of my classes. Strangely, I fear that the kids and I are sometimes oblivious to these miracles. Each of us is a ceaseless wonder, and yet I’ll bet we often pass the minutes of my class in ignorance of this, as though what’s present is relatively unexciting instead of thoroughly astonishing. We’re in the presence of many human Grand Canyons, and yet we act (at least sometimes) like we’re not especially interested. Somehow, I have to let the students know, and remind myself, that human life is an never-ending spectacle. As we sit in my classroom day after day, each of us is an ever-renewing fountain of ideas – ideas that seem to come from nowhere and are as wide and undying as the sky. Each of us will be transformed every moment, totally re-made with a brand new idea. The Grand Canyon is an apt analogy. If my students and I were visiting the actual Grand Canyon, we would be thrilled from start to finish, and yet...there is splendor enough in every one of my classes on Barnes Road to surpass a dozen Grand Canyons. There’s the endless birth of ideas. There’s wisdom as astounding as sheer, mile-deep cliffs. There are innumerable thoughts as compelling as canyon winds. Truly, my students and I should keep our eyes wide open in wonder.

GRACE IN ENGLISH CLASS

I doubt whether too many teachers think of their classes as being graceful, but it’s actually been a goal of mine for as long as I can recall – to have English classes that are as stylish and charming as, say, a dance performance, or even an opera. I think of this often as I’m listening to an opera. The refined melodies and elegant harmonies put me into a mood of relaxation and inspiration, exactly the kind of mood I want to create in every class I teach. I’d like each class to be as well-designed as an opera – all the parts of the lesson blending with style, and all the students adding their individual talents in a perfectly suitable manner. In an opera, some performers play supporting roles, coming on stage only occasionally but still adding essential features to the overall performance, and the same is true of a good English class. There are the front-and-center students, the confident and voluble ones, but there are also, of course, the quieter students who watch and listen, but who bring indispensable support to the discussion just when it’s most needed. Each is required for a truly good opera or English class. Each adds chic and grace to the performance, whether it’s in Room 2 in a little school in the Connecticut countryside or on the main stage at Lincoln Center in New York.

SOFT OPPRESSION IN ROOM 2

“... There gentle sleep
First found me, and with soft oppression seised
My droused sense…”
--Adam, in Paradise Lost

When I came across these lines this morning before school, I was immediately struck by the odd combination of “soft” and “oppression”, and I began to wonder whether it actually describes what I sometimes employ in my classroom. Of course, oppression is usually thought of as being heavy-handed and antagonistic, even cruel, but if it’s soft – if it’s dispensed with kindness and care – perhaps oppression can feel light and gracious. Perhaps a softly oppressive atmosphere can actually be advantageous for my students. In Milton’s poem, sleep, a peaceful and refreshing experience, is described as coming with “oppression”, so maybe my many requirements and assignments – the academic oppression I administer to my students – could be meted out with as gentle a touch as sleep employs. I have to be the boss in my classroom, and that means requiring the students to do taxing and sometimes downright oppressive tasks, but if I present and manage the tasks in a benevolent manner, perhaps the students might actually find in them some of the refreshment they find in a good night’s rest.

BEING LOWLY WISE

“Be lowly wise.”
--The angel Raphael to Adam, in Paradise Lost

This is prudent advice for a teacher of teenagers. Certainly I need to be a wise teacher for my innocent and often bewildered students, but I need to always remember how vast is the sea of ignorance inside me, from which small fish of wisdom leap only occasionally, and always in a fleeting manner. I have some knowledge to share, but I must keep in mind that what I don’t know would fill all the oceans of the world. I am not getting any younger (68 and counting), but in terms of insight and discernment I’m still a child, an infant in a very wide and weird world. Perhaps Raphael is telling Adam to be wise in a modest way, to be “smart”, yes, but to also be aware and accepting of his ignorance, because from that “lowly” ignorance can spring, now and then, a small but spectacular flash of wisdom.

LATE SUMMER BEACH

I spent an hour at the beach this evening, surrounded by nature’s late-summer serenity. Everything seemed at rest. The ocean rolled some sizeable swells onto the beach now and again, but it happened with a smoothness and gentleness that could have rocked someone to sleep. There were tidal pools of silent, lucid water here and there, and the few people sitting or walking seemed to be doing it in an almost silent and sleepy manner. Even the sky, with its soft azure and crimson colors, appeared to be sleeping far above us as it sailed along toward autumn.

PARADISE REGAINED IN ROOM 2

Lately, in the morning before school, I’ve been reading a few pages from Paradise Lost, and I’m finding, oddly enough, that it’s helping me be a more peaceful teacher. I think it must be the music of Milton’s lines. As I read each morning, I feel almost like I’m listening to a Mozart symphony or a piece of unhurried chamber music, and the music seems to stay with me through the day. This afternoon, as I was teaching a lesson on finding themes in an essay, I wonder if lines like these were rolling through the back halls of my mind:

“… over all the face of Earth 

Main Ocean flow'd, not idle, but with warme
Prolific humour soft'ning all her Globe, 

Fermented the great Mother to conceave, 

Satiate with genial moisture …”

In the midst of my occasional feeling of indecisiveness and perplexity during class, did those wonderful ‘l’s and ‘m’s and ‘s’s and ‘n’s of Milton’s make their melodies somewhere inside me, enabling me to flow along more effortlessly with what was happening in class? Did his leisurely rhythms cause my heart to hold a peaceable cadence as I was teaching? Did a line like

“And sowd with Starrs the Heav'n thick as a field”

help my thoughts to drift instead of dash?

WHAT A NEW CELL PHONE TAUGHT ME

Since most of my students probably haven’t yet experienced the multitudinous rewards of patience, I might tell them the story of my new cell phone and what I learned from it. I have never been a particularly patient person, and thus a new gadget often frustrates me as I fly through the directions and try to quickly learn how to use it. I usually end up utterly befuddled, and the gadget often ends up resting idle on the shelf. Since I was not patient enough to slowly study and master the directions, I missed out on an opportunity to enjoy what was probably a valuable new device. However, I surprised myself by the patient manner in which I dealt with the new phone. I actually sat at my desk and went through the directions step by step, scrutinizing each one and trying it out on the phone. I labored over those directions for perhaps 45 full minutes, surely some kind of record for me. I guess I was determined to come to a complete understanding of how the phone worked – and I did. I started using the phone later that same day with utter confidence and effortlessness, pushing buttons with self-assurance as I called various people just for the pleasure of doing it. The point I will make to my scholars is that patience opened the door to my success, and it can also be the key to their success in my class. Reading directions can’t be rushed, and neither can school work. Only by doing a task with attentiveness and staying power can we harvest its full rewards, as I found out with my new phone. By being patient, I learned how to be a skillful cell phone user, and the students can similarly learn how to be English experts in my classroom.

KINDNESS RULES

The human race no doubt exhibits an ample supply of spitefulness on a daily basis, but I continue to see evidence that goodness far surpasses it in presence and power. Today, for example, I was driving home from the store when I was nearly cut off by another car. I was just starting to fume and seethe and wonder who the idiot was, when I heard a honk behind me. I looked in the mirror, and the driver was leaning out his window and shouting “Sorry, friend! My mistake!” Then, a few hours later, I went to KFC to get some dinner, and was waited on by a young man who was obviously struggling to learn how to do a new job. He didn’t seem to have any idea how to answer my questions or place my order. I could see the confusion and fear in his face as he asked another server to help him, but I was also impressed by his meekness and his desire to learn. When he finally brought me my order, he smiled timidly and said it was only his second day on the job. “I apologize for any delay I might have caused you, sir,” he said. I assured him that I was very satisfied with his service, and, as I walked to my car, I felt equally satisfied to be a part of a human family that contains, I am sure, billions of people just as thoughtful as these two good men.

SILENCE AND EMPTINESS

This morning, as I was taking my usual early exercise (5:00 a.m.) on the hills near my apartment, I was impressed, as I usually am at that time, with the silence and emptiness of the neighborhood. It was as if the houses and trees and soft breezes and I were the only things present. A few lights softly glowed in windows, and now and then a car whispered past me, but for the most part there was a sort of beautiful desolateness everywhere as I climbed the hills. The streets seemed asleep and deserted. It’s what I love most about the pre-dawn moments. The world seems to be silently waiting for the miracles of a new day to commence. All seems hushed and poised. Life is resting in stillness, suspended on the brink of beautiful daylight hours.

Waiting and Watching

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A SILLY STORY

Today, while I was mulling over some seemingly complex problem concerning one of my classes, for some reason it suddenly came to me that the planet upon which I was pondering this supposedly serious problem was traveling through space at unbelievable rates of speed. I checked the Internet and found that, at the same time as I was wrestling with this dilemma about a lesson plan, the earth was rotating at 1,000 miles per hour and was circling the sun at 67,000 miles per hour. Not only that, while I was worrying myself into a tizzy about how to teach punctuation, the earth and the sun were circling the center of our galaxy at even higher rates of speed, and the entire galaxy was racing out to the edges of the universe at a thoroughly unimaginable speed. As I leaned back in my chair and thought about all this, somehow my problem became more like a joke, more like a silly story to laugh about while riding on a swiftly speeding planet.

GETTING THERE

Every weekday morning I have to get to a certain place – my school – and I always take the same route. Years ago I learned this route – learned that it’s the shortest path between my house and school, and that it will reliably get me to work reasonably quickly and safely. Now I drive the roads almost without thinking. Because I have faith in the route, getting where I need to go has become an easy and fairly speedy task. I often think of my students as I’m driving to school, for they, too, have destinations they must reach in English class. Each week they must arrive at an understanding of how to construct their next essay, and must make their way, with grace and aplomb, to a final stylish sentence. Each week they must somehow journey to an understanding of new concepts and skills, and must learn what routes to take through the bewildering pages of poems, stories, and novels. Week after week, I place a goal, a destination, in front of them, and it is their job to get there – and that, I’ve always believed, is where I come in. I guess what I enjoy most about teaching is simply helping the students “get there”. Years ago someone told me what roads to take to get to school as efficiently as possible, and, similarly, I try to lay out for my students some reliable routes to success in English class. I don’t necessarily want to make “getting there” easy for the students, but I want to make it as uncomplicated and trouble-free as possible. When I get in my car each morning to drive to school, I know, without a doubt, that I will be successful in getting there, and I want the students to have a similar assurance when they set out to pick their way through a chapter or steer a course through a complex writing assignment. I’d like them to be able to say, “The goal of this assignment is far off in the distance, but, thanks to Mr. Salsich, I know exactly how to get there.”

Taking Fast Hold

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DEVELOPING “GREEN” WRITERS AND READERS

The more I think about it, the clearer it becomes that extravagance is a quality my students need to assiduously address and eliminate from their work, and that its opposite, prudence, is a virtue they should make better friends with. Extravagance is simply wastefulness. The etymology suggests that it has something to do with aimlessly "wandering" around, living (and writing and reading) in a slapdash manner, using resources recklessly and needlessly. When students in my class write or read, they call upon their resources – mainly thoughts and words – and their duty is to use these resources in a judicious manner. Just as they shouldn’t recklessly fling their money around, so they should avoid using thoughts and words in a hasty and undisciplined way. Of course, it’s not surprising that my students tend to be wasteful with their mental resources in the classroom, when we remember that society as a whole is nothing if not wasteful. A sad kind of profligacy is a way of life these days, with self-indulgence apparently a far more sought-after quality than self-discipline. Growing up in a culture that throws out tons of refuse each day, it’s little wonder that young students don’t mind tossing some jumbled thoughts into an interpretation of a Dickens chapter or handfuls of superfluous words into a persuasive paper. The solution to this wastefulness, this happy-go-lucky extravagance, is an uncomplicated but sadly out-of-date virtue called prudence, which one of my dictionaries defines as “the wise use of resources”. It’s that simple, really. My students have a finite number of thoughts and words, and they must try to employ them in a cautious and calculated manner. As is true in the care of personal finances, they will find that this kind of attention to the guardianship of their mental resources will result in much higher profits in their English studies.

THE IMPORTANCE OF IGNORANCE

Ignorance has gotten a bad rap over the centuries, but over the course of 40+ years as a classroom teacher, I’ve slowly come to realize that ignorance is as necessary to academic success as good soil is to a prolific garden. Ignorance, you might say, is the fertile loam of first-rate education, for without it no learning would take place. I can’t learn something unless I’m first ignorant of it – unless there is first an empty space in my understanding of the world that is waiting to be filled by awareness and appreciation. It’s surprising to me that so many people seem to want to hide their ignorance, or pretend that it doesn’t exist. That’s as foolish as hiding the soil of your flourishing flower garden because you’re ashamed of it, or as silly as pretending the oozy mud in the bottom of ponds isn’t actually the source of every beautiful water lily blossom. Out of the darkness of night comes the light of the morning, and out of the confusion of ignorance comes the longed-for sparkle of insight. I’m proud to be, relatively speaking, overwhelmingly ignorant, because it means I have a universe of learning ahead of me.

BEING COMFORTABLE

Like most of us, I have always enjoyed being comfortable, and, as a teacher of teenagers, good comfort for one and all has been an abiding goal of mine. For instance, I like to think my classroom provides comfort in the form of physical ease and relaxation for the students. Although the chairs are fairly hard and there’s a limited amount of space, a few cheerful lamps provide, I hope, a sense of coziness and well-being, and perhaps the recurrent smiles of the old teacher serve to boost the students spirits now and again. I almost feel a sense of luxury when I enter my classroom, and I hope the scholars can feel at least a touch of that, also. In addition, I hope my teaching itself is comfortable, in the sense of being as “large” as is needed or wanted. We define a comfortable income as one that is big enough to supply all our needs and wants, and I hope my students can experience my teaching in that way, as instruction that makes available all the tools and stimulation necessary for their continued growth as English scholars. A third and elemental way in which I want to provide comfort in my work as a teacher has to do with the etymology of the word. “Comfort” originally referred to bringing strength to a situation (from the Latin “fortis”, as in “fort” and “fortitude”), so when we are comfortable, it is because we feel strong and surrounded by strength. We feel comforted because we know that all is well, which is exactly how I want my students to feel. Whatever happens in English class, whatever their successes or failures may be, I want my students to know that all is well, that they are good and getting better, and that all the strength they need is waiting securely and comfortably inside them.

A CONVENIENCE IN ROOM 2

Perhaps I should think of myself as a “convenience” for my students, something that assists them in building a relatively competent and satisfying academic life for themselves. Just as a laptop computer is seen as a convenience for the traveling executive, making her or him a more effective and efficient manager of the company’s affairs, I might consider myself an aid or a tool for my students to utilize as they pursue their studies. Don’t we surround ourselves with conveniences, and aren’t some of these conveniences exceedingly important to us? If I want to read at night, I have lamps conveniently ready to glow and give good light for my eyes. If I want a drink of water, I have the convenience of the faucet and its trustworthy flow. Conveniences make it easier for us to do essential tasks, and isn’t that what a teacher does? The students want to learn – need to learn -- and Mr. Salsich is there to make the task easier, more convenient, for them. Similar to a stapler or a pencil sharpener or a laptop, I’m ready to assist the young people as they climb the trails of appreciation and understanding. The word “convenience” derives from the Latin word meaning “to come together”, and I guess what I’m doing as an English teacher is helping my students come together in the classroom to learn, helping their talents come together to write truthfully and read wisely, and helping their faith and trust in themselves come together inside them so they can smile in my class, and perhaps in their lives, a little more often.

A SINECURE, NOT A JOB

In George Eliot’s Adam Bede, which I’m re-reading these days, the author says that, for some people, life is not a task but a sinecure, which is exactly how I feel about teaching. I feel incredibly lucky that, all those decades ago, I was accepted into this profession that seems, at least at this stage of my career, to be more like soothing entertainment than strenuous labor. I love what I’m doing – totally and from start to finish. Even to think about my classes is to get a rush of eagerness and exhilaration. Of course, I do work hard at my lesson plans and paper grading, but it’s the kind of hard work a mountaineer does as he ascends dazzling trails. It’s work, yes, but it’s also delight and stimulation and satisfaction. I almost feel ashamed to get a paycheck every two weeks, considering my classes are filled with kicks and gladness and rewards of the best kind for a weathered and wrinkly English teacher.

I must read the book from which this wise and inspiring quote is taken:

Lightly, my darling, lightly. Even when it comes to dying. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic. No rhetoric, no tremolos, no self-conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Goethe or Little Nell. And, of course, no theology, no metaphysics. Just the fact of dying and the fact of Clear Light.

So throw away all your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly, my darling . . . Completely unencumbered.

--Aldous Huxley, in Island

A VERB IN THE CLASSROOM

This may sound strange, but in my classroom I try to be more like a verb than a noun. I think of my teaching life more as “events” that are constantly unfolding than as a solid, unchanging “person” who is supposedly responsible for the teaching and learning in the room. After all, nothing in this life is stationary or fixed, including me. My cells are continually dying and being reborn, second by second, and so is everything around me in the classroom. The atoms in the air come to my students and me from vast distances, and they’re gone before the class is over. Process is everywhere and stasis is nowhere. In my classroom, I am a new idea every moment, and then a new action, and then another new idea. It happens continuously, with no pause. It’s verbs, not nouns. Who am I? I am “Laughing” or “Pointing” or “Speaking” or “Smiling”, not a lackluster, cast-iron person called “the teacher”.

TEACHING AND LEARNING WITH STYLE

I hope my classroom – and my teaching – has “style”. When the students enter my room, I’d like them to think, “Wow, this place has some style and taste.” We often think of classrooms as drab and dreary places, but does it have to be that way? Why can’t a classroom for teenage English scholars have some panache, some feeling of youthful and street-smart chic? And why can’t a teacher, even an elderly and furrowed one, have a little style in his bearing and behavior? Why can’t he wear sprightly bow ties and impeccably pressed shirts, as much as to announce, “This teacher has some technique, boys and girls”? Why can’t I show a sort of flamboyant confidence and manner, as if to say to the scholars, “This is the way I live, and it’s the way I read and write, too – with style -- and you can too”?

Adam Bede Cottage, Wirksworth, UK

Adam Bede by George Eliot

This is, in some ways, a very sad story. The heartbreak and despondency of Hetty, Adam, and now Arthur is almost unbearably sad. I'm hopeful for an inspiring, optimistic ending, but right now, about 3/4's through the book, it's a somber and distressing story. Hetty has been "transported" to Australia for murdering her newborn child, Adam is bereft and grieving, and Arthur, the gentleman landlord and protector of his many tenants, is enlisting in the army and will be gone for years, perhaps forever. The one uplifting note is that Adam has forgiven Arthur and the two have renewed their friendship. It's also encouraging that the author has given the reader 100+ more pages here at the end, which suggests that regeneration and renewal may lie ahead.

DISTRIBUTION AND CIRCULATION IN ROOM 2

I’ve come to think of teaching and learning as more of a distributive process than an accretive one. When I’m teaching, I’m not adding anything to the students’ academic lives as much as I’m helping them distribute the wisdom of the universe among themselves. Learning doesn’t happen by piling up facts and insights, but by being open to the free dispersal and circulation of understanding. The universe we inhabit is teeming with knowledge, and all the students have to do is feel and enjoy it as it flows through their lives, and all I have to do, really, is make sure I don’t get in the way.

ALERT BUT RELAXED

Like a good driver, a good teacher must stay both alert and relaxed. When driving on an icy road, I have to be watchful for especially slippery sections of the road, but I also have to remain relaxed enough at the wheel to maneuver the car with deftness and flexibility. I have to stay both tense and comfortable. I must be determined, in the sense of being committed to watching every inch of the way ahead, but I must also be open, flexible, and accommodating to whatever the circumstances might provide. I sometimes picture a good driver on a bad road as having furrowed brows (the alertness) but a slight and genuine smile (the relaxation). He’s working hard but still somehow enjoying himself. I picture a teacher in a similar way. Certainly I have to be totally alert to every shade and tone during class. I need to have fifty eyes instead of just two, and a few dozen ears wouldn’t hurt. Thousands of mental and verbal events happen in each class, and I need to be aware of all of them. However, I must always balance my watchfulness with an equal amount of lightness and easing up. Teaching teenagers the rudiments of fine writing and serious literature often resembles navigating a frozen mountain road, and while I’m ever on the alert I also need to be relaxed enough to move the class along the zigzag road that’s always created when free-thinking, restive adolescents come together to discuss the art of speaking from the heart in written words. I need to ‘drive’ the class with the coolest kind of awareness, with an attentiveness that feels like dancing.

YIELDING

One of my favorite dictionaries says the most common meaning for “yield” is “to produce or provide a natural product”, and, in that sense, I hope a great amount of yielding will occur in each of my classes. Just as a farmer looks forward to an abundant “yield” of crops each year, I look forward to the ripening and flowering of untold ideas in my classroom. The students, you might say, are the fruitful and fecund soil, out of which will slowly rise a plentiful crop of wholesome thoughts. Someone passing my room and glancing in might be reminded of harvest time down on the farm. Another common definition of “yield” is “to give way to pressure”, as in “He yielded to the demands of his peers.” My students don’t make demands on me, but they definitely bring pressure to bear during class – the pressure of their own attentive and sensible lives. It’s a quiet and gentle pressure – the kind of loving pressure that most young people tend to exert wherever they are – but it’s also an intense pressure. One of the greatest lessons I’ve learned over the years is to yield, as gracefully as possible, to this pressure of my students – to this steady and useful wisdom of adolescence.