NOISELESS PAIN AND ANGUISH

“There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence.
    --George Eliot, in Felix Holt, The Radical

    I’m an English teacher, not a therapist, but when I read this passage this morning, I couldn’t help but think of some of my students. In my classes, we sometimes have what Eliot calls a “hurrying existence” as we try to cover as much material as possible, but I know full well that there are always a few students in the class who are “suffer[ing] pain that is quite noiseless” as we go about pursuing our English goals. Unfortunately, the age of fourteen is not too young to experience crushing sorrow, and many children carry their sorrow into class like a wearisome weight. While the rest of us are dispassionately studying sentence variety in a short story, these students stay silent under the burden of their grief. I think of one girl in my class who has no friends, rarely smiles, and walks stooped over as if carrying an unspeakable load. I know, from talking with school counselors, that she is faced with daily instability and furor at home, and I can see the effects of it in her cheerless eyes. No matter what we happen to be doing in class, including laughing at a riotous scene in a story, she sits among us like a lost and passionless soul. Of course, my contract calls for me to teach English, not give guidance to forlorn teenagers, but unfortunately I’ve never learned how to separate the two. I’m not good at forgetting mournful faces as soon as a class ends. I can be enjoying a glass of Merlot in the evening, when the somber eyes of a student who has no idea where she will be staying each night will rise before me – a girl who is living with “suppressed anguish” every day of her life. I only wish I could help her as easily as I can point out sentence variety in a story.

MOMENTOUS AND UNREMARKABLE

       More and more, I realize that the work I’m involved in as an English teacher is both momentous and unremarkable, both special and insignificant. When I’m teaching my teenage scholars, I sometimes feel like an engineer carefully designing and constructing rocket ships, and other times like a custodian who’s simply trying to keep things orderly and neat so the students can do their required English tasks. Every so often I feel very special, and just as often downright ordinary – no more special than the nameless people who somehow send electricity to our school each day. I’m honored to be a teacher, yet also humbled to realize that I’m just one of the zillions of forces that educate my students each day.  When I’m sitting on my high horse and applauding myself for belonging to such an important profession, I occasionally wake up to the simple truth that I’m merely an infinitesimal grain of soil in the rich loam that instructs the students in the ways of the universe. Each day, they learn about life from every person they meet, sentence they read, sight they see, thought they think, show they watch, song they listen to – and among these literally countless influences is Mr. Salsich’s modest 48-minute English class.  My students are gradually and inevitably unfolding as promising young adults, thanks, in very small part, to the tiny grain of soil called “9th grade English class”. I don’t mean to belittle my work as a teacher, for it is just as important as any other work the universe does to prepare young people for adulthood – but no more important. An essay by N. Scott Momaday, studied in English class, might shine a helpful light for a teenager, but so might an episode of “Family Guy”, or a song by Five for Fighting, or the fleeting remark of a friend.  My students learn to write formal paragraphs in my class, but is that writing any stronger or more significant than the tumultuous and impassioned Facebook comments they shoot back and forth to each other? Education happens at the hands of this endless universe, and I’m thrilled to be a part of it all – but just a part, and a microscopic one at that.

THE POWER OF THE UNKNOWN

    A popular maxim tells us that knowledge is power, but as a teacher, I must always remember that lack of knowledge is just as powerful. The vast and hidden unknown is a mighty, and often unrecognized, force in any classroom. I often picture my students and I wandering on the surface of a planet called “English”, while the incalculable energies of the unknown are simmering at the center of the planet like so much magma. We are usually unaware of the underground, shadowy, nameless strengths of what we are studying, but they are always there, churning away beneath us. When my students and I are studying a poem, the best we can usually do is wander among the lines, noticing an understandable truth here and there, but only rarely do we catch the rumblings of the unexplained, out-of-sight truths under the words.  Now and them, fortunately for us, something like an eruption happens, sending an extraordinary insight shooting up in our midst, and then we are able to appreciate, again, how powerful are the forces of all that we don’t know. What I find strangest of all is that, by some uncanny magic, the more we know about a work of literature, the more we seem to not know. As our understanding of a short story grows, so does out ignorance of it. Each time we read a poem, a brighter light shines on the words, but, strangely, the darkness beneath the poem grows darker, more potent, … and more beautiful. This is the power of the great unknown at work, and as a teacher, I’m grateful for it. After all, the more we don’t know, the more exploratory and adventurous English class becomes.

"Lines Written in Kensington Gardens" by Matthew Arnold

This is a wonderful poem, which I don't think I've ever read before. As I read it today, it came to me that Matthew Arnold was either very familiar with the teachings of Buddhist, or simply had a Buddhist heart.

Written in Kensington Gardens

by Matthew Arnold

In this lone, open glade I lie,

Screen'd by deep boughs on either hand;

And at its end, to stay the eye,

Those black-crown'd, red-boled pine-trees stand!

Birds here make song, each bird has his,

Across the girdling city's hum.

How green under the boughs it is!

How thick the tremulous sheep-cries come!

Sometimes a child will cross the glade

To take his nurse his broken toy;

Sometimes a thrush flit overhead

Deep in her unknown day's employ.

Here at my feet what wonders pass,

What endless, active life is here!

What blowing daisies, fragrant grass!

An air-stirr'd forest, fresh and clear.

Scarce fresher is the mountain-sod

Where the tired angler lies, stretch'd out,

And, eased of basket and of rod,

Counts his day's spoil, the spotted trout.

In the huge world, which roars hard by,

Be others happy if they can!

But in my helpless cradle I

Was breathed on by the rural Pan.

I, on men's impious uproar hurl'd,

Think often, as I hear them rave,

That peace has left the upper world

And now keeps only in the grave.

Yet here is peace for ever new!

When I who watch them am away,

Still all things in this glade go through

The changes of their quiet day.

Then to their happy rest they pass!

The flowers upclose, the birds are fed,

The night comes down upon the grass,

The child sleeps warmly in his bed.

Calm soul of all things! make it mine

To feel, amid the city's jar,

That there abides a peace of thine,

Man did not make, and cannot mar.

The will to neither strive nor cry,

The power to feel with others give!

Calm, calm me more! nor let me die

Before I have begun to live. 

Emerson, "Divinity School Address"

This is a wonderful quote from Emerson's speech to the Harvard Divinity School graduating class, July, 1838, which I read this morning:

"These facts have always suggested to man the sublime creed, that the world is not the product of manifold power, but of one will, of one mind; and that one mind is everywhere active, in each ray of the star, in each wavelet of the pool; and whatever opposes that will, is everywhere balked and baffled, because things are made so, and not otherwise. Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonentity. Benevolence is absolute and real. So much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he. For all things proceed out of this same spirit, which is differently named love, justice, temperance, in its different applications, just as the ocean receives different names on the several shores which it washes. All things proceed out of the same spirit, and all things conspire with it. Whilst a man seeks good ends, he is strong by the whole strength of nature. In so far as he roves from these ends, he bereaves himself of power, of auxiliaries; his being shrinks out of all remote channels, he becomes less and less, a mote, a point, until absolute badness is absolute death."

"Wonder" by Thomas Traherne

I read this 17th century poem this morning and thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm sure I've read it before, probably years and years ago, but I doubt if the meaning took hold of me the way it did this morning. I hope I can read it often as the days pass, and that I can more and more appreciate "how bright are all things here!"

Wonder

by Thomas Traherne 

       How like an angel came I down!

               How bright are all things here!

When first among his works I did appear

       O how their glory me did crown!

The world resembled his eternity,

               In which my soul did walk;

       And ev’ry thing that I did see

               Did with me talk.

       The skies in their magnificence,

               The lively, lovely air;

Oh how divine, how soft, how sweet, how fair!

       The stars did entertain my sense,

And all the works of God, so bright and pure,

               So rich and great did seem,

       As if they ever must endure

               In my esteem.

       A native health and innocence

               Within my bones did grow,

And while my God did all his glories show,

       I felt a vigour in my sense

That was all spirit. I within did flow

               With seas of life, like wine;

       I nothing in the world did know

               But ’twas divine.

       Harsh ragged objects were conceal’d,

               Oppressions tears and cries,

Sins, griefs, complaints, dissensions, weeping eyes

       Were hid, and only things reveal’d

Which heav’nly spirits, and the angels prize.

               The state of innocence

       And bliss, not trades and poverties,

               Did fill my sense.

       The streets were pav’d with golden stones,

               The boys and girls were mine,

Oh how did all their lovely faces shine!

       The sons of men were holy ones,

In joy and beauty they appear’d to me,

               And every thing which here I found,

       While like an angel I did see,

               Adorn’d the ground.

       Rich diamond and pearl and gold

               In ev’ry place was seen;

Rare splendours, yellow, blue, red, white and green,

       Mine eyes did everywhere behold.

Great wonders cloth’d with glory did appear,

               Amazement was my bliss,

       That and my wealth was ev’ry where:

               No joy to this!

       Curs’d and devis’d proprieties,

               With envy, avarice

And fraud, those fiends that spoil even Paradise,

       Flew from the splendour of mine eyes,

And so did hedges, ditches, limits, bounds,

               I dream’d not aught of those,

       But wander’d over all men’s grounds,

               And found repose.

       Proprieties themselves were mine,

               And hedges ornaments;

Walls, boxes, coffers, and their rich contents

       Did not divide my joys, but all combine.

Clothes, ribbons, jewels, laces, I esteem’d

               My joys by others worn:

       For me they all to wear them seem’d

               When I was born.

TUNING UP MY CLASSES

Recently, after hearing a friend talk about tuning his piano, it occurred to me that I need to keep my English classes well-tuned. As I understand it, tuning an instrument involves adjusting its tones to a fixed reference (for instance, A = 440 Hz) so the instrument is able to play pleasing melodies and harmonies. If an instrument is “out of tune”, the reference point has been lost and the instrument produces sounds that only clank and jar. It’s as though each tone is isolated in its own universe of sound, with no melodious relationship with the other tones. As I wrote that last sentence, I thought of the many classes I’ve taught where the only “melodies” were those of dissonance and puzzlement – classes in which the students and I seemed utterly out of tune with each other. It was as if an orchestra had assembled but each musician proceeded to play, on untuned instruments, whatever notes came to mind.  These were classes that left me, and surely the students, as weary as if we had listened to incomprehensible and messy music for 48 minutes. To avoid this in the future, the students and I simply need to “tune” our minds at the start of each class. Our fixed reference will vary from day to day, but it’s important that a moment or two be taken to align our interests and goals – to get ourselves attuned to each other. As the teacher, I probably should be more like a concertmaster than a conductor. At the beginning of a class, similar to a first violinist, I must somehow let the students know what the fixed tone for the class will be, and then join the students in performing some sweet and surprising English-class music.

"The Holly-Tree", by Charles Dickens

 This week I read Dickens "The Holly-Tree", a wide-ranging and festive tale about a snow-bound traveler and his recollections of the many inns he's stayed in. It's Dickens at his story-telling best, as though he's sitting before the blazing hearth, sipping some grog or mulled port and letting his Christmas memories have free rein. I also read, and loved, Matthew Arnold's poem "The Scholar-Gipsy", as well as a selection of little-known sonnets, including a fine poem by someone named Edgell Rickword.

A SIMPLE-MIINDED TEACHER

    For some reason, I woke up on this Christmas morning with the word “simple” on my mind. Perhaps it was the utter simplicity of the small crèche scene on my coffee table – just a few plain wooden figures looking down at a tiny shape lying on a few blades of grass I pulled from the lawn yesterday. Perhaps it was the desire to find a little reassuring simplicity in the midst of some recent disarray within my family. Or perhaps it was the unadorned grayness of the winter sky. Whatever the reason, the idea of simplicity seemed to shine softly for me on this special morning when so many people celebrate the renewal of plain old-fashioned kindness. I’m not sure why, but, as I was fixing the coffee, I started thinking about the old word “simple-minded”, which used to be employed to refer disparagingly to mentally handicapped people. It occurred to me that perhaps there’s a positive side to being simple-minded -- that perhaps, in fact, it’s a quality I’m gradually and thankfully approaching in my teaching. Perhaps a simple-minded teacher is one who fully understands his overwhelming ignorance when it comes to the complexities of teaching other human beings, and who is willing to accept this handicap. A simple-minded teacher might be a humble teacher, one who realizes that he is an ordinary person attempting to do extraordinary work.  A simple-minded teacher might be a completely unpretentious and unaffected teacher, because he realizes that pretending to understand the intricacies involved in the rocket-science called teaching is a dead-end street.  The simple-minded teacher, perhaps, has taken off the mask of smugness and self-assurance, and stands before his class as a mere mortal – a mystified, anxious, but always inquiring human being. As I sipped my coffee and looked at the roughly carved wooden baby lying on the coffee table on this Christmas morning, being simple-minded seemed to me to be a stroke of good fortune.

A GOOD GAME

“But, Lord! when you come to think of yourself, you know, and what a game you have been up to ever since you was in your own cradle, and what a poor sort of a chap you are, and how it's always either Yesterday with you, or else To-morrow, and never To- day, that's where it is!”
-- Dickens, in “The Holly-Tree”


This sentence, in the Christmas story I was reading yesterday morning, started me thinking about the “Teaching English” game I play during the school year. Actually, it got me thinking about the many different games I play each day – the “Serious Writer” game, the “Loving Father and Grandfather” game, and – most challenging of all – the “Over-worked, Much-too-busy, Constantly-fearful-and-frustrated Human Being” game. I take these games seriously and usually play them with desire and zeal, but thankfully, I’ve gradually come to realize that they are, in fact, just games. I don’t mean they aren’t serious, important, and sometimes life-changing games – just that they are still only games. Like chess, I enjoy these daily games, but, like chess, I know that if I lose at the “Loving Grandfather” game today, the earth will keep spinning, winds will keep sweeping across mountaintops, and tomorrow will bring another chance to play the delightful game. Trouble is, I sometimes forget that “Teaching English” is only a game. I often lose myself in the “seriousness” of it all – the feeling that I am engaged in a colossal and historic task that could transform forever the lives of my students. I frequently forget that, while I’m fretting over the failure of my class to comprehend the various uses of gerunds, “in the Orion Nebula,/From swirling gas, new stars are being born”**. In other words, in the biggest picture of all, my work in Room 2 at my small countryside school is simply a fun-filled, exasperating, festive, problematic, discouraging, and inspiring game. As the narrator in Dickens’ story suggests, I spend entirely too much time regretting past lessons and fussing over future ones, and not nearly enough time taking pleasure in whatever lesson I happen to be teaching – or playing – at the moment. As veteran game-players know, total focus on the game is the first prerequisite. If I’m teaching about irony in Macbeth, that should be as gripping and exciting a game as Monopoly – but still just a game. When both games are over and the players, hopefully, have had a good laugh, the sun will keep setting and rising, as always.

HARMONY IN ROOM 2

“… an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony…”
-- Wordsworth, in “Tintern Abbey”

    Reading these lines again this morning, I thought of the harmony I occasionally feel during English class. It doesn’t happen every day, of course, but there are classes now and then when everything seems to flow as smoothly as the River Wye in Wordsworth’s poem. In those classes, whatever we do and say seems to be precisely what should be done and said. Notebooks open quietly, pencils move effortlessly, thoughts are tossed among us like balloons, and the period comes to an end as effortlessly as a river rounds a bend.  Some of this harmony, I suppose, can be traced to good planning, but a lot of it is as natural and unplanned as winds moving among trees. Honestly, I have no real idea where this kind of concord  comes from. Wordsworth attributed it to “a motion and a spirit, that impels/All thinking things”, and perhaps that spirit occasionally passes among my students and me as we carry on our English work. Wherever it comes from, I feel lucky to be “surprised by joy” like this now and then (to quote another Wordsworth poem). One moment I’m waiting to start class, and the next moment I’m floating with my students on a friendly and perfectly-balanced 48-minute English lesson.  

TASTING THE STRAWBERRIES

    When my own sense of mediocrity seems to be pursuing me in my teaching work, I sometimes remember an old tale about a woman who is being chased by demons. In her attempts to escape, she arrives at a cliff. She spies a vine hanging over the cliff, and climbs down on it. As she hangs there, hoping the demons above won’t find her, she looks down and sees demons waiting below, and soon she notices a mouse nibbling away at the vine she’s clinging to! Next, however, she sees a bunch of strawberries growing near the vine. She reaches out and tastes the berries. This story is helpful because there are many demons involved in teaching English to fidgety, befuddled, and brooding teenagers, not the least of which is the worrisome feeling that I’m simply a middling, run-of-the-mill teacher. That particular demon seems to enjoy harassing me almost on a daily basis. However, I try to look for the strawberries. No matter how bad things seem to get, no matter how barely so-so my teaching seems to be, there are always some things to celebrate. There’s the boy who smiled when I said his comment about a poem helped me to understand it better. There’s the girl who spoke brilliantly in a discussion after weeks of a dismal kind of silence. There’s the parent who simply said she was glad I was her son’s teacher. When the devils of discouragement are tracking me and I’m hanging over the cliff, I reach out and taste the strawberries.

The Chimes, by Charles Dickens

I'm not sure if I have read this story before, but I'm cerainly glad I read it this year. It's another of Dickens' ghostly Christmas tales, though this one is more about New Years. Once again, a man learns wonderful lessons about life at the instruction of ghosts, this time the spirits of chuch bells. The following is the final paragraph of the story:

"Had Trotty dreamed? Or, are his joys and sorrows, and the actors in them, but a dream; himself a dream; the teller of this tale a dreamer, waking but now? If it be so, O listener, dear to him in all his visions, try to bear in mind the stern realities from which these shadows come; and in your sphere - none is too wide, and none too limited for such an end - endeavour to correct, improve, and soften them. So may the New Year be a happy one to you, happy to many more whose happiness depends on you! So may each year be happier than the last, and not the meanest of our brethren or sisterhood debarred their rightful share, in what our Great Creator formed them to enjoy."

LIGHTENING UP

    I have a friend who enjoys advising me to “lighten up”, and I appreciate his reminders, because I tend to carry my responsibilities – including teaching – as if they are terribly burdensome loads. The task of teaching teenagers how to read deeply and write stylishly often makes me feel like I’m hauling a heavy weight, and I usually drag the weight home with me each night, and sometimes even lug it around my apartment on weekends. Strangely, I think I secretly enjoy this feeling of being the overtaxed but devoted educational laborer. The heavier my teaching responsibilities feel, the more seriously I take my profession, and myself. Subconsciously, I probably think of myself as a superman of some sort, a “champion of young people”, a valiant man who’s willing to make great sacrifices for his students. It’s precisely this pompous, humorless attitude that thoroughly exasperates my friend . “Lighten up, Salsich!” he will say. He’ll then remind me that I’m merely one infinitesimal breeze in the great wind of my students’ education, that what I can teach them is like a tiny drop in the endless ocean of learning, that I’m every bit as ignorant as they are, just in different ways, and that if I dropped dead today, their academic lives would sail wonderfully on without me. And then he’ll offer his most important advice: “Laugh at yourself, Salsich. Laugh at your preposterous self-importance. Laugh especially when your teaching falls flat on its face. Lighten up and laugh – and then maybe you’ll finally be on your way to being a half-way decent teacher.”

The Mill on the Floss

     I finished the book last week, and I'm still mulling it over, letting the many themes of the story sift down through my mind. In some ways, I didn't like the ending -- too sudden, too inconclusive, too shocking. I wanted Maggie to go on living, growing, changing the world -- because she could have been an agent for wonderful change in her stifling community. I loved her character, but disliked most of the others, except for lovable Bob Jakin and the minister (but even he seemed too weak to stand up to the hypocrisy of his parishoners). 

      I read a few scholarly articles about the book, but I sort of wish I didn't. They were very opinionated articles, and they cast a shadow over my feelings about the book. However, it's good, I guess, to get other's views on the book -- sort of like meeting in a George Eliot book club. 

     What I should do is go back over the book, rereading passages and chapters. I'm sure new lights would be shed on the meaning of this wonderful novel.

ELEGANCE AND "EVANGELINE"

    I would like my classes to be like the poetry in Longfellow’s “Evangeline” – elegant in a simple way. I’ve always enjoyed poetry that hides its beauty in ease and unfussiness, and “Evangeline” does that. The lines are outwardly unadorned -- no rhyme, no artistic stunts, just a graceful story modestly told – but somehow the poet conceals genuine beauty in each of the straightforward lines. He cloaks elegance in the plainest and most natural covering, which is what I would like to do in my classes. I wish each class could proceed with the cleanness and neatness of this line: “White as the snow were his locks, and his cheeks as brown as the oak-leaves.” There’s nothing tricky in that line, and I hope there’s nothing tricky in my teaching. The poet speaks with openness and simplicity, and I want my teaching to work in a similar way. Ironically, it takes hard work to create poetry that’s beautiful in a simple way, and the same is true for teaching. The word “elegance” derives from the Latin word meaning “to choose”, which suggests that both the poet and the teacher, if they want to create true elegance, must carefully choose the arrangements of their words and lessons. Elegance doesn’t often just happen; it comes about because someone takes the time to thoughtfully select, mix, match, arrange, and polish. Longfellow did that in the writing of “Evangeline”, and I would like to do that in my 8th grade classes. Each class a plain but handsome poem: that would be a goal to aim for.

BULGING AND BLAZING AND BIG

This morning before school I read Wallace Stevens’ poem, “The Latest Freed Man”, and I’m glad I did, because I think it helped to create a rewarding situation in one of my classes.  In the poem, as I interpret it, the man is “freed” because he has “escaped from the truth” and the “doctrine” of things, and later in the day I rather miraculously escaped from the “truths” and “doctrines” we teachers sometimes burden ourselves with. Unfortunately, I occasionally come to class weighed down with pedagogical theories, which makes my teaching, on those days, rather hesitant and halting as I try to figure out how to make the theories work.  Today, however, in a 5th period class (perhaps, in part, because I had read the poem), I somehow slipped out from under that burden, and, like the “freed man”, I saw “the moment’s sun” – the simple amazingness of having a group of perceptive teenagers join me in a discussion of a good short story. For a few moments, all the complexities and obscurities of teaching – all the so-called truths and doctrines -- blew away like clouds and I was left with the straightforward strength of a few kids and an old man talking from their hearts. In his poem, Stevens suggests that this strength that I felt with my students is “the strength that is the strength of the sun”, meaning, maybe, that it comes from someplace far deeper and vaster than my little teacher brain. Theories, buzzwords, jargon, and the frantic machinery of one teacher’s mind can’t create the kind of fresh and bona fide excitement my students and I felt today. As the poem says, “it was everything being more real.” In an odd way, I felt, for those few moments, like we were “[a]t the centre of reality.” In Room 2, “[i]t was everything bulging and blazing and big in itself.”

   

COME AS YOU ARE

    If we want people to feel relaxed at a gathering, we might say “come as you are”, which is what I sometimes have to say to myself when I get to worrying about my teaching. There are early mornings when I fret and fuss about an upcoming class: Have I prepared enough? Am I ready for any contingency? Am I smart enough to handle this topic? Will I be able to deal with blank and bored faces? Basically, what I’m asking myself on those disquieting mornings is Am I good enough? Can I do this teaching work? Luckily, I usually come fairly quickly to my senses, and often it’s because I say to myself something like, “Ham, just come as you are. Just bring yourself to the class, just as you are, just as the universe made you. The students don’t want a sophisticated computer or a processed and purified technician or a highly polished android for a teacher. They want a generous, whole-hearted, spirited, inquisitive, flawed, and frightened person to teach them – a person just like them. They want you with all your worries and joys and fears and failures. Forget “dressing up” your lessons with a thousand finicky details. Make a lesson that flies like a straight arrow to a wondrous target, and bring it to class with courage and a little comedy. Walk tall, be bold, and laugh at yourself. And just come as you are.”

EASY DOES IT

As my years in the classroom have passed, I have made increasing use of the Alcoholics Anonymous slogan “Easy Does It”. It’s been a revitalizing change for me, because for the first half of my teaching career I might as well have worn a button proclaiming that “Hard Does It”.  In those years I approached teaching somewhat like a soldier approaches a skirmish. Every aspect of teaching seemed to involve an obstacle to be overcome, a resistance to be neutralized, a hurdle to be vaulted. It was hard work – “hard” meaning tense, hectic, and even traumatic. Now, thankfully, I approach my work more like a sailor heading out to sea. When I’m teaching, I often think of my long-gone father, the finest sailor I knew and the man who taught me that “easy does it” on the high seas. Sailing was easy, he said, because you simply let the wind do the work. He taught me not to fight the wind – not to try to control it or manipulate it or resist it – but simply to work with it. Fighting the wind was hard work; cooperating with it, combining forces with it, was, according to Dad, as easy as breathing. These days I often think of him as I’m steering my lesson through a 48-minute class period. Like the capricious winds of the ocean, problems, distractions, and my inevitable mistakes arise and whirl around me, but – remembering Captain Pete – I try to relax and go easy instead of stiffen and fight. As student questions are asked and comments are made, I turn the lesson a little this way or that to take advantage of the energies and interests in the classroom. This doesn’t mean that teaching is easy for me – just that I take it easy as I’m teaching. There are times when I must be firm with a student or a class, just as a sailor must pull hard on the sails in a storm – but I try to be firm in a gentle manner, strong in a kind way. Dad always said a good sailor is both forceful and easy-going, both unyielding and laid-back – an approach that seems to work as well in Room 2 as on Long Island Sound. 

ACCEPTING IT ALL

    Yesterday I wrote about being willing to “give it all away” (let go, stop worrying, take risks) in every English class, but it’s also important that I be willing to accept it all.  Countless odd and unforeseen events can occur in any class, and I need to be open enough to welcome them. I don’t mean always like them or encourage them – just receive and be at ease with them. Interestingly, the etymology of the word “receive” – from the Latin for “take back” – helps me to be friendlier to the various distractions and stoppages that happen in class. After all, in my lifetime I’m sure I have created, in one form or another, every kind of disturbance that might take place in my class. In my school days and at faculty meetings, I’ve whispered, interrupted, blurted, looked bored, and steered people away from the topic, so when these things happen during my class, I can just welcome them back. Like boomerangs, my questionable behaviors over the decades occasionally return to me during English class, and I try to greet them like old, innocuous friends. It helps me, in this regard, to sometimes think of myself as a river, and all the weird, irregular episodes and incidents that come to pass during class are merely streams, creeks, brooks, and rivulets that flow harmlessly toward me as I conduct the class.  A river doesn’t resist, and neither should I. Again, it doesn’t mean I should like everything that occurs during class, but at least, like an hospitable but persistent river, I can welcome every side stream, somehow absorb it into the lesson, and just keep on flowing. Rivers know how to turn everything into part of the movement toward the goal, and, at the age of 68, I’m still learning that lesson.

GIVING IT ALL AWAY

More and more, teaching seems to me to be all about giving – but I didn’t always feel this way. For the first many years of my teaching career, I was more interested in keeping than in giving. I wanted to keep my reputation as a good teacher, keep control of the class, keep the students on the straight path of my lesson, and keep my pride and dignity. Because I was devoted to hanging on, holding on, saving, and retaining, giving didn’t often enter into my thoughts. How can you hold on and give away at the same time? Now – although I’m not sure how it happened – my thinking has gradually reversed itself. Now it seems foolish to me to try to keep anything back in the classroom, mostly because it doesn’t bring any rewards. Holding back brings only feelings of stiffness, tightfistedness, and smallness, and what I want is the opposite – openness and largeness. After four decades in the classroom, I’m more or less through with holding back. I’m about done with the pride, fear, and self-importance that caused me to hold back for all those years. Before I call it quits, I’m interested in discovering just how big this thing called teaching really is, and I can do that only by giving everything away in each class. For some weird reason, the more I give away, the farther out the boundaries of teaching seem to get, so I’m giving it all away in every class. In Room 2, it’s a totally free yard sale, day after day.

A CURIOUS ENGLISH TEACHER

As the many years of my teaching career have passed (43 and counting), I have steadily become more curious about the peculiar work I’m called upon to do each day. To me, this enterprise of teaching the vagaries of the English language to teenagers has grown more bizarre each year. On most days, when I walk into my classroom I feel like I’m entering a space ship bound for nameless destinations. I basically fasten my seat belt, get my binoculars ready, and hang on. Any Star Trek lovers will quickly realize that this is exactly what makes teaching more and more exciting for me – the fundamentally weird and startling nature of the work. I can’t wait to get to school each day just to see what unexpected things will start happening as soon as the first class commences. Like a scientist in his lab, I am intrigued by what occurs in my classroom – the odd thoughts that arise in my students and me, the strange strings of words that float out of our mouths, the out-of-the-blue expressions that illumine our faces. The older I get, the more full of curiosity I get. Why did I plan this particular lesson? Why did Annie’s words come out in just that way? What dreams is Jason enjoying as he gazes out the window at a drifting hawk?

ALWAYS WONDERFUL ENGLISH CLASS

When someone asks me “How was class?”, I’m sometimes temped to say, “Wonderful. They’re always wonderful” – but I’m sure I would be misunderstood.  I definitely wouldn’t mean that all my classes are thorough or exciting or successful, for many of them are the opposite -- half-baked, mind-numbing, and hopeless. In 40+ years in the classroom, I’m sure I’ve left behind a long trail of busted plans and broken down lessons. No, when I say that all my classes are “wonderful”, I’m referring to the word’s original meaning – “full of wonder”. I truly wonder at all of my classes. Even a class that seems rife with tedium and empty-headedness is worthy of wonder, as in, “What in the world am I doing in this profession?”, or “How did the universe manage to set these kids and me down in this little classroom?” The truth is that my students – all of them – are deserving of wonder, by the very fact that they breathe and think and smile and see. They often act in ways that befuddle and frustrate me, but that only adds to my feeling of astonishment, for the frustration they cause me comes from their out-and-out inscrutability. I have absolutely no idea who or what they are. I am often lost in amazement at their impenetrability, their mysteriousness. If I frequently look bewildered after my classes, it’s not because a class flopped (thought it well might have), but simply because I’m truly full of wonder, day after day. To paraphrase Butch Cassidy, “Who are these kids? Who am I? What are we doing here?”     

WRITING AND JUGGLING

    Today, as I was messing around with VoiceThread, an online tool I’ve been using in class, I came upon a new way to use it, and I must say that it was a somewhat rousing discovery. It sort of “made” my afternoon, you might say – this find of a hitherto unknown and intriguing method of grading essays using video and audio. I felt like the discovery would immediately help me be a better teacher. It gave me an unexpected lift, sort of like getting a surprise check in the mail or an appreciative note from a parent. Later, I began wondering whether my students occasionally get that kind of lift in their English work. When they’re working on an essay assignment, do they occasionally hit upon a new way to construct a sentence, a beguiling device that might deliver their ideas to the reader in a novel way?  Do they get a little lift when that happens? Do they feel, as I did today, that they want to take a few skips and whistle and sing?  Of course, I hope my lessons can provide them with some innovative techniques to use in their writing. I often think of myself as a juggling coach who shows his students new tricks to perform. Words are far more magical than three balls, and I hope I can impart new ways to juggle them in writing. In their essays, my students can choose from thousands of words, and there are thousands of ways to spin, toss, twist, twirl, and swirl them – and that’s where I come in. Hopefully I can show them a few tricks that will give them a lift, maybe make them want to take a break and prance around their computer.

POWER IN ROOM 2

I sometimes mull over the idea of power in my classes – where it resides and where it comes from. Of course, it’s easy to simply say that power resides with me, (because I’m the teacher) and that it comes from my experience as an adult – but that’s just skimming the surface of the subject. Diving a little deeper, I might say that as much power resides with the students as with me. After all, the power associated with learning comes from thoughts, and who can say that my thoughts are any more powerful than those of my students? After all, I don’t think anyone has yet discovered a way to measure the force of a thought, so it’s possible that the slimmest, most delicate thought of a teenage English scholar could actually be as powerful as the thought of a seasoned and sagacious teacher. Going deeper still, is it possible that the power in a classroom actually comes from somewhere outside the students and me? Again, we can dismiss this question by saying that power obviously comes from our thoughts -- but where do our thoughts come from? As a teacher, do I personally and individually manufacture my own thoughts, or do I actually borrow pieces of ideas from sources outside me, and then merely put them together in new ways? It seems to me that the thoughts my students and I make use of in our classroom come from sources that are spread across the vast distances of the world – sources that are impossible to finally locate with any precision. Power in English class, I guess, is like the wind: who can say where it begins or where it ends?

A TREE IN THE CENTER OF ENGLISH CLASS

(Note: Labels and colors are for my students, and indicate parts of the paragraph.)

    TS This morning, I happened to come across a photograph in a magazine of an enormous beech tree standing in the middle of an otherwise empty field, and it reminded me, oddly enough, of English class. SD I realized, as I stared at the picture, that the only reason the tree looked so strong and beautiful was because of the backdrop of the completely empty field.  CM It may sound obvious to some, but the thought then came to me that the emptier the background, the more clearly visible an object is. CM Set against this utterly vacant field, the great tree stood forth in all its magnificence. SD Strange as it might seem, I wondered, as I put the magazine down, whether my English class was empty enough. CM When I set my daily lesson before the class, is it surrounded by something like an empty field – a setting so plain, you might say, that the lesson displays itself with all its clout (assuming it has some)? CM Are the students sometimes drawn to my lesson because it seems to stand alone, like this morning’s tree in its spacious and vacant field? SD I’m not sure where this train of thought is heading, but one idea that occurs to me is that silence is a form of emptiness.  CM Perhaps occasional periods of silence could be the field in which my English lessons might locate themselves with a certain clarity and even dignity. CM Perhaps surrounding and permeating a lesson with brief interludes of silence might render the lessons more vivid, more memorable. SD I’ve often thought, actually, that there is too much “noise” in my classes – not the noise of disruption and inattention, but simply the noise of constant talking. CM Surrounding a well-planned lesson with so much talk is like surrounding a beautiful tree with a mishmash of brush and saplings. CM As valuable as the constant talk in my classes may be, it leaves little room for the powerful emptiness of silence.CS 1 Maybe I should say to the students next week, “We’re going to have a minute of silence now before I begin the lesson on the use of participles to enhance writing. Please try to enjoy the silence.”  CS 2 Who knows? Perhaps the tree of my lesson might be a little easier to see.

MELANCHOLY IN ROOM 2

“… in the very temple of Delight           
  Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine…”
--Keats, “Ode on Melancholy”

    Last week, when one of my students was beside herself because of the C+ she had received on an essay (she’s usually an ‘A’ student), I thought of these lines by Keats. This girl normally experiences nothing but success in English class; she dwells “in the very temple of Delight” in my classroom. She labors diligently on each task and receives high tributes for her work. She generally knows little of melancholy as she toils assiduously on her reading and writing assignments, which is probably why she suffered so much when she saw her grade. I wish I could help her see (but it will have to come with the passage of time) that, as Keats suggested, failure is the other side of the coin of success, and “sorrow” is on the back of the sign labeled “happiness”. For this girl to think she can experience only triumph in her life is as naive as thinking she can have only sunshine and no storms. The “sovran shrine” of failure sends out music as sweet as success does, but this youthful scholar can’t hear it at this point in her life.  She (like me and most of us, I would guess) wants life to be all happiness, but that’s like wanting only in-breaths with no out-breaths. Can’t happen. 

THE DEPTH IN ROOM 2

“It was not till Tom had pushed off and they were on the wide water,—he face to face with Maggie,—that the full meaning of what had happened rushed upon his mind. It came with so overpowering a force,—it was such a new revelation to his spirit, of the depths in life that had lain beyond his vision, which he had fancied so keen and clear,—that he was unable to ask a question.”
-- from The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot (my italics)

This passage seemingly has nothing whatever to do with teaching English to teenagers, but still, I do see a connection to my daily work in the classroom. Suddenly, in the midst of a tragic flood, Tom Tulliver sees “the depths of life that had lain beyond his vision”, and it sometimes comes to me, quite unexpectedly, how deep and complex the life in my classroom is, and how far beyond my vision it lies. Tom had always been sure he knew the truth – what to do, how to do it, what to believe, how to live – and similarly, I’ve always been confident that I know what my students need and how it can best be provided to them. However, in the novel, Tom understands, out of the blue, how ignorant he has been and how much he has been missing, and there are times in the classroom when something renders me silent, something that whispers of profound developments and expansions within my students that I am utterly unaware of. Like Tom, and perhaps most of us, I live on the surface of life, where matters seem relatively unfussy and controllable. I plan lessons the way an engineer designs a machine, telling myself it’s just a matter of putting the right parts in the right place. I don’t actually believe this, but the way I operate in the classroom would suggest that, like Tom, I think achieving success is as easy as following a technician’s design. When he finds himself caught up in the roaring waters of the flood, the awareness comes to Tom that success comes not from adhering to designs, but from being totally open to what’s happening -- unlocked to all the greatness and impenetrability of what’s right in front of him. I need to keep Tom’s epiphany in mind as I work with my intricate, incomprehensible teenage scholars. These kids are more like boundless mazes than simple machines. I need to respectfully admit that my vision is not nearly as “keen and clear” as I used to believe – that the life in my little classroom is actually as deep and uncontainable as a flood.

MY ENGLISH CLASS GARDEN

I have often enjoyed comparing my work as a teacher to that of a gardener. Both of us are interested in helping things grow – the gardener her plants and I my burgeoning students. Both of us take pleasure in walking among our charges, admiring the expansion of leaves or minds, and both of us love the times when we can stand apart and marvel at the final product – the unfolded flower petals, the spreading-out minds of teenagers. What I find especially satisfying about this metaphor is that neither the gardener nor I has any control over the kind of final products our work will produce. A zinnia seed will produce a zinnia, and the young people in my classes will become exactly what they are capable of becoming, no matter how much I may think I am “guiding” them. All the gardener and I can do is prepare the environment, supply the appropriate nutrients, pull the “weeds”, and then … step back and patiently wait. A gardener uses manure to stimulate the growth, and I use my daily lessons. I sometimes spread a few suggestions about sentence variety among the students in the hope that full-bodied essays will sprout in a few days, and occasionally I scatter advice about revision, hoping it will allow their paragraphs to be more handsome and healthy. What I must always remember is that silver queen corn seedlings will become silver queen ears, and my students will become what they are individually equipped to become. All I can do is water, weed, wait, and be amazed.

WATCHING LEAVES, USING ADJECTIVES

    The other day, when I was told I would be missing two sections of English class because of some special activities at school, I was initially upset, even a little irate, but luckily I soon remembered that there are innumerable activities that are at least as important as English class. It’s seems preposterous to me that I can so easily fall into the trap of believing that the subject matter of my curriculum is unrivaled in its importance. Where did I get the notion that learning the rule for semicolons is more important than hearing experts speak about the dangers of drugs? What gave me the idea that studying some lines from As You Like It is far more important than attending a special musical performance? Where do I come off passing judgments like this – handing down the edict that English class exceeds in significance all other school activities? Actually, in the wide (actually boundless) world of learning, my little lessons and exercises in English class may pale in comparison to millions of other supposedly less-important pursuits. Who can say that an 8th grade student might not learn far more from following old roads on a bicycle than from discussing a poem by Maya Angelou? As blasphemous as this may sound, an episode of “Family Guy” might expand a student’s thinking far more than writing an in-class essay on irony in To Kill a Mockingbird. Even watching a leaf floating in the wind could create way more educational benefits for a student than sitting through a lesson on using adjective and adverbs to make contrasts. I simply need to get off my high horse and open my eyes, because this world offers kids countless learning experiences that rival, and sometimes far outstrip, Mr. Salsich’s English class.

TEACHING WRITING WITH MOZART

This year I’m going to try teaching writing with the help of Mozart’s music. It’s often struck me that classical composers must have worked in a somewhat similar fashion to the way my young writers work on their formal essay assignments. When I listen to a Mozart quartet, I hear the main theme developed in various ways, just as I (hopefully) see a thesis expanded and explained in the students’ essays. Mozart comes back, over and over, to the major idea of the piece, and I insist that the students do the same on their essays. One of the most intriguing similarities between classical music and essay writing is the role creativity can play in the “development” part of the composition. Mozart’s themes (opening melodies) are, to my untrained ear, quite plain and unadorned, but he develops them with astonishing inventiveness and zest, something I hope my students can do in their middle paragraphs. No matter how straightforward their main point is, they can develop it with all the inventiveness and originality at their disposal. Seventy-word sentences, ingenious metaphors, long strings of gerunds,  short sentences like sawed-off shotguns – all can be used the way Mozart used his development sections, to play the wildest tricks with the theme and take it out to the most distant  boundaries.  As the essay comes to an end, the students can “recapitulate” the main theme, as music professors might say. The young writers can smoothly bring us back to where they started, with a reminder of the central point of the essay, just as Mozart always brings us back to his opening melodies. In music, this recapitulation often includes a “cadenza”, a virtuosic section in which the soloist can display her or his finest artistic talents, and perhaps I can encourage my students to do the same in an essay. As the paper draws to a close, why not let the young writer loose to do some runs, riffs, fills, and trills?

NON-JUDGMENTAL READING

    It occurred to me the other day that I am always passing judgment as I read. It’s as if I’m sitting on the “bench” in my courtroom handing down rulings – judging either the value of what I’m reading, or the meaning of it. Similar to a courtroom judge, I am totally focused on my judgments -- preoccupied, you might say, with evaluating the worth and significance of the words. It’s like a full-time job when I’m reading – always judging, judging, judging. What I might be missing because of this all-consuming fascination with passing judgment is the important task of simply understanding what the author meant when she or he wrote the words.  This attempt at truly understanding an author’s intent is not an act of judgment, but more an act of listening, of leaning forward and squinting our brows and genuinely hearing what the author is trying to tell us. It’s an act, I might say, of unselfishness – an attempt to look away from our own preferences and beliefs and get inside an author’s intentions. In a time when self-absorption seems almost unchecked in our society, it’s particularly important that we readers learn to turn away from ourselves now and then and pay careful attention to what great writers are actually saying.  One might ask, “How can we know for sure what an author actually meant, especially a dead ones?”, but that’s not too dissimilar from asking how we can know what a speaker means, someone who’s talking to us at meeting, for instance. There’s only one way, and that’s by attentively listening, both to the speaker and to an author whom we’re reading. It’s all too easy to give up trying to understand a speaker’s intent and just pass a quick judgment on what his words mean to us, and it’s just as easy to do the same thing in reading, especially if the reading is challenging. We can toss in the towel, make a usable judgment, and say, “Oh well, I’m not sure what the author meant, but here’s what I get out of it.”  What I hope to do, both in my future reading and in my teaching of teenagers, is encourage more listening than judging. “Listen carefully to what the author is actually telling you,” might be my advice both to myself and my young literary scholars.