A Gentle Empire

In one of John Keats’ poems, he uses the phrase “gentle empire”, which I love because it suggests exactly the kind of classroom atmosphere I try to maintain. It has to be an empire, and I have to be the emperor, because today’s teenagers badly need adults to stand at the helm and steer the ship. For some mystifying reason, many adults these days have deserted their posts of leadership and seem to be trembling somewhere behind the children in their care, but not in Room 2 at my school. Inside that 9th grade classroom is Mr. Salsich’s empire, where the children are simply what children always are – badly informed, bewildered, fearful, and sometimes utterly off course – and where the adult is what an adult should be – in charge. However, there’s room for gentleness in the best of empires. A ruler can be both commanding and good-natured, both forceful and affable, and so can an English teacher. I hope my students see my classroom empire as a place where strict rules are nicely balanced by optimism and cheerfulness. However, it's still an empire. I am my students’ guide and boss, not their friend, mostly because friendship is not what they need from me. They get friendship from other 14-year-olds; from me they need leadership – not the kind that browbeats and pesters, but the kind that both pushes and praises, both makes the laws and gently lets the spirits of his students rise higher and higher.

Just Simply

When I think about teaching, “just simply” is a phrase that often comes to mind. One of my major goals is to show the students that there’s a fair degree of simplicity inherent in all they’re required to do and learn in my class. Life, and being a 9th grade English student, must sometimes seem overwhelmingly complicated to the kids, and I hope to uncover the ease and straightforwardness that usually lies just below the puzzling surface of things. Writing a formal essay can seem like an impossibly intricate task, and some students get lost in their obsessive planning and fretting, so occasionally I have to remind them to just simply sit down and do their best. I also have to remind myself, since I can easily go straying off into compulsive worrying about how complicated my responsibilities are. When teaching English starts to seem like rocket science, I have to take myself back to the plain truth: I’m just simply supposed to help 14-year-olds read and write a little better than they could last year. I don’t have to remake the students’ minds or shape them into superstars – just simply encourage them to continue caring about the sentences they read and those they write. I don’t mean to suggest that teaching teenagers isn’t hard work, or that’s it’s free of disappointments and disasters – just that it’s probably a much simpler task than I usually realize. This isn’t a perfect analogy, but I think of the old story about the man who, when he found himself in a room with the window shades pulled down, started to fret about how complicated it was going to be to bring light into the room, when someone from outside shouted, “Just simply raise the shades!” In my teaching, I need to just simply do my best each moment, and let the learning unfurl and spread as it inescapably will.

Yesterday I joined Luke and Jaimie and the kids at Jaimie’s shady place in the woods for a morning of pure fun. Mostly we amused ourselves with Noah’s and Ava’s toys, frisking around among race cars and dolls and pretend food. Luke (age 40) was a kid again as he frolicked around with a complicated race car track, occasionally wrestling with Noah and squeezing Ava with a smile. I enjoyed myself mostly by watching and helping – sort of an assistant coach of a having-fun team. Jaimie, meanwhile, slipped outside to finish riding the tractor mower across the flourishing spring grass in the big backyard. It was a morning of simple messing around.

Today we met at the little beach in Stonington for a few hours of fun in the bright May sunshine. Noah caught many tiny crabs and happily showed them to family and strangers alike, and Ava waded into the icy water up to her ankles and called herself a “vewy bwave girl.”

Huffing and Puffing Thoughts

On most days I enjoy some good laughs at school, and what I often find funniest are my own thoughts. Before school, when thoughts of inadequacy and downright dread are sometimes dashing around in my mind, I can occasionally see all those passionate, attention-seeking thoughts as though they are simply on a stage and I’m in the audience – and then I have to laugh at their silliness. It’s as if I don’t even know the thoughts, as though they’re strange actors swaggering around with their ridiculous self-importance. From this viewpoint, a thought like “I’m not sure I’m thoroughly prepared for 9A” becomes just an innocuous and silly player prancing in the theater of my mind. I also have a hearty laugh after school now and then, especially if I’m recalling a lesson that completely collapsed earlier in the day. When I see the thoughts that put that spindly lesson together, and how flimsy and unrealistic they were, I often laugh right out loud. The teacher next door might hear me and think I’ve just thought of a good joke, and she would be right, in a sense. The joke, so often, is my own thoughts, those puffed-up impostors who act as if they are awesome power brokers, but who are really just boyish actors huffing and puffing and playing their harmless roles. It’s fun to watch them and have a good laugh.

Seeing Roses and Shadows

This morning, taking my usual early walk, I passed a bush of roses I had never noticed before, and it made me wonder about the beautiful things I have failed to notice in my classes. I probably passed these roses on at least seven previous mornings and never saw them – strolled right past them in my typically automatic manner. When I noticed them this morning, they were startling in their modest loveliness, as though they had just miraculously materialized there. I wondered why I had missed them, why I had been so adrift in my thoughts that I hadn’t seen such a lovely sight. Further down the street, I also started noticing the shadows at this time of sunrise – my own shadow slowly altering as I passed close to and then away from streetlights, and the shadows of trees and shrubs shaking in the morning winds. They made a kind of darkish beauty, which, again, I had never noticed before. I knew the shadows had been there each morning, making their gray charm, but I had missed them completely. As I sipped my cup of coffee back home, I wondered what I’ve missed in the 604 English classes I’ve taught so far this year. How many kids more miraculous than any roses have I taken no notice of during a class? How many words spoken from student hearts have risen right past my careless ears?

The Value of Doing Nothing

When I overheard a teacher say to a student the other day, “Get busy. You can’t just do nothing,” I recall thinking to myself, “Why not?” It has often occurred to me that one of my students’ biggest problems might actually be the fact that they’re always doing something. In my class, I expect them to either be taking notes painstakingly, listening carefully, speaking clearly, or thinking deeply. I was raised to believe that the successful life consists, for the most part, in nonstop doing, and I guess that’s generally the way I’ve run my classes. Like most teachers, I don’t offer “doing nothing” as an option. However, I must confess to sometimes asking myself, “Why not?” Why can’t students occasionally neither take notes, nor speak, nor even listen, nor even – shocking as it sounds – think? Why can’t they, at least for a few moments, simply be alive, without doing anything at all? Surprisingly, this kind of silent and stationary liveliness might actually help my students “get more done” in class. If they could, at least occasionally, drop out of their accustomed academic lifestyle of just routinely doing one school task after another after another, they might actually be able to see and hear more clearly what’s happening in class. If they could, for even just one minute, simply notice (just notice, not busily think about) what’s going on – notice the color of a classmate’s shirt, notice the way the teacher’s eyes move when he talks, even notice the special movements of trees outside as breezes blow along – maybe they would be better able to then notice the main points of my lesson. It sounds strange, I know – a bunch of kids doing absolutely nothing in class for 6o seconds – but there might be some magic in making life grow slow and silent now and then. Suddenly, my words might make a little music instead of just the usual forgettable noise.

Whatever

Not too long ago, “whatever” was a reply in common use by teenagers, and today I got to thinking that I could profitably employ it now and then in English class. The word is generally used to emphasize a lack of restriction, as in “Do whatever you like”, or “Take whatever action is needed”, and I occasionally find myself needing to say exactly that to my students. Sometimes, when they’re writing an essay, they need to break away from the various academic curbs and constraints they’re accustomed to and just do “whatever”. That’s what writers from Shakespeare to Joyce Carol Oates did, and sometimes it’s what youthful writers need to do – just go for it, take a gamble, put it on the line. Being attentive to directions and rubrics is important, but so is going for broke every so often. I think of athletes in this regard – basketball players, for instance. No game is more restricted by boundaries and rules than basketball, and yet I’ve often heard of coaches telling their players before a game to just “go out there and have fun”. Sometimes coaches will say “play loose” and “don’t think too much” and “play like when you were kids”. Essentially they’re saying, “Do whatever”, and I need to say that to my students now and then. When the kids get so caught up in directives and requirements that writing with force and authenticity becomes an utter impossibility, I need to call a time out and remind them that written words should be windows to the heart, not white flags of surrender to a thousand rules. Like a coach, I sometimes need to say (maybe even shout), “Go for it! Take a chance! Let out the sails! Put the pedal to the metal! You’re only 14 once! Write whatever!”

A LITTLE THOUGHTFUL WATCHING

I often think I’d rather be more of an impartial witness in my classes than someone called “the teacher”. As the official English teacher of my students, I’ve too often been the classic busybody, so beside myself with doing, striving, arranging, and accomplishing, that I almost never find time to stand back and simply observe what’s happening. An uncommon assortment of surprises reveals itself in each of my classes, but I rarely see it because of my fascination with doing, doing, doing. If dozens of flourishing roses miraculously materialized in the center of the classroom, I probably wouldn’t notice it, absorbed as I am in my incessant teacherly duties. What if I sat at the seashore on a flawless summer day and did nothing but draw up lesson plans for future classes – face buried in a notebook, never bothering to bring my eyes up to be surprised by the life of the surf and the brilliance of sea birds in their paradise? Or what if I sat among wondrous mountains and saw nothing but the words in a book I brought – saw neither imperious hillsides nor summits with pennants of clouds? I’m not suggesting that I can actually stop teaching and simply step back and observe for 48 minutes, but I am looking for a little less relentless doing and a little more thoughtful watching. Even while I’m teaching a lesson I can be an attentive witness, taking a seat in my mind and watching these teenage students and their teacher playing the elaborate and absorbing game called education.

I Am Breathing

A peculiar and comforting thought came to me today while my students were taking a quiz: I am breathing. Of course, I’ve been breathing for nearly 69 years, but at that moment I actually noticed my breathing. As the kids were working on the quiz, I found myself simply following the flow of my breathing – in, out, in, out, in, out. Unlike my usual practice while in the classroom, I wasn’t doing anything – not organizing my desk, not checking my email, not grading quizzes from an earlier class, not going over the lesson for the next class. I was simply observing my breathing -- and, quite honestly, I was fairly surprised by it. I guess what I found most intriguing was the fact that the breathing was being done without my help. This perhaps seems obvious – yes, of course, our lungs do breathe routinely, even when we’re sleeping – but it was a bit of a bombshell to me as I stood in a square of sunshine by the window. It was like a startling disclosure: I don’t have to do anything to make my lungs work. My lungs were rising and falling due to some force other than my personal willpower, and they’ve been operating in this autonomous way for all the moments of my life. I stood silently with this awareness as the kids finished their quizzes. I felt my lungs reliably lifting and falling on their own, and, when the students had handed in their papers and left, I turned and saw spring tree limbs unreservedly swaying and sunlight overspreading some stepping-stones, all with no assistance from me. It was good to realize, once again, that this far-reaching universe finds its own wonderful way without my particular help. I looked down at the quizzes on my desk and knew they would get graded, somehow, with precision and ease.

Bird Songs and Student Words

At five this morning, the tunes the first birds were singing around my neighborhood started me thinking about my students and the words they speak in English class. The songs of the birds were of every possible variety, and so are the students’ spoken words. Some birds sang softly almost to the point of being soundless, just as some of my students share their thoughts like shy squirrels squeaking from behind a bush. Other birds this morning were making the proudest of melodies, pouring out music as if they personally had possession of the entire town, which made me think of students whose voices seem to rise up with earnest confidence when they speak. Some birds sang in short chirps of sound followed by long moments of silence, just as some students say a few distinctive words and then rest in the ease of stillness. And surely there were birds stationed in trees who sang no songs at all, but simply sat on limbs and listened and looked, like the kids in my classes who stay still from start to finish, perhaps finding some special serenity and inspiration in their silence. We need them all, of course – all the various bird songs (even the silent ones) and all the numerous ways my students speak or stay quiet. We need, in equal measure, the soft and noisy birds and the shy and strident students. It’s the mixture, the bizarre assortment, that makes the music of springtime birds and youthful students so extraordinary.

Carrying All of Us

Over the years (centuries, I guess), much has been written about the importance of experiencing the “flow” of life, and lately, as May has generously blossomed around my school’s campus, I’ve been feeling some of that flow in my teaching. I guess I’m seeing more clearly that teaching English, or any subject, is a lot like floating down a stream that’s as widespread as the sea – not just an English class stream, but a stream sent from the universe. All school subjects, all things to be learned, all events, all thoughts, all thrills and sorrows are in this stream that my students and I are flowing with. In this stream there’s no separate course called English -- not even, strange as it sounds, any separate students and teachers. It’s all one, this stream, and it contains all the creations and gifts of the universe, and we are among them, my spirited teenage students and their somewhat shriveled but still fervent teacher. This is the flow I’ve been feeling each day lately – the endless coursing of the universe right through my classroom. Sure, it’s convenient to say that I’m a separate teacher, that my subject is separate from all others, and that my students are detached and distinct individuals, but the truth is stranger and more marvelous. Every word we say in my classroom rolls out, in due course, to the ends of the world, and every sentence that students in far off places speak somehow draws close to us on Barnes Road in Connecticut. When it comes to learning, all boundaries are illusions. We teachers work with thoughts in class, and thoughts easily stream through and over any make-believe boundary lines. These days the graceful flow of May’s breezes has made it easy for me to forget struggling and striving to be a super-teacher, and instead, to just ease back and be part of the insistent stream of learning that’s carrying all of us who knows where.

Widened Awareness

I should place this reminder front and center on my desk in my classroom: “EXPAND YOUR AWARENESS!” It’s become clear to me over the years that almost every problem I have encountered as a teacher has been caused by my own unimaginative, unadventurous, small-minded view of what’s happening. Because I often see things through the zoom instead of the wide-angle lens, my classroom sometimes seems like a slim and restricted place, and my students like painfully imperfect learners with considerably more shortcomings than strengths. When I have this myopic view of things, I seem to be operating in an educational world made up, essentially, of undersized and inflexible perimeters. In this kind of classroom universe, everything is tight and tense, which is why I wish I had that sign as a reminder. I need to say to myself, “Open your eyes! The universe is limitless! Look up and out!” When I see limitations all around me, it’s because I choose to see them. I could just as easily use the wide-angle lens to expand my awareness and see nothing but stretching horizons – nothing but kids who can throw their thoughts far beyond the farthest boundary lines, and a teacher who needs to learn to let the world be as widespread as it really is. In this kind of measureless classroom world, no thoughts would be unusable and no achievements would be out of the question. This kind of widened awareness would make a classroom what this universe is – a boundless place for truly unrestrained learning.

Trustworthy Work

This morning, as I was eating breakfast, I started worrying about a situation in one of my classes, but the pendulum clock in the living room pretty quickly quieted me down. It’s happened more times than I can count. I’ll be fussing and stewing around the house, consoling myself about one misfortune or another, and suddenly I’ll notice the steady sound of the clock – the clicking that’s constant in troubles or triumphs, sorrows or exaltations. Whether I’m laid low by bad news of the worst kind or thrilled by some cheerful thought, the clock will still keep its unvarying cadence. If I’m walking out into a day of predicaments and possible bombshells, the clock, as I close the door, will be dutifully doing its work. Actually, most of our universe is like that – planets and stars and hearts and lungs performing their work with utter regularity, no matter if my life is rising to new heights or going bust before my eyes. If I’m looking for reliability, all I have to do is step out the door and see the stars in their everlasting places, or listen to my lungs letting air in moment after moment after moment. I may be a bust as a teacher every so often, but even then, the earth is dependably circling the sun at the precisely proper speed. It’s a comforting thought – that a zillion things keep occurring with complete reliability no matter how luckless my life may sometimes seem. If a lesson on alliteration in Hopkins hits a wall, oh well, at least my clock back home is doing trustworthy work.

DAMP DAY WITH BRIGHTNESS

It was another cool day today, with dark skies and dampness everywhere, but at least no rain. The only real brightness was in my small apartment before sunrise as I sat by the lamp listening to a meditation tape and minding what was happening: my lungs doing their reliable rising and falling, the pendulum clock ticking, a few early birds brightening the morning darkness with songs. There was brightness, too, in my classroom, as always – the lights, the sunlight from the windows, and two vases of tall flowers, and of course the friendly students who smile much more easily than they frown.

A STUDENT AMONG STUDENTS

As often as possible, I like to sit in different chairs around the classroom, often right amongst the students, just to offer myself as many perspectives as possible. My usual “teacher” chair is a soft, adjustable one, but this morning I sat in one of the student’s regular chairs, and it was a sizeable change for me. It was lower, for one thing, so I felt smaller and, I guess, less significant, less necessary. It momentarily sent me back fifty years to the time when, like many of my students, I was a somewhat unsure and hesitant kid trying his best to stay out of sight in the classroom. As I sat in the lower chair this morning, I felt again that sense of being just another unremarkable student in the vast apparatus of official education. Earlier in the week I sat in a chair facing the windows, from where I could see blossoming bushes and trees, as well as birds being their full-of-life springtime selves. It was a revelation for me, because I found my attention strongly drawn away from my own lesson plan and toward the look of the outdoors, especially the goldfinches flying back and forth like little flames. As the teacher, I was perhaps the most distracted student in the classroom for a few moments. The Tempest was not nearly as fascinating as the irrepressible life I was looking at through the window. On another occasion, when I was sitting among the students and surrounded by four hulking boys, I had this sense of being a small hill among mountains. At one point, the boys coughed almost in unison, and I’m sure I recall thinking of quakes and upheavals as I felt the force and noise of their coughs. It was an efficient reminder to me that a teacher should be a sturdy leader out front, yes, but also, now and then, a student among his students, struggling like them to respond to surprises and stay alert, striving like them to feel the flow of at least a little confidence.


© 2010 Hamilton Salsich

JUST WATCHING

It occurred to me this morning, during my sitting meditation, that what I was doing was incredibly easy. I was simply watching. I wasn’t actually doing anything or trying to get anywhere or attempting to improve myself. I was simply observing what was happening in the present moments as they passed by. It also came to me that I could do this easy task (if it can be called a task) at any time of the day or night. In fact, every moment of the rest of my life could be profitably spent simply watching – simply sitting in the grandstands of life and witnessing the seamless show that is reality. Of course, I will also be part of the show, carrying out my various roles as father, friend, and teacher, but the wonderful part is that the other me – the real one, I think – can be leaning back, folding his arms, and effortlessly following the action.

SKIES AND TEACHING

I often fret about the quality of my teaching, but it’s interesting that I never worry about the quality of the sky. The sky, as the saying goes, is what it is – stationary in solid blue at seven, cloud-dappled at eleven, stormy with encircling winds at six, star-spangled at midnight. Not even a fool would insist that the sky is “better” at one time than another; it’s different, yes, and perhaps unpleasant to us sometimes, but it’s always just the same high-quality sky. Its natural “skyness” is always perfect. Why, then, does my teaching so often seem so imperfect, flawed, deficient, and simply unsatisfactory? Why can’t I appreciate a day’s work in the classroom the way I appreciate the sky – as an ever-changing and vastly interesting phenomenon? Some skies are overcast, and some English lessons move slowly and hesitantly, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are fruitless. An artist might see something special in a dismal sky, and I need to see the distinctive qualities of every class I teach, not just the so-called successful ones. After all, some of my students may see wisdom and a blessing in a lesson that seemed a shameful disappointment to me. They might see sweetness and light where I saw only the cloudiness of unsatisfactory teaching.

SPRING RAIN

It’s been a day of spring rain and chilling air. I was glad all day that I had my wool sweater on, since my classroom seems to be the coldest place in the school. The gray rain fell and the students passed in and out of my room, hopefully feeling a little smarter because of English class as they left. Now, at 6:45, I’m sitting at home in my soft blue chair, listening to the pendulum clock clicking along and the sounds of rain running down the windows.

TREMBLING SHADOWS AND A WALK WITH DEAR ONES

This morning I hiked the hill beside my house amidst trembling shadows from streetlights and the early breezes of a spring day. I felt like the most fortunate person I know, to be up for those first hours of daylight and holding forth as a happy walker. I swung my arms more than usual and moved my shoes at a sprightly pace, as though chasing good cheer up and down the hill.

On Saturday, I spent a rousing few hours on the trails of a local nature center with two of my grandchildren. Noah raced around the pathways with the skill of a six-year-old explorer, and I came along slowly and blissfully with three-year-old Ava. Forever the hugger and smiler, she made it a morning in paradise for Hammy (what she calls me) rather than simply a walk in the woods.

MUSEUMS ALL AROUND ME

 

         This morning, as I took my daily exercise hiking up and down the hills near my house, the extraordinary thought came to me that I was in the middle of an art museum – one that might not have any boundaries.  As implausible as it sounds, the scenes I was seeing as I walked seemed to have the beauty of the best paintings I’ve seen in New York and London. Wherever I looked were settings that could be set in frames to shine forth from the walls of museums. There was the luster of streetlights on surrounding trees, the glow of lamps in a few windows, shadows shaking in the occasional winds, and over all, the coming of the first sunlight above the trees. It sounds fanciful, but anywhere I looked I could have framed my fingers to make a scene that, to me, seemed to rival Rembrandt’s and Van Gogh’s.  I carried that thought through my morning classes, and I soon realized, with the same kind of wonder, that my classroom is an extension of the museum I was in this morning. It’s hard to describe, but every student seemed to be dressed for a painter’s portrait, and every assortment of poses and movements and spoken words seemed ready to be framed. The way kids turned their heads to listen, their slight movements in chairs, their shifting expressions as the lesson proceeded, the play of light on faces and arms, even the flutter of leaves outside the windows – all seemed made for the handsomest paintings. It made me a little giddy, actually – sort of rushed-off-my-feet by commonplace, everyday, museum-type magnificence.

© 2010 Hamilton Salsich

WHO KNOWS?

Occasionally I wake up in the morning with a feeling of dread – a sense that something menacing awaits me in the coming hours, some bad news or signs of coming sorrow – and it is then that I ask the question: Who knows? Really – who knows what will happen in the next few hours, or in the next few minutes or seconds? The universe is a vast and baffling place, full of numberless events knocking together to make new events, and who can predict what events will seethe up to the surface today in that part of the universe called “my life”? At the dawn of each day, zillions of occurrences stand ready to come into existence, each of them as good and bad, as fearsome and wondrous, as waves in the sea. Who knows? Instead of the disasters I sometimes fear in the morning, I may find myself in the sudden sunshine of happiness at seven, and feel a wind of fine mental weather around one. There’s no good sense in wondering or worrying. Waiting with a trusting expectation of miracles (which happens every moment) is the best way.

MY ONLY CHILD

I try to think of my “self” as my only child. This self, this little ego that I have created and raised inside me, is always a fearful and frail creature, calling out for protection and provision in this supposedly scary world. My “self” sees the world as a worrisome place, packed with perils and hazards all around. It runs scared all day and through most of the night. If it weren’t such a sad situation, it might be almost laughable, to think of this “thing” I’ve made making such a fearsome place out of a universe that, from some points of view, is a stunningly peaceable place. This is where I come in, the “father” of this only child I have created. I need to be a loving dad to this frightened little self. I need to comfort it when the perceived perils of the world seem to snarl around it. I need to hold it comfortingly in my awareness, accepting all its fears and concerns, consoling it with the truth that I am vast enough to hold not only it, but everything that could happen to it, in my reassuring arms.

PATTERNS

Looking at a small patterned rug in my living room this morning made me think of my students and the patterns of our studies in English class. I often fret that my lessons may not always follow a noticeable pattern – may not always flow in an artistic manner so as to set up a seamless design for the students – but then I suppose there’s always a pattern to things, whether I am perceptive enough to see it or not. Even a spring day of seemingly disorderly winds and storms has a definite design that would be evident to any meteorologist. Even the most furious forest fire rages on in a certain distinct process, following a pattern a forest service scientist would easily understand. I must continue to make orderly lesson plans for class, but I must also have a little more trust in the unseen patterns that sometimes influence my classes. I intend my lessons to follow certain blueprints, but there may be other undisclosed blueprints shaping themselves even while I teach the lessons. As I trust the weather to follow its intrinsic systems, I must learn to trust the teaching and learning in my classroom to do the same. If I do my best to prepare orderly lessons, all I can do then is have faith that various useful patterns will materialize in a smooth and certain manner.

© 2010 Hamilton Salsich

DISARMAMENT IN ROOM 2

I often come to class well armed with preconceived notions, opinions, conclusions, verdicts, and utter seriousness, but, almost without fail, my students do something within the first few minutes that totally disarms me. They are a charming lot, these teens from far different planets than mine. A youthful smile flashed like a sparkle of sunshine can cause my careful reserve to crumble pretty quickly, and giggles from a few fourteen-year-olds can almost always start me smiling, no matter how staid and humorless I want to be. As the years have passed, I have found the harmless foolishness and ingenuousness of teenagers to be more and more beguiling. In a world gone crazy with seriousness and self-absorption, my young students bring a refreshing measure of madness and generosity to my life. They live their lives like cars careening around cliffs and sharp corners, sometimes smashing up, I’m sure, but always traveling in a sort of boundless and sincere way. They are irresistible in their ability to bring me down from my pretentious, bookish heights with a grin or a goofy joke. They can win me over so simply, even by staring with joyfulness at a strange, bright bird outside on the feeder when they’re supposed to be bending over a passage from The Tempest. They know, and I should, that a red-breasted grosbeak in spring beats ten-syllable lines any day.




2010 Hamilton Salsich

PLAIN MAPS, PAINLESS ROADS

Driving along a country road near school today, it occurred to me that my English class lessons this year were sometimes not as easy to travel as this clean, clearly marked road. If I asked my students whether it was easy for them to follow our program of study from week to week, and whether they were always able to see the overall map and the eventual destination, I’m afraid their answer might not be an entirely spirited yes. In my attempts to try new directions and travel new paths this year, I may have accidentally led the students into some roadless regions that left them fairly befuddled. In trying to improve my teaching by mixing traditional with untried methods, I may have forgotten the importance of plain maps and painless roads. As I thought about it while driving this morning, I realized that I never go anywhere except on designated roads, highways, sidewalks, or paths – and I should definitely offer that luxury to my students. I never wander aimlessly through pathless forests, nor do I drive my car across pastures and playing fields. I always travel on legitimate roads and trails, which is what my students, I’m sure, would like to do in English class. Like me, they would like to always know where they are going and precisely how they will get there. They would like to have the year’s big-picture map in front of them, as well as a detailed map for each daily leg of the journey. Sadly, I’m not sure I always gave them that this year. I’m afraid my desire to dream big and break out new technology tools might have sometimes made it a mystifying journey for the kids. Unlike my car cruising on shipshape roads toward an obvious destination, the students might have occasionally felt stranded in a classroom wasteland.

© 2010 Hamilton Salsich

ROOMINESS

Perhaps the main cause of every problem I’ve ever encountered in life is my belief in limits. Since my earliest days, I have been conditioned by my culture to believe that reality is basically a limited phenomenon. Life, I’ve been told, is basically made of perimeters, boundaries, and edges, all of them serving to separate. It’s been impressed upon me, over and over, that, though it has its hints and intimations of spaciousness and freedom, reality is fundamentally a matter of countless separate, limited objects trying to maintain and protect themselves. Reality, therefore, has more smallness than largeness, more constraint than openness. Life, in this common way of thinking, is much more like a small, closed box than a vast, wide open space. I began thinking about this today because I was faced with what seemed to be a threat to my personal comfort and security. When I sensed this apparent threat, I began feeling closed off, alone, and vulnerable, as if my life was little and locked up tight, like a small box surrounded by innumerable enemies. I felt the opposite of free and unobstructed; I felt confined, puny, and powerless. Luckily, I found a few moments to think quietly about it, and I slowly began to see my mistake. (I’ve slowly seen this mistake countless times over the years.) I began to see that the universe is not a place of limits, but of boundlessness. I began to see, again, that life is not small and restricted, but vast and without walls of any sort. I saw my “self” as it really was – as a part of an inexpressibly spacious universe that can hold any so-called threat with comfort and peacefulness. I realized, thankfully, that I am in no way small and vulnerable, and that, in fact, I am not even a separate “I”. I am the universe and the universe is me, and therefore, truly, I am at liberty and illimitable. In a universe of such generous roominess, any apparent threat suddenly seems like nothing more than a silly and harmless charade.

STORMS, SUNSHINE, MOODS

It would be insane of me to think I could control the weather – to think that, by worrying and fretting and fuming and manipulating, I could produce one sunlit day after another. Anyone would consider that an utterly senseless way to think, but is it any more senseless than for me to think I can control happiness? I have spent a good part of my waking hours (maybe 95%, shockingly enough) attempting to make sure I am happy at all times, and when, for umpteen various reasons, I occasionally find that I am not happy, I get nervous, cross, and sometimes quite sad. Poor me! I’m not experiencing pure happiness right now! I don’t deserve this! How silly would it be if I acted this way about the weather – if I went outside in a rainstorm and commanded the sun to come out! I wouldn’t do this, of course, because I fully understand that the weather does what it wants to when it wants to. The weather is irregular, inconstant, unsteady, and unsettled, and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it. What I have to do is realize that all of life, including moods, is exactly the same. Storms sometimes follow sunshine, and sadness occasionally comes after happiness. It’s the way things work. Just as I usually find a way to accept rainstorms and perhaps even appreciate them, I need to find a way to say yes to occasional gloom and grief, and who knows, perhaps even recognize the value of them.

WHY MEDITATION IS IMPORTANT

It came to me this morning that meditation is important because it puts me in touch with the only power in the universe – the eternal present moment. All the other activities I could engage in, including reading books about meditation, involve gaining something, changing something, getting somewhere, being somebody different, improving myself – in other words, moving away from the present moment. Only meditation says, “This moment, right here right now, is perfect, so live in it and appreciate it.” I see more and more clearly that I have been trying to flee from the present moment for most of my life – obsessively throwing myself into pursuits that would take me anywhere but the present. The word “pursuit’ fits perfectly here, because it is, indeed, a chase – an attempt to catch some future moment instead of living in the all-powerful present. Even reading a book about meditation has to do with freeing myself from the present, becoming someone different – more educated, more spiritual – than who I am right now. Only meditation brings me face to face with the trouble-free, all-embracing, and unbounded present.

HAVING MERCY

I need to have a little more mercy on myself. When things go off-course in the classroom, I need to loosen up and smile instead of censuring myself. Rather than giving way to discouragement, I should probably just be cheerfully inquisitive about where my lesson went askew. I should probably just grin, get out my detective’s badge, and go off on a hunt for the reasons for the sidetracked class. As a youngster, I was taught to be merciful to people, and shouldn’t that include myself? If I show mercy to my students when their youthful foolishness occasionally lets itself loose in my classes, shouldn’t I do the same for myself, a loyal but limited teacher who always tries but frequently fails? Like the good father in the Bible, shouldn’t I warmly welcome myself back, the penitent prodigal seeking mercy for a messed up lesson? The universe, after all, is a vast place, large enough to easily and comfortingly hold zillions of mistakes. So what if I break a lesson into pieces before it barely gets started. It’s just a mistake, and mistakes are as common – and as essential – as wrinkly leaves in autumn. Old leaves make soil and soil makes new leaves, and my stumbles in the classroom create a chance for mercy, which I, being a resident of this generous universe, have a copious supply of and should be happy to distribute to myself when asked.

© 2010 Hamilton Salsich

SOLEMN SUNSHINE

“Rex and Anna hurried away through the sunshine which was suddenly solemn to them.”
-- George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

I was struck by the phrase “solemn sunshine” this morning because it brought to mind the puzzling world I face each day in English class. As I glance around at my teenage students, I see both sunshine and solemnity, both the joyousness of childish life and the gravity of heavily burdened boys and girls. There’s summer on one girl’s face and dark December on another’s. It’s always that way, day after day – always a mixture of the lightness of being 14 and the weary seriousness of being 14. I need to remember this when I’m teaching. I may come into the classroom carrying the inner light of the love of my grandchildren, which is fine, but what about the student in the second row whose sense of distress knows no boundaries, or the girl in the back who gives nothing of her kindness to anyone, ever? To these two kids, the sunshine I’m feeling inside must seem as solemn as a memorial service as it spreads out from me (which a teacher’s moods inevitably do). Even a bright and breezy poem can seem as burdensome as bricks on your shoulders if you bring a heavy heart to it. I’ll try to keep this in mind tomorrow. If sunlight lays itself across the blossoming trees outside my classroom windows and all seems heartening and hopeful, I’ll try to remember that there may be, right there in the sun-drenched room, some students whose sorrow makes even the brightest of days seem bleak.


© 2010 Hamilton Salsich

CARS AND THOUGHTS COMING AND GOING

Today, as I was climbing the hills near my house for my morning exercise, the cars randomly coming and going reminded me of the arbitrariness and uncertainty that inevitably make up a part of my English classes. Surely all the cars knew precisely where they were going, just as I like to think I know exactly where I’m going in each class – but in my case, there’s way more arbitrariness than I like to admit. For one thing, my thoughts are among the most haphazard of all events. When I’m planning a lesson or teaching a class, thoughts crisscross through my mind like cars gone crazy. I can pretend that my thoughts arrive at the doors of my mind like orderly servants, but the truth is quite different. If my thoughts were cars on the street, disorder and dread would rule. My students, too, must sense some of this randomness as they work on their weekly writing assignments. Perhaps they, too, notice how their thoughts sort of speed along the streets of their minds, dashing together into phrases and forcing their way into the traffic of sentences in the essay. Some of their best ideas are possibly also the most whimsical and reckless, just randomly rushing around in their minds, getting lost, crashing, coming to a dead stop sometimes. It’s a marvel, really, that the students ever manage to systematically park some thoughts in an essay, and that I sometimes am able to steer a few accidental ideas into a structured and competent lesson.

A COSTUME AND A SPOONFUL OF WATER

I recall a friend telling me years ago that a good way to live is to always pretend you’re holding a spoonful of water in your hand while wearing a silly costume The point she was making, I think, is that it’s important to be 100 percent focused, no matter what we’re doing, but also 100 percent wild and crazy. The focus gives us the ability to be totally present with the task at hand, while the craziness enables us to feel the wideness and elasticity of the situation. I thought of this today in a 9th grade class, because it came to me that I had forgotten the silly costume. I was holding the spoonful of water, all right – utterly focused on the lesson I had planned, keeping my sights on the next steps, never wavering from what I had arranged to do. I was holding the spoonful of the lesson with complete concentration and resolve. Nothing was going to deter me from carrying it all the way to the last second of class. Trouble is, I had forgotten the silly costume. I had forgotten that focus and attention to detail must be combined with passion and vision and sometimes whimsy – that attention to goals without the balancing touch of looseness and inspiration is an open door to dullness. I was carrying the spoonful of water without spilling a drop, but the kids’ interest, I’m afraid, was disappearing into daydream land. It’s a good reminder for me – to always mix some natural madness with my orderly approach to teaching. It’s what nature does, after all – a perfectly pristine morning followed by boisterous winds in the afternoon. My classes can’t be all tidiness and temperate weather. If I’m teaching sincerely and from the heart, some loose and boundless winds will sometimes blow through the class, and silly costumes will surely be seen.

© 2010 Hamilton Salsich

YOUNG SAILORS

I sometimes stop at a park overlooking the Connecticut River to see the small boats of a beginners sailing class in the distance, and it usually starts me thinking about my students. Far off, I see the undersized sails fluttering and tilting as they follow a small powerboat, upon which (though I can’t see for sure) the sailing instructor is no doubt standing and gesturing. I hear his voice, very faintly, as he calls out commands and directions and occasionally sounds an air horn. Around and back the small boats go, sailing in circles, slanting and leaning, learning their lessons. Now and then the sounds of yells and laughter float across the river and up the hill to where I sit with thoughts about my students in English class. They, too, are learning to “sail”, in a sense, as they maneuver their way through stories and poems and their weekly writing assignments. As the teacher, I’m in the “lead boat”, delivering the day’s instructions: “Be sure to use transitions between paragraphs.” “Focus on whoever is talking.” “Let’s read page 16.” Like the boats with their young sailors on the river, my students must lean this way and that as the winds of the words they’re listening to or writing or reading blow strong or soft. When writing, they must let out the sails of their sentences in certain places, but write cautiously, pulling the words in snuggly, in others. It’s arduous and tense work, this sailing and studying English, and I sympathize with the young sailors and students. Sailing a dinghy on a broad, blustery river is no simple task, and neither is steering through a year’s worth of sundry and sometimes utterly surprising English lessons.

© 2010 Hamilton Salsich

COUNTLESS TEACHERS

I am the “official” English teacher for my students, but I don’t for a minute kid myself: there are countless unofficial teachers out there doing a marvelous job of making the students skillful readers and writers. The scholars come to my classroom for 48 minutes each day and respectfully listen to my lessons and suggestions, but for many hours each day they learn from the lessons of their unsanctioned, off-the-record English teachers. Every spoken sentence they hear is a lesson in the use of words to convey thoughts, and every written phrase they read is full of messages about how to make, or not make, written words speak with influence and grace. Even listening to their favorite song lyrics lets them know some of the secrets of using words to win people’s hearts. One of my students’ best English teachers is simply the books they read for pleasure. The more they read, the more they learn about making sentences move with style and strength. It doesn’t matter if the book is a best-selling, shallow story for the beach or a classic to be slowly absorbed: no matter what, the sentences will teach their intrinsic lessons about the difference between graceful and clumsy writing. I respect what I do as a trained and salaried English teacher, but I’m fully aware that I’m not alone. The kids have a bevy of books and songs and spoken sentences around them throughout their days, all dutifully doing the work of teaching reading and writing.

THINGS TO SEE AND HEAR

I wish I could notice things in my classes the way I noticed the scraping and scratching sounds my sneakers made on the sidewalk early this morning as I took my daily exercise. Because I tried to be especially focused, I seemed to hear even the smallest sounds – the closing of a door down the street, the flapping of a flag around a corner, even the scuffing of my shoes on the sidewalk. There were small stones on the sidewalk here and there, and my sneakers made slightly different sounds on every cluster of stones. As I listened to my footsteps, I felt like a scientist studying the characteristics of sound variations. It made me wonder if I need to be more of a scientist in my English classes – more of an acute observer of the occurrences that come to pass when the students and I come together. I could set a challenge for myself before each class: How many new and remarkable things can I notice? I set out this morning to be a sharp and observant walker, and maybe I need to set a similar task for myself as I prepare for a class. When scientists are observing phenomena, they use tools like microscopes and telescopes, but my fairly fit eyes and ears are the only tools I need in the classroom. I simply need to look and listen with sincerity. There are things to see and hear in Room 2 that are far more fascinating than sneakers brushing across cement at six on a May morning.


© 2010 Hamilton Salsich

NOBLE RETICENCE

"… such … noble reticence …”
-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King

I’m no knight in the classroom, but I wouldn’t mind having some of the “noble reticence” of Tennyson’s stalwart heroes. A reticent person understands the power of silence, a power I too easily lose touch with when I’m teaching. Instead of occasionally pausing to allow silence to spread its refreshing influence around the room, I’m usually speaking my mind in a fairly relentless manner. The kids might feel like they’re being shot at with a rapid-fire thought-gun for the full forty-eight minutes. What’s the point of all this incessant long-windedness? Is teaching all about seeing how many thoughts I can think up and throw out to my students like so many stones? What happened to simply shutting up and letting the wisdom in the room simmer for a few seconds? What happened to trusting the thoughts of the students to do some tossing around of their own? I sometimes picture a shade tree in the corner of my classroom, a fine place for sitting and being silent. When I see that tree in my mind, I’m reminded to make my own silence a part of the daily lesson. I take my place under the make-believe branches and bring my prattling to a stop for a few moments, the reticent teacher staying still so understanding can swell and flourish.

© 2010 Hamilton Salsich

SEEING THE STONES

Today I wonder if I might, in fact, see something in my classroom that’s been right in front of my eyes all along. A similar thing happened this morning as I was climbing the hills near my house for my daily exercise. I passed a stone wall which I had passed numerous times before on other walks, but this morning, for some reason, I actually noticed the wall and the individual stones in it. I saw the separate stones with their distinct shapes and sizes, and I even noticed the various shades of gray in the stones. It was a strange daybreak revelation, as though the stones had magically materialized overnight. It started me thinking about my English classes, those daily 48-minute episodes which I sometimes pass through like a ghost going somewhere in a hurry. How many small but significant occurrences have I completely missed in my classes because I was focused on my particular prearranged agendas and goals? How many students, far more fascinating than a stone wall, have I passed over with scarcely a glance as I sped on to the next step in my lesson? I sometimes compare myself to someone sitting at the edge of the Grand Canyon with a blindfold on. My students – and I say this with all seriousness – are way more amazing than the Grand Canyon, and yet I walk into my classroom each morning like it’s just a run-of-the-mill room on a commonplace country road. Today, perhaps I can get rid of the blindfold and see what’s in front of me – not cliffs and ravines, but astounding teenage human beings, breaking, right before my eyes, into adulthood.

© 2010 Hamilton Salsich

SEEING WHAT IS

Feeling frustrated lately by a sense of disorder and obscurity in some of my lessons and classes, I’ve been remembering something I was told on a bus to New York City many years ago. I sat next to an elderly fellow who was traveling to see his six grandchildren in the city, and, when I complained about some turmoil in my life, he smiled gently and said, “Just see what is. Just see what is and go from there.” He turned back to his magazine and we spoke no more, but his words have stayed with me. In a weird way, those three small words – see what is – seem to state an essential truth about life, and about teaching. It sounds overly simple to say it, but what I need to do in my classroom is just see what’s right in front of my eyes, moment by moment. I don’t need to see goals and objectives and long-range plans and detailed curricula as much as I need to see the distinct and singular students sitting in front of me at any particular moment. Instead of almost exclusively focusing on following the steps of my lesson plan, I need to open my eyes to the miracles called Maddy and Joseph and Asia. It seems increasingly clear to me that I have spent a ludicrous amount of classroom time seeing what isn’t instead of what is. Tomorrow’s class isn’t, and neither is next week’s nor yesterday’s. Even the next step in the lesson isn’t. Only this moment – this strange, unsullied, spanking-new moment with Ryan in his red shirt right in front of me and Carrie beside the windows and Cassy saying what she thinks the story means – only this moment really is. Reducing frustration might be as simple as rediscovering my eyesight, my mislaid capacity for seeing what is, whether it’s Jeb searching for words to express his thoughts, or Amy all by herself by the bookshelves, or Billy bending under his pack of troubles as he sits beside me, or a granddad in a gray sweatshirt going to the city on the train.

© 2010 Hamilton Salsich

WITHOUT MR. SALSICH'S HELP

Early this morning, as I took my daily exercise on the hilly streets near my house, I heard countless sounds of sunrise, and none of them needed my help. The universe of my neighborhood was stirring and rising into life without Mr. Salsich’s assistance. The English teacher who sometimes sees himself as the center of his classroom cosmos was completely superfluous this morning. The new day was effortlessly establishing itself without my support or advice. It was an instructive half-hour for me. As I climbed the hills, I heard the whistles of birds and the hum of early cars, the buzz of morning insects and the rustle of spring blossoms, and it came to me, as though a lamp had softly switched on in my mind, that countless things happen, moment by moment, without my help or approval. Even my eyes were working with no help from the officious English teacher – my eyes that make miracles every single second, welcoming the world into my life whether I want them to or not. Also, my ears were receiving the morning sounds with wholeheartedness and ease, not because I made it possible for them to do it, but because that’s what they naturally do. The point was as clear as the daybreak song of a robin: the universe doesn’t need my consent for anything. As I continued climbing and thinking, I realized that this applied even to my teaching -- that my students can learn beautifully without any special approval or help from me. Certainly, as a teacher, I lend my daily support and assistance, but like the bird songs encircling the streets this morning, learning of some sort will carry on no matter what flashy plans I make for class. Kids learn because their hearts and minds are miraculous learning machines, not because some wizened English teacher dreams up bizarre lessons. It’s amazing to me how often I fall into the fantasy of thinking that I am an utterly essential part of my students’ schooling. I was surely not a necessary part of the sounds at sunrise this morning, nor am I indispensable in my students’ attempts to make some sweet academic music in their school careers.

© 2010 Hamilton Salsich

BUBBLES AND TEACHING

Yesterday, when my granddaughter and I were blowing soap bubbles on her 3rd birthday, I somehow felt like I was back in my classroom. As we watched the bubbles drift off in the spring air and then pop or simply disappear, I thought about the hundreds of thoughts I share with my students each day, thoughts that are lucky to last as long as the bubbles we were blowing. My phrases and sentences sail out among the kids like our bubbles floated among the flowers close by, and most of my words silently vanish from the students’ minds as fast as the bubbles disappeared. In fact, all my carefully designed lessons are probably no more abiding than the evanescent bubbles Ava and I were cheerfully sending forth. Some of my English lessons, I’m sure, harmlessly dissolve and vanish within minutes, just as moments and days do. Classes and school days pass away like bubbles in a stream, and so do Mr. Salsich’s precious lessons. Fortunately, however, this, to me, is not cause for gloom. After all, I’m mildly confident that some of my words and lessons are occasionally as interesting, even perhaps as beautiful, as the bubbles Ava and I sent sailing across the lawn yesterday. They don’t last, but then nothing beautiful does, simply because beauty always makes room for new beauty. As our bubbles disappeared, my granddaughter and I took closer notice of the multicolored blossoms they had been among, and when my words and lessons have vanished, perhaps it’s sometimes true that the students’ wisdom has, in a secret way, ever so slightly widened and sharpened.

© 2010 Hamilton Salsich