THE DEERSLAYER

I've been reading this old, long-forgotten classic this summer, and enjoying it immensely. The book is scoffed at by college professors and other "sophisticated" readers, but I love if for its sincerity. Somehow I get the feeling that Cooper, while not being the most talented writer I've read, is one of the most genuine. It feels like he loved his characters, and especially loved his settings -- and I admire authors with that kind of devotion and genuineness. Plus, since my recent move to a home in the dark forests of northeast Connecticut, I feel right at home as I read the chapters in the shadows of the great trees. I almost expect to see Natty and Hurry and Hutter and Chingachook come out of the woods nearby.

WATCHING BUTTERFLIES AND KIDS

Image by e³°°° via Flickr

This afternoon, just after I had spent a few minutes carefully observing a butterfly with my binoculars, the thought came to me that I rarely observe my students with such attentiveness. It seemed strange, the more I thought about it, that I had just devoted more than a minute to watching a butterfly, whereas I only infrequently pause for half that time to observe a student during English class. The beautiful butterfly captured my complete attention, but my individual students, it seems, seldom do. I wasn’t too busy today to pause and study an insect, yet I’m apparently so absorbed in the minutiae of my lessons that I rarely find a few seconds to watch and wonder about these out-of-the- ordinary creatures who are my students. Sure, I see them all before me as we work through an English lesson, and I’m as dutiful and alert as most teachers, but I don’t often stop to attentively observe individual kids. In that sense, I guess I’m not a very scientific teacher. A proper scientist observes - scrutinizes -- with steadiness and precision, always taking detailed notes, because she knows that’s the only way to learn about and come to understand the life – the reality – of the subjects of her study. Why, I wonder, don’t I do that? Why don’t I think of my classroom as a sort of laboratory? Why don’t I occasionally grow as silent and observant as a scientist, maybe for ten minutes at a stretch, carefully taking notes on what I'm watching? Are not teenagers, in their madness and intensity and brilliance, as interesting as butterflies?

A WASTEBASKET AT THE ENTRANCE

This year I may put a wastebasket at the entrance to my classroom, just as a reminder to the students that emptying their minds at the beginning of class might be a good way to go. It sounds a bit nutty, I know, but truthfully, some sensible mental emptying wouldn’t hurt the students, and might make some room in their minds for a new thought or two. If I were an artist, I would draw the inside of a teenage student’s mind as a vast swarm of ideas, swelling with each class and careening around with craziness, bulging the head almost to bursting. On the outside my students usually seem fairly calm, but inside, there must be a sort of contained chaos as new ideas struggle to squeeze into the packed space.  Seriously, how can I expect my students to accept a new idea in my class unless they first open their minds and dump a few thoughts at the door?  Partially emptying a container, after all, means the container is now ready to accept new material. To add fresh water to a glass you first have to throw out the stale. I’m not sure how I can help my students go about this emptying process, but it might help if I simply started each class slowly and quietly. If there are a few minutes of peace at the start of my class, when my words are spoken softly and haste and fussiness are nowhere to be found, that may be all the kids need to allow some old thoughts to float off and be gone.  Like a settling pool, some stillness might let their spinning ideas sort themselves out, thus opening up a little generous space for a few fresh ones from English class.

Yet

When I think about teaching English to teenagers, the word “yet” often comes to mind. Here I’m thinking of it as a conjunction, meaning something like “but at the same time” – as in “I’ve been teaching for over 40 years, yet I often feel dumber than when I started.” Teaching kids is a puzzling, paradoxical enterprise, which leads me to often feel wise yet also a complete fool. I’m sure I’ve become a more organized teacher, yet, strangely, I sense unrestrained chaos just below the surface of my lessons and classes. I’m a well-trained and qualified educator, yet I sometimes feel, at the start of class, like a kid on the edge of a wilderness. I guess I shouldn’t fret too much about all this yet-ness, since all of life seems to be a ‘yet’ kind of situation. I love my four grandchildren, yet I sometimes pine for peace and stillness when I’m with them for hours. The sunshine brightens beaches not far from my house, yet millions in sweltering places pray for the sun to soften a little. This afternoon, my backyard is a breezy place of beauty, yet down the roads of the world there is woe and weariness all around. All I can do, I suppose, is accept all these ‘yets’ and try to see the good sense of them. After all, life – including teaching -- is a total mystery to me, yet I do so often get a glimpse, too, of its trimness and splendor.

Being a Mirror

A mirror doesn’t do much of anything, which is exactly why I have a small mirror hanging on the wall behind my desk at school, just as a reminder that “doing stuff” is not always the best way to teach. A mirror just reflects, or sends back exactly what is sent out to it, and I need to do much more of that in my work with teenage students. A mirror is the opposite of a busybody perpetual motion machine: instead of rushing here and there, saying hundreds of words per minute, and trying to control everything in front of it, a mirror simply stays where it’s put and is what it is. It has one straightforward but superb task – to give back whatever is given to it, exactly as it was given. When I think about it (and I often do), a mirror is a perfect representation of one of the primary duties of a teacher. Most kids (and some teachers) don’t realize it, but the true purpose of school is to discover who you really are, and nothing does that better than a teacher who takes pleasure in being a mirror. My job is not so much to add more bits and pieces of stuff to my students’ already congested brains, but to merely show them a little of who they actually are. Luckily, my subject matter – writing and good literature – can do that, as long as I sometimes keep my lips sealed and occasionally just reflect back to the kids, like a loyal mirror, what they have written or said. Perhaps, in a figurative way, I can do what the mirrors in our dance teacher’s room do. In dance class, the students probably say, now and then as they catch a glimpse of themselves in the mirrors, “Wow, so that’s what I look like!” and in my class, maybe the teacher, Mr. Mirror, can cause them to do a little gaping, not at what they look like but at how they think and who they are.

BEING AN ECHO

Echo Bridge, Newton, MA

    In the school year ahead, I’m looking forward to doing less jabbering and more echoing. I’ve known for a long time that I do far too much talking in my classes – too much prattling on about this, that, and the other idea that happens to show up in my mind. Of the thousands of words I speak in class each day, probably half are thoroughly unremarkable, inconsequential, and unnecessary. Silence would be a fine substitute for many of my spoken sentences – silence, or some soft and precise echoing of what the students say. Instead of throwing out words upon words, most of them destined to vanish forever in the vastness of the students’ lives, I could see myself as a quiet mountain valley that can easily contain, and reverberate back to them, the thoughts the students express. In conversation, nothing is as heartening -- and rare -- as hearing our ideas spoken back to us, and perhaps I can do that more often for the sometimes insecure and hesitant young thinkers in my classes. No doubt I must not waver from occasionally speaking my own words of grandfatherly wisdom to the 9th graders as we make our way through the school days, but I also need to be quieter more often, like mountains often are as we move among them. When we speak in the presence of mountains, we occasionally hear our words sent softly back across the air, perhaps reassuring us that, yes, our thoughts are still out there somewhere, and kids need some of the same reassurance. If I repeat back what they say now and then – just shut up and be an honest echo –  maybe they’ll be amazed by the sound of their young ideas.

A Kaleidoscopic English Class

Oddly enough, reading about kaleidoscopes today got me thinking about my work as a teacher of teenagers. I loved playing with those strange cylinders when I was a kid, and what amazed me the most, I recall, was the fact that every single twist of the tube brought a beautiful symmetric pattern into view. There were no flubs, no unsightly patterns, no designs that seemed even slightly unbalanced. However many times I turned the tube, something delightful and beautiful always became visible. It’s not easy, but I sometimes try to look at my groups of students as though through a kaleidoscope. I doubt if a visitor would use the word “beautiful” to describe any particular scene in my classes (we’re just an everyday kind of teacher and some fairly commonplace kids), but I try my best to look through the kaleidoscope of my inner vision. Even a run-of-the-mill 9th grade English class can seem extraordinary when seen with the miraculous help of optimistic assumptions and high expectations. Kaleidoscopes do their tricks with mirrors, and I guess you might say I use the mirrors of my abiding belief that startling miracles can happen in every class, and at any moment. Perhaps because I try to look for the miracles, they seem to be there more often than not. Even a silent and seemingly glum group of English students can suddenly, at the turn of a moment, seem like serious scholars – if I’m watching, and if I’m using my secret inner kaleidoscope.

INSCAPE AND INSTRESS IN ENGLISH CLASS

I have long been an admirer of the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, and today, reading again about his theories of “inscape” and “instress”, I thought about the collections of teenagers that make up each of my English classes.  Hopkins studied scenes in nature with great care, hoping to detect that which made each scene totally unique, and I often find myself wishing that I could discover the secret something that makes each of my class sessions a one-of-a-kind phenomenon.  In 9A, for instance, the same kids come day after day, but each day – maybe even each moment – there’s a subtly different makeup or motif in the class, something that renders it, for that moment, a class beyond compare. Hopkins would look at the same tree at five different times in a day and say it had a different “inscape” each time – a different makeup, composition, perhaps even character – and I could say the same about a given group of students.  “Instress”, if I understand it correctly, was Hopkins’ term for the force that both energizes and holds together the inscape of every scene and object in nature.  Even a totally motionless tree, according to Hopkins, contained within it a distinctive kind of energy that made it possible to remain a totally unique tree at any given moment. It seems odd to me, but this concept perfectly applies to my classes, each of which seems to fizz with concealed energies, even when stock-still and silent. What’s interesting is that, like the instress in nature, these hidden energies appear to transform moment by moment.  Even a relatively relaxed 10-minute discussion, when I watch and listen with care, can simmer almost visibly with ever-shifting forces, much like a grove of quiet trees quivers, though imperceptibly, with its hidden life. In a poem called “On a Piece of Music”, Hopkins says that “good grows wild and wide”, and I see that in my groups of students, each of which is wild and wide, moment by moment, in special and matchless ways.

DOING DON QUIXOTE

I remember being enthralled when I read Don Quixote years ago, and this week I’ve been thinking of the brave but bewildered knight errant as another new school year comes into view on the horizon. Like countless readers, I loved the Don for his wacky willingness to simply accept what comes along and do what must be done. I especially admired his eagerness to just go where the next moment led him. We are told that, as he set out on his first adventure, “he pursued his way, taking that path which his horse chose, for in this he believed lay the essence of adventure.” The word “adventure” catches my attention there, because that’s precisely what learning and teaching should be – a somewhat impetuous and unconstrained expedition. During this coming year, I hope to do a little Don Quoxote-style teaching as my young students and I explore the territories of good literature and their own rough-and-ready writing. I’ll have my lesson plans prepared, of course, but I might occasionally give a lesson a gentle kick in the side at the start of class and just see where it takes us. With my teaching reins held a little more loosely than usual, it might be fun, for instance, to follow a lesson on symbolism in The Tempest, even if it decides to take the path called "characterization" shortly after starting. From there it might wander down the trail of "the theme of friendship", and might end up stopping at the waterhole of "iambic pentameter". I must confess that it’s not easy for me to teach this way, since my bent is naturally toward orderliness and single-mindedness, but I might be able to do a little Don imitation now and then – be a little errant and wayward, let my usually disciplined lessons kick up their heels and have their capricious way.

GIVING SPACE

I walked in some wide-open spaces this morning, feeling full of the freedom I so often miss in day-to-day matters, and it made me wonder if I could provide more of this kind of sweeping, unfastened freedom for my students. I have often heard people say something like “Give him some space” and “I need my space”, and perhaps space is, in fact, one of the pressing needs of the students in my English classes. It strikes me, when I give it some thought, that my students may feel hemmed in, constricted, and confined much more than they feel free; they may feel more like prisoners than travelers in wide open spaces. This saddens me, because nothing should be more liberating than reading and writing, and to think that these hopefully refreshing pursuits might be construed as imprisoning by the students is, to put it mildly, distressing. Of course, the learning process is often, by necessity, rigorous and constricting, and studying a Shakespeare sonnet is not, at every step of the way, a liberating experience. However, there has to be some way to ensure that the sudden sense of intellectual and emotional freedom will be a regular occurrence in my classes; otherwise, I am little more than a warden instead of a teacher. Somehow I have to make it possible for my students to occasionally (like every day) feel as free as I felt in the unfenced meadows and pastures this morning. Writing and literature should do that, after all. Even if composing an essay is plain hard labor, I must somehow enable the young writers to feel, albeit when they read just one of their sentences, the joy of having made something that has a kind of boundless beauty. While rigorously working through a Joyce short story, there should be at least one moment of sudden deliverance from ignorance for each student. Even if they don’t “get” the entire story, surely – if I’m doing my job – I can show them some heights where small but indispensable truths can be touched, and where their little lives, and mine, can feel suddenly as spacious as summer fields.

Small Secrets

This morning a bolt and a nut reminded me of the importance of small secrets in teaching and learning. I was replacing a blade on a sickle, and for many minutes I could not get the bolt to stay still while I turned the nut. The top of the bolt kept turning, the nut went nowhere, and my temper took some turns for the worse, until – ta-da – I discovered the secret. I simply had to insert the bolt from the other side of the blade so its square head fit into a square space on the handle, and, there you go, the bolt never turned and the nut never stopped turning till all was tight. I had seen the small secret of success, and suddenly the job was just a short and simple one. It occurs to me, now that I think about it, that dozens and hundreds of similar secrets lie in wait for my students to come across in their travels through my English lessons and assignments. Of course, part of my responsibility is to show them these secrets, but it’s fun, too, to let some of the secrets lie concealed so the satisfaction of discovery can be enjoyed. Perhaps a student is reading over a first draft and feeling puzzled as to why the sentences sound so flat and lifeless, when, quite suddenly, she notices that they are all roughly the same length. Presto, the secret of varying sentence lengths is revealed to her, and the happiness of composing a stylish essay is hers to savor. Life – including the repair of sickles and the writing of school papers – can sometimes seem full of frightful twists and turns, but every so often a little secret is discovered, and presto, the road ahead is suddenly straight and plain to see. Starting in September, countless of those secrets will be waiting for my students, and sometimes I’ll dispassionately stand aside and simply observe the searching, and smile.

Never a Problem

The Buddha taught that there’s never a problem with being exactly where I am, and yesterday the truth of that statement came home to me fairly clearly. First of all, where I am is the only possible place I could be, at least at this precise moment, which means it’s out of the question for me to be anywhere else. Thinking of the here and now as a “problem” suggests that I think there’s a better place somewhere, a place and time where I would be happier, but there’s actually no other place, at least at this moment, than exactly where I am. Since this is true, the idea of a problem needing to be solved, a better situation needing to be found, becomes meaningless. There is never any other place than right here, and therefore, as a matter of plain fact, there is never any real problem. Also, I’ve realized for a long time (at least when I’m fully awake and aware) that all that exists in any present moment is thought (or consciousness, or awareness). There certainly seem to be lots of material “things” in the present moment, but these – if I analyze them carefully – exist only in thought, or consciousness. The fact is that everything in any present moment is thought. If this is true, and if the present moment, as I said earlier, is the only place I can ever be, then it follows that the only real power in life is thought. What’s especially fun to realize is that this thought, this power, being immaterial, has no boundaries whatsoever. There’s absolutely no limit to what I can think and how far my thoughts can extend. A thought about being brave or compassionate is never born, like a material entity, and never ends, but extends out to infinity. It’s power is unlimited. Therefore, how could there be a real problem in any present moment, when infinite power is always there with me. When I think about it, I realize that a problem arises only when I feel somehow powerless, but how can I feel powerless when any present moment contains never-ending power of incalculable force and variety? It might be, in fact, that the present, right where I am, is always the opposite of a problem – always a moment when everything is precisely as it should be and must be, and when power is expanding out beyond the farthest horizons. I guess what this is all about is going from a tiny picture to an amazingly big picture. When I’m thinking that the present moment is a problem, I’m seeing the smallest possible picture – the picture of little, isolated, vulnerable “me” surrounded by other isolated and threatening entities. It’s a nightmare picture, for sure, one that naturally leads to a thoroughly problem-filled life. However, when I change the picture to the biggest and truest of all – the one that shows both the endless reaches of space and the vast inner horizons of limitless thought – I see clearly that there can never be a genuine problem in a universe of such boundlessness. There are changes, yes, and differences, and ups and downs, and happiness and sadness, and success and failure – but these are like breezes blowing in the never-ending wind of the universe. They’re not problems, just the way things are at this particular, inescapable, perfect, problem-free moment.

A Kind of Expert

I guess you could say I found out this morning that I’m an expert at teaching English. Well, not really, but I did discover, while messing around in the dictionary, that the word “expert” derives from the Latin word for “try”. I picture medieval speakers of English saying something like this: “You have tried so hard to be an alchemist that you are now an expert – an advanced and superior tryer." Thinking along these lines, perhaps I could call myself an expert teacher, since I’ve tried fairly assiduously for a full 45 years. It occurs to me, actually, that this would be an excellent definition of an expert – one who simply tries, again and again and again. After all, who’s to say when someone actually knows all there is to know about a subject – especially a subject as maze-like as teaching teenagers? Calling someone an expert English teacher is like calling a cloud in the sky an expert cloud: both are silly and pointless statements. Teacherness and cloudness, if we can use those terms, are way too vast and multifaceted to be measured and evaluated. So we’re left with trying as a measure of expertise. If I continue to hike the steep and bewildering trails of teaching English, continue to take up the path each day with as much" devotion and ardor as I can gather, perhaps I can call myself, in some ways, an "expert teacher.

I took a shady and satisfying bike ride this morning along some of the roads I’ve ridden in the last few days. It was a muggy morning, as all of them have been lately, but my riding pace was slow and smooth, and the breeze in my face was strong and steady. One of my favorite parts of the ride was the short, steep climb up a farmland road called Youngs Road. It is, indeed, very steep, but I took my time and used low gears, stopping for cold water every so often and enjoying the Northeast Connecticut countryside. The road runs alongside a pasture where one long brown cow was quietly standing. Another wonderful portion of the ride was a road I hadn’t taken before – an English-looking road running between freshly cut pastures and rather stately country homes. I felt lucky to be riding there.

The Universe Will Still Be Harmonious and Happy

A wonderful thought came today: when something termed a “disaster” happens to me, including the disaster called death, the universe will continue in its harmonious and happy way. So often I get entirely caught up in “me-ness”, seeing myself as somehow the center of the universe, and feeling that if something “bad” happens to me, the universe itself will suffer. It’s strange to me that I somehow developed the idea that a universe with no beginning and no end – a universe consisting of an endless number of astonishing occurrences moment by moment forever – would somehow go haywire if I was struck by cancer or lost my savings or died on a dark street. It bespeaks a weird view of the world, one that completely misses the immensity and miraculous complexity of all things. Imagine an ocean with no shore, no bottom, and no surface, and then imagine, say, a one-inch portion of a current in that ocean. Would the infinite ocean be unfavorably affected if that portion disappeared into another portion? We know instantly that the answer is no, and the same answer must be given to the question of whether the relatively wee phenomenon called Hamilton Salsich suffering a stroke would cause the everlasting universe to suffer. When something called “unfortunate” happens to me – and it certainly will, at some point – I and my family and friends can take comfort in the fact that the myriad miracles of the universe will continue unfolding and exploding everywhere and for all time. My disaster will be no more disastrous than a breeze bending around a tree and blending into a different breeze.

In Good Hands

I have always spent a good part of my time concerned about my safety and security, but this morning, thank goodness, it came to me with great clarity that the infinite universe has me in its very good hands. The plain truth is that I am not a solitary and separate person who needs protection, but an essential and sheltered part of a single unending force (sometimes called the universe, sometimes God) that is always doing what is just right for itself. If I close my eyes and give it serious thought, I can see myself as a breeze in a wind that never started and will never stop, or a wave in an ocean without end. How can this breeze or this wave possibly be harmed? They can change, certainly – everything in this universe is fluid and ever changing – but harm or destruction is literally not possible. The grand universe takes good care of uncountable stars and rivers and dust particles and hearts and blood streams, forever and ever, and it will take good care of me. Sleep in peace, Ham.

A CARDINAL AND KIDS
As I was sitting on the patio this morning close to a bird feeder, a cardinal came floating across the yard toward the feeder and then veered away, as if it saw me and was wary – and it reminded me of what seems to happen in English class now and then. My teenage students are wary folks -- especially, perhaps, when their teacher is a silvery and seasoned 68, a guy with more furrows in his face than hair on his head. They often stare at me as though they’re seeing something from a distant historical age. When they approach my desk, they’re usually hesitant and silent, coming slowly forward with the deference and wariness they might show to a frail grandfather. It happens that as I’ve been writing this, the cardinal has approached the feeder a few more times, but each time has swerved off to the distant trees, as if he can’t quite find the courage to get so close to the old fellow below the feeder. I hope he finally is fearless enough to come for his food, and I hope my young students, too, can learn to live comfortably in the classroom with their elderly teacher. For me, it’s a question of being patient – just sitting at my desk (or on the patio) and good-naturedly waiting for birds and kids to trust a little more.

Pronouns can be helpful words (there’s a bunch in this paragraph) but I wish I could use the first person singular a little less when I’m thinking about teaching. Of course, they’re a convenience in talking and writing, but when I’m thinking about the nature of the work I do with my young students, the use of those pronouns suggests that I’m thinking about teaching in a way that I just don’t like. It suggests an overly personal approach to the work, as though the person called “I” is terribly important – more important, it sometimes seems, than the teaching and learning that happens in the room. With this first-person-singular attitude, it’s “my” classroom and “my” students. The lesson plans are “my” plans, as though I somehow own the ideas in the plans, and when things go well, it’s often what “I” accomplished as a teacher instead of what the kids accomplished as students. I realize I may be playing semantics here, but still, I find my constant use of these first person pronouns a plague in my thinking about teaching. Why does it have to be “my” classroom instead of just “the” classroom – a place where the learning is not owned and engineered by any one person but is shared by all? And why, for heaven’s sake, are they “my” students, implying that I have some strange type of ownership of them. They are simply students, not owned by anyone except their own freewheeling strength of mind. And “my” lesson plans? Don’t I borrow all of my ideas – yes, all of them – from outside sources, including colleagues, articles, books, and on-line discussions? I may remake them a bit, but they are still rightfully “owned” by the countless hidden sources from which they sprang. Since when are they “mine” and not simply shared ideas found at the infinite fountain of teaching know-how? Of course, I do play a significant part in the learning that occurs among my students, but only in the way a passing breeze plays a part in the general wind that’s blowing across my yard as I type. Imagine a breeze announcing, “This wind is my wind and all the breezes in it are mine.” It might actually make an interesting children’s story, and the moral would be that self-importance is a foolish path to follow. All breezes are equally important as they work with the larger winds of the world, and the gray and slightly stooped teacher and his students in Room 2 are equally important as they stir up some English education together.

An Enchanting Life

I often forget how I ended up getting lucky enough to teach English to teenagers for 45 years – and I shouldn’t, because it’s an astonishing story. Truth is, a zillion pieces had to fall into just the right places to enable me to find myself in a small school in St. Louis in 1965, and a zillion more pieces have fallen into place in the years since then. Now I do my labor of love in another small school in southeastern Connecticut, and just how I got here is still a marvelous mystery to me. Stars shifted, possibilities rose up from nowhere, winds of chance and good fortune followed me here and there, and lo, I find myself still surrounded by captivating kids for nine months of the year. Are the kids always well behaved? Of course not, and neither, you might say, are stars or winds or snowstorms or sunshine, but that doesn’t make them any less miraculous. I live an enchanting life as a teacher, and I don’t want to forget it, nor how the universe somehow was good enough to allow me this life of learning and teaching. Some might say I earned it by hard work in school, dedication to my job, etc., but to me it’s way more complicated than that. The fact that I’ve had four decades of rewarding work and millions of other people haven’t remains an impenetrable mystery to me, as profound as the mystery of where exactly the breeze that just blew by me came from.

English Class Concerts

It occurs to me every so often that the dignified atmosphere I insist on in my classes can, in some ways, be compared to what you might see at a classical orchestra concert. First of all, there’s a hush in the concert hall as the musicians silently enter, as though something extraordinary is about to occur, and I insist that students enter my classroom in a similarly dignified kind of silence. Both the orchestra and my students are expected to present distinguished performances, and therefore they should both set a suitably decorous mood beforehand. I wouldn’t expect musicians to enter the concert hall conversing and jostling, and neither do I expect it from my students. I also recall, now, that an orchestra doesn’t begin its concert before taking a moment to make sure their instruments are in proper tune, and perhaps we need to do something similar in English class. Perhaps we should use the first two or three minutes to “prepare” ourselves to take part in distinguished, scholarly discussions and activities. A few moments of complete silence at their places might be fitting – a little time to lay a foundation for studious work by settling thoughts and allowing the bewilderment of their young lives to clear away. If all of this sounds like I want my classes to be grimly solemn – not at all. I always hope for some cheerful laughter during class – the joviality of junior scholars enjoying their academic labors – but one of the best kinds of cheerfulness, to me, arises from doing dignified work in a stylish way. Like musicians in an orchestra, we can have great fun while we’re “performing”, and we can do it best by behaving in a properly honorable manner.

Car Alarms and Surf

This morning, as I'm typing this, someone's car alarm is sounding down the street, which might be thought of as quite aggravating. However, it could also be thought of as simply some morning sounds -- even some interesting morning sounds. It’s strange, when I think about it, that I’m so accustomed to judging sounds: bad, good, annoying, pleasing, happy, sad. When I’m sitting at the shore listening to the sounds of the surf, I automatically categorize them as pleasant sounds, but I instinctively (and almost unconsciously) place the sounds of a car alarm in the “annoying” category. You might call me old Judge Salsich, the distributor of verdicts about the relative quality of sounds. But what if I took off my judicial robes? What if I simply accepted each sound as just what it is – a phenomenon in a universe of phenomena? Would it be possible, when listening to the car alarm, to say, “That’s a very interesting sound – just as interesting as the sound of the surf”? An odd but cheerful picture comes to mind: I’m standing on the sidewalk, looking down the street at the car whose alarm is sounding, and I’m smiling contentedly. Someone says, “Why are you smiling, Ham?” and I reply, “Oh, I just find those alarm sounds quite fascinating.” It could happen, but only if I give up judging sounds and just accept them for what they are – attention-grabbing gifts given by the universe.

Enjoying the Show

There are lucky times in my teaching life when I’m able, so to speak, to sit in the audience and enjoy the show. Usually I’m much too involved as the main character in the drama of “Mr. Salsich the English Teacher”, but now and then I’m able to get myself out of the drama and off the stage. I’m still teaching, perhaps even standing in front of the students and guiding the activity, but in my mind I’m sitting in the audience, observing with attentiveness this absorbing show. It’s a tragicomedy full of sometimes spellbinding teacher stunts, distinguished successes, and miserable failures. As I watch Mr. Salsich the teacher in action, I alternately laugh, sigh, shout approval, and sob. It’s an odd trick, to be able to perform as the teacher and at the same time observe the performance, but I find it an essential one. Far too often I get so completely caught up in the mesmerizing stage show called “9th Grade English” that I forget that it’s only a show and I’m only playing a part. It’s so easy to take myself way too seriously as a teacher – to begin believing that what I do during 3rd period on Wednesday will have life-changing effects on the children, when the truth is that my classes are no more important than the sunrise this morning or the meatloaf I made last night. My English classes are shows (sometimes spectacles, occasionally even extravaganzas) -- not too different than sunrises, making meatloaf, my lungs lifting and falling, or the stars shining their lights across the sky. My classes come each day and then they go, and they’re no more special than other things that come and go, like breezes and bubbles on water. To be honest, I find my classes to be fascinating shows, both in the preparation and in the performance, but they are only shows. They change student lives no more then their breathing does, or how their parents hug them, or what movies they see. Does this make me feel less valuable as a teacher? Not at all, and, truth is, actually more valuable -- as valuable as stars overhead or a breath of fresh air or a good hug.