Who Made This Teacher?

One of the questions I was supposed to ask myself as a small boy in religion class was, “Who made me?” and I’m still asking that question, but rephrased as “Who made this teacher?” It puzzles me, really, this mystery of where this silver-haired, somewhat creased and crumpled senior citizen English teacher came from? Who, or what, made or brought or pushed or dragged or unfolded him to the point where he still loves every second he spends in the classroom? It’s a question that baffles me as much as “Where does the wind begin?” or “What made this moment?” In religion class, the answer was simple -- “God made me” -- and now that I think of it, perhaps a similar force was responsible for making the teacher my students see each day in English class. I am not a church-going person, but surely there’s something vast and endless about the powers that shaped me – the countless spoken words and books and articles and sights and events and master teachers and conversations. How can I possibly pry into these forces enough to understand the wonderful ways they worked together to assemble Mr. Salsich-the-68-year-old-teacher? And it wasn’t just people, but weathers and woodlands and mountains too, and rainstorms when I was six and days of fall light just last week. All of these, and limitless others, threw together, over forty-plus years, this still-young-at-heart instructor who, alongside his students, struggles and fails and prevails each day. Somehow it all happened, and here I am, resting at my desk, lucky to be looking forward to again finding 8th graders in my classroom in about 16 minutes.

Seeing the Stones

The other day, driving to school among the fall fields and woods, I noticed a small section of a stone fence I’d never seen before, and it amazed me rather the way I was amazed, this morning, by the new things I saw in To Kill a Mockingbird. I’ve taught the novel for many years, so you might assume that I’ve already noticed all there is to notice, but this morning I saw, as though for the first time, some qualities of Miss Maudie Atkinson I had apparently missed in earlier readings. I shared my surprise with my students: How can a long-time reader – an English teacher, no less – miss so many details in a book on numerous readings? Are my reading skills so unsharpened that small details effortlessly dart past me? Quite honestly, the answer is probably yes, and it seems like a gift given to me to be able to say that – to be able to admit that a well-seasoned senior citizen teacher still has tons to learn about serious reading. This was a humbling lesson for me, but a helpful one too – this finding out how far I have to go to as a skillful reader. It helps me hold in mind the most important truth about pinpoint, polished reading – that it’s a major mountain whose summit is still somewhere out of my sight.

Slow-Working Words

I occasionally think of my spoken words in class as small specks of yeast released into the dough of the students’ lives. It’s reassuring to think that at least some of my words might slowly sift their way through the students’ hearts and minds and make a small change in the way they think and feel. When I make a loaf of bread from time to time and see the lumpy dough slowly soften and spread and rise, I sometimes think of my students stretching out and transforming day by day, perhaps sometimes because of words said in English class. With my still wide-eyed optimism, I always hope at least a handful of my hundreds of words per class might cause a useful change in the students. Like a baker of bread, however, I must always practice patience. The dough takes almost three hours to gradually give way to the yeast’s reconstructing powers, and who knows how many hours, months, and even years it may take for a few spoken sentences of mine to take their soft effect? There’s no rushing in fine bread making, and a good teacher knows his words may need years to prove their worth to the inner lives of the students. Of course, most of my spoken words are probably lost forever, like yeast grains spilled in the sink and washed away. Still, I take consolation in the fact that far off in the future, a former student might suddenly understand something new about the nature of this life, partly because of a few slow-working words from a long-ago English teacher.

Seeking Calmness

“I will seek calmness in my ordinary duties.”
-- Rev. Rufus Lyon, in George Eliot’s Felix Holt, The Radical

Calmness is not usually associated with teaching teenagers, but lately – like Rev. Rufus Lyon – I’ve been finding some serenity as I go about my everyday duties. I guess there’s goodness in even the slightest tasks of a teacher – distributing papers, bestowing smiles like small presents, listing and describing assignments – and this past week I was blessed and soothed by this usually concealed richness. Nothing special happened – no long leaps forward in learning, no group hurrahs by students as they suddenly grasped something, no particularly top-notch teaching – but still there was comfort in carrying out the tiny tasks that all teachers must take upon themselves. Just saying to the students, “Let’s take a look at Chapter 4” felt like something special, like lots of things would change because I said it. It may seem silly, but on Wednesday, in a 9th grade class, I walked from one side of the room to the other to throw something in the wastebasket, and the throwing brought the thought that the class would be a calming and winning one, and it was. It’s a curious truth – and Rev. Lyon knew this – that the most pedestrian duties can sometimes be the most restful and inspiring ones.

As Good As It Is Possible to Be

When I came across this dictionary definition of “perfect” this afternoon – “as good as it is possible to be” –it came to me, in a flash, that my students are always perfect. In the face of the seeming ludicrousness of that statement, let me stand by it and say that it does seem to me, now that I think about it, that each of my students – and their English teacher, for that matter – is, at any given moment, as good as he or she can possibly be, at least for that particular moment. At 9:07:53 a.m. or at 1:26:31 p.m., each of us is precisely what we must be at those exact moments in the history of the universe. We are as good as we can possibly be for that specific instant. I think the reason we so often get lost in making judgments about worse, good, better, and best is that we have the all-consuming habit of comparing ourselves at different moments: I’m not as good this moment as I will be in some future moment, or as I was in some past moment. We see ourselves as worse or better or best simply because we live more in the past and future than in the present, and thus we are constantly making comparisons and passing judgments. The plain truth, however, is that my students and I – and all of us – live only in the exact present moment, which is always, to use a current cliché, just what it is. At 10:42:12 a.m. on September 27, 2010, only that moment exists, and it – and we – are as good as we can possibly be right then and there. When the next moment arrives, we will no doubt be different from the previous moment, and for that new moment, we will be, as usual, a perfect fit. As I thought about this curiously astonishing fact this afternoon, I was sitting in a lawn chair watching leaves float down from the trees, and it occurred to me that we would never think of saying, “Oh too bad. That leaf floated down in an imperfect way”, or “I wish those leaves could do a better job of falling to the ground.” No, we seem to instinctively realize that falling leaves always do their handsome tasks in perfect ways, and it now seems to me, surprisingly enough, that my students and I do too.

FELIX HOLT, THE RADICAL by George Eliot

This is a WONDERFUL book -- as are all of George Eliot's. The last few days' reading has been a joy for me. Now I remember why I tend to read only the great classic authors -- because the write with a rare beauty and power. I'm now on Chapter 40 and rolling along, loving all the characters as the plot draws near to the end.

THE WINDOW AT JAIMIE’S

Just the window
is enough for him,
for his heart
that holds heavy
and light winds.
He washed the windows
till they showed
the construction of the world
that waits for him,
with its holy places
prepared to hold him
in comfort and fondness,
the way a wind
holds the yellow leaves
just now sailing past
the window
made in wonderland.

A Steward of English

I am a teacher of English, but I sometimes think I’m more of a steward of English. My on-line dictionary tells me that a certain type of steward takes care of people, and perhaps manages some aspect of their lives, and I actually like that as a description of a teacher. It seems to me – and I enjoy reflecting on this – that I’m taking care of my students when I’m teaching them grammar rules or how to read sophisticated novels. They bring me the part of their lives that deals with understanding and using the written word, and I do my best to help them oversee it and hopefully refine and polish it. An airline steward looks after the needs of the passengers, and it seems to me that I do the same for my students as they travel through their widening worlds of writing and reading. If they appear to need punctuation assistance, I’m there with a rule and a smile, just as I am when they need a strenuous but inspiring writing assignment. It has often seemed to me that I am – and perhaps should be – more of a helper than a teacher, more of a steadfast and unassuming servant than a loud leader. I can hear some readers responding that students need leaders more than servants, and of course, in a way, that’s true, but perhaps I can be both a leader and a servant, both a teacher and a steward. I am not at all reluctant to embrace the assignment bestowed on all teachers – that of being of service to students – because it is in serving students that I can best teach them, and it is in taking care of their academic needs that I can be a leader who truly leads. Passengers need stewards to show them the way to an easy and satisfying flight, and kids need teachers who teach and steer by serving and caring.

It's been another wonderful week at school, what with my hard-working and helpful students, colleagues who care about each others thoughts, and weather from nature's wonderland. Now, after my third Friday off (in a whole school year of them!), I'm sitting on the patio as evening drifts toward us on this almost motionless September day. I spend the day grading papers, making my weekly slide show for the students, and reading -- with some kick-off exercising in the minutes around sunrise. Now I hear Jaimie moving dishes around in the sink, and off in the woods and weeds the sounds of small creatures commencing their evening singing. 

Things

This morning I fell into thinking about all the “things” I had to do in class today, but fortunately I remembered that English class doesn’t deal with things, but with thoughts. As I prepare my lessons, it seems odd that I often picture myself manipulating “things”, as though teaching English is no more problematical than pulling and pushing furniture to different places in a room, or setting out stones on a garden path. It’s as if I believe that simply by assembling certain “things” (goals, objectives, methods, etc) in the right arrangements, learning will inevitably happen. What I remembered this morning was that teaching is far more like charting the cosmos than arranging “things”, far more like seizing the wind than organizing steps in a lesson. We English teachers deal with words and ideas, which are as different from tangible, maneuverable “things” as clouds are from concrete. Yes, I have to carefully prepare my lessons each day, but that’s sort of like a pilot preparing to fly. In due course he has to place himself in the hands of the vast and capricious winds, and each day I must put myself, with all my carefully composed plans, in the hands, not of “things”, but of evanescent and boundless words and ideas.

A Beautiful Finish

When I heard someone exclaim that a certain table had a beautiful finish, I was reminded of a student’s recent essay, and of the student herself. Her essay was certainly not a work of academic perfection, filled as it was with sporadic errors and whole sections of sluggishness, but still, it had what I would call “a beautiful finish.” Just as an antique table might be scattered with nicks and scrapes but still be considered a masterwork, so did this girl’s writing win me over with its modest and sincere artistry. There was a shine on the sentences as I read them -- mostly, I think, because I could sense that she tried her very best and that the words were the work of a big heart. You might say her essay, then, was “finished”, as though, for that single endeavor of her young life, it was as good as it could be. For some reason, it made me think of the sky, and it came to me (I was outside beneath a bundle of fall clouds) that every sky that appears above us – every different display of clouds or haze or sunshine or storms – is perfect just as it is. Every cloudy sky is a perfect cloudy sky – has a perfect finish to it, in other words, just as this girl’s flawed but heartfelt essay was perfect for what it was. There was a finish to it that seemed like something lustrous as I set it down on my desk – my soiled and disordered desk that should have been thankful to have such writing resting on it.

Face to Face Teaching

This year one of my teaching goals is to do more face-to-face teaching. By this I don’t mean aggressive, in-your-face teaching – the kind of teaching that takes a teacher right up against the students in a hostile stance, putting him in a contentious position as the students’ opponent instead of partner. That’s the kind of so-called “tough” teaching that I thought was distinctive and first-rate back in my first rash and incautious years in the classroom, but I’ve learned that bluster and bravado only create chaos in the minds of kids, certainly not wisdom and peace. Given that kind of cantankerous teaching, it’s better for kids to travel the streets for wisdom than waste time in a quarrelsome classroom. I guess I’m talking more about the kind of teaching that takes me and the students face-to face with what should be at the center of all English lessons -- words and ideas. When I’m planning lessons and teaching, I often get lost on side roads and by-paths, instead of focusing on what’s truly important – the significance and influence of individual words and ideas. After a class, I sometimes feel like forceful words and great ideas were lurking along the route of my lesson, but we never managed to come face to face with them. What it will take is a little slowing down on my part. I need to be a more deliberate and unhurried teacher, the kind of teacher who takes his students slowly along the road of a lesson to see the special sights, the words and ideas that can carry kids’ minds to surprising heights. If I don’t “cover” as much in a lesson, at least we haven’t missed the miracles along the way. There will be time for the students, sooner or later in their remaining 80-some years, to find the miracles we missed.

Wondrous Things

I feel a little odd and old-world this morning, so I’ll use some old-fashioned language and say I hope to behold wondrous things in my classroom today. Actually, that’s my hope everyday, because I’ve become convinced, as my 68 years have passed, that wondrous things happen around me constantly, moment-by-moment, and that all I have to do is open my eyes and behold them. Because the eyes of my mind are usually more closed than open, I have completely missed a countless number of astonishing occurrences - – the slight smiles of students, the way wandering leaves float along in the fall, the sun letting its light down on the walls of my classroom in different ways at different times, the leaning forward of this student and the leaning back of that. I live in the midst of ceaseless miracles, and yet life sometimes seems as featureless as a sheet of paper to my unseeing eyes. Today, though, is a day for wide open eyes and an unfastened mind – a day to truly behold what this impressive universe has prepared for my classroom. Every sentence spoken by the students will be extraordinary, simply because it’s never been spoken before in all of history; every face will shine in ways never seen in the world; every bend and turn of the trees outside the classroom will be beautiful beyond belief. If you can’t see the possibility of this, then perhaps your eyes are just as shut as mine usually are. I wish you a day of simply seeing, like I’m looking forward to today.

Climbing High Enough

“It’s always a beautiful day, if you just climb high enough.”
-- airline pilot to passengers

Each day, I try to climb high enough in my work as a teacher. It’s so easy to get lost in the feeling that everything’s small and restricted in teaching and learning – that I and my handful of students are wee creatures at the center of a diminutive universe called 9th grade English. From that close-up perspective, teaching and learning is little more than a relentless struggle against enormous and persistent obstacles. We may find success one day, but there’s always the fear that some type of failure will find us tomorrow. However, like the pilot, I know that somewhere up above my shortsighted view there’s a perspective that shows English class in its proper place in the universe. My students are learning how to use and understand their language from countless “teachers” each day – my English class, yes, but also everything they read in any class or anywhere, every word they speak or hear, every television show or movie they watch, and on and on. From the largest and farthest perspective – the “big picture”, we might say – Mr. Salsich’s English class on a country road in Connecticut is a minuscule current in an endless and shoreless river of language learning. I’ll keep working hard writing detailed lesson plans and pulling my weight in the classroom, but I’ll also try, as often as possible, to climb in my thoughts to a higher place where the truth of things comes clear – that the river of learning will continue to course along, come what may in my little classroom.

Nutty Teaching

When I saw the hickory nuts spread out on the grass beside my house this morning, I thought, strangely enough, about teaching. I find my work in the classroom to be almost always a pleasurable enterprise, but there are times when I need to be, you might say, as hard as the shell of a hickory nut. In the midst of teaching a lesson, occasionally I must present a severe -- even stern -- exterior to the students. I need to sometimes remind them that I am absolutely serious about keeping their attention and teaching them something. It’s not easy to break open a hickory nut, and I need to occasionally demonstrate for the students that my steadfastness is of a sound and indestructible sort. On the other hand, there’s a softer seed inside the hickory nut, a seed that may eventually sprout and produce a prosperous tree, and there’s always, I hope, a softer side to Mr. Salsich that my students can easily see. In every essential way, gentleness is the strongest of all the teaching virtues, and I trust my students can sense the gentleness nestled inside my sometimes steely appearance. Like the hardest hickory nut, I need to be hardy and durable on the outside, but hopefully there’s always a promising seed hiding inside.

Lights Along the Road

On my long commute to school in the darkness of these September mornings, I get pleasure from seeing the streetlights along the roads -- those small signals that let a little light down on the millions of us who make our way to our important places each day – and it often starts me thinking about my young wayfaring students. I long ago realized that my English courses are faint and shadowy roads for many of the students, and that a little light along the way sends strength for a successful journey. I don’t want to eliminate all the darkness, since darkness seems to be where wisdom is usually born, but I do want to set out a light now and then just to say, “This way, boys and girls.” In the midst of wandering off course in a chapter of A Tale of Two Cities, a precise suggestion from me can bring some useful illumination to the scholars. It’s a cheery sight, at six-fifteen on a murky morning, to see so many lamps lit along the roads, and maybe my job is to make reading Dickens and writing essays a bit less obscure and mysterious by setting out, at sufficiently far-flung intervals to preserve some of the enriching darkness, a string of educational lights along the route.

A Word Like a Fire

My students often get discouraged in their writing endeavors (usually because of grades they consider to be second-rate), but I try to persuade them to look beyond a letter grade to the features in their writing that throw a light on their true talent – features like the powers residing in single words. If an essay receives a C because of assorted problems, it still, most likely, has some phrases, even specific words, that seem to glow when you read them. Even the student who regularly struggles with organization and clarity can sometimes set down words that work like small fires in an otherwise perplexing piece of writing. I try to point out to the students the special words in their essays – the ones I come upon like lights on dark trails – and convince them that just a few of those strangely stunning words can win over a reader. No doubt some students will still receive Cs on their essays, but perhaps the presence, now and then, of a word like a fire will help them hold fast to the thought that a few compelling words can cause an essay to glow a little, if only like a small and hesitant flame.

There Is a River

When my students, like most of us, occasionally fall into dismay and discouragement, I always hope they will soon be able to see the river of good thoughts that’s constantly flowing inside them. There is, indeed, a river there, and in all of us, and it has more rousing and optimistic ideas than we could ever count. It flows from somewhere or nowhere in its relentless manner, and the only way we don’t notice it is by simply turning away and noticing the pessimistic river instead – and that’s a steady and persuasive one, for sure. It’s easy for kids, in their sometimes snarled and frenzied lives, to be spellbound by the flow of negative, downbeat, disapproving, and downright depressing news and thoughts that pour past them, which is probably why I try to select books to read in class that will bring a brighter view. I don’t mean that I avoid books that show the certainty of sorrow in human life, just that I look for books that also show the strength and inspiration that can come with, and even be created by, the sorrow. There is a river I love in great books – a river that carries light for the darkness and quiet confidence for the future – and those are the books that can be the creators of new life for young students, bringing a stream of stirring ideas that any teenager can make use of. Those are the books, too, that can turn the students back to the good river of hopeful thoughts that’s always with us all, if we could only turn and see it.

Gradualness

On my early-morning 50-minute drive to school today, I gave more than usual attention to the slow but sure increase of daylight – the gradual gift of another day – and because of this, on impulse I decided to adjust my lesson plans for the day, with a revised focus on the importance of gradualness in the study of English. It was, indeed, a beautiful beginning to the day, mostly because of the almost imperceptible way in which it occurred, and I talked to the students about the fact that understanding often begins in just such a slight and hardly noticeable way. They often want to tussle and brawl with the books we read, as if comprehension comes through the use of haste and force, but I asked them today to try another technique, something like the restful way of this morning’s sunrise. Could they, I asked, think of understanding as something that usually shows up in our lives slowly, like sunshine lighting up an interstate little by little? Could they talk themselves into good-naturedly waiting for knowledge the way they’re content, I would imagine, to wait for the sunlight to stretch out across their lives each day? We often read books in class that are full of a miraculous kind of obscurity, and you can’t force clarity into those kinds of books. There’s light inside the pages, for sure, but it only rises and shines on us when we’re willing to wait and let the words slowly glow in their faint and gradual way.

Mono-tasking

I ask my students each day to join me in daring to be monotaskers. Mind you, it’s not easy for me, for I often fall into the fashionable practice of multitasking, but at least when I write my daily paragraphs, it’s usually just me and the words, and sometimes, as my assertive ego at long last drops into the background, it’s just the words. When I’m truly focused on the task of placing words on a computer screen in graceful and wise ways, the wide world could go crashing off somewhere and I might just keep typing. It doesn’t always happen, but when it does, this type of unswerving, lost-in-thought effort feels like total fulfillment – and I hope my students can learn to let it happen for themselves. You might say it simply requires a love of one-ness – an affection for being thoroughly present with the single task that needs to be done. In a world gone haywire with two-ness, ten-ness, and thousand-ness, it’s a challenge for the students to settle for simply doing the one job that’s at hand, but once they do, they usually find it’s no harder than having, and really enjoying, a single delicious apple for an afternoon treat. It’s hard to enjoy five apples at a time, and it’s just as hard to write a satisfying essay when sixteen concerns are careening around your mind. I ask my students to write and read the way they would eat the most marvelous apple ever – unhurriedly and with affection and deliberation, one high-quality word at a time.

A Man of Privilege

Coming out of a store this afternoon, I happened to look up at the sky, and for some reason it appeared totally remarkable to me with its curling set of multicolored clouds. I think I even paused in the parking lot to take it all in – a September sky that seemed like none other I’d ever seen. On other days I might have passed under it with scarcely a notice, but today there was something arresting about it, this strange assemblage of gray and windy billows above me. As I was driving home, I thought about meeting my students for English class tomorrow, and whether I might pause at some point to take in the remarkable nature of all of them, these teenagers who could tell the world a few things about living life with gusto and a great amount of goodness. I’m as privileged to be their teacher as I was to be present beneath that extraordinary sky this afternoon, and, as I did today outside the store, I need to occasionally pause among the students and be grateful for my good fortune.

"Felix Holt, the Radical"

I had another excellent hour or so with this fine novel. Her characters, with their different dialects, are utterly realistic and charming, and of course the wisdom in the book is ever-present, almost page after page. Here is an especially wonderful quote: "So our lives glide on: the river ends we don't know where, and the sea begins, and then there is no more jumping ashore."

Ah, such special September weather. The last few days have had a quiet coolness that's been perfectly refreshing. I've done some wood-splitting and sawing in the fresh fall air, and also some sitting, writing, and reading outside in the sunshine, or, on early mornings, inside by the friendly fire. Noah and I had a fine time finishing up our 300 piece jigsaw puzzle (a picture of many exotic animals), and now we're working on a puzzle about the fish of the sea. Ava and I enjoyed playing "baby and mommy" (you can imagine what that's like) and also reading the new copy of "High Five", an excellent magazine I subscribe to for her. Yesterday we sent them off to Jessy for the weekend, and it was a sad (for me) farewell. I miss them, but I must also admit to enjoying the solitude this weekend.

Imprisoned Ideas

“But the little man suffered from imprisoned ideas, and was as restless

as a racer held in.”

-- George Eliot, in Felix Holt, the Radical

This year I have many of George Eliot’s “racers” in my English classes – kids who can’t begin to count all their spanking new, raring-to-go, but locked-up ideas. As I watched them in class last week, I pictured limitless numbers of ideas dashing here and there inside them – new-born thoughts as well as thoughts a thousand years old passed down to the kids through the generations. The ideas are surely full of frantic energy, eager to find some way to express themselves, but unfortunately the mental jails of teenagers tend to be taught and unyielding. As the kids sit restlessly in class, I can almost see them straining to keep control of their restive, ready-to-break-out thoughts. Of course, at times the thoughts do break free – in a burst of blurting, in a totally rowdy paragraph, even in a whole essay that’s blessed with both looseness and precision – but usually the ideas the students set free in English class are the tame ones, the trusted ones that can be counted on to say the right thing. This year perhaps I can convince the kids to cut some of the locks and let a few ideas fly around in freedom. They’ll have to go easy, of course, and keep some sort of control over their thoughts, but thinking freely can be a fun experience when you’re a freshman English student. It’s like racing around in the fresh fall air, just joining in with nature’s free ways – just reading and writing with wise and stirring spontaneity.

Sarah Orne Jewett and George Eliot

After spending the last month or so reading James Fenimore Cooper's The Deerslayer (a good read but definitely nowhere near a classic), I was pleased to go back to two of the finest authors who ever wrote -- Sarah Orne Jewett and George Eliot. I read a touching and beautiful story by Jewett about Irish immigrants to America, and went back to Eliot's Daniel Deronda to enjoy more of Eliot's wise and graceful sentences. She's one of the absolute best -- right up there with Shakespeare, Milton, and Dickens. 

How Big Are Feelings?

 Yesterday, when the students in our school chorus sang a stirring rendition of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”, I was moved almost to tears by a mixture of feelings, and later I wondered just how big those feelings were. Of course, in some ways it’s a perfectly silly question, because there’s no way to measure feelings, and surely never will be. A feeling is not a material object, like a shoe or a sack of potatoes – not a “thing” that starts somewhere and stops somewhere and thus can be easily measured. A feeling, I guess, is the opposite of a material thing – an invisible force as measureless as the air around us. When we say we are “carried away” by a feeling, we don’t realize how right we are, and that a feeling can bear us beyond the farthest frontiers. Sometimes I see this in my students’ eyes as we discuss the books they’re reading. It’s as if the book has given birth to feelings that are still flying away inside them, and the students are simply hanging on for the ride. I see it sometimes in their written sentences, too – in sentences that clearly carry the weight of young feelings that are big beyond measure. I feel fortunate -- privileged, really – that my daily work involves being in the presence of such limitless forces.

The Music of English Class

Yesterday morning I started my work day by listening to my school’s middle school chorus singing with rousing exuberance, and it inspired me to wish there was singing of some sort in my English classes – but then I realized that, in fact, there is.  The kids in the chorus were singing so well that it shook me a little, standing there on the third day of school – shook me to see students giving their all to something as simple as making music. There wasn’t anything fancy about it, nothing spectacular or especially polished – simply teenagers telling their music teacher, and me, that singing, at least on some mornings, was made just for them.  As I watched and listened, I started to see that a similar kind of singing, if I can call it that, sometimes happens in my classes. Can’t earnest and  occasionally deep discussions about books be seen as a kind of singing?  It’s not music like the kids in the chorus make, but it’s surely music to my ears to hear teenagers telling each other the feelings that flow through their young hearts, feelings that sometimes rise to the surface in our literary discussions. And isn’t the nimble and harmonious writing that young people occasionally produce – the sentences in their essays that sometimes sing with youthful zeal when I read them, and the paragraphs that can croon and hum with the coolest adolescent wisdom – isn’t this a kind of music?  Passersby wouldn’t hear songs from musicals and movies making their way out of my classroom, but, if they’re listening with their hearts, they might hear the songs that written and spoken words sometimes sing.      

Who -- or What -- Does the Teaching?

I confess to wondering, sometimes, just exactly who – or what – does the teaching that happens in my classroom. I long ago gave up the notion that a single individual called “Mr. Salsich” does it, because I simply know that’s not true. To me, saying I do all the teaching is like saying a breeze in my backyard brings about all the great winds of the universe. Each day something wonderful occurs in my little classroom (and no doubt in all classrooms, to one degree or another) – something beyond my ability to understand, something that shifts and shakes up the young lives I’m entrusted with – and I know without doubt that I, a small breeze in a vast wind called learning, am not totally responsible for it. What happens is called learning, but it might as well be called “changing lives”, because that’s what all learning does, and I don’t feel comfortable calling my small self a life-changer. No, I’m just part of an immeasurable process, just a passing gust in the endless swirl called education. When a breeze blows by me, I know to not ask where it started, because its origin lies in the immensity of the atmosphere, and, for a similar reason, I may as well not ask who or what does the teaching. I suppose the best I can say is that it just happens, like winds from wherever bluster among our streets on these fresh September days.

It was a wonderful first day of school for me, after all these many years. I was as jumpy and thrilled as I was that first year in the classroom back in 1965. I simply cannot believe how lucky I am to belong to such an excellent profession. I felt like some kind of honored dignitary today. And tomorrow, lucky for me, I will have the opportunity to make 36 children very happy. I take it as a challenge -- every day.

Now a quiet evening at home in the woods of Brooklyn, with crickets and other creatures singing all around.

The Substance of English Class

An interesting idea came to me on the drive to school this morning, and it occurred to me that the idea, in a sense, had no “substance” – nothing that could be weighed, measured, assessed, or graded.  It was truly a marvelous idea, one that stirred and even shook me a bit, one that seemed possibly life-changing in some small but significant ways, and yet – where exactly was it? What exactly was it? Of what “stuff” was it made, what material, what substance that I could lay out on a table to examine and evaluate?  I find it strange that this idea that so inspired me this morning was actually as insubstantial as the wind, and, oddly enough, I feel a similar sense of strangeness when I try to assess my students’ work in English. Of course, there are the objective quizzes and tests I occasionally give, which provide a reasonably safe kind of measurement, and the students’ essays, at least to a degree, can be evaluated by their relative orderliness and clarity, but what about the really essential aspects of English class, like ideas?  English deals with words, and words are born of ideas, and ideas are the forces that transform the world moment by moment – so how do I measure the subtle and transitory ideas born within the students each day? My job is to teach English, which means not just proper punctuation and the meanings of literary terms, but also the life and light available in the best books. The books I use hopefully help my students to see in new ways, to think things they’ve never thought, to maybe even make new lives for themselves, at least in small ways – and how, for heaven’s sake, is this to be quantified and assessed?  A new idea in a student’s mind is like a breeze from the back of beyond, or a sudden stretch of sunshine, and I know for sure there’s no way of appraising such experiences. I guess all we can do – the students and I – is simply welcome the experiences with a smile, the way we smile in a breeze and beneath fresh sunlight.     

        

"The Lady of the Lake"

Today I went back to this wonderful narrative poem by Sir Walter Scott. The author is generally ignored in college English departments, but I find this poem to be utterly beautiful. The poetry rivals, in my mind, the narrative poetry of Wordsworth, and yet Scott is never mentioned in the same breath with Wordsworth. Oh well ... I just did.

On Letting the Tools Do the Work

As I was sawing some stove wood this morning with an old-fashioned handsaw, I thought of my late father, and then of my young English students. Dad always told me to “let the tools do the work”. I’d be sweating away with a saw, forcing and shoving and slamming it through a log, and he’d come along and softly suggest that I simply let the saw do the work. The saw is a fine tool, he would say, but you have to lighten up and allow it to show its stuff. I remembered Dad’s advice this morning, and I also thought of my new students, whom I will greet on the first day of school tomorrow. They will be using many tools this year in English class, and I hope I can persuade them to loosen up a little and let the tools take them through the assignments. Words, for instance, are tools of tremendous power, and they are quite capable of making marvelous sentences and essays, if the students will only let them. You might be thinking that the students make the essays, not the words, and of course that’s true in one sense, but in another sense, we might say the words actually make the essay, just by being their matchless and spirited selves. A few words burst out of a student’s mind and into the essay, and those words, in their inimitability and feistiness, call forth more words, which in turn tell other words to take their place in the essay, and so on and so forth. Writing can almost be that easy – just standing out of the way, you might say, and trusting words to work their magic. Of course, some type of planning is indispensable, and the students must make sure the sentences are under a reasonable amount of control, but still, some faith in the force of words themselves is essential. I must convince the students that words, like handsaws, do their best work when we let them do their best work.

Pals

Beloved Uncle Matty

 Here are some photos from Noah's recent 7th birthday party...

A strange Lego creation

"Hi Hammy!"

Jaimie and I spent a quiet, cool, and gusty day yesterday at home in the woods of Brooklyn, CT. It was as good a late-summer day as I can recall, and I even enjoyed some juicy and mellow apples from the local orchard's farm stand.

Here is a photo of Jaimie, early this brisk morning, sitting by the fire with coffee and a book.

Never Any Separation

"A unity of spirit to meet nature’s challenges can bring the intelligent responses and the adequate resources that are needed."

-- Christian Science Monitor, September 3, 2010

It's so important to remember, especially in emergency situations, that no one is ever separate from anyone else, any more than a breeze can be separate from the endless winds of the atmosphere.The universe is a single infinite entity, and, however much we might feel separate from each other and from the power of the universe (which some people refer to as "God"), any separation is an utter impossibility. Simply feeling that great fact, and really knowing it, can bring instant comfort and strength.

"The Deerslayer"

Hutter's "Muskrat Castle"

In Chapter 19, there is some of Cooper's finest descriptions. While Deerslayer is being held captive by the Hurons, Hutter, Harry, Hist, and Chingachook head back to the castle, but are by some concealed Hurons. A fight ensues, but prior to it, the author does a wonderful job of describing the lake as the sun rises. Simply beautiful writing.