IN THE BEGINNING

“In the beginning was the word” is a Bible phrase that’s always seemed strangely associated with my duties as an English teacher. Words stand at the very beginning of all things in my classes. All lessons, exercises, readings, writings, quizzes, tests – all discussions, debates, arguments, speeches, lectures, comments, and remarks start with the force of a few words. Even the thousands of thoughts that arise among us during a 48-minute class are constructed with the words we know, as buildings are built with boards and stones and steel. It’s as if words are an invisible power present in the classroom, a power that ignites thoughts and carries conversations and assembles interpretations – a power that stands ready at the starting line of everything we do. In fact, it has always seemed to me – and I often share this with my students – that students and teachers of English do business with the strongest force in the universe. All wars start with words, as do all friendships, quests, transformations, and triumphs. A world without words is a garden without daylight, a seed without soil. I’m grateful that I find myself, having just turned 69, still surrounded in the classroom by the everlasting liveliness of words.

THE PLANETS AND US

These days, one of my students finds holding his life together to be more than full-time employment, and my hope for him is that he will someday see that actually, he doesn’t have to do the work. The vast universe he belongs to is doing the holding-together for him, with true steadfastness, daily and hourly. I know from experience how easy it is to slip into a style of living that considers myself as the main mover in my life, but it simply is not an accurate understanding of reality. While I’m fretting over self-protection issues, trying my best to preserve and strengthen my small personal self, the endless universe is flawlessly supporting and sustaining even the smallest part of itself, be it the lungs of a fox or the life of my student. Our world that sometimes seems so small to us as we struggle with our private problems is actually an immeasurable vastness, speckled with far-flung planets and comparatively infinitesimal specks like my friend and me. The fact is that none of us are separate, solid, defenseless entities, but absolutely essential and inseparable elements of this graceful and limitless cosmos. In a sense, we are no more responsible for the maintenance of our supposedly separate selves than a breeze crossing my shoulder is responsible for maintaining the movement of the winds of the earth. We are always in the good hands of the universe – my student and I and all of us. For me, this doesn’t mean I can dodge my duties and become a loafer as I let the universe carry me along. Rather, this understanding fills me -- and perhaps my student, someday -- with force and daring, and a fullness of confidence that I can take part in grand creations in my life. After all, to employ a phrase this same student sometimes uses, the entire universe – rivers, stars, sunsets, cells, and seas – has my back.

I DON'T KNOW THEM AT ALL

Many years ago, when I was complaining that a certain student was lazy and unmotivated, a wise colleague replied, “You don’t know him at all, so don’t pretend to.” It was a shocking and somewhat upsetting statement, but as we talked about it for a few minutes, I realized he was right. I was the student’s English teacher, and all I really knew about him was how he performed in my class. For me to pretend that I could see into his life and learn about his motives and inner failings was the essence of foolishness. My colleague had come to my rescue and shown me the simple truth that talking about the personal lives of students as though I actually know what I’m talking about is stupidity bordering on nastiness. What I know about my students resembles what I knew about the Grand Canyon when, some years back, I stood at the rim staring out at the vastness. What I knew about the canyon was what I saw, nothing more, and the same is true of my relationship with my students. To me, each of them is a greater mystery than the Grand Canyon, and every bit as concealed from my understanding. I know how they score on tests and whether they can compose a thorough essay, but beyond that, my friend was right: I don’t know them at all.

BEING THANKFUL FIRST

I sometimes spend a few minutes after class feeling grateful for even small accomplishments, but this year I’ve actually been silently expressing my thanks at the start of class. It seems to make more sense to me, since I know beyond a doubt that helpful things will happen during class – every class. No matter what plans I put in place or how ingenious or uninspired my teaching might be, ideas of substance and merit will make their appearance among the students, and significant learning will work its usual magic. No, it may not be the particular learning that I was looking for, but it’s always there, the relaxed, trouble-free learning that’s constantly occurring inside all of us. None of us can avoid learning as we live our lives, and my young scholars are no exception. My lesson on alliteration in some Hopkins poems might make only a sleepy impression on the kids, but you can be sure some learning is happening – some subtle changes in the way they think about things. To put it another way, each of my classes is a thoroughly instructive session. The lessons the students learn may be vastly different from those in my carefully designed plans, but I’m thankful for any learning that occurs – and it always does, which is why, these days, I've been saying my silent thanks just before we start.

Unbelievable Classes

(To my students: 

Bell word is in red, echoes in blue.)

Teaching, to me, has grown to be an entirely unbelievable enterprise. Sometimes the things that happen in my classes are simply beyond belief – beyond anything that I might have imagined decades ago when I began teaching. Every day incredible events occur, from an unusual smile by a shy student, to a string of discerning sentences spoken by a boy about a book which he says he hates, to even – these days – the steady flow of warm air from the floor ducts. These may seem like just commonplace occurrences, but hidden inside their ordinariness is a strange kind of rareness. It often feels obvious to me that every incident in every English class is so strange and new-fangled as to be thoroughly incredible. Just the other day a boy turned in an essay shining with insights, this from a guy who usually gave English assignments a swift glance and no more. Yesterday a girl grew red in the face when I praised her paragraph in front of the class, and later a small smile from me caused the whole class to turn into laughing fools. These are, yes, just ordinary events in my usually run-of-the-mill English class, but, for some reason, they sometimes shine like implausible mysteries.

MY OLD-FASHIONED CLASSROOM

“Our old-fashioned country life had many different aspects, as all life must have when it is spread over a various surface, and breathed on variously by multitudinous currents, from the winds of heaven to the thoughts of men, which are forever moving and crossing each other with incalculable results.”

-- George Eliot, Silas Marner

I’ve always thought of my classroom as a sort of “old-fashioned” place, but I never actually stopped to consider what that might mean until I read this passage this afternoon. There are, for sure, “many different aspects” in my classroom, which is understandable given the amazingly miscellaneous group of kids who come to me each day. They are as different from each other as galaxies are from neighboring families of stars, as different as first-rate summer days are from lingering, melancholy winter days. Trying to understand each of them, I find, is like trying to understand a snowflake or a fast-flowing river. Thankfully, these days, after decades of teaching, it’s become easy for me to feel the “multitudinous currents” coursing through the classroom – the countless forces and influences that subtly persuade us to think this thought or say these words. My young students and I are forever feeling the effects of energies effortlessly “moving and crossing each other”, caring for us all by bringing us the bright future of new feelings and thoughts. What’s scary -- and somewhat exhilarating -- is that all of this leads to perfectly “incalculable” results, to ends that are as capricious and unforeseeable as the formations of clouds. I enjoy pretending that students can accomplish the specific goals I set, but it’s only a pleasant deception. The fact, as Eliot knew, is that old-fashioned life, whether in early 19th century England or my modest classroom in Connecticut, is more multitudinous and whimsical than the winds that spin and swirl around our school in their uncertain ways. Predicting what will take place on a certain day in Room 2 resembles the craziness of guessing precisely how snowflakes will land in the grass.

Stilling the Wild Winds

“… a Swain,

That to the service of this house belongs,

Who with his soft Pipe, and smooth-dittied Song,

Well knows to still the wilde winds when they roar,

And hush the waving Woods”

--- John Milton, Comus: A Mask

When I read this passage this morning, it seemed to be describing the type of teacher I try to be. I don’t play a “pipe” and my singing is the opposite of smooth, but I do consider one of my main responsibilities to be “stilling” – not “wilde winds”, but the swirling, swarming minds and hearts of my teenage students. I always hope to have a peaceful class, one in which the “waving woods” of my students’ inner lives can be hushed to some extent. Not much literature can touch the lives of kids who can’t escape their own spinning thoughts and feelings, so, from the moment the students enter the classroom, an atmosphere of ease and orderliness is maintained. I guess my usually subdued voice takes the place of the “soft Pipe” of the poet, and perhaps my insistence on respect and kindness at all times works like a song to settle the kids down. With a little luck, this kind of easygoing atmosphere leads to some lighthearted but stirring work by the students and me.

Christmas Eve, 2009,in Westerly

Sacrificing in English Class

In a world where “me” is making its case for the most important and popular word, I’m pushing for something else in my classes. Amid the egocentric mayhem of our fairly selfish world, I want a different world in Room 2 – a world where kids and the teacher, instead of grabbing what they can get for themselves, treat each other like the real kings and queens in the room. It takes a little sacrifice on our part – not the sacrifice of diffidence and weakness, but the sturdy sacrifice that simply says there’s something wonderful in each person in the room and we want to watch for it and be thankful for it. Forgetting about ourselves is actually one of the smartest things we can do in English class, because it always calls out the creativity in others, which inevitably blesses us with its wealth. It’s like closing the door, for forty-eight minutes, to our small cares and concerns and, in turn, opening several dozen doors to the bountiful lives of the others in the room. It’s the kind of sacrifice that finds treasures for all of us.

High Speeds in English Class

 (To my students:

The bell word is in red, echoes in blue.)

I’ve written often about the apparent lethargy and listlessness in some of my classes – the sense I often get that everything in the classroom, including the students and I, is on the very threshold of sleep – but, at the same time, it’s fun to remember that, actually, everything in the room is constantly on the move, and sometimes at fairly high speeds. For one thing, scientists tell us that every element of our body is ceaselessly moving. The countless atomic and subatomic particles zoom here and there without rest, causing the entire body to be a swirl of constant activity, even when a student is sitting in a haze of daydreams in his chair. The student seems to be entirely stationary and still, but science shows us something different, the streams and spirals of non-stop motion that make up the student who seems ready for a snooze. Also, isn’t the earth my classroom rests on speeding around at rather blistering speeds? While my students are sometimes staying awake with only their finest efforts, the earth beneath us is careering around on its axis at roughly 1,000 miles per hour, while at the same time racing around the sun at a blazing 67,000 miles per hour! It’s almost impossible to believe that sentence, to accept the fact that we are all passengers on a ship moving at unthinkable speeds, even during a lackluster English class – but it seems to be the truth. This brings encouragement to me in the minutes after the last class on a day of fairly lifeless teaching, minutes when I sometimes wonder why I ever thought I could be a good teacher. As I’m sitting in the empty classroom offering condolences to myself, it sometimes comes to me that, whether we know it or not, my students and I are always voyagers on a journey that defies description. While I’m having only small success spelling out the meaning of a Dickens paragraph, the good ship Earth is sailing so fast it’s a wonder we can keep ourselves in our seats.

Grace and Glory

I’m not a church-going person, but I do recall hearing, in a passing conversation with a Christian friend, something about “grace and glory”, and, surprisingly, those words occasionally come back to me when I’m doing the daily work of a middle school English teacher. I think of grace, not in a religious way, but in an everyday, commonplace way, as the quiet gifts I regularly receive of good thoughts and helpful feelings. When I’m working with the students, continuous useful ideas somehow seem to flow toward me, and feelings that make good teaching possible are given to me in astounding abundance. I have no idea where all this comes from, all this munificence of spirit that I make use of each day, but I feel it fully, moment by moment. This, for me, is what grace is – the nonstop giving of a universe that seems so full of goodness the giving might never stop – and it is this grace that causes me to feel the simple and straightforward glory of teaching. I’m not talking about big-time glory, like superstars seem to bask in, but rather the calm glory of seeing a student send out a stream of smiles because she finally understands a Dickinson poem, or watching a boy break through his hang-ups about writing and just set down his thoughts with liberty and delight. The glories of English class are as small as a student holding a chair for another student, or the shy thank-you’s I sometimes receive at the end of class, or the creation of carefully shared ideas during discussions. It’s a simple thing, I think, to feel the glory given to any person blessed enough to be a teacher. They’re all around me in my classroom -- constant, rousing gifts from anywhere and everywhere.

As Quietly As Grass

“They rooted themselves in her mind, and grew there as quietly as grass.”

-- George Eliot, Silas Marner

Not a lot seems to be happening in many of my English classes as the sleepy students sit through my sometimes (I must confess) tedious lessons, but perhaps inside minds and hearts, away from the lackluster discussions and activities, some promising thoughts and feelings are quietly growing. It occurs to me, now that I think about it, that almost everything of importance grows slowly and quietly, away from the superficial clamor of a thoroughly rushing world. While countless misfortunes, shouts of pleasure, disasters, and peaceful moments of satisfaction have come and gone, an oak tree in my yard has been growing, bit-by-bit, for more than 200 years. While I’m typing this, the skin on my fingers is silently transforming itself as cells pass away and new ones form, and the grass outside, as Eliot knew, is growing in its secret and steady manner. Everything, you might say, is always growing, and the growth usually makes as soft a sound as possible. Perhaps, then, I shouldn’t be pessimistic about the seeming lassitude in my students, because it may be that serious expansion and progress is occurring just inside the silence of their uninterested faces. Perhaps a thousand helpful thoughts are slowly thinking themselves into something special, into ideas that will someday push up and blossom like exceptional flowers. Who knows? Maybe a few of those up-and-coming thoughts might have been thrown down in the students’ minds like seeds during one of my classes, seeds which needed hours of silent rest (sometimes provided by English class) in order to sprout and show their surprises.

Building with Legos and Words

Watching my 7-year-old grandson building with Legos this morning made me wonder if my students could write their essays in a similar manner. Noah loves to carry out tests with the blocks as he builds, assessing the various sizes and shapes to see what he can create. He seems to have no map in mind as he manipulates the little blocks, just letting them line up and link together in unplanned ways. It’s a joy to watch him work in such a freewheeling way, and I wish my students could experience that kind of looseness and liberty in their writing. I can picture them sitting, in a perfectly unperturbed way, like my grandson, and setting sentence after sentence down with as much ease as if they were working with pleasure on a sandcastle at the seashore. Noah has a big box full of Lego pieces to pick from, which makes his job a joyous and fairly effortless one, and, similarly, my students have their vast assortment of thoughts and words to put to use as they construct their essays. They could reach into their minds and muddle around among the thoughts and make their selections with a certain amount of openness and – who knows - -even happiness. What they would end up building with their words might be as distant to them as the stars in the sky, and just as inconsequential. What would count, if they could write this way, would be the fun they would have as they help sentences stick together with the smoothness of Lego pieces – as much fun as Noah nodding and smiling while he watches his construction take shape.

LISTENING

“Eh, Aaron, my lad, are you there?” said Silas. “I wasn’t aware of you; for when Eppie’s talking o’ things, I see nothing but what she’s a-saying.”

-- from George Eliot’s Silas Marner

I wish my students and I could always listen to each other the way Silas listens to Eppie. For Silas, the world withdraws when his stepdaughter talks to him, so much so that he might be exactly accurate when he says he “see[s] nothing but what she’s a-saying.” When she is speaking to him, only she and her words -- those treasures that he takes to his heart -- exist for him. Perhaps he actually does “see nothing” but her mouth moving and the music of her words and the thoughts they symbolize. It’s like being lost in what someone is saying, a sensation I wish we could experience more often in English class. My hope each day is to see all faces shift to attentively focus on the next speaker, then the next, then the next, and so on. Friends across the room, passersby in the hall, birds at the feeders – all should fade away as we listen to someone’s words. This is the kind of focus that could free the kids and I to find the sometimes secret significance in what others say. Gold inside hills will give itself to us, but only if we give our attention to uncovering it, and the same can be said of the gold in the sentences spoken in English class.

Leaving the Door Open

“Yes – the door was open. The money’s gone I don’t know where, and this is come from I don’t know where.”

-- from George Eliot’s Silas Marner

I sometimes think of these words of Silas when a dreadful day of teaching is followed by a miraculous one. I try to leave the door of my mind wide open as I’m planning my lessons, letting in all possible ideas and allowing them to linger long enough to evaluate their usefulness, but that kind of openness contains a risk. On many occasions a perfectly foolish idea for a lesson has persuaded me of its value, and the result has almost invariably been catastrophic. True, many wonderful ideas for lessons have made their way through the open door of my mind, but now and then a thoroughly silly plan has managed to make itself seem worthwhile, at least long enough to demolish a day’s teaching. What’s strange, though, is that, on more occasions than I can count, a truly incredible and useful idea comes to me that very night, and the next day’s lessons is like lightning in its brightness and liveliness. One day disaster, next day nothing but triumph – and I have no idea where either one came from. Silas Marner would understand what I’m talking about. He customarily leaves the door of his hut open, and one day a robber walks in and promptly walks out again with his carefully stored savings, but, oddly enough, not many days later a golden-haired orphan named Eppie comes like a gift to Silas through the same open door. One day, “the money’s gone”; another day, a little treasure takes his hand in hers. My favorite words in the quote are “I don’t know where”, because, like Silas, I truly don’t know where my fiascos and conquests come from. One day my lesson lies down and dies, next day it shines like summer – and who can say why?

Connections

Much to my dismay, the little independent school where I teach keeps school open on Veterans’ Day, but this year I was somewhat pleased about it, because it caused me to consider, as I was waiting in my classroom for the students, the many connections we have to people from the past, including veterans. The fact is that the students and I are able to study Dickens’ sentences and enjoy stimulating discussions and sit at ease in my restful room day after day, only because of the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of people in past years. Countless anonymous heroes – unknown women and men who made being dutiful a day-after-day habit -- helped make a path down through the decades and centuries right to the door of my classroom. I’m thinking of “veterans” of all kinds – from the pioneers who put up the first houses on this property centuries ago, to the soldiers who served to save freedom for all of us, to the plumbers who prepared the drinking fountains we use each day, to the guys who get our school spotless each night so we can carry on our important work the next day. As we sit in my classroom and speak of appositives and writing styles and Dickens’ characters, we are imperceptibly linked to countless forces from all the years before – forces which found a way to make 8th grade English at a small school among pastures in Connecticut a possibility.

Hills and a Valley

I was watching what seemed like endless hills on my drive into school today, when suddenly they spread back into a spacious valley, and, as happens so often, the scene brought with it thoughts about teaching English to teenagers. When we’re reading A Tale of Two Cities or some poems of Shelley, I’m sure my students often feel like they’re lost among strange, bewildering hills, and yet there are always soothing valleys somewhere along the way -- places in the reading that do make sense, that do open the kids’ minds to thoughts they haven’t met before. They must learn the patience of the serious reader – learn to let the confusing places have their way until the way leads, now and then, to a few moments of wisdom and pleasure. After all, confusion is a generous gift if it leads, as it surely can, to its opposites, understanding and appreciation. I’ve always believed, weird as it might sound, that one of my responsibilities as an English teacher is to cause my students to enter what I might call wilderness areas in their reading and writing, because only then can they discover the secret and surprising ideas that can supervise their continuous growth as intelligent human beings. I could keep the kids in effortless and comfortable valleys of reading and writing throughout the year – an easy way to win kids over and have them saying, “We love English class!” – but that would be ducking my duty. There are thrilling things to be learned in seemingly mystifying and unmanageable books and assignments, but the hills do have to be climbed. The easy valleys will be there, but only among the sometimes lofty hills.

Endless Resemblances

The 9th graders and I have been discussing metaphors recently, and, as always for me, it has called forth an appreciation for the astonishing resemblances among all things. Metaphors have been prominent in literature from the earliest writings, partly because of these resemblances – these secret and strange similarities that seem to be interfused through the universe. Indeed, everything, when studied with interest, seems to be somehow similar to everything else, somehow much more like a sister and brother to everything than a stranger. A cast iron pot is like a person’s concern for others, a soft carpet is like a smile, a sky in November is like the lonesomeness we sometimes feel, and a discarded tissue is like anything you please. I’ve been encouraging the students to use metaphors and similes in their essays, perhaps like signals of their individual style and inventiveness, perhaps to point out how things are way more similar than dissimilar, or perhaps just to say to the reader that this special sentence was written with spirit and pleasure, . I’ve also been encouraging them to stretch out for the strangest comparisons, the ones that seem preposterous at first but then slowly shine with a new truth about life. In some small way or other, anything is similar to anything else, and seeing the likenesses among all things is one of the stirring joys in life, including English class.

A Drop in the Bucket

Oil on pane by Carol Nelson

I occasionally like to reflect on this old saying, especially when I’m thinking, as I often do, about the vastness of the bucket called “teaching English”. I say thousands of words each day to my students, and I teach hundreds of lessons each year, but it is completely clear to me that these words and lessons are mere drops in a bucket that’s as big as the starry sky. If my students wanted to learn everything possible about reading, writing, thinking, and listening, it would take them not 180 days, but 180 years, the subject is that colossal. After all, in English class we deal with ideas, those short-lived but endlessly spacious and spread-out forces that preside over the world. Our bucket is indeed enormous, and my day-by-day instructions, as sincere as they may be, are just small tinklings in a container of incalculable proportions.

Where's the Love?

When a friend of mine received a seeming rebuff from his girlfriend the other day, for a while it seemed to him that all love had left his life, and, oddly enough, I have a feeling my students in English class share that feeling sometimes. Of course, we don’t deal with love in some traditional senses, but if love can mean the enjoyment of and appreciation for others, then there’s at least a modest supply of love in my classes. My students and I usually do our best to bring a feeling of friendship to our discussions, and all our smiles and nods and encouraging comments to each other are surely a kind of classroom love. It’s an atmosphere I try to foster in my classes – a sense of closeness and comradeship, a feeling of being fellow learners instead of opposing rivals. Nevertheless, now and then students, I’m sure, feel that friendship is miles away from Room 2 – students, perhaps, who have little success with essays or sit silent and isolated during discussions – and to those students, and my friend, love probably seems faded and far-off. To them, it’s like love is a bank account that’s been closed for good. What I hope my friend and my students can come to understand is that love is not a material commodity, like dollars or diamond rings or pieces of paper with ‘A’s at the top. Things like love and friendliness and appreciation and cordiality are made of something way different than a material that starts and stops and breaks down and dies away. They're like the wind that has no starting or finishing place, or like the everlasting sunshine, always with my friend and my students and all of us, steady and supportive behind even the occasional covers of our personal clouds.

Evaluating the Ocean

With the passing years, it seems more and more foolhardy of us teachers to believe we can accurately evaluate “the whole child”. I’ve sat in meeting after meeting where we assess not only the students’ academic work, but occasionally drift over to discussing their emotional and personal lives as well, and increasingly it makes very little sense to me. We say things like “He looks like a very angry boy” or “She doesn’t really care about the quality of her work” or “He’s sometimes dishonest” – statements that often have no demonstrable, provable basis, and that deal only with brief, passing behaviors. The comments are sincere but completely casual – and yet we seem to believe they actually help to evaluate “the whole child”. It seems as unrealistic as presuming we can evaluate the “whole ocean” by describing a few surface features at one particular beach. I don’t mean to be flippant about this, but I sometimes imagine a meeting in which teachers who live near a particular beach evaluate “the whole ocean.” They comment on things they noticed on the surface of the water at their beach – the way waves work on various days, the colors of the breakers, the kinds of birds that come and go – and then they proceed to evaluate the entire ocean. They make the gigantic jump from a few informal observations of one speck of the surface of the immense ocean to an evaluation of the entire ocean! Surely we can see how foolish this is, and yet is it any more foolish than assuming we can come to an understanding of a “whole teenager” by commenting on a few chance behaviors? To me – and I couldn’t be more serious – each of my students is as inscrutable as the ocean, as sphinx-like as the endless sky. With my training as an English teacher, I have reasonable assurance that I can appraise their abilities as writers and readers, but that’s like making passing observations about one aspect of the surface of the sea. Underneath all my English assessments – my grades, comments, reports, and recommendations – the immeasurable lives of the students remain, like the unfathomable ocean, an undisclosed mystery.

Wakeful Thinking

As a teacher, I’ve been accused, now and then, of what is called “wishful thinking”, but I prefer to think of it as wakeful thinking. The wishful thinker often manufactures castle-in-the-sky successes where no authentic accomplishments exist, whereas the wakeful thinker simply sees what’s actually right in front of him. This world is a place of ceaseless wonders, from leaves in the fall to the look on a face in front of a sunrise to the moves fingers make on a keyboard, and wakefulness works to help me see those wonders. My students are not perfect scholars, but every day they bring their individual miracles with them to class, and I gratefully watch for them. I’m talking about just about anything, because just about anything is a miracle – the way Milly gives her always surprising thoughts in a discussion, the way George turns in his seat in the sunshine from the window, the staring at the windows that Diana does when she wanders away in her mind, the steady smiles of Kyle. I try to think in a wakeful way because I don’t want to miss any of the countless little wonders that occur in every class. No, the kids don’t always connect with my lessons, and no, they don’t always behave like first-class boys and girls, but they can’t help but bring their miraculous lives with them when they enter my room. All their hearts are pumping with precision and their lungs are lifting and falling flawlessly, which are miracles enough for me to want to stay wakeful and watch these young wonders who do their English work with me each day.

Walking Slowly in Traffic

This morning, in rush-hour traffic on a dark road, I paused at a light and watched a man walking very slowly and casually across the dark street, and for some reason it brought to mind some of my students, who amble along in the quietness of their own lives as I am rushing here and there through lessons and assignments. Cars were busy on the roads this morning, making their swift way to their destinations, while this fellow followed his own free will and walked as though the road was all his. It brought me up short to share the busy street with a man who made dispassionate walking a special skill. At 6:15 a.m., he obviously had no place in particular to go, so he gave leisurely and on-the-loose walking all his attention. In English class, I usually have many places to go – goals to reach, lessons to be learned, little and big tasks to be undertaken – so I’m sure the students often see me as someone set on getting somewhere fast, so fast that they sometimes, no doubt, take no notice of me as I speed by with my fancy lessons. I suspect most of my teenage students are somewhat like this morning’s undisturbed walker, more interested in being peaceful than in pursuing faint and far-off academic goals. They see the “traffic” of my English lessons dashing hither and thither, and I’m sure they sometimes simply keep walking in their minds to make their tranquility last. Yes, they learn a few things in my class, but the best part, for them, is most likely the little trips they take with their daydreaming thoughts, like a man strolling with serenity across the traffic.

Counting the Sunny Hours

I heartily accept the often-heard accusation that I’m a hopeless optimist when it comes to my students, and I think I actually enjoy hearing it, because it never fails to remind me of the sundial I used to see in my grandmother’s garden, the one that had “I only count sunny hours” inscribed on it. I used to think a lot about that sundial’s message when I was younger, about the fact that there’s so much sunshine in our lives, so much to marvel at and be grateful for, and I began to be bewildered as to why people so often insisted on seeing only the sinister side of things, counting mostly the gloomy hours instead of the sunny ones.  It may be that I began “looking on the bright side” way back then, when that silvery sundial showed me that brightness is a big part of our world, and that a sincere and sensible cheerfulness about things could be mine for the choosing. And it is a choice. When I sit in meetings concerning students and listen to list after list of negatives about the kids, I sometimes think, “What if we chose to use these sixty minutes to make a list of the strengths of the students instead of the weaknesses? What if we counted the moments of sunshine these students bless us with instead of detailing, over and over, their faults and failings?” It is definitely a choice, and I choose, whenever possible, to focus on the brightness rather than the darkness.  If I have one hour to talk about 40 students, I’m going to give a report on the sometimes small and scarcely noticeable strengths I saw in the past week – perhaps Peter being polite to a girl in the hall, or Jeanine jumping for joy when her friend got a good grade in English class, or Karrie Lee creating one splendid paragraph in an otherwise undistinguished essay.  There’s enough darkness in the world without my adding more to it. I choose to see the sunshine in my students’ work, and there’s always a generous supply of it. Even Jerry, who’s just managing to pass my course, occasionally says something in a discussion that will wake up the room as though newfound lights have been suddenly switched on.   

OLD-TIME TEACHING

Today I had to teach the old-time way, and it was a refreshing pleasure. The Internet at my school was down, so I was forced to do what teachers have been doing for millennia: I simply sat face-to-face with the students and shared thoughts with them. Instead of walking around the room while the students stared at various aspects of the lesson projected on the screen, I pulled my chair close in a circle with the students and we just spoke to each other for a full 30 or 40 minutes. There were no gadgets, widgets, thingamabobs, or doohickeys – just young-at-heart learners learning, again, how to look at and listen to each other. It was a powerful lesson, for me, about the force and magnificence of simple, sincere conversation. It didn’t make me want to turn away from using technology in the classroom, but it did forewarn me against forgetting about what should be the centerpiece of any classroom – a teacher and students sharing ideas. Computers and projectors and screens are machines; teachers and students are works of wisdom and passion. Tomorrow I will use the machines, when it’s beneficial, but the students and this fortunate teacher will stay center-stage, speaking and listening and learning as one.

Dimming My Headlights

In the morning darkness today, I occasionally had to dim my headlights to make it easier for oncoming drivers to see their way ahead, and it started me thinking about my students and their need for a clear road to follow in the sometimes mystifying darkness of English class. We read books that can bring on a cloud of confusion and obscurity, and the writing projects I assign can produce the kind of puzzlement a nighttime driver might experience when faced with oncoming bright lights on a dark road. I purposefully put the students into these murky situations, because it often fashions a wonderful kind of learning, but at times I need to soften the lights of my own senior-citizen, seasoned-teacher wisdom so the kids can see where they’re going. It’s all too easy for me to metaphorically speed along the roads of my lessons with my 68-year-old knowledge shining its brightest lights, but that often makes it almost impossible for the students to steer a successful course. Faced with my almost constant stream of advice, suggestions, directions, instructions, and opinions, it’s not surprising that the students occasionally lose their way and wonder where in the world they are. It sounds strange, but the truth is that I can sometimes be the best kind of teacher by dimming the lights of my own ideas, sometimes even turning them off completely. When kids are lost in misunderstanding and perplexity, the last thing they need is the imperious intellect of the teacher shining straight into their eyes. Maybe, in fact, they sometimes need total darkness, so their own promising thoughts can start to throw some youthful light on the road before them.