A LOST SELF

One day he lost his self.

It was a shy, scared self,

and now it had disappeared,

like darkness does

when morning

makes its light among us.

He sat and stared out

at the universe

which now was not heavy,

and held him

in its never ending hands.

SOFT SOUNDS

This morning he was surprised

by the sound of the furnace

finding its life again in the cellar.

It was a soft sound,

like someone humming

at the start of another day,

or a stream taking its easy way

among stones and boulders.

He wondered if, among the stars, 

there is also that sort of sound,
a sort of everlasting singing 

as the universe slows or speeds up

in its travels

with him and his family. 

NOTHING

There was nothing

he needed to do.

The dawn was doing it all,

with its last stars and its

silent footsteps

outside his house.

A whole day

was being brought to birth

without his help.

Wherever he looked,

a lamp seemed to be

switching on,

and signals were being sent,

but there was nothing

he needed to do.

FREE 3-D

"Snowy Forest", pastel, by Karen Margulis

Recently, I saw an add that shouted at me to buy a new kind of 3-D television, but today, splitting wood out among the snow-white trees, I saw several sensational 3-D scenes, all for free – and it got me thinking about my own 3-D classroom. In my many pauses to catch my breath while working this morning, I noticed astonishing three-dimensional views all around me. In one instance, I noticed a slim snow-covered branch fairly close to me, and then, behind it, countless small trees diminishing into the distance. I stared for a few minutes, just feeling grateful for this good fortune outside my house, and realizing, with a silent joyfulness, that it’s outside every house and across every hillside. It’s also in my classroom – authentic 3-D television, without the screen. Each day, the students are placed out in front of me like a three-dimensional scene of modest tastefulness – a few up close, and then others behind, receding down the classroom like trees in the woods. Truth is, I’m usually too absorbed in successfully getting through my lesson plan to pay attention to the basic elegance of the scene in front of me. My job is not to focus on the scene in my classroom, but to teach, so I usually miss the routine, moment-by-moment loveliness in front of me – but still, it sometimes wakes me up with a start just to see these good students in perspective, some up front and some further back in simple scenes no fancy television could touch.

SLOW DRIVING. SLOW LEARNING

"Country Road", oil on canvas by V...Vaughn

I often find myself behind a school bus on my way to school, and almost always I eventually feel grateful for it, for it reminds me of an essential truth about teaching and learning. Usually I’m a fretful, even frantic driver in the morning, believing, for some reason, that some kind of desperate driving is needed to get my day started efficiently, but falling in behind a big bus gradually transforms the frenzy to a pleasant kind of patience. The bus lollygags along, stopping for students now and then, and slowly my thoughts slow down to a fairly undisturbed walk. Little by little, I begin to actually take pleasure in the passing morning scenery, and speed seems pointless. In my classroom speed seems equally pointless, whether it’s dashing through books, or breaking records for most essays assigned in a year, or forcing five topics into a lesson instead of a reasonable one or two. I occasionally get caught up in the race to cover crazy amounts of material in class, and the school bus scenario in the morning makes its easy to see the insanity of rushing anywhere, and the simple good sense of living -- and teaching English -- slowly. The sentences in the great books we read in class were written slowly, and only the slowness of a serious reader can sense the wisdom the writer set down in them. Since truth takes lots of time to take shape, and since it usually takes lots of time to see and understand it, my goal in English class is to stay in front of the students -- an old, slow-thinking bus of a teacher -- so slowness, and real learning, might happen.

SIGNS IN THE DARKNESS

"Late Night Fill Up", oil on birch panel, by Gerald Shwartz

Driving to school this morning, I noticed the obvious fact that road signs are shining and easily visible only when headlights strike them, and it brought to mind the students in my class who only occasionally show their smart side -- only occasionally astonish us with thoughts from somewhere in the far distance. They're like important signs hidden in the darkness of night roads, waiting for lights to flash across them so their meanings can be seen and understood. These kids stay silent for most of a class, but sometimes a single question or comment can bring a certain brightness to their faces, and it's then that they show some of the wisdom that's been there, like a sign in the darkness, all along.

"Up on the Roof", pastel, by Johanna Bohoy

It’s astounding to me to remember, now and then, that an infinite number of possibilities await my students and me each day. I sometimes forget that the universe is vast beyond measurement, and that the students and I are part of that vastness – part of the 15-billion-year-old extravaganza that’s constantly constructing, transforming, and expanding itself. There are as many possibilities awaiting us as there are stars spread out in the cosmos, and they arrive at our lives with the randomness of shafts of starlight. Before school, I sometimes sit in my classroom and see, in my mind, my students and I as on the edge of a minuscule speck surrounded by immeasurable swirls of stars and planets. How, I then wonder, can I think so highly of my position as the planner and producer of learning for my students, when I see the astonishing vastness of our situation -- a few willing learners looking out at the endless lights of knowledge that spin around us? I plan my lesson carefully, but who really knows what will happen today, or this hour, or this moment? Out of the limitless number of possibilities, who knows which ones will shimmer like lamps for a few seconds in our classroom today? It’s impossible to say which rays of starlight will shine on our houses tonight, and it’s just as impossible to guess which flames of understanding will flare up in Room 2.

LIGHTS FOR THE WORLD

"Light in the Dark", oil, by Zack Thurmond

On these dark days of winter, I sometimes think about the light my students will send out to the world as the years pass, and some of that light, I like to think, is being harvested and stored these very days in English class. I see it in their eyes every day -- the light that surfaces when a student sees the truthfulness in a sentence, or when most of a class seems to suddenly understand what Dickens is trying to say in A Tale of Two Cities, or just when a student learns that a considerate comment during a discussion can raise up someone’s day like sunshine raises up spring grass. Room 2 is a workshop and storehouse of light. Little by little, the light in my students’ strong minds and caring hearts grows clearer and more enduring, simply because children’s lights are predestined to shine with greater force and goodness. I just happen to be lucky enough to be present as it happens.

KINDLY STEADFASTNESS

"Snowy Range Road Wyoming", oil, by George Coll

Driving to school this morning on snowy roads, it struck me that I was using a combination of gentleness and strength that is similar to what I use with my students. The roads were slick in unseen places, so my hands had to be soft enough on the steering wheel to allow the car to sort of flow over the snow instead of assailing it like an adversary. I had to almost let the wheel turn itself in my hands as it “sensed” what maneuvers needed to be made. Simultaneously, however, I had to be strong – had to stay absolutely alert and observant, sitting up straight with eyes fixed firmly on the road. Softness and muscle – it’s what I needed this morning, and it’s what I need each day in my teaching. There’s enough inflexibility and hardness in the world without my adding more in my classroom, so I try to share as much of my soft side with the students as possible – the side that allows me to confess to mistakes, to laugh at my own ignorance, and to sometimes let the class carry on with their own whims and interests. Nevertheless, I must still stay strong for the students, simply because it’s what they urgently need. Along with hardness, this world also has way too much flightiness and fickleness – too much oh-well-do-whatever-you-want kind of attitude – so I owe it to my students to show them the kind of affectionate supervision and kindly steadfastness that might make their world less frenzied and more full of light and discipline.

SIGNIFICANT SMILES

“Mr. Jerome winked and smiled significantly.”

-- George Eliot, Scenes of Clerical Life

I came across this quote in my reading this morning, and I instantly felt it was useful for my teaching. I guess I smile as much as any teacher, but I’m sure my smiles are not always significant – not always signs of an open door of enthusiasm and acceptance on my part, but often, I’m afraid, signs of just the customary, required kindliness any teacher tries to bring to class. A significant smile is one that says I’m totally present and totally appreciative of the students’ presence – that I’m thoroughly enjoying being with them. My smiles, truth be told, are too often merely robotic responses – the kind of smiles that probably don’t mean much to the students. Making a change might be fairly easy, but it will require more mindfulness on my part than I sometimes bring to class. I need to be entirely aware of what’s happening, including how the students are feeling and looking, and exactly what’s being said and exactly why and how it’s being said. When I’m not fully aware – when I’m sort of auto-piloting my way through a lesson -- my smiles are simply pictures pasted on my face, but when they’re born of genuine awareness, they are sincere and helpful gifts to the students. It just takes some clarity of focus. Instead of  being with my students in a casual and distracted manner, I need to take their presence seriously, second by second, and make my smiles something more than mere routines.

MELTING SNOW AND ENGLISH CLASS

"Melting Snow", oil, by Don Gray

As I’m writing this, I’m listening to the haphazard sounds of melting snow dripping off the eaves, and it reminds me of the sometimes unsystematic operations of my English classes. I try my best to bring order and arrangement to all my classes, but inevitably there are those times when my teaching takes a detour down an appealing path, and before long the lesson has become a rather free and easy excursion among out-of-the-blue topics. The melting snow drips in its own accidental way, and these freewheeling classes of mine make their turns and stops and detours as chance dictates. It’s like letting a car loose to drive itself, or like Don Quixote kicking his horse in the side and saying, “Steer yourself and I’ll ride along.” Surely this kind of haphazard teaching is not something I desire or seek, but when it happens, I tend to take a step back, at least for a few minutes, and see where it takes us. After all, there’s great beauty in certain kinds of randomness – the casual rustling of tree limbs in the wind, the offhand flow of rivers, the laid-back look of afternoon light as the hours pass – and perhaps my occasionally messy classes can create an eccentric and special kind of learning in the classroom. By letting things happen spontaneously now and then, maybe I can make it possible for the students to share in the magic of looseness and naturalness, like the slapdash dripping from the eaves.

Grass and Lassitude

The snow in my neighborhood is slowly softening and passing away, displaying, after all these weeks, the stouthearted grass that obviously never gave up on spring. It gives me a good feeling to find some green across the ground instead of always white, and it makes me marvel a bit at this grass that's so strong and stalwart, so willing to wait for winter to go its way. In some ways, I can learn a lesson from the grass that's slowly surfacing on lawns and fields. Over these snowy months, the grass, I assume, hasn't struggled, hasn't groused about its sad fate, hasn't hurried itself up through the snow. It's been simply staying where it is, silent and resolute, ready for whatever comes, whether a covering of still more snow or a pleasant wind of spring. I wonder: In my teaching, could I be more like this resigned and long-suffering winter grass? Could I wait in a more easy-going way when lassitude seems to cover my young students like snow? Could I simply remind myself that wisdom always arrives at last, at least to the patient, and that waiting is the perfect path to learning? I'll be watching the grass in the next few weeks, just to see the green gaining on the white, like new ideas irresistibly showing up in the minds of my students.

ENJOYING THE WATERFALL

Talking with a good friend yesterday reminded me of something I've often thought about -- that my students and I don't really own any ideas. We "have" ideas, and ideas "come" to us, but we surely don't make or own any of them. We're not little factories that somehow fasten together things called ideas" and then use them or store them away like so many manufactured commodities. As we work together in Room 2, we simply try to be the respectful recipients of ideas as they generously arrive at our lives the way leaves alight on lawns in the fall. You might say we observe and appreciate and play with our ideas more than we make them. My students and I should feel lucky to be part of a universe that is such a magnanimous and proficient producer of ideas. We're like drops of water in a wondrous waterfall that never stops -- a waterfall named "Ideas". A drop of water can't own other drops, and neither can we own ideas. All we can do is relax and enjoy the ideas as they fall around and upon us.

My Dear Sons,
     I got to thinking about us today, a dad and his sons, all without special women friends (at least to my knowledge). I have been without the love of a woman for ... well, I've lost count, but it must be more than 20 years. Those years of love with your mom were among the best of my life, but what I realized today is that I've had years and years of genuine love since then -- just a different kind of love. The love between your mom and me was, in some ways, a selfish, grasping kind of love. There was a lot of me, me, me in it, at least on my side. The kind of love I've experienced since then has been, I think, less me-centered and more outward focused. It's been a love for others and the whole world, not for what I can get out of it, but just for the sake of loving. It's made me realize, more and more, that real love is not tied to any one person or place or thing. Real love is not material, not something we can weigh and measure and keep and own. Real love is like the air we breathe, free to everyone and absolutely infinite in scope.
     And it can never go away or disappear, especially on Vaentine's Day. This is a day to sit back and smile and truly take in the wondrous fact that love (or Love, because it's everywhere and all-powerful and can't possibly be defeated) is always here for us to be astounded at and sincerely enjoy.
     Some people even say that what is called "God" is actually Love. I believe it.
     Especially today.


Love for all,
Dad

"Into the Woods", oil, by Robin Weiss

Up early this morning as usual. Silent reading and thinking beside the still dark window. Drove the dark streets for coffee and a cinnamon bagel, then split big logs in the crusty snow, then did dishes till the kitchen was clear and clean, then ironed shirts and pants for tonight's class (creating a sharp-looking, serious professor), now sitting by the window tapping on this keyboard.

Sarah Orne Jewett and George Eliot

Yesterday I continued reading Eliot's Scenes of Clerical Life, with its graceful, artistic writing, and I also read a short story Sarah Orne Jewett, "A Winter Courtship" -- a brief, beautiful, and utterly honest tale of two elderly widowed travelers who decide, in the midst of a day's trip from one town to another in Maine in the late 1800's, to marry each other.

"Winter Light through Trees", oil, by Steven P. Goodman

So far this has been a four-day weekend of stillness and serenity. My life is simple these days, especially compared to so many millions of others, and I'm thankful for it. I've spent the last two days trying to be as appreciative as possible for every single moment, whether it's sitting at the puzzle table to try to understand where the various pieces have their places, or reading some Sarah Orne Jewett stories beside a sunny window, or splitting logs for stove wood under the winter trees. Ava and Noah are with their mom, so we miss them for sure, but the peace and almost total silence is wonderful, I must admit.

LETTING THE PUZZLE COME TOGETHER

Puzzled Cow Fenced In, oil, by Robin Weiss

I’ve been working on an unusually perplexing jigsaw puzzle for probably two months now, and, slowly but surely, it seems to be coming together. I say “coming” together because it often seems clear to me that I’m not “putting” it together as much as I’m simply watching and waiting for the pieces to present their proper places to me. It’s a question of being long-suffering, and perhaps even hospitable, as you stay ready to accommodate each piece when it finally introduces itself and determines its place. I’ve realized that putting puzzles together involves less forceful focusing than I had thought, and more of what I might call peaceful passing of time at the table, just staying put so the pieces can find their positions. In my work as a middle school English teacher I also have to “stay put” with a certain kind of serenity as I wait for the parts of a lesson to settle into the general design.  If I rush and push, chances are that portions of my plan for the class will stay apart in some ways, and at the end of class the puzzle of my lesson will still be a puzzle. The secret, I guess, is to work assiduously and wait softly. When the kids come to class, the learning is scattered before them like a complex puzzle, and simple staying power, on their part and mine, will almost inevitably enable it to come together.

DEPENDABILITY

Yesterday, at a time when the temptation to sink into low spirits about my teaching was especially strong, I thankfully thought of my heart. It came to me that my trustworthy heart had been dutifully pumping all through the previous night as I slept, and was doing its steady work even now, at the same time that I was seeing my teaching life as a dismal stage show. Even as I was offering condolences to myself for being such a catastrophe in the classroom, my stout heart was reliably sending life throughout my body. While I was seeing myself as a pedagogical disaster, a major miracle was occurring within me, moment after moment. This realization, as I sat in my classroom with a little wintry daylight left outside, was a restorer, a reminder of special truths, and a light that lit up the next few hours. As I drove home on the highway, I thought of other things that help me as faithfully as my heart – the car’s engine that keeps running without my assistance, the wide lanes on the road that let all of us move in a methodical manner, the sun that sends its warmth without fail, and – yes – even my mind that makes precisely the thoughts that are right for me every second of my life. When I’m working with my students, my heart is dependably doing its job, and so is my faithful brain, that miraculous muscle inside my head that works little wonders second by second so I can keep carrying out my classroom duties with an amount of success that never fails to surprise me.

FOUR THOUSAND DAYS OF LEARNING

I often fall into the snare of seeing myself as the “starter” of all learning in my classes – the person who permits learning to take place by setting it in motion at the outset – but the truth is that learning needs no start because it has never stopped. From the first moment of conscious awareness, my students have been learning at lightning speeds. All glimpses, all passing sounds and sights, all words seen or heard even with just the swiftness of a short-lived thought – all are teachers of a high order. My students have, for something like four thousand days, been doing a serious kind of studying and learning, just by living their irreplaceable lives. In my classroom, they will continue this constant and mysterious process, whether addressing themselves to my lessons or soaring out the windows on the wings of daydreams.

ALLOWING

ORDER AND LOOSENESS

I insist on order and decorum in my classroom, but I also insist on a certain type of looseness. It sounds incongruous, I know, but looseness seems to me to be closely connected with, and a cause of, the kind of shipshape and distinguished success I aim for with my students. I want the students to be serious and focused, but also lighthearted and slightly unruly, at least in their hearts and minds. There needs to be an even mixture of earnestness and giddiness if any appealing essays are to be written, or any singular visions about books are to be brought to birth. I want my students, I guess, to feel relaxed in my class – not feet-up-on-the-table relaxed, but the kind of I-can-do-anything-with-my-mind relaxation that liberates thoughts and feelings like so many sparrows in the sky. I believe students can sit up straight in class, speak with civility, and carry themselves with decorum, and still feel free and comfortable. In fact, the freer they feel, the more poise and pride they seem to show. Maybe it’s like the winds, which, when they soar around in the loosest manner, rather like undisciplined teenagers, also present their most solemn powers.

ANYTHING GREAT AND GOOD

"When I left him, I reasoned thus with myself: I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know."

-- Plato, Apology

I sometimes go back to this passage when I'm feeling like a masterly and polished teacher, because it's a rude reminder that, actually, I probably don't "know anything great and good" about teaching. Rather than helping people increase their knowledge, Socrates tried to show them how little they knew, and how little they would ever know -- and I've been learning that disquieting lesson over my many years in the classroom. In a sense, I've grown dumber and dumber over the years, and I suppose Socrates would congratulate me for knowing it. I've worked hard over the years, and ironically, it has only caused me to feel more inexperienced and misinformed than ever. When I'm teaching, I guess I play a little fantasy game with myself, masquerading as an all-knowing Superteacher, but what I now know for sure is that I am the opposite of all-knowing -- more like a disoriented novice than an accomplished professional. What's really strange is that knowing that fact makes me feel that I'm finally beginning to learn something. Socrates might say, "Good work, Ham! Now you can start being a good teacher."

THE DAWN OF IDEAS

"Sunrise West of Rugby", oil, by V...Vaughn

I recall hearing someone speak of “the dawn of ideas”, and ever since, I’ve tried to see that dawn doing its wonderful work in my classes. Like many of us, I love the look of a newly made morning, with the sunshine once again slowly dispensing its good spirits, and I like to look for a similar kind of newness in the thinking my students and I do. Together, we are the recipients of countless ideas in a 48-minute class period, each of them rising among us with warmth and encouragement, each of then throwing a little light out for anyone needing it. Even the undersized, wispy ideas that surface in the midst of our conversations bring their own special and useful brightness, though sometimes they disappear among the more dazzling ones. New dawns of ideas don’t stop in my classes, or in any class. When minds meet in a classroom, consider it a law that the light of ideas – imposing or petite, showy or reserved -- will inevitably brighten up the place.

TEACHING LIKE THE CELTICS

Here is a link to a post I wrote using Note Taker on my iPad.

Puzzles and Teaching

On these snowy winter days, I’ve sometimes settled myself in front of a jigsaw puzzle for a few minutes at a time, hoping to find places for some pieces, and it often reminds me of putting the pieces of my English teaching together day by day. Doing a complex puzzle requires, above all, a certain kind of resigned and unruffled patience, and isn’t the same true of teaching middle school students? I can sit at the puzzle table for fifteen full minutes and find no good fit, and I feel a similar frustration in teaching a lesson when nothing seems to fit for minutes at a time. What’s wonderful, though, is that patience always produces results – a mystifying piece in the puzzle suddenly fits perfectly, and a lesson, out of the blue, brings itself together like a solved mystery. It simply takes sitting patiently at the puzzle table and waiting, and working patiently with my lesson plans while letting success come slowly into sight.