ENJOYING STORMS

"Passing Storm", acrylic, by Toni Grote

I actually enjoyed driving through a serious rainstorm on the way home from school today, just the way I sometimes enjoy the various storms that get stirred up during my English classes. For some reason, I decided to loosen up and simply take pleasure in the slanting lines of rain across the fields as I drove along, and it sometimes occurs to me to do the same during class. When my lesson seems to be flying apart in all possible directions, or when the students seem to be settling into a midday stupor as I’m speaking to them about some obscure literary issue, I can occasionally step mentally back from the situation and smile to myself as I observe the passing “storm”. Everything seems to be going wrong, but yet it seems to be going wrong quite impeccably. My lesson might be falling apart, but it’s falling apart in a perfectly suitable and graceful manner. If this sounds strange, perhaps it’s no stranger than seeing a sinister-looking storm as something astonishingly beautiful.

MEEK, LIKE A RIVER AND THE SKY

I doubt if many of us would think “meek” could be used to describe a successful teacher of teenagers, and yet, in my 5th decade in the classroom, that quality seems more and more important to me. Contrary to some definitions of the word, a meek person is not necessarily a weak person – not a person who submissively gives in, bows down, apologizes, and lets people pound away on him. A meek teacher, in my mind, is simply a patient teacher, a gentle teacher, a long-suffering teacher (in the sense of not being too bothered by broken-down lessons or badly behaved kids or whole school-days gone crazy). The meek teacher, the kind I hope to be before I finish this adventure, has the strength of genuine gentleness and patience – perhaps the gentleness of great rivers that roll along no matter what happens, perhaps the patience of the limitless sky that says yes to any clouds that come along. It's being meek in a mighty way, which is, I think, exactly what teens need from adults.

SHOUTS AND CHEERS

Today I actually heard some shouts and cheers in Room 2, a strange occurrence in my usually staid and somewhat old-fashioned English classes. For one of the few times of the year, we were using the projector to play a vocabulary game, and there was special excitement as I sat down at the keyboard to try to top the winning student score. I did reasonably well, but at the end, when my score came up six points short, a great roar erupted from the students. I must admit to being somewhat shocked by this, since I’m accustomed to mostly sitting with students in fairly serious conversation on literary subjects. I won’t say my classes are humorless, since I see a scattering of smiles as we work our way through stories and poems, but raucous hurrahs are seldom heard. Today, though, there was a splash of mayhem for a few minutes as we played the game, and it was a pleasant surprise to this seasoned and sometimes stuffy teacher. I felt like some of the air had escaped from the balloon of my self-importance. For a second or two, I was an impetuous kid cheering with friends.

EMPTY CLASSROOM, EMPTY MIND

Sitting in my empty classroom this morning, I was reminded of the importance of keeping, at least occasionally, an empty mind. There’s something calm and peaceable about a classroom that’s silently waiting for its students, and there’s something equally to my liking in a mind that makes waiting for ideas to arrive a pleasant pastime. Classrooms can be frenzied places just before class as the teacher hurries around in a last-minute rush, and my mind can be similarly messy when I’m searching for suitable teaching techniques. Perhaps my mind needs to take a lesson from my classroom the way it was this morning just before the students arrived – a kind of expressionless and silent space, with me standing in stillness at my usual place. It was as if the room and I were simply waiting to see what ideas would show up during this class – what changes would be made in the lives of students and teacher because of the words spoken and read during class – and it would not be wrong to wonder if my mind could benefit from a similar kind of emotionless waiting. After all, countless billions of bright ideas are lingering around us at all times, just waiting for an open mind to ask them in – and perhaps it would help if the mind was reasonably empty and thus more keyed up for visitors.

LITTLE SENTENCES IN THE SPRING

My 9th grade students have been working all year to bring better length to some of their sentences, but now, as the slowly- warming days of spring send a feeling of simplicity to some of us, I’m asking the students to take on short sentences as a focus in their essays. They’re beautiful things, those short sentences in the midst of graceful long ones, and they’re easy to write. Subject, verb, a few ornaments – that’s all it takes. It’s like placing the smallest Easter eggs in the grass among mighty trees, or scattering a few silver dollars around a teen’s room, just for love’s sake. It’s so easy. It’s fun, too.

THE WINDS OF DISTRACTIONS AND INTERRUPTIONS

After I managed to cover very little of my planned lesson in one of the 9th grade sections today, I was somewhat disheartened. I scolded myself for a few minutes after school, thinking my curriculum was hopelessly damaged and I was a perfectly dreadful teacher. Fortunately, however, I soon came around to thinking about the value, and actual force, of flexibility. Finding that the word “flexible” means, according to one dictionary, “capable of being bent repeatedly without injury or damage,” I thought of a slim, supple tree limb. Countless storms blow past it in its long life, yet it stays as strong as ever, and always produces its handsome blossoms in the spring. In the strongest storms, tall pines on hillsides simply bend back and forth and await the return of stillness and sunshine. In fact, don’t our arms and legs actually grow stronger when they are “flexed” – when they are “bent repeatedly” in various kinds of exercise? Not only do they not suffer “injury or damage”, but because of their increased elasticity, they actually prosper when faced (as in a gym) with stress and resistance. When I ride my bike, pedaling faster and climbing steeper hills only makes my flexible legs stronger. The more I thought about this, the clearer it became that my 9th grade class today, the one in which I “failed” to finish my lesson, might have actually been a gift to me. My detailed lesson plan ran into resistance, similar to the strong winds a tree limb faces, but I didn’t allow myself to suffer “injury or damage”. I remained flexible. I simply swayed with the distractions and interruptions, and soon enough we returned to a fairly unruffled working mode and finished a few important tasks. Later, looking back on it, I realized that I was just as strong a teacher as I was that morning, and the students were just as brilliant, and my curriculum was as focused and well-planned as I like it to be. The “winds” of today’s distractions and interruptions had had no ill effects, and, in fact, may have made me a wiser and more tenacious English teacher.

BUMPY ROADS, SMOOTH ROADS

"Country Road", oil, by Liza Hirst

I love riding on smooth interstate highways, as I do in my daily drives to school, but I also take pleasure in pounding my way over bumpy backwoods roads – and I see some similar differences in my approaches to teaching. Often I find it helpful to set out a smooth road for the students as they travel through an assignment – a sort of interstate highway of requirements, guidelines, directions, and steps. After all, if I really want them to reach a certain destination, providing a fitting, trouble-free path would make sense. However, I also, now and then, purposely throw down a shabby side road for them to follow -- an assignment littered with potholed directions and puzzling detours. It’s a chance for a different kind of success for the students – an opportunity to take a rough and rutted road and turn the trip into a triumph. On these assignments, I feel the coarser and more mystifying the assignment, the better the chance for finding wisdom. I like to see the students sweating their way through a seemingly impassable assignment now and then, for I’ve learned what happens when, at the end, they come through with celebratory looks on their faces. Happiness in English class can come from smooth traveling, but also from a little rough-country pioneering.

WAITING FOR CLASS TO START

Waiting for class to start,
he sang to himself.
No one heard his song,
but sunshine was sitting
on his shoulder, as if
it was interested, and a book
beside him was looking
more silent than ever.
He heard the furnace
somewhere far off
seem to slow down
as if to be less noisy
when someone’s singing,
and who knows
how many trees were turning
toward his classroom
at that breezy moment?

DEATH AND LIFE IN THE CLASSROOM

"The Good Grass", oil, by Justin Clements

If death has to do with rigidity, stiffness, and the absence of expansion and creativity, then I must confess that I occasionally find some signs of death here and there in my classroom. Ideas become dead when they shrink away from their own liveliness and settle into convenient categories, a process I’ve seen happen to too many of my initially spirited ideas. In the interest of having all things controlled and tidy in my teaching, I’ve too often found myself fitting my teaching into handy drawers, as though teaching a lesson was similar to setting silverware in its proper places. It’s happened, for sure, in my teaching of writing. I know all too well that an apparently well-arranged student paragraph can be little more than a convenient coffin for a few lifeless ideas, and a grammatically correct sentence can sound like dead men’s bones rattling. Yes, I might be able to occasionally get students to construct systematic, understandable essays, but sometimes writing of that sort can carry the scent of old cemeteries. Bringing life to the teaching of English means being in touch with the boundless and effervescent power of the very tools we use for our study – words. It means making room in the lesson for a little of the unrestrained liberty we see in grass growing again in the spring. Words, the stuff we use and study in my English classes, are loaded with life, which makes letting them die in lessons and student essays a sin of solemn proportions.

FLAPPING WINGS, CHANGING SEATS

"Butterfly Pansies", oil, by Nancy Medina

The other day, my teaching was transformed when I simply decided to sit in a different place in the classroom. No, it wasn’t exactly a resurrection type of transformation – I’m sure my face wasn’t shining with any exclusive kind of wisdom at the end of the class – but nevertheless, it was a rather startling experience for me. Just by sitting in a new spot at the opposite side of the classroom, I was able to see my work in a fresh and surprising light. I somehow seemed closer to the kids, able to more clearly sense what they were thinking, able to see a little better the separate lights they each were shining on the subject we were discussing. At the end of the period, when the students had left, I lingered a little over this odd, accidental discovery. Why is it, I wondered, that I didn’t think of making this move months ago? What led me to let go, on this particular day, of a well-established routine and thus find a new and apparently liberating way to teach? And how many other transformations are waiting to happen when I make the next slight shift in my usual routine? They say a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the world changes things forever on the other side, so maybe switching chairs was a butterfly for me. Just by sitting a few feet away from my customary seat, I seemed to become a new and maybe better teacher, the way wings moving so slightly can make changes many miles away. I wonder what wings will shift things for me tomorrow.

WIGGLES AND BOXES

"Spring Comes to the Shoreline" 

(Waterford, CT beach), oil, by Roxanne Steed

It’s strange to me that I think of boxes more than wiggles when I’m teaching. What I mean is, my classroom goals seem more to do with making sure everything fits smartly into a box of some sort than with insuring that students’ minds move with variableness and freedom. A wiggle can work in a million different ways, which is the way students’ minds actually work, but when I’m teaching, I seem to try to tame those wiggles and set them into suitable boxes. There are grammar boxes, paragraph boxes, essay boxes, and the countless literary terminology boxes – all waiting to be packed with the students twisting and squirming thoughts. What’s odd about this is that reality actually works in wiggles, never in boxes. Our thoughts shake and shimmy and disappear as fast as they appear, and putting a thought into a box is about as doable as putting a piece of the wind in our pocket. And of course nature, with her constantly shifting patterns and movements, makes no boxes, no convenient containers, but comes and goes with the variableness of flowing water. Certainly I realize that I have a responsibility to train my students to live effectively in this boxy, container-crazy, label-loving culture they are part of, but at the same time I can encourage them to enjoy the underlying capriciousness and evanescence of their lives. I can say, “Put your sentences into boxes, but brighten the boxes with your individual flamboyance. Do my assignments within the box of the requirements, but wiggle and bend those requirements almost to breaking. Be controlled, but make it the freest, most imaginative control possible.”

WHILE HE WORKED AT HIS DESK

"Daffodils and Pears", oil, by Sarah Sedwick

While he worked at his desk,
the daffodils did no work at all.
They stood where the student
had placed them yesterday,
as though they were proud
to have a place in his classroom.
A cloud carried itself with composure
across the sky, some branches bowed
in a puff of air in an unruffled way,
his fingers found the keyboard
like it kept him happy,
and these flowers were fortunate
to be where they were.

CONGRATULATIONS TO A GREAT DAY

"A Beautiful Day", oil, by Susan Cox

He said, “Great job on this day,

dear sun! And good work,

you humorous winds

that gave my shirt a shake

every so often! And way

to go, sticks in the grass,

staying in your perfect positions!

And congratulations, light-winged

little birds that belong everywhere

on a day like this! And

you did it, worries, you wailed

and screamed in the softest way

and then went away all alone!

And attaboy, you bright lights

in some of the words I spoke!

And attagirl, you gifts

given to me moment after moment,

in the millions!”

He threw a few more words

in the air in praise and appreciation,

and then prepared his supper.

ONLY

It’s interesting to me that the word “only” derives from the same root that gives us “one”, a fact which I often relate to my work as a middle school English teacher. When I remind myself, as I often do, that I only have to teach kids how to improve their reading and writing, not how to live lives of decency and resolve, what I mean is that there’s a oneness, a singleness of purpose, in my work that makes maintaining focus fairly easy. I don’t have a thousand jobs to do, only one – to teach students to read with vigilance and write with self-assurance. When I drive to school each morning, a single overshadowing thought should be on my mind: today, I only have to give the students a suggestion or two to help them be better readers and writers. From "one" we also get the word “lonely”, implying, perhaps, that being “lonely” does not always have to be a discouraging experience, especially if it simply means being alone in my complete focus on the single task at hand. I am alone – “all one” – when I give my utter attention to a few essential teaching tasks. I am lonely, or “l-one-ly”, in the good sense of focusing singly, one by one, on teaching some simple skills and concepts for a few hours each day. After all, I’m only a teacher of middle school English. The stars spin above us constantly, winds come across our towns from unimaginable distances, and in such an awe-inspiring universe, I’m fortunate that I only have to show kids how to read and write better than they did before.

SETTING LAMPS OUT

"Two Turq Lamps", watercolor, by Gretchen Kelly

On some days the belief that he is a bad teacher

or that his students can be unsuccessful

slides away like clouds fall off to the west.

Then he sees again that his thoughts are lights

that always lead the way,

and that his students’ thoughts are also lights --

little ones as wonderful as his.

He sees that light is all that lives in his classroom,

and that ignorance always gets up and leaves

when he and his students set their lamps out

at the start of every English class.

A PROPER THANKS

One day a parent thanked him,

but he said she should also

thank his parents,

and all his teachers,

and every person

who passed his way

in sixty-nine years,

and the mountains

that made him strong

thirty-seven years ago,

and the Current River

for the courage it taught him

as a teen,

and the sun that strengthens him

day after day,

and the air

that makes miracles in his lungs

and lets him stand

before his students

and teach

what all these have taught him.

WHAT THE SKY SAYS

"Sky Painting", oil, by Tom Brown

A wide, wonderful day

was spreading itself out,

a bird was letting itself loose

in the woods, 

but the sky

was simply staying where it was.

It does that, the sky --

just good-naturedly lets things underneath

think they’re strong and significant,

while it takes its time

with its sunshine

or clouds carrying presents

for us all. It says,

“My strength is in staying

out of the scene,

especially on large, lovable days

like this one.”

CRUISE CONTROL IN THE CLASSROOM

"Country Road", oil, by Heidi Malott

In most ways, I don’t think I can be said to “cruise” when I’m teaching, but occasionally I do find myself in a coasting or sailing disposition as I’m working with my students – and I like the feeling. These are times when whatever is happening in the classroom seems to have been brought into existence just for us -- as though the universe is serving up, each succeeding moment, precisely what is best for my students and me. These are times when worries about goals gradually give way to a simple and sincere confidence that the flow of my teaching is, at least for now, perfect. This is when I feel like I’m in cruise control – like the teaching is taking care of itself. It’s “coasting” at its best – not loafing and letting anything happen, but simply sitting back and seeing the power of learning and teaching take off. Cruise control is a fine way to see the country in a car, and it’s not a bad way to bring kids and a teacher together in an easy, graceful search for understanding.

HE HAD A FRIEND

"Road Challenge", oil, by Stephen Goodman

He had a friend

who was full of happiness,

and because of that,

he also was happy.

He saw that happiness

is like sunlight,

something that can’t be

measured or collected

or kept to one person.

It spreads evenly

across our lives

as we sleep or visit a store

or set out in search of it,

or just as we sit

in our secret sadness,

not noticing the happiness

that always fills the universe

and always waits.

APRIL

"Tennessee Spring Light", watercolor, by Chris Ousley

Just the word itself,

can cause fields

of good moods

to grow inside me.

April’s a welcome companion

-- its wide-open mornings.

it’s wisps of warm air,

its rain

running down the roads

to meet me.

The passing of March

makes April my manager,

the creator of countrysides

of youthful thoughts,

the thrower of first-class feelings.

NEW CURRENTS

“How very beautiful these gems are!” said Dorothea, under a new current of feeling […].”

-- George Eliot, Middlemarch

As I read the above sentence last night, I pictured Dorothea Brooke wholly submerged in her feelings, with new currents constantly passing over and around her, and then I pictured my young students in the same situation. To a casual observer (and even to the teacher) my 9th grade English classes can sometimes seem sluggish and even sleep inducing, but the appearance is deceiving, because under the surface the currents of feeling are effervescent and relentless. Inside the often silent and expressionless kids that sit before me each day are feelings that would shout if they had voices. If feelings were rivers, those in my classroom would carry us all away on floods. I’ve seen evidence of this fact too many times to count. We’ll be studying a bewildering line from Wordsworth when suddenly a smile spreads across a face, just as if a new current of thought passed by, and the student starts to speak with wisdom about the line. Or, out of the blue, a student will bring us back to something said many minutes before and offer a fresh thought on it, like a new current in a river suddenly coming along. And the teacher is no different. Even now, as I type this, I feel fresh, unused currents of thoughts and feelings flowing around me, carrying me along to who knows where.

EVERYDAY PERFECTION

"Canoe and Fisherman", oil, by David Larson Evans

     An old truism says that nothing is perfect, but strangely enough, I’ve come to think that, in a way, things are always perfect in my classroom. Of course, by the many artificial standards we use to pass judgment on ourselves and others, there are dozens of degrees of imperfection in everything that occurs in my room, but whenever I manage to stand back in a more non-judgmental position, I see evidence of flawless events unfolding just as they should. From this more accepting point of view, each moment of a class carries out its duties precisely as it’s supposed to. Each small or significant occurrence creates something special, something that sets that moment aside as distinctive, even though the distinction, the full worthiness and merit of the moment, may not be entirely clear to me. I’ve long since realized that my ability to judge the true value of anything is about as nonexistent as hair on my head. I regularly pretend that I know which lesson soared and which one was a washout, which students set records for themselves and which ones slumped along, but the truth is it’s all just stylish guesswork. In point of fact, I can judge the success of my classes no better than I can judge whether winds are what they should be when they pass the classroom windows. What I’ve come to see is that, rather than constantly passing judgment on what happens in English class, I should try to step back and accept the suitability of all of it and try to see how each moment, no matter what it’s made of, makes a new opportunity for learning.  This doesn’t mean I need to like everything that happens, or that I shouldn’t rapidly redirect any misbehavior; on the contrary, accepting what’s happening now makes it much easier to make something different happen a moment from now. It’s a little like steering my kayak in quick waters: by not fighting nature’s perfectly-planned course of the river, I find smooth ways to get where I want to go, and by saying yes to the rightness of whatever’s happening in English class, I can usually notice and follow the most effortless ways to teach what needs to be taught.   

IT HAPPENED SUDDENLY

"New England Summer", oil, by Roxanne Steed

It happened suddenly.

He was speaking to his students,

about lines from Shakespeare

when, without warning,

it seemed his words

were made by mountain winds,

his thoughts thrown together

by fires and floods.

He felt like feelings

were falling into him

from far off heights,

like the land of heaven

was here in his classroom

in this quiet part of Connecticut

where commonplace things

usually occur.

SILENT READING

"Bluebird Happiness", oil, by Thaw Malin III

We were all sitting silently,
and the stones outside
were sitting beside each other,
and trees were sitting
with warm arms held out,
and somewhere there were limitless stars
settling into their places.

Our pages slowly turned
as we traveled separately,
serious readers
shining side by side
somewhere.

POISED IN ROOM 2

"Antique Lamp", oil, by Heidi Mallot

This morning, when I happened to brush against the small chain that lights a lamp in my living room, I paused to watch it as it swayed for a few seconds and then slowly came to a standstill, and it occurred to me that I should do more of that in my teaching. In my classroom I can be occasionally unsettled by small disorders and commotions, and it’s important that I fairly quickly bring myself back to a state of composure and readiness. The chain on my lamp swung for a few seconds and then stopped and was steady, and hopefully I can always come back to this kind of quietness soon after any interruption. As I looked at the gold chain swaying and slowing down and then poised in almost perfect motionlessness, it seemed like a suitable symbol for a teacher of teenagers.