AN A+ FOR GOODNESS

"Summer in the City", oil, by Liza Hirst

Like most teachers, my grades for students tend to spread out across a suitable range from D’s to A’s, but in one category they always receive A+’s: plain and simple goodness. I recall a film where Robert DeNiro looked at someone and said, with emphasis, “You are good!” – and I say exactly that to my students quite regularly, simply because I believe it. They’re not perfect in their understanding of dramatic irony or in detecting dangling modifiers in their writing, but they are, to my way of thinking, perfectly good. To me, their goodness has neither defects nor border lines, but is as unblemished as the sunshine. Does this mean their actions are always respectable and first-class? Of course not, just as sunshine is not always at its best and brightest. There are days in my class when the students’ attitudes seem far from wonderful, just as there are days when the light of the sun dims and darkens behind clouds. However, I know from long classroom experience that an impressive sun of goodness is always shining inside these boys and girls, just as our loyal sun in the sky stays full of flawless light no matter what the clouds do. I can grade essays with C’s and B’s, but I can’t grade a person’s goodness, mostly because it’s not a quantifiable entity – not something I can measure and appraise. My students’ goodness is like sunshine, boundless and everlasting, and who can pigeonhole or grade sunshine with anything but an A+?

A STOP ON A BIKE RIDE

"Bike in the Park", oil, Susan Cox

The stream spoke
to the rocks
as it rolled along,
a breeze seemed
to break out in song,
and a few quiet thoughts
came comfortably along
to let me see
how lucky I was,
how loose and wild,
like wheels on a bike
on back roads.

SETTLING

"Summer's End", acrylic, by Fawn McNeill

As a boy, I always enjoyed watching a stream slowly settle after being stirred up, and I feel fortunate that I can see the same kind of settling almost every day in the classroom. It’s accurate, I think, to compare my teenage students coming down the hall for class to a forest stream surging along in its sprawling way. Between classes, the kids are a liberated group, blessed with undisciplined thoughts and free feelings, and flowing along with all their force and liveliness. It’s as if something stirs their lives for a few minutes after each class, and, like an unsettled stream, they flow down the hall to their next class. Actually, I like the unsettled nature of their young lives, in much the same way that I like the look of a swiftly flowing stream. One never knows what a hurrying stream will do next, which is part of its poetry, and likewise, I enjoy the persistent unpredictability of my students. I would never want them to be a thoroughly settled group, sinking into a tedious sameness. However, part of my responsibility to them is to insist that they sort themselves out without much delay and set about the business of being serious students of English for forty-eight minutes. I set up a routine at the start of the year that enables them to do this fairly efficiently, and they usually subside, within a few minutes, into a quietly industrious group of scholars. It’s like seeing a stream in the woods of Missouri, way back then, slowly bring itself into peacefulness after being stirred up by a meddlesome boy.

ON THE MOUNTAINTOP

"Zion Late Afternoon", oil, by Becky Joy

When a friend said yesterday that she was surprised that her sister gave up teaching – gave up what my friend said was a job “on the mountaintop” of all professions – I felt silently grateful that I have had the privilege of working on this grand mountaintop for many decades. My friend understood something I’ve known for years – that giving the gift of new learning, or at least making the gift more possible, can make a teacher’s life something like a marvel. Mountains can make you feel fulfilled when you reach their summits, but something far more special occurs when a student’s eyes start shining with newborn wisdom. I’ve been to the tops of real mountains, and yes, it’s spectacular, but I’ve also been to the tops of classroom mountains – those peaks that you can’t prepare for because they usually soar up suddenly like new lights in the darkness – and honestly, I’m confident that no actual mountain peak can compare. After all, what actual mountain summit can you stand on almost every day and see lives transforming before you – lives sometimes turning inside out as they think intensely about stories or poems? What Appalachian peak can compare to the view across a classroom of students who have sincerely -- and sometimes joyously -- received the blessing of brand new knowledge? I trust my friend’s sister had good reasons for turning away from teaching, for no one would unthinkingly give up the chance to stand on genuine summits day after day.

GOOD STUFF

In baseball circles, “good stuff” refers to a pitcher’s ability to throw a ball at very fast speeds, but in my English classes it refers to the gift all kids have to create ideas that positively burst across the room. I’ve seen it in every student I’ve taught – the wonderful flair for saying things that throw a new light over a discussion, sort of like a brief spread of sunshine on a misty day. Of course, this kind of thinking – this good stuff – sometimes hides for days and even weeks in some kids, but it never fails to suddenly surge out at odd moments. The most silent and insecure students have, on occasion, made statements during discussions that shined a fresh brightness over the class, as if some new scholar had suddenly appeared among us, when it was really just one of the kids coming on with the good stuff of wisdom.

MARVELOUSLY MADE

Not long ago a friend was speaking about a dresser she saw in an antique store, saying how it was so “marvelously made”, and later, I mused about how marvelously made all of us are, including my young students. It’s easy and commonplace to marvel at the machines our society produces these days – the computers, the miraculous cars, the colossal planes that somehow ascend above us – but what about the human machines that make miracles each second of their existence? What above these boys and girls that get fresh ideas by the dozens in my classes – ideas that may not be made-to-order for the lesson I happen to be teaching but that nonetheless are minor miracles? What about the students’ feelings that flow unceasingly and in unlimited fullness throughout every class, and that transform their inner lives moment by moment as surely as oxygen transforms their bodies? What about the words they place in essays, words that, as simple as they might be, can brighten a teacher’s day as he reads them? These essays, these words, these feelings and ideas, these young students of mine – these are truly marvelously made, more, in my mind, than any dresser sitting in a store

THE WAYS

When I think about it, I realize that I taught for many years with the notion that there was basically one way to do just about anything in the classroom, but now, after four decades of teaching, it’s clear to me that, on the contrary, there are an infinite number of ways, and all just about equally effective. I sometimes think of sunshine, and how it spreads its light in countless patterns across the earth, all of them special and handsome in their distinctive ways – and can’t we say that all sincere approaches to understanding a short story are, in surprising and perhaps hidden ways, equally wise? Or the rain as it falls in numberless rhythms and speeds: is it more beautiful at one moment than the next, and is one student’s halting but honest attempt at an essay assignment less inspiring than a whiz kid’s creative masterpiece? I guess what I’m saying is that all students who try their best build a kind of masterpiece of one sort or another, and I need to stay alert to the curious and sometimes strange splendor of their work. To me, the way of the natural straight-A student is no more magnificent than that of the dutiful but stumbling C student. There are a zillion kinds of success and a zillion ways to get there, which is precisely what makes living – and teaching – such an adventure.

MAKING FREEDOM

It’s good for me to give some thought now and then to the freeing aspect of English teaching. We’re all fond of freedom, including my fidgety teenage students, but too seldom do I consider the ways that freedom can find us as we work our way through my curriculum. It’s freeing, for instance, to simply see something in a written sentence that you didn’t see before, or to set words side by side in a refreshing way, or to listen to a student speak about a poem with force and wisdom.  Each of those small, daily occurrences can bring a bit more freedom to our lives that so often seem small and restricted. In that fashion, English class, as run-of-the-mill as it might be, can set my students and me free in small but distinguishing ways.

RETURNING AND REST

"Resting in South Pasture", oil, by Debra Sisson

Strange as it sounds, I sometimes think my main job as an English teacher is to help my students discover how to return, and how to rest. Returning and rest, in a sense, are the keys to learning anything, for it is only by returning, again and again, to the subject matter that we make it a part of ourselves, and only by resting in the center of each new understanding do we discover its true depth and breadth. Returning and rest is the opposite of restlessness and bustle: by quietly returning to a poem again and again and resting, without mental struggle or anxiety, in its various meanings, the student settles the mind and meets with fresh intuitions. Dashing ahead with never a glance back or a breather is the way of reckless students, whereas constantly coming back again and taking a break inside a topic or concept creates students who save what they learn for years to come. Realizing this, I sometimes stop my students in their tracks. I say, “Let’s reread this page, slowly and with special treatment. Lets rest for a few moments inside the meaning of the words.” They usually sigh and seem to be saying, “Oh god, can’t we please just move on?”, but my task is a simple and special one – to show the students the power and pleasure of revisiting and taking a respite among good words.

THE LIGHT SHINES

"The Shapes of Sunrise", oil, by V...Vaughn

Every so often I’m tempted to turn off the lights in my classroom and just let the light of thoughts throw its brightness over all of us. After all, there is light, and then there is light, and the light of freshly made ideas makes fluorescent light look dim by comparison. It’s strange to me that my mania for “getting things done” in class sometimes causes me to be blind to the light of the thinking that’s always happening. My students and I can’t stop thinking new thoughts any more than our lungs can stop causing new air to come into our bodies. Each moment of English class is a sunrise of thoughts, a silent explosion of concepts, notions, images, schemes, plans, feelings, and beliefs – more than enough light to let all of us stretch out and grow strong in its influence. The light of thought always shines in English class, whether we see it or not, whether we feel its soft and fulfilling pressure or not.

STRENGTH AND GLADNESS

"Prairie School", oil, by Don Gray

No student, I’m sure, feels especially glad to be coming down the hall to my English class, but I actually hope, in all honesty, that some small amount of mental strength might be gained during class, which in turn might create some real satisfaction, perhaps even gladness. If each student, for instance, could sense something new inside them during English class, some unusual understanding, some small insight into the mysteries of written words, this could possibly produce a silent, private shout of good cheer. If the students, each in their special ways, could find a further appreciation of some aspect of the literature we read, then maybe an honest bit of strength and gladness might be given them during a modest English class in Room 2 on Barnes Road.

IN QUIETNESS AND CONFIDENCE

It might seem a stretch to compare one of my 9th grade English classes to a workout at the gym, and yet I am striving to build a certain kind of strength in my students – a strength that’s very much connected to quietness and confidence. It’s a shame that strength, these days, is so often associated with noisy bravado – with bragging and boasting and singing your own praises – when, to my way of thinking, true strength constructs a quietness that’s far more remarkable than clamor and horn-blowing. I want each of my students to develop an inner power that produces quiet confidence, the kind that sometimes creates a strange calm in classmates, as though just sitting next to this student settles you and sets you up on a mental hill. The quietness, perhaps, comes from knowing that what you know is nothing compared to the vast expanses of knowledge in the universe, and therefore you might as well relax and appreciate the sheer smoothness and lightness of all this nonstop knowledge. I hope my students come to discover that knowledge is not really something to struggle for or labor after, but that it’s more like a current in a quiet sea, a current that can easily carry them to incredible places and create a confidence that’s way stronger than shouts and chest-poundings

HIDDEN GIFTS

This morning, toward the end of a restless, almost sleepless night, the thought came to me to good-naturedly watch for the good that will come from this spell of insomnia, and I began thinking, later in the morning, that this is excellent advice for a classroom teacher. Halfway through my wakeful night, I was not thinking positively about my tossings and turnings, nor do I usually see the bright side of the various misfortunes that take place in my teaching. Just as I desperately wanted to fall into a sound and soothing sleep, in my classes I want a steady dose of success, and I grew just as frustrated with my sleeplessness as I do with any malfunctions in my lessons. However, toward morning the odd thought came to me that perhaps this nighttime wakefulness has some blessings for me. Perhaps, I thought, I should quietly wait and watch for the good that’s been given by these hours of missed sleep. It was strange to think that what seemed like sheer misery from midnight to morning might actually be a bequest from the vast universe just for me – a generous bestowal to use as I see fit. I’m waiting and watching (no signals as of yet), and I hope to be able to do some similar waiting and watching when things fall apart in my teaching next year. Who knows what gifts might be disguised as a disastrous lesson?

GOOD FORTUNE

"Monarch", pastel, by Karen Margulis

While he was smiling

at his good fortune,

a butterfly unfolded its wings

with what seemed like courtesy,

camped on a modest blossom

in a neighborhood nobody

cared much about,

a quiet, careful place

in Connecticut,

a small spot

on our carefree

and picturesque planet.

TIDINESS IN FLOWER GARDENS AND ENGLISH LESSONS

"Spring in the Garden", oil, by Pol Ledent

This summer I’ve enjoyed the fulfilling work of setting various kinds of edgings around our perennial flowers, and now the final, finished look of the gardens gives me some sense of how my best-planned classroom lessons might look next year. The flowers themselves are lovely, but somehow the trim and tidy look provided by the edging enhances their beauty, and it’s possible that some of my lessons could look just as well-set and shipshape. What I wish to teach in a lesson is actually no more important than how it’s presented to the students – it’s staging, you might say, or it’s presentation. Simply strewing a bunch of beautiful flowers here and there, with no visible borders, will bring little or no joy to viewers, nor will scattering skills and concepts through a lesson, with no discernible tidiness or method, bring much meaningful learning to my students. Both the good looks of a flower garden and the effectiveness of a lesson plan depend greatly on a simple feature that’s often overlooked – straightforward, old-fashioned tidiness.

THE INIFINITE RANGE OF THOUGHT

"Wheatfields 2", oil, by Liza Hirst

A friend recently spoke of what she called “the infinite range of thought” – her belief that there are absolutely no limits to what we can think – and her words brought to mind an odd combination -- my students and a boundless sky. It does seem like a peculiar combination, especially since most of my students think their thoughts flutter around in the tiniest of skies. If I asked them to compare their minds to something, they might select a closet or a kitchen cupboard, something so small that only a few trifling thoughts can fit. My students, year after year, seem to see themselves as thinking in very small spaces instead of in boundless skies. My friend would tell them something different – that thoughts are immaterial and therefore not tied to the typical laws of materiality. Thoughts can move as fast as sound or sunshine, and out beyond the farthest borders. No fence, no frontier of any kind, can hold back even the smallest thought. Of course, if my students believe the range of their thoughts is confined and cramped, then, for them, it will be. We make our own prisons, especially when it comes to thinking, and most of my students sometimes choose to stay in their mental prisons, preparing undersized thoughts in what they consider to be their peewee brains. A significant part of my job as their English teacher is to show them the vast – indeed, infinite – span of their minds – to help them realize that they can think any of the countless thoughts available to all of us in this measureless, mysterious universe. All they need to do is believe it.

EVER-CHANGING CLOUDS AND KIDS

"Building Up in Montana", oil, by Mary Maxam

This afternoon I was lazily gazing at some passing clouds, noticing their ever-shifting shapes and thinking, too, of my always changeable students. These clouds were the kind that seem stable, as though they are solid blobs of matter moving along, but on closer scrutiny become slowly transforming swirls of almost nothing, and I often mistake my students in a similar way. They sit in class like solid and separate entities, each one always the same, always seemingly set in her or his ways, and yet I know for sure they aren’t the same from one second to another. Like clouds, they can fool me with their ostensibly fixed appearance. They can trick me into taking them for granted – “Oh yeah, here come the same kids I taught yesterday” -- while all along they are transforming as constantly as the clouds this afternoon.

THE MIRACLE OF THOUGHTS

I used to not believe in miracles, but over the course of my many years in the classroom I have come to see them as almost commonplace, especially when it comes to thoughts. After all, isn’t a single thought – the appearance, out of the blue, of an idea – a true miracle? We’re sitting somewhere, perhaps sipping a 7up or saying something special to a friend, when presto, a thought comes to us as if on a breeze from the back of beyond. We know nothing of where it came from or why, just that it’s here with us and shaping our life a little differently. And these mysterious helpers – these powerful forces we have named “thoughts” -- come to us some tens of thousands of times each day! I often think of this during a 9th grade English class, when it would be easy to see dullness and tedium instead of miraculousness. It helps me to remember that, at any given second of any class, dozens of brand new thoughts are being born – thoughts that no thinker has exactly had since thinking began. What greater miracle is there, really, than the birth of something as fresh and strong as an idea – and it happens in a non-stop way in my classes. It may be an idea like “It’s a beautiful day outside”, or “I think I’ll call Jimmy tonight” or something more extraordinary like “I finally understand this poem”, but whatever form it takes, an idea is a darting signal of change in a person’s life: our minds are made over ever so slightly by each and every infant idea, every smallest miracle of thought.

TEENAGE STRESS AND COMPASSION

Stress in our lives can actually lead us to live more compassionately, an odd fact that I will ask my students to occasionally consider next year. The kids in my classes are usually carrying significant loads of unease and angst as they make their way through teenagedom, and it’s my guess that they have never considered the positive aspects of this stress – never realized that their toil and trouble can make them more aware of their membership in the vast, worldwide family of fretful teens. If they could step back a bit from their personal worries and get a more distant perspective, they might be able to picture the millions of other anxious kids in the world, and thus might be able to breathe a sigh of reassurance in the understanding that they are not alone. Indeed, the feeling of being alone – of being the only kid in the world who feels weighed down by stress and disorder – is the real burden, and if I could help lift that burden off them – help them realize they have brother and sister teenage sufferers all over the world – perhaps I would be a slightly better teacher. My job is to teach English, true, but my students are people with powerful feelings, and they will learn literary terms and comma rules better if they know they’re not alone in sometimes feeling bulldozed by pressures beyond their control. They will still worry, but they will worry, I hope, with more compassion for their countless worrying comrades around the world.

THE SPACIOUSNESS OF LIFE

Yesterday, my friend who is facing some serious pain and fear told me he is trying to see the genuine spaciousness of life. He said he realizes now that he has always thought of life as being small, cramped, and confining, but he has a strong feeling, these days, that he’s been completely mistaken. He has a feeling – and it has often come to him during this recent time of pain and fear – that life is not only not small or cramped or confining, but that it is, in fact, infinite – that it knows no boundaries, no start or finish, no limits of any sort. He told me he sees himself, sometimes, as if he is floating in an endless sky – no bottom, no sides, no top – and that the small life he has always called “his” – even the pain and fear -- is actually like a breeze in this endless sky, swirling effortlessly, coming and going and passing by in the immeasurable spaciousness of life, always with ease and properness. He said it’s a feeling unlike any he has ever had – a feeling of absolute naturalness and assurance.

TWO ANCIENT AND WISE TEACHERS

     A friend is facing some pain and fear, and I’ve been deeply impressed by his attitude toward these enemies all of us have faced. Actually, he told me he tries not to consider them enemies, but rather simply as conditions that have come along in his life – conditions he can’t avoid and may as well try to get to know and understand, and – who knows –maybe even appreciate (his words). He tells me he tries to think of the pain and fear as teachers, and he says they might be the best teachers he’s ever had. He says he’s even, in a strange sort of way, grateful for their presence in his life, for he’s spent many years in -- as he puts it -- a closet of anxiety and closed-mindedness, and this pain and fear might force the doors of his life wide open. For one thing, he thinks it might open him to a greater awareness of the pain and fear that billions of people are feeling at any given moment. His situation, as he puts it, will make him a member of the vast community of sufferers on our planet. He says he has high hopes for his journey with pain and fear as he looks ahead to what he will be learning from these ancient and wise teachers.
     As he embarks on his “adventure of learning” (his words), I plan to stay close to my friend, for I have a feeling he will, in turn, be a wonderful teacher for me.

ENJOYING A DRIVE THROUGH A STORM

Fortunately for me, I seem to be learning how to drive through stormy weather with a fairly comfortable attitude, and I’ve also grown more comfortable with the storms that occasionally swirl through my classroom. The coming on of clouds and showers used to take the fun out of highway driving for me, but I’ve learned to let the storms show me their magnificence more than their menace, and a similar change has happened in my teaching. Tough times come to any teacher – poorly planned lessons, little misbehaviors here and there, a thorough feeling of monotony among the students – and I’ve slowly learned that leaning into these obstacles is better than resisting them. There’s something striking about a storm descending across a road, if only I can open myself to it, and the same is true of the trials that sometimes test the wisdom of every teacher. When a lesson loses momentum and makes me feel like a failure, I can try my best to bring my attention to the strange aptness of it all – the fact that it happened, the fact that something else will happen in the next moment, the fact that suitable mysteries will continue to happen forever. Finding a certain fascinating properness in storms on highways or collapses in the classroom is not easy, but I’m learning to do it – and am learning to relax and smile more in the process.

TEENAGE RIVERS

"Mighty Mississippi", oil, by Kristin Grevich

I grew up near a marvel of constant motion called the Mississippi River, and I realized, not long ago, that my teenage students are similar marvels. It’s interesting that we give a name to a river, as though it is a solid, static object that can be conveniently labeled and categorized, as though it is always the same, always just the old, unchanged “Mississippi River”, and not the always transforming, always newfangled phenomenon we know it to be. My students, too, have names -- Maria, Cooper, Kiona, Gaelen, and so on – as if they are packages of humanity that stay the same day by day and therefore can be easily classified and compartmentalized. In that way of thinking, the Mississippi is always just the same Mississippi, and Maria is always pretty much the same Maria. Of course, we know this is ridiculous, for we know that both rivers and kids are relentlessly changing phenomena, never the same from second to second. Rivers rush by us with their countless and ever-shifting currents, and my students’ lives flow past me with equally mystifying variableness. In a single 48-minute class, a zillion changes happen to each of my students – new oxygen, new cells, new blood, new thoughts, new feelings. It’s as if I’m standing on the banks of many human rivers, pretending they’re the same as yesterday, pretending their names capture their reality, pretending I can understand who and what they are – but knowing all along that they are as mystifying as the mighty Mississippi.

WATCHING OUR THOUGHTS PASS BY

"Bluebonnet Stream 3", oil, by V....Vaughn

At times, my teenage students sometimes seem entirely too full of distress and anguish, and it’s then that I should ask them to simply watch their thoughts for a few minutes. Like most of us, the kids in my classes usually take their thoughts way too seriously, as if their thoughts are their rulers instead of just short-lived bubbles in the vast stream of their lives. I can sometimes see in their faces that thoughts are totally holding sway over them. In a sense, the students, like so many of us, bow in obeisance to thoughts like “I’m not smart”, or “This assignment is too hard”, or “Maybe I have a serious illness”, instead of simply observing the thoughts as they pass through their minds. It’s strange, how something as ephemeral and fleeting as a thought can throw our lives into absolute disarray. It happens to me as often as to the students, a thought suddenly soaring over me like some god that’s been given the power to rule. Here comes a thought like “maybe this headache is a  sign of something serious” and there goes my ability to dispassionately appreciate the moment-to-moment miracles of life. This coming year, I think I will occasionally ask the students to join me in simply observing our thoughts instead of throwing ourselves at their feet. When I’ve succeeded in doing this myself, a strange feeling of peacefulness has almost always come to me, as if I were sitting on the bank of a stream silently watching the currents and bubbles pass by. Even one minute of this peaceful observation of our thoughts by my students and me might make for a noiseless center of stillness in our stressed and anxious lives.