DESIRE

He sometimes desires the kind of day

that dances with you from dawn

till the sky is smoky with stars.

Or sometimes he just desires

the brown skin of a Snickers bar,

or the feel of a soft new sneaker on his foot,

or the fullness of a Sunday

free of a sense of duty.

Mostly, though, he desires her hands in his,

her whole life leaning into his

as they lie back in this soothing universe

FREELY GIVEN, FREELY GIVING

I don’t do much community service work, but I do often have a feeling of “giving back” when I’m teaching. I’m not sure where it all came from or why it keeps flowing forward to me, but I have been on the receiving end, over sixty-nine years, of a free-flowing river of gifts. In each of the numberless waking moments of my life, I have been given the gift of astonishing thoughts and feelings. I know now that I don’t make these thoughts and feelings, but rather they unfold of their own accord and cascade toward me in a timeless manner. Just sitting here now, holding my hands to the keyboard, countless ideas from somewhere show me what words to type. Since all these inner gifts have been so freely given to me, I take pleasure, as I’m teaching, in freely re-giving them to my students. They’re not mine to keep and care for; they belong to the limitless universe of thoughts and feelings, and sending them straight on to my students seems like the instinctive next step. I sometimes picture myself as a strange kind of Santa Claus, coming to class with a big bag of inspirations which came my way by some mysterious and magical good fortune, and which I distribute among my students with the satisfaction of an old man making merry.

CLASSICS ON GRASS AND STONES

We only study classic, time-tested works of literature in my classes, but that doesn’t mean we always study them in the classic, traditional ways. There are times, yes, when we sit at our desks under the fluorescent lights, but there are also times when we’re outside resting on the grass, or sitting on the stones of the many old walls surrounding the school, or just strolling around the grounds with a good book in our hands. With some instruction on proper attentiveness outside amid the distractions, most kids can come to appreciate being free of the stuffy classroom and able to study great writers in the great outdoors. We sometimes walk among the trees on our campus, discussing the words in whatever book we’re reading, sharing ideas as easily as the breezes are blowing around us, thinking an occasional astounding thought. The students, not surprisingly, seem more at ease, more serene, less interested in resisting our studies of Shakespeare and Dickens when we’re out in the fresh air and perhaps finding fresh inspirations coming our way.

STANDING FOR SHAKESPEARE

Today, when I told my young students they should feel free to stand at any time during my classes, I was surprised to see expressions of astonishment on their faces, as if school is supposed to be only for sitting. Later, I came to understand their sense of amazement, and to feel sad for them because of it. What has brought education around to this place where students across the world always sit, for hours and hours and hours? When did sitting become the foremost prerequisite for learning? John Dewey once wrote (and I’m roughly paraphrasing) that a 12-year-old can’t learn much of anything without moving her or his body, and perhaps that’s why I allow the students to stand in my class whenever they wish. Why can’t a student study Shakespeare’s words as easily standing as sitting, as easily leaning against a wall with the words in his hand as sitting in a hard chair with boredom bearing down on him? These days we all love to be outside in the fresh air of fall, so why can’t I bring some of that sense of liberty and leisure into my classes by making it possible for students to stand now and then, and to even take a few steps around as though they are sidling through a Shakespeare play instead of simply sitting and lifelessly studying it?

LEAVES AND STUDENTS

"Falling Leaves", watercolor, by Nicole Wong

Today I was watching a few leaves lingering in the air as they let themselves down to the grass, and it brought to mind my young students, whose minds seem to linger and glide and flow with any winds of thoughts that waft through the room. It usually frustrates me to see this kind of capriciousness in the students, but strangely, it doesn’t frustrate me to follow these little autumn leaves as they stray around and finally down to the ground. The leaves take a beautiful and lazy route as they fall, and my students sidle around and around as they think their way through a novel or a poem. Why should their whimsicality and waywardness be any less enjoyable to watch than the falling leaves I saw moving carelessly among the trees surrounding my house?

FRESHNESS

“Dorothea's entrance was the freshness of morning.”

-- George Eliot, Middlemarch

And so is his new friend.

She sows the seeds of newness

when she enters a room,

when windows suddenly

seem spanking clean

and all the walls

look lighthearted and spotless.  

He’s always surprised

when she comes to visit,

the way the shingles shine

as she walks to the door,

the way the rooms

seem to refurbish themselves

for her presence.

.

HOW CAN HE KEEP FROM SINGING?

He doesn’t know how

he can keep from singing.

He sings in the strangest places –

at his sunny desk,

in rain-washed streets,

in the produce section

among lettuces and onions.

He lets the music

make him merry,

whatever the world is doing.

While death does its drumming

all around him,

he sings the way wind blows,

because he has to,

because who can stop the wind?

THE ENORMOUS TABLE

"The Long Table", oil, by Liza Hirst

I recall a poem about a table that was so huge that it could conveniently carry an infinite number of objects on its surface, and I sometimes think of such a vast and tolerant table when I’m teaching my middle school students. In fact, I occasionally see myself as a quiet, uncomplaining table upon which my students can set down their ideas and talents as readers and writers. In a way, an English teacher should be so vast and sturdy, like a one-of-a-kind table, that he can carry whatever the students might bring to class, even the craziest ideas and least disciplined feelings. In this analogy, I don’t really have to do much except make myself available as a resting place or storage space for the limitless lives my students bring to class. This, of course, includes their less-appealing thoughts and feelings, the ones other folks might think are dim-witted or downright silly. The English teacher’s table should be big enough to carry all the stuff of the students’ inner lives, whatever they want to bring with them through my door. Dump it all down on my table, I want to say to them; we may not deal with it all, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make room for it. As I think about it, it does seem there is something patient and peaceful about a teacher who is like a table – something that welcomes wandering students and the mental baggage they bring with them. This kind of teacher is not always talking and teaching, but sometimes simply waiting and receiving, like a trustworthy table. Come in, students, I might say. Unload your life a little. Pile your thoughts up and let us ponder them awhile.

THESE TWO, by Jaimie Johansen

She grew up in Texas,

taking her time with life,

holding love

in her little hands,

looking for wisdom

wherever it was waiting.

Now, in New England

with a new friend,

she follows stars.

Together they take the paths

the stars prepare for them.

If you see these two,

you will also see starlight.  

BEING ICE WATER

"White Porcelain and Ice Water", oil, by Jelaine Faunce

I make ice water available to my students in my classroom, and it’s gradually become obvious to me that I myself could be a similar kind of refreshment for the students. After hours of sitting in other classes and carrying out homework assignments, the kids are sometimes half crazed with confusion when they come to my classroom, and a little refreshment could be a restorative gift to them. Perhaps if I prepared myself to be like a cooling stimulation for the students rather than a bossy bringer of assignments and instructions -- perhaps then my classes could be a brighter part of the students’ day. I don’t mean to suggest that I should stand silently in a corner like a cooler full of water, or that thoughts of earnest, painstaking, and studious work should be thrown out the window. No, I can be a serious teacher and at the same time be a pick-me-up for my industrious and sometimes exhausted students. I can be a strict leader and at the same time be a glass of bracing ice water in their hot and hassled academic lives.

SHOPTALK

"The Boys of Summer", watercolor, by Johanna Bohoy

Occasionally I see a group of guys gathered around some motorcycles doing a little of what we might call shoptalk, and it makes me think of my English students on the days when they comment on classmates’ essay drafts. They’re talking about words and sentences instead of motorcycles, but their talk does occasionally take on the appearance of a creative, academic kind of shoptalk. They sometimes look at a classmate’s sentence on the projection screen the way guys stare at a carburetor, and they often comment on a sentence with the keenness of bikers bringing their praise and criticism to the bikes of fellow riders. A student might say, pointing to a properly placed adjective, “I really like that adjective right there. It’s in a perfect spot” -- and I picture in my mind a biker guy getting giddy as he praises the look of some sweet exhaust pipes. I have ice water and small cookies available for my students, so they sometimes take a sip of water or a bite of a cookie as they stand back to praise a prepositional phrase or suggest a better placement for a participle. They’re not swilling down a beer as they talk, but still, they sometimes remind me of biker dudes doing shoptalk around a first-rate Harley in front of the local watering hole.

QUIET MORNING

"Morning Light", pastel, by Karen Margulis

It was a quiet morning --

just the call of a few birds

bringing back the daylight,

just the shaking of branches

as a wind did its early work.

Wherever he was

was wonderful –

upstairs with the silence

of his books,

in the kitchen with a cup of coffee,

outside as the sunlight

looked shyly through the trees.

All was quiet –

this fresh, carefree day

and his happy-go-lucky life.

"MAZING" IN ENGLISH CLASS

Yesterday a friend told me she was “going running” later in the day, and for some reason it started me thinking about “going mazing” in English class. I realize that’s a somewhat bizarre use of the word, but it makes sense to me. As the many years have passed, teaching English has become a more and more maze-like business to me, so you might say I’m going to “maze” through my classes next week, the way my friend was going to "run" through the town yesterday. No matter how carefully I plan my lessons, still the actual teaching tends to be like locating the secret paths through a web of wonders. My lessons seem to be clear-cut, perfect paths to selected goals, but actually they are more like trails drawn on the surface of the sea, shifting and disappearing almost as fast as they are drawn, so that, sometimes five minutes into a class, my work suddenly widens before me like a mystifying maze. To be honest, I don’t mind that feeling, because working my way through a maze, or going “mazing”, has usually been a happy experience for me. I sometimes send out a silent cry of thanks that I’m fortunate enough to do some serious mazing each day with serious, maze-solving young students of English.

THE MYSTERY

It’s funny, but finding my way in any given class is often as frustrating as finding my way blindfolded through the paths of a maze. As diligently as I plan my lessons, I sometimes feel lost and out of touch with both my lesson and my students, as though I’m in a wide desert land with only distant signals to show that other people are here with me. There are moments (not many, thankfully) when, as I walk among the students, things seem so astonishing, so bizarre and full of surprises, that I wonder where I am and why. It’s like I just awoke and here I am in a classroom full of kids. Strangely, this is not a depressing feeling for me, for I’m realizing more and more that I actually look forward to these moments, these split seconds when the unreserved mystery of teaching overwhelms me. More often than not, I pretty much prance through my lessons with ease and almost casualness, as though I know precisely what I’m doing and where I’m going, but every so often the haze of mystery descends on me, and the inscrutability of teaching another human being becomes overpoweringly real. At those times I hope the students don’t see me as dazed and stupefied, though that may be a suitable description of this old but youthful-feeling teacher who often feels befuddled by the strange obscurities of teaching teenagers.

SILVER AND GOLD

"Stars over Casco Bay", oil, by Elizabeth Fraser

He sat in silence
among the silent stones
on the patio.

A new night was

washing over his world

with miles of stars,

his friends and fellow-travelers.

Tell me a tale,

he asked them,

of silver and the flowing

of friendship,

and six stars sang

of Ham and a friend

with silver feelings

and golden goodness

in her eyes.  

SILENT FORCES

As my students enter my classroom each day, I try to keep in mind that they carry countless unseen engines inside them, engines that silently furnish more force than winds across the countryside. Some of these engines are physical, for sure, like their loyal hearts and lungs, but the ones I love are the silent machines that make beliefs and inspirations by the thousands. It’s as if the students, as they sit quietly before me, are inwardly moving around in whirlwind ways as ideas dance in and out of their lives. It’s these inner, silent forces that move their lives ever forward. Their hearts help their blood and bones be full of life, but it’s the thoughts they think that steer their young lives and show them new, wide-open doors almost daily. Beliefs and brainstorms by the hundreds are starting up each second in my classes. I often feel like I’m in the midst of a strong, voiceless storm as I move among the kids -- a good storm to watch and wonder at.

ENDURING RICHES

Strange, but sometimes I feel, as I’m standing or sitting among my students, that I am a millionaire many times over. My actual bank account wouldn’t break any records, but the wealth that’s with me when I’m teaching sometimes seems over-the-top, totally beyond counting, inconceivably vast. It’s a wealth that no trials or tribulations can take away and no economic downturn can damage. It’s mine to make use of as I wish, now and for evermore. I’m speaking here, as you can tell, of interior riches -- of thoughts, insights, enlightenments, stray feelings flowing past during class, any of the countless wonders of the mind and heart that happen to any teacher every day. If I could somehow count it all, add it up like currency, the final total would take up whole pages. I could break a bank with all the wealth I win each day in class. Even now, as I sit at my desk in my classroom in the cooling hours of the late afternoon, I find myself smiling as I consider the countless new feelings and thoughts that flew softly into me today from somewhere or everywhere as I was teaching. I don’t have piles of money packed in vaults in the bank, but I do have ideas that don’t stop pouring in like cold cash as I carry out my blessed duties as a teacher.

RAINBOWS AND THOUGHTS

I saw a surprising, split-second rainbow the other day, and I’ve already seen some similar wonders in my middle school English classes. This was an especially wondrous rainbow – a sudden and extensive band of colors above a small cloud in an otherwise blue sky. Usually rainbows, at least in my experience, appear after some rain, but this one was different and sort of shocking, so much so that I called a friend to share my surprise. Later, it made me think about the bright rainbows that have suddenly shown up in the midst of my few English classes so far – rainbows in the form of colorful feelings and thoughts shared by the students. We’ve gone through some minutes of fairly mundane remarks during our discussions, but then, always before very long, a student has said something that stuns all of us, sort of like my rather astonishing rainbow. For a moment or two, we’re silent with wonder at the student’s startling comment, but soon its glory goes away, like the transitory rainbow, and we’re left with the usual and simple successes of English class, sort of like the blue sky last week when the rainbow slowly but surely disappeared.

STARS AT DAWN

It’s always somewhat saddening to see a few morning stars slowly disappear as I drive to school, but at least it does me the favor of reminding me that everything eventually disappears, even the successes I have in my English teaching. If this morning I make new paths with the students through a Shakespeare sonnet, much of that knowledge may be no more real than a wisp of air by tomorrow. The words we say in class this afternoon will float off beyond our minds by breakfast in the morning, when other words will wander into our lives with their look of self-importance. All things eventually vanish – clouds, rainbows, echoes in the mountains, and the seemingly special accomplishments of an English teacher on an undisturbed countryside road in Connecticut. This, though, makes me happy rather than sad, because the disappearance of success into the universe means more success can find space in my life. Thoughts arise and pass away in my classroom, which means new thoughts will throw themselves across the room like lights. Yes, stars fade away at dawn, but it only means the mighty light of the sun will be shining soon.

THE CHOSEN ONES

I sometimes think of my students and me as “the chosen ones”, not in any biblical or religious sense, but simply in the sense of being a special selection of people brought together in a classroom to complete extraordinarily essential tasks. I imagine us being carefully selected for these particular sections of 8th and 9th grade English – being hand-picked, first–rate candidates for some significant awards in scholarship and schooling. I sometimes make believe that we few students and a teacher have been carefully chosen from a choice group of thousands of the best and brightest, and have been brought together in a small classroom in Connecticut to create educational miracles beyond explanation. Strangely enough, this fantasy scenario is, in some ways, absolutely true. The measureless universe will somehow set my students and me down in Room 2 on Barnes Road tomorrow morning, and there will be no other collection of learners exactly like us in the wide world. Autumn winds wander every which way and deposit leaves, by some means, just where they should be across lawns, and, in a similarly incomprehensible way, each of my students and I have been brought together for this year of finding new knowledge. We will be a one-of-a-kind group, a Number 1 band of brothers, sisters, and one old-time leader, all looking to learn whatever there is to learn about the way words work in this old, odd cosmos.