BARBAROUS IN BEAUTY

“[N]ow, barbarous in beauty, the stooks rise […]”
-- Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Hurrahing in Harvest”

Strangely enough, this line came to mind this morning during a 9th grade English class, when several unkempt and scruffy teenagers taught me a few things about a novel I thought I knew well. These were kids who probably care way more about basketball and texting than teaching an old teacher about an old book, but nonetheless, there they were this morning, making me sit up and see some sentences in A Tale of Two Cities in an entirely fresh way. We were discussing a puzzling passage which I had, I thought, come to some understanding of a few years back, when these two boys abruptly brought me around 180 degrees. They were dressed somewhat shabbily, and I remember hearing them sort of throwing themselves down the hall as they came to class, but once we started discussing last night’s assigned reading, they broke forth like the lights of a new and wild wisdom. For a few minutes, they made several of Dickens’ strange sentences shine as clearly as candle flames, these untidy boys who break all records racing around at recess but who only this morning made me aware of their skill in decoding cryptic books. In some ways, the word “barbarous” could be applied to these boys who often forget the simplest manners and make a brief but crazy chaos between classes. However, in some ways, like this morning, they also bring a peculiar beauty to my classroom – the beauty of bold ideas born of youthful sincerity and uprightness.

SPEAKING THE TRUTH

“But speak the truth, and all nature and all spirits help you with unexpected furtherance. Speak the truth, and all things alive or brute are vouchers, and the very roots of the grass underground there do seem to stir and move to bear you witness.”
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Harvard Divinity School Address”

I hope my students understand the importance of speaking the truth as they see it, for this kind of speaking can show the miracles their young lives are made of. It doesn’t matter whether their words carry the weight of “the truth”, whatever that might mean -- only that their words wear the clothes of their own special and irreplaceable ideas. If a student considers Dickens to be a bewildering writer, then that is the truth for that student, and she has a responsibility to say it convincingly so all can understand her. If a boy can’t believe his English teacher hasn’t read the Harry Potter books, he should say that to the teacher with graciousness but energy, for it is the truth as his heart apprehends it. Emerson makes the point that powerfully putting your perception of the truth out there for the world to at least understand, if not welcome, will inevitably bring the blessings of a universe that thrives on the truth of things. Just speak what you honestly believe, I say to my students, and the powers of the wide world will work with you. Emerson suggests that the universe will “stir and move” and make new forces for us to use, if only we will say the truth as we sincerely but unpretentiously touch and experience it at this moment.

SHOPPING IN ROOM 2

I spent some time shopping at a sprawling mall this morning, and it reminded me, improbably enough, of teaching in my tiny classroom. My room sprawls about as much as a closet does, but still, there’s a certain sense of spaciousness when the students and I are shopping in a mystifying novel for answers to its questions, or searching for the correct keys to crack open a poem. We go browsing among the mass of possible choices, just as a friend and I cruised through the various stores this morning. My friend and I finally found a few items to purchase – items that seemed to precisely fit our needs – and during English class, my students and I usually discover some useful truths in our daily shopping trips. Of course, all of this shopping, whether at the mall or in class, calls for a lot of leisurely looking and evaluating which leads, sometimes, to just a few special discoveries. After an hour or so of searching and assessing, I purchased just one small item this morning, and some English classes might generate just a few truths for the kids to take with them – but that seems to be the necessary way in mall or classroom shopping.

THE BEAUTIFUL CLASS

Since soccer, the so-called “beautiful game”, often seems endlessly tedious, I’ve decided to call my sometimes tiresome English classes “the beautiful classes”. When I watch a soccer match, I’m often lulled into a lack of expectation by the constant passing and back and forth with little or no noticeable excitement, and the same thing might happen to an observer in English class. She or he might hope something besides step-by-step lessons might happen – something besides kids and teacher talking quietly about a book in a not especially eye-catching classroom. A visitor might make the assumption that this is a fairly lackluster class taught by a fairly tame teacher, just as I might decide, when watching a slowly- progressing soccer match, that there are a thousand more thrilling things to do with my time. Sincere soccer aficionados, however, know that nothing is more beautiful than a carefully-crafted attack by a team that takes its patience seriously, and there’s a similar need for patience in practicing the art of teaching English. An earnest soccer team strives to set up fine-looking passing patterns that might produce a fine-looking goal or two, and in English class, we carry on in a similarly careful, and perhaps monotonous, manner, making comments and asking questions that might appear insignificant to a visitor, but that lead us slowly toward the goal of good learning. It’s an inevitably slow and painstaking process, this matter of making goals and knowledge, and lovers of soccer and teaching take seriously the measured and purposeful aspect of it all. There may be only a single goal in a game, and just a crumb of knowledge in a class, but the beauty of the process is priceless.

JOICING

A teacher came skipping down the hall recently to say she was rejoicing about some superior work her students had done, and for some reason it started me wondering about the “re-“ part of the word, and whether the simple word “joicing” exists, and whether I should sometimes, instead of re-joicing, simply do some joicing about my students’ work. In a literal sense, re-joicing means doing it over and over again, as though it’s become customary and expected, whereas joicing might mean it’s a first -- a fresh release of enthusiasm, a mint-condition kind of praise and appreciation. When you joice over something, perhaps it’s as if you’re cheering in a totally revitalizing way, like a breeze blowing among branches as never before. I’ve frequently felt a surprising sense of newness in my classes, as though something totally new was being born before my eyes, and surely that’s an occasion for joicing – for silently shouting approval in a rosy-cheeked way. Whether it’s a boy bringing his bright insights to a conversation about a story, or a girl giving us the gift of her unprocessed wisdom about a poet’s work, or someone complimenting a classmate for clearing up obscurities of one sort or another, or just a shy student suddenly awakening us with her cautious but impressive thoughts, there’s always a time, now and then, for some earnest joicing. I guess what I mean is, there’s always a time for finding newness and uniqueness in my classroom, and thus a time to joice, and then perhaps re-joice.

CLEANING TABLES AND MINDS

When I’m cleaning the tables in my classroom at the end of the day, I often find myself thinking of the “tables” in my students’ minds, and wondering how often they receive a first-rate cleaning. It’s interesting to pursue the comparison – the tables in my classroom, covered with dust and shavings of erasers and perhaps some scraps of paper, and the tables in my students’ minds, so often messy with strewn, used-up thoughts. I wipe my tables with soft tissues so they take on a shining and unsullied appearance for the students, and maybe the students, similarly, might make use of some mental tissues to take off the shroud of dusty ideas. Of course, it’s impossible to actually make our minds spick and span each day, but figuratively speaking, perhaps we can come into each new day with a feeling of spotlessness and roominess in our minds, a feeling that we’re destined to find spanking new thoughts to set down on the freshly washed tables of our minds. Perhaps the students can prepare their minds the way I prepare the classroom tables, making both minds and tables set to receive the best and newest of a new day.

FINDING COMFORT

In my English classes, I hope my students find value in the poems we read, power in the pages of the novels we study, and smoothness and strength in their own written words, but most of all, I hope they find comfort. I don’t mean comfort of the soft and sentimental kind – the kind that says to students that English class will always be easy and pleasurable – but comfort, rather, of the brave and well-built kind. After all, the word derives from the Latin word meaning “with strength”, suggesting that true comfort comes in the form of an influx of power rather than approval, of confidence rather than commiseration. I want my students to be comfortable in my classroom in the same way they might be comfortable on a mountain trek – because they know they have the power to perform the necessary actions. If I bring comfort to the students, it means I make them understand that they have more might and merit than they ever thought possible. It means I make them feel the forces present inside them, which in turn comforts them with the knowledge of their own power. Being comfortable in English class doesn’t mean the students loosen up and relax and let things happen as they will. On the contrary, it means making sure their real power is presented to their classmates, their teacher, and their world in as poised and positive a manner as possible.

RAISING THE WHITE FLAG

As a teacher I have spent more than several of my 46 years in one sort of struggle or another – the struggle to understand a novel, the struggle to set down a decent lesson plan, the struggle to understand my students’ minds and hearts, the struggle simply to survive those occasional tiresome days that try any teacher’s soul. Lately, though, I’ve been bringing the surrender flag to school and unfurling it in front of myself now and then. I’m giving up struggling. I’m setting down my combat tools, putting aside my weapons of warfare. I’ll still be an attentive and faithful teacher, but I’ll be attentive in a more temperate way, and faithful like flowing rivers are faithful, with a peaceful kind of pushiness. Rivers, I have always realized, do not struggle. With rocks in their way, they simply slide around them and move along, and when trees topple, the waters open wide and say “welcome”. Rivers are powerful in a soft but persevering way, and that’s what I’m aiming for in the classroom. I guess I’m trading struggling for flowing, and I have a feeling my students will follow along with more willingness than when I was a classroom warrior.

THE CHILDREN OF ROOM 2

      In Room 2 at the small school where I teach,  groups of young children gather together several times each day to experience the intricacies, satisfactions, and sporadic pains connected with the study of English – and one of these children, the teacher,  is 69 years old.  Yes, I have come to realize, as the years have passed, that I am as much a child as my adolescent students, and that all of us are like tots taking our first steps into the world of literature. True, I’ve been reading books for 60-some years, but I still often feel, quite honestly, like a lost little boy in an astonishing forest when I find myself inside a new story or poem. I know all the impressive terms and turns-of-phrase that English teachers use in discussing literature, but those are like so much smoke sent out to simply camouflage the fact that I’m not at all sure what any of this writing really means. Sometimes, like a confused kid, I feel like I want someone’s hand to hold as I read a Dickens novel – someone who can show me which of the thousand trails of meaning I should follow.  I guess teaching English, for me, is a lot about pretending – making believe I know exactly what this book means and what that poem signifies, when in fact I’m as bewildered as a small boy who has wandered beyond his yard.  Luckily, I don’t always pretend. Sometimes the child in me makes a stand for honesty, and I simply say to the students that I have absolutely no clue what Dickens or Shakespeare or Dickinson is saying.  I throw up my hands like a lost boy, and then it is that we children of Room 2 – students and senior-citizen teacher together – set off on a cheerful search for the countless truths always concealed under beautifully-written words.
 

MADE IN SECRET

More and more, life seems to me to be composed of secrets, and never more so than in my work as a teacher. In the classroom, as I steadfastly try to teach the students my carefully planned lessons, I feel the fullness of an entire universe of secrets just below the surface of things. While the students and I share thoughts on the significance of sentences in a Dickens novel, great treasures of undisclosed mysteries are lying all around us. It’s as if we work in a wilderness of puzzles, this small classroom called “Room 2”. In a way, every thought that comes to us is a secret: What does this thought really mean? Where did it come from? Where will it go from here? We pretend that we understand our thoughts – that they are simple and understandable statements – but the truth is that every thought is like a locked room and its little key has been long since lost. We share our ideas in class, but essentially, each one is as secret as a closet with a closed door. I guess what this all leads to is the utter secrecy and silence of all of our lives. Around the seminar table in Room 2 sit many adolescent mysteries and a single senior-citizen puzzle, all prepared to pretend we understand each other. We’re foghorns surrounded by vast shadows and dimness, calling out to the darkness in the hope of receiving signals sent back. If this sounds dismal and cheerless, it doesn’t to me. On the contrary, coming to visit mysteries each day seems like an escapade to me, a rousing mission made just for Mr. Salsich.

SO MANY BIRDS

So many birds
find the food of life
at the feeder, and
so many ideas
dawn in his mind
like mornings at the shore,
sunrise after sunrise
in his mind
as he watches
the wonder of birds
bringing their lives to the window
of his hushed classroom.

POPPIES AND PREPOSITIONS

"Poppies by the Roadside", oil, by Karen Margulis

Yesterday our entire school sat down and made paper poppies to show our appreciation for the indispensable work our veterans do, and it started me speculating, surprisingly enough, about the relative unimportance of prepositions. Over the years, I have spent endless numbers of hours teaching supposedly essential topics like prepositions, but it all seemed inconsequential yesterday as I thought about our servicemen and women waging peace around the world. Yes, I know that knowledge of the ins-and-outs of our language will be beneficial to my students, but, in the bigger picture, it fades in comparison to the crucial life-and-death efforts our veterans are, and always have been, engaged in. While my students and I sit in ease and safety in Room 2, women and men around the globe are giving themselves to the task of taking good care of our freedom. While we discuss whether we need a comma or a semicolon in some sentence, soldiers and sailors far from their homes are helping America remain free. I have always wondered why my small independent school insists on having school on Veterans Day, but perhaps its because we can bring some understanding to the students of just how special the role of veterans is. Perhaps I can remind my students today that the use of prepositions in essays is an utterly frivolous topic when set beside the essential lives and deaths of the veterans we honor.

THE DEAREST FRESHNESS

“Nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things.”

-- Gerard Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur”

When I’m making my way through a school day that seems stuck in dullness, I sometimes think of this line from Hopkins, and soon I’m starting, once again, to see the freshness in my students’ lives. It’s certainly true that any sense of tediousness in my classes is caused, not by anything in the students, but by my own confused view of them – a view that sees lifelessness where there is actually unspoiled vitality and creativeness. It’s easy to see drabness in the students, as easy as seeing just another sunset in endless shades of light spread across an evening sky. If my inner eyes are closed during class (as, sorry to say, they sometimes are), then I surely won’t notice the everlasting brightness of the students' faces and their spoken words. At this time of year, when nature seems to be settling into sleep as falling leaves leave the trees stripped and empty, it’s important to remember Hopkins’ insistence that “nature is never spent”, and it’s just as important to see this kind of endless freshness in my students’ lives. They may sit before me in class like silent stones, but there’s always a steady expansion of life inside them, a constant widening of the circles of understanding. There’s a “dearest freshness” in Room 2 –always – and it’s my essential task to see it and cherish it.

FLAWLESSNESS

She knows that the stars
are perfect in their places,
and that the moon
lets its light shine
where it’s supposed to shine,
and that her hands on the keyboard
are carrying themselves
with the poise of the perfect hands
that all of us have.
She knows this for sure,
and she also knows
that all the days will dance
in their exceptional ways,
and what she wants to do
is sit back and stare
at all this flawlessness.

THE MUSIC OF YOUTHFUL WRITING

As my classroom years have passed, I have grown increasingly interested in showing students the pleasures of making music with their written sentences. For most of my career, I focused, like many writing teachers, on topics like clarity, coherence, and general tidiness, but over the years I have steadily placed increased emphasis on the harmonious characteristics of their words and phrases. It seems clear to me that much of the smartness and magnificence of written words comes from their melodious qualities – their ability to bring to our minds and hearts the kind of whole-hearted peace we are sometimes blessed with when listening to music. Of course, the content of my students’ written words is important, but somehow even run-of-the-mill content can be carried marvelously along if the music of the words is exceptional. This is why I’ve been bringing to the students, now and then, the assorted musical tools available to writers – tools like alliteration, assonance, consonance, rhythm, and internal rhyme. Realizing that assonance – the recurrence of similar internal vowel sounds – can create stylishness in an otherwise lackluster sentence brings some satisfaction to students who otherwise might consider writing to be simply a mystifying and painstaking task. In the same way, using subtle rhymes inside a sentence can show young writers that writing school essays can be a frisky and lively experience instead of a bland and lifeless one. The ideas my young students share in their formal essays are not always stirring, but, if they are set with lightheartedness in reasonably musical phrases and sentences, they can at least be satisfying -- and even sometimes rousing -- to read.