'Chasing the Sun", oil on linen, by Roxanne Steed

In the last few days, I’ve been rereading Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, and thoroughly enjoying it. It has brought to mind, again, the startling fact that I could spend the rest of my life reading only Shakespeare, and never feel dissatisfied or wanting. Somehow, in a manner totally beyond my understanding, Shakespeare was able, 400 years ago, to capture in 30+ plays all the beauty and power of life. Nothing written since then comes even close to matching the elegance and energy I find in his plays. What is especially intriguing to me is the fact that I find total economy present side-by-side with power and loveliness. He wastes no words. Nothing seems to be overdone. Each word is useful and necessary, and each line of poetry carries exactly the weight that it should carry. This is especially interesting to me, living, as I do, in an age when superfluity and extravagance seem to abound in writing (and everything else). Shakespeare was a frugal writer. He understood the beauty of brevity, something we moderns seem to have lost sight of.

I also realized, again, that many Shakespeare plays are rather easily accessible to eighth and ninth grade scholars. For instance, Julius Caesar is a play filled with the kinds of strains and tensions that teenagers constantly feel. Not only that, Shakespeare’s language in this play, though 400 years old, would be remarkably easy for my scholars to understand. As I was reading the lines aloud this morning, I could see in my mind the faces of my scholars next September as they listen to the feelings in the words and sense the power of Shakespeare’s themes. This play, in many ways, could grip them as well as the best beach novel.

TEACHING JOURNAL

Field Day, June 11, 2009

 

     Today we held our annual end-of-the-year Field Day – a day of recreation – and it started me thinking about the meaning of that word. Recreation, based on the origin of the word, is a time of re-creation – an opportunity to start over, a chance to remake ourselves. When we relax in the enjoyment of harmless games, we are giving our lives a chance to feel the energies of youth again. Playing a silly game like the beanbag toss (which I supervised today) can be like a small rebirth. I was thinking of this as I watched the children taking pleasure in the happy activities of Field Day. It was like seeing hundreds of little people being rebuilt before my eyes. After 9 months of seriously hard labor in their classrooms, the students were taking their tense and tired lives apart and enthusiastically putting them back together. With every toss and jump and sprint, a little more freshness and newness came back to their lives on this day of spirited recreation.  

"The Primary School, New Hope, Kasana, Uganda", oil, by Robin Weiss

Teaching Journal

Day 161, Tuesday, June 9, 2009

 

     Today, the last day of official classes, brought a dash of sadness with it, but, as usual, it was a selfish kind of sadness, the kind with a lot of ‘I’ and ‘me’ in it. I felt sad because I wouldn’t be the English teacher for many of these good scholars next year. They wouldn’t return in September to sit with me in my classroom. I wouldn’t have the pleasure of watching them continue to grow as scholars of reading and writing. I wasn’t sad for the kids, just for me. I find it somewhat sickening that, after all these years, I still get stuck in a small, egocentric place like this – a place where little me feels downtrodden and forlorn because I didn’t get my way. Why can’t I see, at age 67, that life is not about me, but about all of life? Why can’t I realize that, while I’m reeling around in my self-centered sorrow, some other human beings – my young scholars – are looking forward to great happiness at their new schools? Why does it so often have to be all about me? It’s disgusting, and I feel like kicking myself -- but that’s selfish too, because while I’m pay attention to berating myself, I’m forgetting that the universe is infinitely bigger than just me and my little worrisome world. The vast universe is beautiful and perfect today, just as it was yesterday and will be for all the tomorrows – including in September, when my departing scholars will meet their magnificent new schools, and a new group of willing scholars will take their seats in my classroom. 

"Sunset Ride", oil on masonite, by Candy Barr

Teaching Journal

Day 160, Monday, June 8, 2009

 

     I made it a point today to not be a ‘blurter’ in class – to not always speak my thoughts as soon as they arose. Strangely, it’s one of my disconcerting habits that’s been hardest to break. For the first three decades of my teaching career, I was the best of the blurters. I taught in a freestyle way, shooting from the hip. Words flew off my lips as fast as thoughts arose in my mind. In a way, I was an out-of-control teacher, a cowboy riding the range of English teaching, and I let my horse -- my mouth -- go pretty much wherever it wanted. It’s been a hard habit to break, but today I reined in my impulsive voice fairly well. It’s important to me, because teaching is about discipline, self-control, quietness, and – most of all – selflessness. A teacher who blurts is a teacher who thinks too much of himself – thinks his  thoughts and words are way more important than they actually are. As the years have passed, I’ve learned that my thoughts and words are just very small parts of the infinite process called teaching and learning. Consequently, I’ve tried to put my ‘self’ farther and farther in the background in order to allow the other important educational forces to do their quiet work. I’ve tightened the reins on my words. I now speak more slowly, more quietly, and much less often than I used to. An old maxim says that a good teacher speaks only when a student asks a question, and that’s the kind of teaching I’m aiming for. The more I move toward silence, the more my scholars will be able to speak. Today, because I avoided blurting, I probably said half the number of words I said yesterday. Maybe tomorrow I can cut it in half again. Maybe a silent teacher in Room 2 isn’t too far away.  

Teaching Journal

Day 159, Friday, June 5

Today I will write about my love for grammar rules. 999 people out of 1,000 (including my long-suffering students) would probably gag at the mention of grammar rules, but I honestly love them. I guess it’s because I love words. They're just small collections of letters on a page, just spoken groups of sounds, but words carry enormous power. In fact, words, to me, are close to the center of power in the universe -- because they are born from thoughts, and no other force is as mighty as a thought. Words are more explosive, more creative, than the strongest winds and waves. Words, not weapons, cause wars, and words make true love way better than bodies do. Grammar rules being the guidelines for how to employ these potent forces called words, it’s logical that I would enjoy investigating and understanding them. People who love engines love to know how they work, and I feel the same about words. Sit me down with a glass of wine, some pretzels, and a grammar book, and I’ll be content. Tell me how you use commas with participles and gerunds in your writing, and I’ll sit back and listen with pleasure.

Teaching Journal

Day 158, Thursday, June 4, 2009

 

     Today was a tension-filled day for the 9^th graders, because it was final exam day in English class, but for me it was a day of fulfillment. After 157 days of painstaking and sometimes torturous labor, the scholars and I finished the job of being 9^th grade English students and teacher, and I felt happy for them and for me. Together we accomplished something this year. I set out some lofty goals in September, and today we all, I think, were able to experience the realization of many of those goals. For one of the few times in my long teaching career, I felt genuine satisfaction as they took their exam – satisfaction that I had prepared them the way I had hoped to prepare them back in September, and that they were entirely ready to do well on the exam. It was a feeling of achievement – a sense that we had actually reached many goals that seemed distant and shadowy nine months ago. Certainly there are also goals that were long since lost sight of, many September resolutions that faded away as the weeks passed, but there’s a strong feeling, too, that I showed more persistence and resolution this year than maybe ever before. We reached the summit of some high-minded and worthy goals today. After 40+ years of teaching, perhaps I finally discovered how to walk a teaching path all the way to the very end, to the very top. It was a good feeling today.    

Teaching Journal

Day 157, Wednesday, June 3, 2009

 

     This year I feel good about something that, years ago, would have troubled me. It’s increasingly clear to me that the students are more relaxed, perhaps even more comfortable, in the company of the younger, more energetic teachers than they are with me. They obviously gravitate to the teachers who joke with them and make their classes exciting and sometimes dramatic. The kids, given a choice between quiet and rather staid Mr. Salsich and a younger, more vibrant, more astonishing teacher, will pick the latter. In the ‘old days’ of my teaching, this would have concerned me. I would have felt left out, scorned,  and bedraggled. I would have done a good share of pouting – wondering why the kids didn’t ‘like’ me, etc. etc. Teaching was a personal thing back then – an ongoing endeavor to see how ‘popular’ I could become with the students. Now, it’s very different. It may sound odd, but teaching has become a completely impersonal enterprise for me, in the sense that it’s no longer about ‘me’ as a person. I’ve worked hard to let my ego slowly fade away and die, at least in my teaching, and it’s brought me – and hopefully my scholars – many blessings. Now, in fact, I actually give a silent cheer when I see the students having fun with the more effervescent teachers. I’m happy for them (both kids and teachers), and I’m happy for myself, because it allows me and my annoying ego to slip further into the background. The farther away ‘I’ get in my classroom, the better the teaching becomes. When ‘Mr. Salsich’ disappears, the scholars can come to where they belong – the foreground, the dais, center-stage. With the presence of the young and lively teachers, that’s happening more and more. The teacher in Room 2 is getting quieter, more modest, more concealed –- and that’s good for both teaching and learning.  

Teaching Journal

Day 156, June 2, 2009

    

     Sometimes I find a real need for ‘open space’ in my teaching, and at those times I often think of the sky. Teaching can all too often become a closed, cramped, confined, and overcrowded enterprise. I sometimes feel like I barely have room to take a breath, surrounded as I seem to be by essays, tests, quizzes, lesson plans, and scholars who need unvarying attention.  Sometimes the classroom just seems too small for my scholars and me and all our wide-ranging needs and wants.  That’s when I picture the sky. If I can see in my mind the vastness of the sky, even for a moment, it reminds me of the vastness in which we teachers perform our duties. My scholars and I, in truth, are not confined or restricted in any way. We do our educational tasks in the universe of the mind, which has no boundaries whatsoever. As the poet John Milton put it in “Paradise Lost”, we are  “intellectual being[s], [with] thoughts that wander through Eternity”. There are no limits or restraints in eternity, and neither are there in our work as students and teacher. The great sky above us goes out into space forever, and so do the thoughts we think in English class. There’s an infinite sky in my little classroom -– something I try to recall when the walls close in. 

Teaching Journal

Day 155, Monday, June 1, 2009

 

     Today a little defensiveness showed up in my teaching – an old nuisance from the past. For many years, I taught like a soldier in a war zone: weapons raised, defenses at the ready. I rarely got angry, and I actually enjoyed my classes immensely, but I was always ready for a fight – ready to pounce on a scholar at the slightest hint of rebellion. I actually knew very little about how to be a good teacher, but I knew (or thought I knew) that it had something to do with war. Over the long years, however, I have gradually learned the truth – that teaching is actually the opposite of fighting. Good teaching has to do with trust instead of suspicion, with cooperation instead of conflict. If I want to do my job properly and with dignity, I have to be willing to put down my defenses and welcome my scholars as colleagues in a vast enterprise. Today, for just a few moments, I forgot to do that. After giving an assignment, I noticed – or thought I noticed – a boy making a frown at another boy, and the thought came to me, in my old defensive way, that I should reprimand him somehow. Fortunately, however, the thought disappeared as quickly as it had come, and I remembered that this teaching business is not combat. It’s not the kids against me. So what if the boy frowned at a friend? What’s the big deal? If we’re all engaged together in the honest pursuit of knowledge, our steady cooperation as scholars and teacher will more than compensate for any trivial and fleeting facial expressions. The petty frustrations will fall to the wayside as the great caravan of learning in Room 2 moves cordially forward.   

 

Teaching Journal

Day 154, Friday, May 29, 2009

 

     A girl came to class this morning and immediately asked if she could be the ‘server’. (I provide ice water and whole wheat crackers for the students.) I said we would be grateful if she would, and then, as she walked around with the container of crackers, I began to appreciate the significance of her request. She wanted to do the job – wanted to take minutes away from her quiet reading time and be a servant for her classmates. She wanted to work rather than relax. It was, perhaps, one of her favorite things about English class – the chance to wait on others. These reflections –realizations, really – made it clear to me that this theoretically minor feature of my class – this opportunity to be attentive to others’ needs – is of greater consequence than I had thought. Perhaps it’s neither minor nor nonessential. Perhaps it should be thought of as an indispensable part of my curriculum. I teach comma rules, literary analysis, essay writing, and service to others. 

Teaching Journal

Day 152, May 27, 2009

 

     Despite the occasional article or book that presents the negative aspects of praise, I continue to think it’s an absolute necessity for the scholars in my classes. However, I like to use the word ‘extol’; I don’t just praise my scholars – I extol them. The dictionary tells me the word derives from the Latin root meaning “to raise up”, which is exactly what I try to do for each of the students as often as possible. Everyone needs to be occasionally raised up – put on a pedestal, brought to center stage, made to feel like they’re standing tall – and that, I feel, is a big part of my responsibility as a teacher. Praising students is too easy and sometimes too hollow; extolling them – sincerely telling them they’re among the best and the bravest and need to stay that way – is the hard and demanding work of the devoted teacher. Today I extolled my 9^th grade scholars because they deserved it. I set them up on a dais because they have proved themselves to be champions of English scholarship. This year they have run a marathon of English work, and here at the very end most of them are in an all-out sprint for the finish line. They have saved their best for last, and that’s brave, and that demands to be extolled. If I had a raised platform in my room, I would have insisted that the class stand at the top. They deserved to be ‘raised up’ and honored, and they deserved to be told that they deserved it – and that’s why I extolled them.   

 

Teaching Journal

Day 150, Friday, May 22, 2009

 

     Today, for the first time this year, I completely trusted the scholars to make good use of their time without my supervision, and they didn’t disappoint me. On this pleasant spring day, I wanted to rehearse with individual 9^th graders for an upcoming event, so I told the class to go outside, stay fairly close to the classroom, do some reading or writing, and I would call them individually for rehearsal. This was the kind of trust that would be impossible in a larger school, where rules are stringent about scholars always being under the supervision of a teacher. In my small, sociable school, however, we feel more able to allow the students to work individually or in small groups without a teacher always lingering nearby. As I rehearsed with individual scholars, I occasionally heard sounds from those who were outside – scraps of quiet conversation floating in, plus an occasional flare-up of laughter. I accomplished much in my rehearsals with students, and I trust that the kids outside realized some accomplishments also. Did they complete as much “school work” as they might have if I had been standing beside them in my typical managerial role? Probably not – but I’m betting they appreciated my trust and made a good effort to prove worthy of it. They may not have made much of a dent in the English class curriculum, but they probably did learn that being trusted brings a feeling of self-worth – and, if so, that’s a lesson I’m proud to have taught them.   

Teaching Journal

Day 149, Thursday, May 21, 2009

 

     In a story I read recently, a character was described as wearing “beautiful garments” for some special occasion, and it started me thinking about why I dress up in my pressed shirt and bow tie each day. I guess I would simply say that each class is, for me, a special – a very special – occasion. Men wear ties and jackets to banquets and weddings because of the importance of the events, and I wear dressy attire in my classroom for the same reason. In fact, teaching children is an activity of far greater magnitude than eating at a banquet or celebrating at a wedding, so perhaps I should wear a tuxedo when I’m teaching. When we dress up for a special occasion, we ourselves feel  special  – like we’re not ordinary but extraordinary, not nobodies but somebodies of stature and prominence, and I feel exactly that way in my classroom. I am lucky to be taking part in the most honorable of all professions, and therefore I dress in an honorable manner. In my room, I feel like a dignitary, a distinctive celebrity of some sort, and I try my best to make my scholars feel the same way. They have their dress code, and I have mine, and together we’re dressed each day in our own kind of "beautiful garments" for a very exclusive event called English class.      

Teaching Journal

Day 148, Wednesday, May 20, 2009

 

     The other day, when I overheard someone say he was 'bored out of his mind' by a movie he had seen, I thought of my young, impatient English scholars. The country of Boredom often seems to be where they reside during my classes. Often my words appear to pass among them like vacant ships in the night, hardly stirring a thought or rumpling a feeling. An atmosphere of ennui sometimes hangs over my scholars like haze in the dog days. What I have to remember, though, is that what we call boredom often arises out of an unwillingness to buckle down to a demanding task. Boredom, in other words, can be a mask for laziness. When faced with a poem that requires their full and energetic concentration, being ‘bored’ might be the scholars’ way of saying “I just don’t feel like working very hard today.” Of course, I could give them poems that are instantly captivating, and I could assign essay topics that are immediately thrilling, but often those are not the poems and topics that will actually teach the scholars very much – and teaching is what my job involves. I was not hired to entertain the scholars and make sure they are never ‘bored’; I was hired to teach them, to push them to new heights, to force them to think and write what they’ve never thought and written before. That’s hard work – the kind of work that often makes young people feel ‘bored out of their minds’. Like most of us, my scholars would usually rather get out of their minds than activate their minds and pay serious attention to serious reading and writing – but those are the tasks of English class. If they make the kids feel bored, perhaps that’s a good sign. Perhaps it means I’m making their minds do things their minds don’t want to do, in which case I should pat myself on the back.     

Teaching Journal

Day 147, Tuesday, May 19, 2009

 

     This morning I worked with the 9^th graders on their poems for the upcoming “Poetry Night” readings, and later I did some related dictionary work. The kids are having a hard time speaking their beautiful poems in a beautiful way, and so it was especially interesting to find that the word ‘voice’ derives from the same Indo-European root that gave us the word ‘calliope”, meaning beautiful sound. (Calliope was the Greek muse of epic poetry.) As I thought about it, I was reminded that voices truly do make beautiful sounds. If a deaf person could suddenly hear, surely he or she would be amazed beyond belief at the sounds the human voice makes when it speaks. Even the modest, hesitant voices of my scholars reading their poems would be astonishing. Even the softest words by the quietest people would be breathtaking. I must keep that in mind when I’m teaching. These young voices I hear in my classroom – these ordinary but astounding voices that speak thousands of words to me each day – are a work of wonder. I wonder how often I let their voices sail right past me as if they’re insignificant noises instead of the sounds of hearts and minds speaking. I wonder how often I treat their spoken words as if they’re dust in the passing air instead of gifts of gold. I guess what this tells me is, when I listen to the scholars speaking their poems, I need to focus less on the superficial qualities of their voices and more on the beautiful inner qualities – the soul and spirit behind their sometimes clumsy and uncertain words. Their voices, like all of ours, come from vast and distant spaces, and I should feel privileged to be within hearing distance of them. 

Teaching Journal

Day 146, Monday, May 18, 2009

 

     Yesterday, the thought came to me that I should spend the last few weeks of school reviewing – actually retracing the steps – of the entire year, and today the idea came to fruition in a gratifying way. In the 8^th grade classes, I put on the screen the lesson and assignment for the day, as I always do, but before class I had customized the blogs so I could scroll down in a matter of seconds to the lesson and assignment for the very first day of school – Monday, September 8. So, after going over tonight’s assignment, we zipped down past 8 months and 144 lessons (it took about 5 seconds) to that Monday in September when we met for the first time. As we looked at the first lesson and assignment of the year, I must admit I was surprised by how interesting – even exciting –  it seemed to be for the scholars. They obviously enjoyed looking back so many weeks, remembering what they did in English class in September and how it felt. In fact, their enthusiasm spilled over to the point where I actually had to raise my hand and do some ‘shushing’, which I almost never have to do in my classes. It was apparently a captivating experience for them, at the end of the year, to start back at the beginning again and see where they had traveled. We looked at some early assignments, and the kids became eager to talk about them. They even asked permission to go to their lockers to get their binders with old homework assignments and essays – and a few of them actually rushed back to the room. (Wait a second -- they rushed back to English class???) We spent the entire period looking at essays from the first few weeks of school, examining ‘class notes’ folders from back then, and going over early reading journal assignments. Many enjoyed reading aloud paragraphs they had written then, and we all had fun recalling some of those first lessons and assignments. All in all, they were stimulating classes for all of us. After hiking the long and sometimes precipitous trail of 8^th grade English for 8 months, we were looking back down the trail from our high springtime vantage point – and liking what we saw.      

Teaching Journal

Day 145, Friday, May 15, 2009

 

As I was scanning a favorite teacher blog this morning, I came across a post about how useful YouTube can be to an English teacher – and very quickly I understood why. In no more than ten minutes, I found at least a dozen excellent videos about everything from paragraph development to the poems of Rilke to the functions of participles. They were short, organized, informative, and entertaining – and, of course, completely free. I gave a little shout and a clap of the hands as I sat on the couch at home and discovered one helpful video after another. It was just a small discovery, I guess, this YouTube gold mine, but to me it felt like a huge door had just swung open. Luckily, a lot of those doors seem to be opening for me lately. Perhaps I’m simply turning the doorknobs more often.   

Teaching Journal

Day 144, May 14, 2009

This morning, during an 8^th grade class, I happened to notice that a student had put his head down on the table, and I reacted quickly and sternly – and I think appropriately. I rarely raise my voice in class, but this was a situation that deserved stronger words than usual from the teacher. By putting his head down on the table, the boy was telling his classmates and me that he no longer cared to listen to us – a serious breach of good manners that needed a vigorous response from me. He – and the class – needed to be unequivocally reminded that some rules may not ever be broken, one of them being respect for others. I simply said his name and then, in an uncompromising and somewhat strident tone, “Sit up straight.” The class was stunned. They had never heard me speak in that manner. There was silence for about 10 seconds as I let the scholars appreciate the seriousness of what had happened. Then we proceeded with the business of English class -- with the offending boy sitting up as straight as a fence post.

Teaching Journal

Day 143, Wednesday, May 13

 

     Today one of the teacher’s assistants (a student who helps me conduct the class) behaved in an exceptionally dignified manner. In my classes I occasionally remind the scholars about the importance of dignity, and this girl has obviously heard the message . Dignity has to do with self-respect, seriousness of manner, and a sense of worthiness, and she showed those qualities as if they were an inborn part of her. She started by saying a firm and heartening “good morning” to her classmates, and then proceeded to lead the class through the initial steps of my lesson. She spoke with self-assurance and poise, and seemed to enjoy being the person in charge. She sat up straighter than usual, as if her life had suddenly taken on some special importance.

 

     We spent most of the class time today going over the students’ annotations on the class blog. This is new software that I discovered on the internet, and it’s proven to be very effective. We were able to see the page projected on the screen, and by moving the cursor over different sentences and clicking, we could see and study the annotations the students made at home last night.  It was academic collaboration at its best – a productive way of examining a text together. 

Teaching Journal

Day 142, Tuesday, May 12, 2009

 

     This morning before school I began thinking about the phrase “don’t take it personally”, and I realized, as I often have, that it’s very good advice for a teacher. One of the mistakes I still make is to think of myself as a separate ‘person’ who is engaged in presenting educational material to other ‘persons’. According to this way of thinking, it’s me over here and the scholars over there. What this leads to, inevitably, is one of two feelings: either I’ve been successful as a teacher, or unsuccessful. Either way, I’m taking teaching ‘personally’, which inevitably leads, at least occasionally, to disappointment and discouragement. A better way is to realize that education is not a limited, orderly, and logical enterprise between two people, a teacher and a scholar, but rather a vast and enigmatic whirlwind that involves innumerable forces and has no beginning and no ending. What I do in my classroom with my scholars is one infinitesimal aspect of the limitless process called education. It’s not a ‘personal’ project, but a universal one. Its success doesn’t depend on little ‘me’ in a small classroom in a small town in Connecticut. It depends, rather, on the success of the entire universe, and the universe has been enjoying success for about 15 billion years now. Taking my work ‘personally’ would be like a wave in the ocean taking its work personally – trying its best to be the best wave it can be for the betterment of the ocean. A wave, if I can put it this way, needs to remember that it’s part of a boundless and already perfect ocean, and I need to remember that I’m part of a process without end called teaching and learning.