PERFECTION

     I have always been taught that trying to be a “perfect” teacher is a prescription for disillusionment, but in the last few years I have come to see it as the road to understanding the real nature of my work. It seems clear to me now that perfection is everywhere, including my classroom. It’s the foundation of everything, the start and finish, the final and irrefutable fact. This moment, this sentence I’m setting down, the words I will speak to my students today, the thoughts the kids will think during class – all is perfection, precision, accomplishment, and excellence. Of course, this completely opposes the widespread belief that perfection is nowhere, is never possible, is nothing but a dream – but still, I stand by my belief in it. I guess it’s a question, for me, of simple humility. Who am I, after all, to pass judgment on the various defects of this or that?  Where do I get the authority and expertise to say that this moment is defective, or that what a student said today is slightly off base, or that what happened in my classroom yesterday was a misfortune? Do I have the universal perspective necessary to say, for certain, that any particular moment is a mistake?  In fact, do I possess the comprehensive wisdom to pass judgment about the inadequacy of anything? Since my answer to the last two questions has become a simple No, I have stopped searching for flaws and failures, and have started accepting the simple rightness, or perfection, of whatever happens. This doesn’t mean I always like what happens – just that I understand that it is what is, and therefore is whole and unblemished just as it is. I believe this somewhat simple view of reality – a view that makes the best sense to me – has made me a better teacher. I now see the correctness in the commonplace things in my classroom – the way a certain student slurs his words, the curious analysis a girl gives when discussing a story, the peaceful feeling of following a student’s words as he describes his ideas. What happens in my classroom is not always what I want, but it seems to me it’s what the Universe wants – and so it needs to be not only accepted but embraced.  I may not always give students A’s on their essays and tests, but they always get A’s from me for the plain and simple suitability of their lives, just as they are. 
 

SWIVELING

His chair at school swivels,
and so does happiness
as it looks in all directions
and dares depression
to say its name.
No one is out of sight
of happiness
as it holds steady
and swings around
to see who needs it,
who's lost in sorrow,
who thinks she's seen
the last of happiness.

He swivels in his smooth chair
and sees happiness
in good health
going round and round
with its gifts.

EXTRAORDINARY DAYS

There are days in the classroom when even a white piece of paper seems polished with light, when even the smallest blossom outside shines with an unusual strength. Admittedly, this doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, it tells me again what a gift I’ve received by being a teacher. Somehow I was shown, 45 years ago, that I would find a fortunate kind of life if I followed the path of an educator, but nothing prepared me for the everyday satisfaction I’ve experienced. Almost all my days in the classroom have been like choosing cheerfulness and comfort as a way of life, but there are those extra-special days when my teaching world seems suffused with an even more intense rareness. Just yesterday, a boy who usually brings only silence and moodiness to class actually carried the discussion along for a length of time. His face was bright with his wish to share his insights about some lines from Shakespeare. Even his gray shirt seemed strangely pressed and fresh as he spoke, and I remember noticing that the pictures on the wall where he sat stood out like spanking new ones. It was a moment like a little miracle, and it made me grateful, once again, that I am given this good life over and over, year after year after year. 

CLARITY

The windows weren't clear,
but, in a way, the whole world was.
He wondered about things,
and his wondering
was as lucid as the light-blue sky,
and his feelings seemed to shine
as if an artist
had just fashioned them.
He thought of the throwing of balls
by kids across the country,
and knew it was
simple and straightforward,
as was the standing up of skyscrapers
and the elegance of kindness
as it carries itself among us.

He stood beside the soiled windows,
and his standing there
seemed to burnish
this already bright world.

FRESH RUNNING WATERS

“… the fresh running waters of his mind’s fountain.”

          -- Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

"The Mystic River", oil, by Roxane Steed

     The above quote, which I came across yesterday after several freshly-flowing classes with my students, showed me once again why I feel so fortunate to be a teacher. You can try to find a vocation that feels more like living in the midst of the refreshing waters of healthy thoughts, but I doubt you will be successful. My students and I share ideas all day the way a river shares its countless drops and streams of water. We don’t so much sit in the classroom as flow, all our thoughts and feelings coursing and surging along for 48 minutes per class. Of course, the mystery -- the puzzle that never ceases to astonish me --  is that there sometimes seems to be no flow at all, as though all streams have stopped in stillness and slumber. A class of kids can quietly convince a teacher that trying to teach them is about as useless as trying to teach tables or empty boxes. I’ve sat among students who appear more like motionless stones in rivers than the rivers themselves. This, though, is just the usual illusion that fools so many of us teachers – that makes us miss the mighty flow of feelings and thoughts that’s always present when kids come together. Under the sometimes sleepy surface of English class, my students are streaming along with their always lively minds and hearts. Rivers of youthful thoughts are rolling along, even when my carefully planned lesson, say, on the life of Charles Dickens, is slowly dying away in dullness.

STAYING

"We're leaving",
he heard someone say,
but then he saw the sunshine
steering its graceful ship,
and the thoughts of friends
flowing across the field,
and the cares of someone he loved
lingering in the shade,
seeking his help.
Someone was leaving,
but he let the world
walk toward him
with its hands stretched out,
and he took them.

DOING NO HARM

“If he did not do much active good, he never did any harm.”

     -- Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

     It seems to me, more and more, that doing no harm should be the highest aspiration of a teacher. I sometimes see myself, when I’m teaching, as someone sitting beside a smoothly-moving, constantly shifting stream – and the last thing I want to do is step in and try to alter its course. The rivers of my students’ lives are flowing with a wonderful steadiness and inventiveness, and who am I to suppose I can enhance them? Can I make mountains be more majestic? Can I shift the winds from the east to the west? I sometimes wonder at the presumption of we teachers, supposing we can transform children’s lives, when it is no more possible than transforming the way caterpillars become butterflies. It would be a better approach to praise, at least to ourselves, the utter rightness of the students’ lives, the absolute appropriateness of each of them as they sit before me in class. Then, having embraced their intrinsic excellence, perhaps I can help them discover it for themselves.

WRITING WHILE STANDING

His feet felt fine,
holding him steady
as he showed his words
where they should place themselves
on the screen. He was not scared
of writing silly or stupid things,
or of finding strange truths
shining in his sentences,
or of seeing stars
and planets spiraling
among the words.
He was only afraid
his feet would feel left out
of the writing,
of the sunshine his sentences
might spread around
while his feet
just kept keeping him stable.

TEACHING WITH EQUANIMITY

 I’ve grown to love the word “equanimity”, and the quietness and calmness it conveys has become one of my main goals as a teacher. Years ago, I was anything but calm in the classroom. There was a sort of restrained chaos in my classroom conduct, as though some storm was always fizzing just under the surface. I was respectful to my students, yes, but they surely could always sense the inspired disorder at the center of most of my actions. Now, though, there’s something else there – a quietness and calmness that has come to me as slowly and inescapably as the years have passed. Now, at the age of 70, I see that nothing in the classroom is cause for concern or despair – that all things somehow work as one for the success of all of us. I’ve seen countless situations where some seeming misbehavior by a student has shown us the way to a kind of fresh understanding, or where a mistaken reading has made it possible to prepare a whole new appreciation of a story or poem. The years have shown me that stillness and acceptance is the best way to work with anything that occurs in the classroom. I always hope I can pass along this attitude to my students. I hope they leave my classroom each day with a deeper awareness of the stillness at the center of any learning experience. I hope they see that storms and confusion are best brought to bay by a level-headedness that simply cannot be shaken.

TRANSPLANTING DAFFODILS AND IDEAS

"Simply Daffodils", oil, by Roxanne Steed 

Over the years, my fiancé has found pleasure in finding places for her beloved perennial flowers as she moved from home to home, and it sometimes brings to my mind the movement of ideas in my young students’ lives. The kids carry all sorts of mental luggage with them as they work their way up through the grades, and I guess, in a sense, they find new places to set down their favorite thoughts when they start a new school year. My fiancé found the best places for her old daffodils in our new yard, and my students are slowly starting to see their best 7^th grade thoughts getting comfortable in my 8^th grade classes. It’s a transplanting process – planting old bulbs and old opinions in new places and hoping for the bursting open of new flowers and beliefs.  It’s inspiring to think of education that way – not as an infusion of wholly new thoughts into the students, but as a re-blossoming in fresh ways of their own finest thoughts from past years. I’ve often thought of the similarity between teaching and gardening, and here it is again – the teacher and the gardener giving their best efforts to promote the prospering of life, both in rising students and in resettled flowers. Delycia assisted in the resurrection, this spring, of venerable daffodils, and, as usual, I showed my students’ some suitable places to plant and nourish their youthful but rightfully hallowed 14-year-old thoughts.

A STORM

A storm showed him
how silly his fears were,
the way it rolled around the school
with shouts of happiness
and hail. It helped him
hold his life more loosely,
like the sky was carrying the rain
in its comfortable arms,
never concerned about whether
it was a good sky or not,
just joining with weather everywhere
to whoop and holler in happiness.

WEAVING A LITTLE FUTURE

“She had woven a little future, of which something like this scene was the necessary beginning.”
      -- George Eliot, Middlemarch

      I occasionally think of teaching and learning as a process of, to rephrase George Eliot, weaving a little future. I picture my students and I sitting in the classroom with make-believe looms, making small pieces of our futures by following the themes in a novel or knowing, at last, what Shakespeare means in certain lines from The Tempest.  We might just be joining each other, say, in a conversation about the use of participles in essays, but perhaps even that seemingly inconsequential conversation creates a small strand in our future lives. Every sentence we say in class can contribute, in a small way, to the lives that lie ahead of us – can fashion a few more miniscule designs for the upcoming years. When we’re wondering together what some lines in a poem might mean, we’re designing, if just to an infinitesimal degree, the way our days will develop in the weeks and years ahead.   

THE BEST MEDICINE

“Honesty, truth-telling fairness, was Mary's reigning virtue: she neither tried to create illusions, nor indulged in them for her own behoof, and when she was in a good mood she had humor enough in her to laugh at herself.”

     -- George Eliot, Middlemarch

      After school, a passer-by might be mystified by the laughter coming from my classroom, especially when they see that I am by myself. It’s not an uncommon occurrence. I often find myself almost folded over in laughter at the end of a school day, and it’s usually directed at myself. When the day is done, I often cannot believe some of the silly, self-promoting, and completely incomprehensible things I said and did. It’s as if I’m sitting in the audience at a comedy show, and my strange capers in the classroom that day make up the show.  I don’t mean to make it sound like I’m a catastrophe as a teacher, because I’m not – but I know how silly I can seem when I’m pridefully prancing around the classroom like some remarkable mastermind. It’s so easy to see myself as a savior for my students – their long-looked-for liberator from bad grammar and broken-down reading skills -- and that’s when it helps to have a good laugh at my foolishness. My students are sensitive, sharp, and promising young people, and what they don’t need is a teacher who treats them like substandard, malfunctioning machines. They are made of the finest materials in the universe, and when I forget that fundamental fact, the best medicine is some fun-loving, finger-pointing laughter at myself. 

 

A MOMENT AT SCHOOL

(A Twitter poem, 140 characters)


Footsteps in the hall, 
then hellos from far-off winds, 
then the folding together 
of stars in space, 
then thoughts making sparks 
and stars.

THOUGHTS FROM NOWHERE

    I often wonder, when I’m working with my students, where our thoughts come from. Each moment, more ideas than we can keep track of make their appearance in my classroom, clashing and combining and causing all kinds of new creations, and yet we can see no source for the thoughts, no place we can point to and say, Yes, here is where this idea began.  You might say we are part of a fast-flowing river as we sit in English class, a river of thoughts that doesn’t seem to start anywhere and is impossible to stop. When I’m teaching, I sometimes imagine myself sitting beside this river, scanning the thoughts as they stream past, and realizing again that it would never be possible to isolate one thought and trace it back to its source somewhere far upstream, just as a single ripple in a river doesn’t have its beginning in some separate spot above it. Thoughts and rivers flow from nowhere, or from everywhere. A single drop of moisture in the air beside me this morning has surely been in the making for many countless years, and this thought that’s making this sentence might have had its start in the mind of someone long, long ago, and, one way or another, been slowly passed along to me, here where I'm sitting in my small school on this soft morning in April, thinking about my upcoming classes that will surely surprise me with thoughts from what seems like a distant nowhere.

SILENCE

(A twitter poem, 140 characters)


"Silence," he said, and suddenly
his thoughts stopped, 
and feelings flowed with no sounds, 
and rivers miles away 
turned almost silent 
for him.

A CORDIAL COMFORT

“This affliction has a taste as sweet

As any cordial comfort.”

     -- Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale

     There are many “afflictions” that might muddle a teacher’s work in the classroom, but all of them, I have found, can be as reassuring and bolstering as a “cordial comfort”, if only I see them in the best light. There are times when I totter through a lesson like something set to collapse, times when all that seems reassuring is the realization that the period will soon end -- but even then, some strange power usually arises to remind me how blessed I am to be standing in this classroom with these splendid kids.  These are students who shine with an inner light that can let my classroom come to life, if only I take off the blinders. Any inconvenience that comes my way when I’m teaching should only serve to remind me of how, almost always,  my classroom work is as easy and painless as any. A cordial is a drink that supposedly brings a sense of warm-heartedness to an after-dinner occasion, and any seeming disaster in the classroom can do the same. When things fall apart, I often find myself smiling and thinking how fortunate I am that such small adversities are so thoroughly overshadowed by the enormous satisfactions of teaching teenagers.

 

A CAREFUL TIME

"Country Corral", oil, by Laurel Daniel

He heard a bird calling in sad sounds
from a tree somewhere,
and kids were coming down the hall
holding their thoughts quietly.
It was a careful time for the earth,
a time for rivers and falling rain
to find comfort in flowing and falling,
a time for a tired teacher
to find his feelings thoughtfully
folded up and placed
under the shade of a tree.

There are trees
like lives with open arms.
He found a few of those
that day.

STIRRING UP ASSERTIVENESS

This morning I found a thought-provoking definition and history of the word "assertive", which may help me devise ways of  supporting this characteristic in my classroom. One definition says that being assertive is simply “stating or expressing positively”, as in “He asserted his innocence”. Certainly I want to stir up this spirit in my classrom – the capacity to show precisely who we are in a positive and purposeful manner. The definition doesn’t imply brashness or hostility, but simply suggests that people like my students and I should be able to cool-headedly display our true selves each moment in the classroom. What I found especially interesting is that the word “assertive” derives from the Latin word for “join”, suggesting that a person who is assertive – who demonstrates in a positive way who he or she is – is doing so in order to “join” more completely with the rest of the human family. When my students and I are assertive, we are stating in a self-assured manner that we do, indeed, belong – in the classroom and everywhere else.

FAILING A TEST

He totally failed the test.
On the "Crying" part, he couldn't,
nor could he sincerely say
his feelings, which further hurt
his grade. On Section C, "To Do's",
he didn't do one of them,
and the "Calendar" section
sabotaged his grade
because he misplaced
all his appointments.
He couldn't even calculate,
in percentages, how much
he appreciated the things he owned.

It was a complete defeat for him.
About all he did right
was reach out to a friend
who was suffering,
and set a bird's nest
back in a tree.

A VAST POWER

     Sometimes, when I’m working with my students in the classroom, I’m struck, once again, by the immense power of our beliefs. It’s as if I’m surrounded by a force stronger than winds and waves, a force that makes our lives what they are, moment by moment. I occasionally am lucky enough to create inspired lessons, but all the lessons in the universe won’t work as forcefully as the beliefs about life that are moving and mixing inside us. I teach stories and essay writing and grammar rules, but I wish I could teach my students about the vast influence of their beliefs.  I wish I could convince them that what they believe about themselves brings more muscle to their English studies than their ability to think up good sentences or say smart things about a story. Their beliefs can be lights that light up any darkness, but they can also be blinds that always bring about a bad kind of darkness and dismay. If my students believe they will discover success at school today, there will be small wonders awaiting them, but the opposite is also true. It’s the same for me. A belief in my inability to teach triumphantly will make failure inevitable, but a belief in the common sense and creativity we bring to class will work miracles made just for my students and me.      

SECOND BY SECOND

"Chocolate Glazed Donut", oil, by Heidi Malott

Sitting still is something
most things never do.
Even a donut on a plate
does miracles inside itself,
all the electrons and things
speeding here and there
in the sugary spaces.
The silent stars are never still
as they circulate through their kingdoms
in the countries above us,
and far from all the stars,
the thoughts we think
throw up their hands in eagerness,
second by second by second.

CASTING OFF CHAINS

“Never did captive with a freer heart

Cast off his chains of bondage and embrace

His golden uncontroll'd enfranchisement,

More than my dancing soul doth celebrate

This feast of battle with mine adversary.”

          -- Shakespeare, Richard II

            In a strange sort of way, I was a “captive” for most of my teaching career, in bondage to a broken-down way of thinking about this most prestigious of professions. I guess I considered a teacher to be more a policeman than an imparter of knowledge, more a swaggering actor than an unassuming partner in the pursuit of wisdom. For twenty years or so, I was wrapped up in the notion that nothing in the classroom was more important than me, not even the students.  I was a sort of inmate of a very mistaken idea about this wonderful work I’m involved in.  About halfway through my career, however, a liberating thought came to me – that teaching actually had nothing to do with whether I could set up a great “show” for the students each day. It wasn’t about acting or pronouncing or performing. What it was about, I realized over the course of several months, was simply standing subserviently aside and allowing the learning to be liberated among my students and me. The learning was there along; all I had to do was wait quietly as it quietly went about its transforming work. That period back in the '80s was a time of true deliverance for me. I felt like some shackles had dropped away. I realized that, while I still had to work very diligently if I wished to be a good teacher, there was a force afoot in my classroom that actually did all the work  -- a force we could call “learning”. It was like learning was the wind, and I was steering a sailboat with my students aboard, simply shifting course now and then to catch the best of the breeze. It made, and still makes, teaching to be more full of fun than effort, more a freeing exploration than a confining chore.    

THE FULLNESS OF LIFE

He wanted to find a proof
of the fullness of life,
so he looked at the light
that left signs of itself 
in the garden and on the stirring grass.
He looked at the loops
the birds made in the bright air,
at the free fall of happiness
on swelling lawns and parks,
at the pride this powerful earth
seems to show in the spring. 
Then he looked at his unsophisticated hands,
at his senior-citizen shoes as they shone
in the light the morning made, 
at a few small stones in the garden, 
at one green grass blade
bending with the blissfulness 
grass often shows.

A TRIBUTE TO DELYCIA

"In a Hurry", acrylic, by Carolee Clark

     You proved yourself yesterday to be an astoundingly strong bike rider. I saw how sturdy you were as you pumped up the sheer hills around Mystic. You are a well-made, hard-wearing woman, a person who strives to overcome obstacles and be your absolute best. Yesterday you rode with a strong will and a wish to succeed. What I especially noticed was your resiliency, your ability to bounce back after ascending some punishing hills. You rode with muscle and might, pedaling pugnaciously up every climb. When you grew tired, you simply grew more spirited, more single-minded about doing what you got on your bike to do. 
     Thank you. I felt fortunate to be riding with you.

ALWAYS SHINING

"Quiet Sunrise", oil, by Heidi Malott

Recently, on a dull-looking day, I heard someone say that the sun wasn’t shining so well, and I immediately thought of the days in the classroom when my students and I don’t seem to be shining especially brightly. Those are the days when the wear-and-tear of academic life seems to let the life out of the classroom, and only quiet and tranquility are in the room, not delight or elation. Those are days – and they are not as unusual as I would wish – when a sort of winter freeze folds all of us up in muteness, and nothing is shining but the fluorescent lights overhead. On those days, the intelligence of all of us seems to be of a dismal kind, like the sun seems dismal on overcast days. What I want to remember, though, is that, like the sun that is always shining at its best and brightest no matter how much mist or cloudiness is present, my students and I have minds that constantly make light, moment by moment, whether we are aware of it or not. Obliviousness and distractions may seem to cover over the thoughts we think, but, behind our inattentiveness, they are as bright as rising suns every second of the day.  In a sense, English class is always a clear and sunny experience, given the shining thoughts we all bring to it. We just have to see through our unawareness to the light.  

  

WALKING ON GRASS

"The Good Grass", oil, by Justin Clements

When sorrows sit on his shoulders, 

he sometimes walks on grass

instead of sidewalks, setting his feet
on the promising green surface
for solace and reassurance.
He realizes again that goodness
grows around and under him,
and that sorrow is not the master
of kindness, but its servant.
He knows that nothing heals
like letting his fussing self
flow away and vanish,
and the goodness of green grass
does that for him,
helps him hold his sorrows
like flakes of paper
that fly off in the softest breeze.

BLESSINGS IN DISGUISE

"Morning Star", oil, by V... Vaughn

An old idiom speaks of “blessings in disguise”, the kinds of blessings I feel are fully present in my English classes. They’re usually in disguise because they don’t seem sparkling and shining with good news – don’t appear to be obvious presents from the universe for my students and me. They usually hide from us as we work on our classroom tasks, somewhat the way the stars are concealed among clouds on stormy nights.  As we discuss stories and poems and ways to write paragraphs, these blessings are quietly wishing us well and waiting to help. They most often come in the form of the resilient and lighthearted wisdom of the students. The kids don’t realize it, but they come to class already with cartloads of understanding, and all of it unfolds, usually secretly, at various points in the school year. Like secret stashes of dollars, their youthful intelligence generates wealth in unobtrusive ways from day to day and week to week. I can sometimes sense it all around me in the classroom – this lavish wisdom of adolescence that usually comes disguised as either silliness or indifference. I’m still learning, after 4+ decades, to see through the disguises to the blessings.

WHO HE IS

He often wonders who he is.

Is he a complex collection

of cells and connective tissues

and bones that easily break? 

Is he his thoughts and feelings

as they fly through his life

like hawks or hummingbirds

or quarrelsome old crows?

Is he a piece of the breezes

that blow by him as he sits 

beside a river with a friend,

the friend who found him last year, 

when he slowly started to see

who he really was,

like a submarine surfacing

and seeing something like paradise?

CHANGING MINDS

"Toward the Light", oil, by Thaw Malin

     I have often “changed my mind” about something, but this morning that phrase made extra-special sense. The words brought to mind someone changing a tire – replacing a road-worn, useless wheel with one that wears the look of newness and strength – or the way the weather sometimes changes in a flash, from the best sunshine to a blustery storm in what seems like seconds. Changing my mind might be a process as all-embracing as darkness changing to daylight. Perhaps when I say “I changed my mind” I really mean my life was somehow made absolutely new.  My students and I, in this sense, are made new in a non-stop sort of way during English class. We are always “changing our minds”. As we sit together in the classroom, fresh thoughts are continuously refurbishing our lives, although in the most private of ways.  Whether we wish to be or not, we are the recipients, second by second, of ideas that didn’t exist one second before – ideas that are as new as any night is when it arrives. We literally change our minds – get new minds -- moment by moment the way every new breath brings newness to our bodies. Our blood is born again and again as we work with each other to understand Shakespeare, and so are our minds and lives.