GETTING ABOARD

At the start of each English class, I feel like I'm climbing aboard the big, bright train that takes my students and me for refreshing rides each day. I plan precise lessons for each class, but I can't help but believe that something besides my brain brings us through the good land of learning. I feel like some kind of colossal engine far ahead of us is always working with smoothness and muscle to make the learning happen. All the kids and I have to do is get aboard and watch for the wonders.

THOUGHTS IN STYLISH RIBBONS

When I discovered this morning that the word "finish" derives from the same Latin root that gives us "fine", it got me thinking about all the fine finish lines my students and I cross in each class. We create thoughts by the thousands as we think our way through the assignments, lessons, and literature we're working with, and all those thoughts are fine just as they are. They may not be the thoughts that "deep thinkers" think, or that college professors praise, or that produce a perfect set of grades for class, but they are the thoughts that came to us, and therefore they are fine just as they are. They are finished, you might say -- as sensible and polished as possible at this particular moment. Can they shift and transform and become thoroughly different thoughts? Of course, but that doesn't mean the new thoughts are any better or brighter or finer -- just newer. Each of our English class thoughts comes wrapped in the stylish ribbons of the present moment, and each, in a sense, crosses the finish line of thinking in celebratory triumph. It's like our minds during English class are playing-fields where robust and successful thoughts -- which is all of them -- are finishing races with a fine kind of flair.

RUNNING WITH PATIENCE

"Runner", oil on brown paper, by Robin Weiss

During a day at school, I often feel like I’m racing around with reckless eagerness, scurrying toward various finish lines, but sometimes, fortunately for me, I am able to run my school-day races with a kind of settled and satisfying patience. It might seem strange to think of racing patiently, but it’s begun to make sense to me, especially when I recall a long-distance runner I used to watch when I was an apprentice runner in high school. This fellow seemed to flow around the track as he ran; instead of struggling to run fast, he seemed to simply allow the fast running to spontaneously happen. It was as if he wasn’t working at all when he ran – as if something called “running” was doing the work, and he was just joining in the effortless amusement of it all. Early in a long race, he was often close to last in the field, but gradually, as if with self-assured patience, he always passed the other runners until, at the end, he sashayed across the finish line first, and always with an unflustered smile. When I’m whipping around the classroom in a frenzy to finish this or that lesson, I sometimes think of him and his serene and enduring way of doing great things on the track, and then I usually smile and settle myself down to do this taxing work of teaching with the kind of trustful patience it requires. Teaching teenagers can be like a race, yes, but one that’s best run in soft and graceful ways.

TAKING OFF THE WEIGHTS

TAKING OFF THE WEIGHTS

Every so often, as I prepare for a class, I remind myself to just simply take off the weights. It's strange to me that I so often willingly carry enormous weights around with me when I'm teaching, and it is a definite relief to set them down and see them shrivel away to nothingness. These are not physical weights, but the shapeless, evanescent weights we carry inside us, like remorse and worry and diffidence and fear. If I'm not feeling guilty about not giving my best teaching to the previous class, then I'm concerned about the lack of creativity in this upcoming lesson, or about my lack of ability to steer the lesson to success, or about the blunders I might make as I bumble along. True, there are many times when I take the first steps in an English lesson with a cocky kind confidence, but there are too many instances when I carry the burdensome weights of my own irresolute attitudes. This is why it's such a relief when I remember to lay all those inner weights right down -- to simply set them aside and raise up my thoughts in liberation and sovereignty, to just say I am me and this is the moment and I can make miracles with this class. When I do this before a class -- when I loosen and let go of all the needless burdens -- I sometimes feel as light as the sunlight in my classroom. On those days I teach as easily as a breeze blows along, and the happiness I feel seems to flow from somewhere far beyond my sight.

MY LUCKY LIFE

"For it is only the finite that has wrought and suffered; the infinite lies stretched in smiling repose."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Spiritual Laws"

After a disquieting day at school, when I feel, for sure, that I have "wrought and suffered" more than a person should, I sometimes consider again this sentence from Emerson, and almost always I start smiling at my breathtaking good fortune. Yes, I suffer through a fair share of disappointments in my days in the classroom, but Emerson thankfully reminds me that a wide world of smoothly-working marvels is always all around me, and that these marvels are a whole lot more like smiles than frowns. When I'm feeling sorry for myself, now and then, for teaching like an utter tenderfoot, the sunlight is sharing its miracles, new winds are renewing the world, and happiness is holding its countless doors wide open and waiting for me. When my teaching seems to be collapsing into pointlessness, the boundless power of life is letting loose its harmonious and beautiful forces, as usual. The life I'm so lucky to be part of is infinitely more immense than my small classroom and its paltry ups and downs. There are stars sweeping the sky that make my tiny troubles trail off in insignificance.

RIDING -- AND READING-- BACKWARDS

I sometimes enjoy riding backwards on the train, seeing the countryside recede in front of me as if I am traveling back past places I passed earlier on the outward bound trip. It reminds me often of the feeling I get when I take my students backwards through a book we just finished. It's as if, at the end, we step off the train of the book for a few days, but then hop back on for the backwards trip to enjoy the journey from a fresh perspective. As we bring ourselves back through the chapters, scenes or sentences we missed might suddenly seem especially significant, or characters who were quiet on the first reading might make their thoughts thoroughly heard on this backward trip through the book. As we retrace the trip, the book, perhaps, unfolds in a fresh manner, making a new experience for us. The book then becomes two books, or three books, depending on how many times we board its train and sit backwards as the story progresses back to its start.

TUNING IN

I got to thinking about the Internet the other day, the way it’s always there, just waiting for us to “tune in” to it, and it reminded me of the mighty power that passes the time in my English classes, patiently waiting for us to tune in to its soft but far-reaching influence. I guess I’m speaking of whatever it is that puts together our thoughts and feelings – whatever it is that makes thinking and feeling such profoundly revamping and replenishing activities. Where do they all come from, the ideas and sentiments that stream through the lives of my students and me as we work through a Shakespeare sonnet or a Jane Austen story? Where does this power have its home – the power that provides my classes with whatever useful lessons might be learned in 8th and 9th grade English? When I muse over these questions, I sometimes do think of the Internet, the way it connects us, with a simple click of a key, to an almost infinite source of ideas – a source that seems strangely similar to that which produces the powerful ideas and feelings that flow among us in my classes. It’s so easy – accessing the widespread wisdom of the Internet, or tuning in to the thoughts of all time and space in my small classroom. For the Web, we simply touch a keypad, and for inspirations in English class, we just swing open the doors of our minds and make room for the millions of thoughts forever waiting there.

REJOICING IN AFFLUENCE

I have always loved the fact that the word “affluence” derives from the description of flowing water, and this year, as usual, I see a lot of this affluence in my classroom. I’m not speaking of dollars and cents, but of ideas that don’t stop flowing from the start of class to the finish. They don’t always flow in the directions I might have planned for them, but they flow nonetheless – effortlessly and relentlessly. My classroom is an absolute sea of ever-flowing streams of thoughts, coming and going and getting started again and again. Occasionally, just to prove this to myself and the kids, I ask them to stop thinking for sixty seconds, and of course it’s an impossible request. Their lives, and mine, are non-stop rivers of ideas that no damn can bring to a standstill, and I rejoice in my good fortune that finds me in the midst of these rivers for six or seven hours each day.

POLISHED CASUALNESS

When a friend and I passed a restaurant yesterday that advertised “polished casualness” as its motif for fine dining, I immediately thought of the kind of writing I expect my students to do. We didn’t eat at the restaurant, but as we passed by, I pictured the pristine but stress-free atmosphere, just the kind of ambiance I hope to see in the students’ essays. I insist on order, precision, and correctness, but I also encourage a little looseness and liberty in their writing, a bit of the casualness that probably comes along with the polish in the restaurant we passed. There’s room in good writing for both tidiness and independence, both adherence to rules and affection for inventiveness. I’d like to see sentences in their essays that are graceful and at the same time somewhat undomesticated. I always hope their writing stands up with stateliness and last-word authority, but also dances with the most casual kind of confidence.

LUCKY WORDS

"So may some gentle muse
With lucky words favor my [teaching]."
-- John Milton, "Lycidas"

I love the idea of "lucky words", and I'm grateful to have been graciously given so many millions of them over the years of my teaching. Lucky means fortunate, but it also means magical and mysterious and felicitous and blessed. It means words that come to me like alerts from a wilderness when I'm teaching, words that work their way into my teaching the way water flows wherever it will. I don't wish my words into existence; they simply show up, one after another forever, flowing into my life and out to my students moment by moment. In a sense, they are all lucky words because they all bring me, in some way or other, the prosperity of this vast life that I, and all of us, are part of. Words work the best of all wonders, shining their lights so my students and I can see which ways to go in our studies. Every so often, I say a silent thanks to these promising signals, these always encouraging words that wander from somewhere into my teaching, time and time again.

RAISING THE SHADES

It’s an old story, the one about the man who made himself miserable by living in a house with all the shades pulled down, and it sometimes comes to mind when I’m teaching. It occurs to me, now and again, that my only significant task as a teacher is to help the students raise the shades in their own lives. It’s not so much that I should give them new knowledge, but that I should simply help them throw open their inner doors and windows so they see what’s always been there. Sure, I can offer them crumbs and scraps of information – novel ideas, feelings they may be unfamiliar with -- but somehow I sense that all they need to know sits hidden inside them, and the teacher’s important job is to cheer them on toward slowly but surely uncovering it all. When I teach about the themes in Of Mice and Men, I don’t think of myself as setting small truths down in their minds like so many gifts; rather, I feel like I’m making it more possible for them to think thoughts that have always been inside them, but that have never risen to the surface. I’m more of an assistant discoverer than a giver of gifts. The sun of wisdom is always shining inside the teenagers I teach, and I like, most of all, to make it easy for the shades to be lifted so they see that sun.

SPEEDERS AND DRIFTERS

In my fairly long drive to school each morning, I am joined on the roads by both speeders and drifters, the same kinds of travelers I see in my classroom each day – and there’s surely room for both. On the interstate and back roads, some drivers obviously like the graceful feelings that come with cruising along at lightning speeds, while others employ – and take pleasure in -- the slow pace of clouds coming and going down the roads of the sky. I used to get exasperated with both sets of drivers – the speeders for recklessly governing the roads with their speed, the drifters for doing everything possible to prevent me from getting where I’m going – but now I see a proper place for both. As long as they are law-abiding, both groups of drivers deserve their place on the highways, and the same is true of the speeders and drifters in English class. Some of my students can cruise through assignments effortlessly, like the guys in the get-up-and-go cars that race past me, but other kids carry their thoughts like heavy weights and work longer minutes and hours than the speeders – but both can bring a lot of light to my classes. In my teaching, there’s a necessary place for all kinds of students – the sharp and the stumbling, the fast and the unsure – just as there’s the right place on the roads for those who rush and those who roll slowly along.

LITTLE MIRACLES

I stooped to pick up a scrap of paper this morning – a small act in a nondescript day – and it caused me to pause and wonder why I don’t truly notice more of the millions of small acts I carry out each day. The fact is that I’m doing something at every waking moment, whether walking down the hall to class, carrying a cart of trash to the road, or simply sitting down at my desk for some work – and the sad fact is that I rarely pay attention to any of these tasks. They turn my life in new directions each moment, but my mind is usually too immersed in musings and wonderings to notice them. What’s really unlucky is that these little nameless acts – all of them – have forces inside them that might remodel my life in small ways, if only I showed some honest interest in them. They are little miracles that might make me see the wonder that works its magic each moment. Picking up a scrap of paper, while apparently insignificant, requires the nimble movement of many muscles and bones, and the sunlight shining on the paper when I picked it up was flawless in its glows and colors. It was a tiny task done in a moment, but a miracle nonetheless -- one of countless marvels I bring about each day with hardly a notice. Typing on a keyboard, glancing up on a gray day, doing the dishes in a silver sink – all are wonders I wish I could appreciate and praise more often.

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.