Tuesday, September 4, 2012
WISDOM OR GOLD?
This morning my school starts, once again, to allow its students and teachers to get the gifts of wisdom, and I only hope that we can all keep in our minds the mighty power of that wisdom -- the wealth and prosperity it brings, the overflowing affluence and satisfaction. Many of us parents and teachers start this day with concerns about finances – whether our lives are furnished with the funds we will need to be safe and secure – and those concerns are sometimes reasonable, but I hope we can see, at the same time, the security that waits for us and the students in the easygoing but persistent pursuit of wisdom. Money appears and then disappears in a flash, but wisdom will stay for all the years of our lives. Money makes its case with gold and glitz that comes and then always goes, but wisdom just waits forever for us to see and use it. My students, when they enter my classroom this morning, will carry with them the wealth of their young wisdom, wealth that makes them, in my mind, richer than princesses and princes – and my commonplace, unspectacular English class will create more wealth for us, day after day after day. New and prosperous ideas will dance in our pockets like coins. Flashy thoughts will wind themselves around us like necklaces and bracelets. It will be classroom of abundance. We may as well bring bags to load up with the wisdom we will find. I might make a sign for the door: “English Class Bank. Withdraw As Much As You Like”.
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SALUTING IN ROOM 1
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
One dictionary defines “salute” as “a gesture of respect, polite recognition, and acknowledgment, especially one made to or by a person when arriving or departing” – which makes me think we should perhaps give some salutes to each other during English class. After all, part of my task as a teacher is to encourage courtesy and respectfulness among the students, especially since much of what we do demands consideration of each others’ thoughts and feelings. When we find ourselves in a serious discussion about a work of literature, we must let others feel the delight that comes from sharing their best thoughts. We must award our classmates the honor of speaking their minds, as well as the earnest promise that we will sincerely listen. We must graciously recognize their presence with us, their powers of feeling and thinking. We must acknowledge, now and always, that each of us – students and old-timer teacher – are creations of a universe of astounding magnificence and influence. In English class, we are in the presence of august and worthy people. An occasional salute of some sort would surely be a suitable gesture.
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THE SANCTUARY OF ROOM 1
Thursday, September 6, 2012
A “sanctuary”, in one dictionary, is defined as “a place of refuge or safety”, which makes me think of my small classroom out in the countryside in Connecticut. It’s just a commonplace, unexceptional room in a school that’s hardly noticeable among the forests and fields, but it’s a place where young people can proceed with their learning in an atmosphere of safety and assurance. It’s a shelter, you might say, from the storms of their young lives – the haste and anxiety they surely must feel in this mildly madcap world of 2012. They don’t face physical enemies, but they face fears of all kinds each day, and my classroom, I hope, can help them hold off those fears so learning can let itself down among them in its tender way. My classroom is a place of commitment and industry, yes, but it’s also a kindhearted place, a room where real respect can be felt the way you feel the softness of sunlight after a storm. The students know they are free to follow their thoughts wherever they lead them, and they are assured, day after day, that the dangers of disdain and ridicule have been removed from their lives, at least for these 48 minutes of English class. Beleaguered people seek safety wherever its found, and these days, a few careworn kids come to my classroom for the quiet kind of safety that comes from studying superb writers in an atmosphere of peace and acceptance.
SECRET TREASURE
Friday, September 6, 2012
Each of my students and I keep a secret treasure hidden in our hearts. It’s grander than the great treasures of antiquity, more precious than pearls, just as spectacular as a sky at sunrise. We carry it with us everywhere, and it sits in its shining silence in the midst of us in English class. It’s a treasure many of us have lost sight of, or perhaps have never seen or recognized or understood -- the treasure of our own thoughts and feelings. No one who has ever lived carried a fortune of feelings quite like ours, and no thoughts in all of history have sparkled like ours do. Each of us -- my insecure, unprecedented young students and their hesitant, silver-haired instructor -- holds thoughts and feelings that could carry the world in their currents, could create a new day every moment of every day. We are walking and sitting and sleeping treasure chests. When class starts, I see the wealth waiting in the room, and it’s dazzling.
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WORKING WITH THE WIND … AND MISTAKES
Monday, September 10, 2012
During the first week of school, several of my students seemed discouraged by their failure to give the correct answers to some of my questions, and, later, I thought of sailors and troublesome winds. When good mariners face forceful winds, they don’t get disheartened, as my young students did last week, but rather they work with the winds. They know, actually, that nothing is better for bringing a boat to its destination than spirited winds, and so they, in a sense, surrender to the winds, and in doing so are able, surprisingly, to use them to their benefit. They realize – and I wish I my students could see this – that difficult conditions can create the occasion for unforeseen and sometimes startling success. Wild winds at sea can be a blessing to seasoned sailors, and wrong answers can make unexpected magic for my students. After all – and I will explain this to the students again and again – learning lets itself into our lives most easily through our mistakes, just as the best sailing sometimes springs from seemingly opposing winds. Each time the kids came up with wrong answers last week, a little more wisdom worked its way into their lives, for – though they probably didn’t realize it -- they used their errors to learn something new, just like sailors use hostile winds to help them on their way. Sailors aren’t dissuaded by gusts and squalls, and my students shouldn’t be discouraged by their mistakes. In fact, they should actually be grateful that they’re inexperienced enough to make mistakes, because mistakes, like stormy times at sea, can be turned into serious progress.
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REVERENCE AND ENGLISH CLASS
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Since one dictionary gives this as a definition for “reverence” -- deep respect for someone or something -- its clear to me that my classroom could sometimes be called a place of reverence. I say “sometimes”, because occasionally my students, like all kids, lose sight of sharing and sharing in a courteous manner, but usually there’s a sense of respect among my students, perhaps because I insist on it. If we can’t have genuine esteem for other in English class, then all the reading and writing makes no magic whatsoever. It’s a waste of precious time and a complete contradiction to talk about dignified works of literature while acting in a thoroughly ill-mannered way. I insist that the students show respect for each other for almost the same reason that we show respect for esteemed symbols like the American flag. When we promise our faithfulness to our country in the presence of the flag, we stay silent and place our hands over our hearts, and when we listen to each other in English class, we must be even more deferential and appreciative. The human beings beside us in class are countless times more extraordinary and imposing than a piece of cloth with stars and stripes on it, and therefore they deserve a higher kind of honor and regard. If we stand with reverence before our flag, we surely should sit up and lean a little forward when our classmates are giving us the gift of their thoughts.
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LIFE-GIVING THOUGHT
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Every so often, my planning produces a sprightly, peppy lesson, one which seems to energize the students from start to finish, and I always realize, even as I’m teaching, that it’s thoughts that are bringing life to the lesson. It’s not so much “me” that makes a good lesson and leads the class through it, but the thoughts that somehow settled inside me as I was planning. It’s as if, from the countless thoughts that are constantly flowing past all of us, a few special ones selected me and started constructing a lesson for English class. They landed inside me and started beneficial fires that then fueled a fairly spirited 48-minute class. I’ve puzzled over this mystery for years and years: where do thoughts come from, and how do they manage to make such brimful life for me and people around me? At the center of a sparkling English class is always the passion of thoughts. Even the smallest thought in the shyest student can flare up like a flames among us and send us off in a new direction in the discussion. I’ve seen classes of students completely set free with new ideas about a story or a poem, and it does seem, sometimes, like someone – or some thoughts – lit fires inside them. It makes me look forward to winter, when the weather sometimes turns unfriendly but the fires of thoughts in my classroom always give some kind of reviving life to my students and me.
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TRAINING AN ENGLISH SCHOLAR
Thursday, September 13, 2012
I often think of myself as a trainer as much as a teacher, and I’m training my students as much to be true believers in their abilities as to be bright scholars of English. It’s a trying task to train young people to honor the gifts they have been given – to see clearly the skills and powers the universe has bestowed on them. Students in these times – at least in my experience – don’t seem to take their gifts seriously, and so day after day I do my best to remind them. I try to show them, in understated and subtle ways, that they, like all of us, are the wondrous works of a vast cosmos, and, as such, they possess the powers of that universe – the ability to expand and transform and be bright like a billion stars. It’s important that I prepare them for high school English class, but it seems just as important to me to prepare them to honor the magnificence they were made for. It’s strange that they usually act more like hesitant namby-pambies than the warriors of the universe they actually are. They enter my class more often with shoulders slumped than standing straight and self-assured, and my job is to change that. I want them to become better writers and readers, but more than that, I want them to wake up to the miracles their lives make each moment. They were made from the same stuff as stars and oceans, and they are every bit as splendid. I train them to take their magnificence seriously.
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