The Fast and the Curious

What is curiosity? How have you experienced curiosity in your life? Did you find an answer? How?

-Monday's journal prompt

I can tell that they are done writing because they start talking. Fifth period, the chaotic fifty minutes directly after lunch, is classic for this kind of behavior. I've written the two sentences to keep Ms. D happy, and now I'll talk for another four minutes while she scowls at me from that little stool at the front of the room. All of my classes do this, and honestly it's part of my job to be aware of their pace. If they've finished writing, sometimes it is because they're being lazy, and sometimes it's because I haven't given them much room to respond. In this case, I suspect the latter.

"OK. Clearly we're done writing. Now, I want to talk about this one." Not every journal entry merits a conversation, but this one is the introduction to the Ninth Grade Research Project, which will haunt their waking hours in the next month, so I feel it's necessary to pause for a moment on the deep importance of curiosity in the research process.

"So... what IS curiosity?" I ask, writing the word on the overhead.

I hear the answers, popping like battle gunshots, around the room. It's wondering. Being nosy. You know, when you want to find out. Everyone is talking at once--what madness. I wait for them to realize I'm writing down none of their many-voiced gibberish.

"Thanks for raising your hand," I point and call a student's name. " What is it?"

"It's... you know, when you want to know more about something, and so you look for the answer."

"Excellent! Now, do we have more to add?" I point to another student.

"It's just trying to learn something. Trying to understand."

"Good," I nod. They're really getting somewhere, this brilliant class. "Now, what you need to understand is that curiosity drives learning. It makes you want to know. Remember when I told you the end of Othello?"

They groan as one; they remember. It was only a few weeks ago, actually, that we put down Othello after reading Act I and they all bemoaned the difficulty of the text, complaining at me for choosing it and at Shakespeare for "not writing like, you know, real."

"What happens in this book, anyway?" someone whined.

"I'm not telling you the ending."

The masses rebelled, wailing and moaning again about the book and declaring that it would be better if they knew now. They claimed it would make them care. I thought they might be right.

"Do you really want to know?" I asked.

Resounding cries in the affirmative.

"Even though it will spoil it?" I pressed.

Even if that was the case, they insisted.

"OK. Othello kills Desdemona."

Perhaps it was the shock of having a teacher actually give them something they wanted, but I have never heard the classroom so quiet. They stared back at me for a full ten seconds without responding. Then the questions had poured down on me. Why? How? What made him do it? Wait, this Othello? Kill his wife? They just got married! They're on their honeymoon in Cyprus! Impossible!

To their dismay, I wouldn't tell them anything else, nor did I give away any more plot details as we read the play. They were the only class of my five sections that knew the ending almost from the outset.

"Yeah," they answer now. "You told us the end. SO mean. Why'd you do that?"

"You asked me to," I shrug. "But really, as soon as you knew what happened, you were full of questions. Way more questions than any of the other classes. Didn't you want to know how they would get to the end? You didn't even believe me."

One boy, in the front row, is nodding. Others have a knowing look, and for a moment I am almost bursting with pride in them, these urban ninth graders, most of whom have stepped so far out onto the limb of imagination and language to conquer a terribly difficult work of Shakespeare. They understand this play, and even now they understand what I'm getting at.

"When we knew the end," the nodding boy said. "We wanted to know how to get there."

"Good. Perfect. You wanted to know. It's that wanting to know that is going to make you learn on this project. Hold onto that."

"Hey," someone asks. "Did you, like, mean to make us curious when you told us the end? Are you like a genius, or something?"

How tempting to pretend I'm omniscient! (They've already called me Superman today, because I saw a kid in the back row unfold his cell phone underneath his desk). I would love to claim that I knew the effect, beforehand, of their probable reaction to hearing the end of the play we were reading. Instead, I shake my head.

"You didn't? Then why did you tell us?"

"Because you were irritating me," I laugh. "Making you curious was an accident."

"Ha. It worked, though," the front-row supporter mused, looking oddly old and wise for a fifteen-year-old.

I smile. How often, these days, are my greatest successes mere accidents! Curious young teacher, I step around on the edges of my profession, waiting for the ice to crack and remind me of my limits, or for--miraculous serendipity--the footing to hold. In these providential, accidental moments, we chase learning with our desire to know, running in curiosity through far-away worlds unknown.

On Generosity

The generous man will be prosperous,
And he who waters will himself be watered.

Proverbs 11:25

A few minutes before six this morning, I come to a halt in my cursory glance through the Proverbs, which has been starting my days in December. Outside, it is still completely dark and well below freezing, which my inky black windows remind me as I peer out, hoping for a hint of dawn as a reason, a hope, a promise that this night will not last forever. I look back at the proverb, feeling guilty that I was distracted by the earliness of the morning and the soft, pleasant comfort of bed. Once again, it seems so isolated and unearthly to be up at this hour. In self-centered agony, I feel I'm the only one awake in the world, that I must surely be suffering alone the tortures of darkest winter in the Northwest.

The generous man will be prosperous. I sigh and think dimly that the order seems off. I consider that the most generous people I can think of, whose names appear on the signs of libraries, theaters, symphony halls, and hospital wings, have been able to give out of the bountiful prosperity that they already enjoy. This, clearly, is not me. Anyway, I have a faint, early-morning suspicion that this generosity must have to do with more than finances, anyway. No loopholes for tired and young teachers, even if we don't have much money to give.

The sun has not yet risen when I arrive at school, tromping across the classroom in the heavy, warm and dusty darkness that reminds me of being far underground, close to the center of the earth. I plug in the Christmas lights that drape across the windows, and think the light is almost like candlelight. That makes me feel better about starting my work while it is still night. I pull up the eight window shades and stare out at the sky, which is just beginning to turn grey. The classroom is a magical, quiet place at this hour, a soothing place to wake up and wonder about the day.

Generosity. How will I be generous today? I know that I will not spend the day handing out cash or unearned good grades, even though my students would consider that very generous, indeed. The computer casts a blue glow over the classroom, spoiling the candlelight Christmas glow. I wonder what I can offer them, these funny, demanding people who will any minute storm in, asking for that missing assignment, or the answers to Friday's test, or what I did last weekend.

We are so tired these weeks at school. The calendar has tricked us, with an early Thanksgiving, into an extra week of school before Christmas, and students and teachers are ready for a break. Yesterday, Monday, the kids and I spent the day misunderstanding one another, a dreadful day full of mistakes and missteps, from which I came away feeling that none of us really heard anyone else, all day long. I am too tired, I complain to myself as I turn on the lights, too tired to be generous with myself. With my time, my energy, my attention. I don't have enough to be generous.

By lunch, the classroom has filled with students, all there for different reasons. Some come for the hot water, wanting to make their noodle meals. Some come to hang out with the noodlers. Some are doing homework quietly on the other side of the room. There are many today, though, who just want attention. Not bad attention, the kind that students get when they tag walls or throw tantrums in class. These are the kids who wander in from the halls to tell me stories about the cars they are fixing, the slopes they hope to ski this weekend, and the boys they like or wish they didn't like. Sometimes I feel flattered that they choose me, absent-minded young teacher, as their outlet, and more often I am ambivalent, nodding and correcting and occasionally replying. Today, I am too weary to be flattered or annoyed. I have no energy for grading or planning during lunch. I can only munch on a salami sandwich, sip cinnamon tea, and listen.

"Hey, Ms. D! Look who I found!" cries one boy, dragging another one into class behind him. "It's that one guy. The one we never see. Ever."

The sheepish absentee grimaces, perhaps waiting for a barrage of questions, and looks back at me. He's a great kid, if a little lost, who plays the viola and likes to read out loud. I have missed him in class in the last week, and am honestly glad to see him.

"Seriously," the first boy jokes, "What are you even doing here?"

"Hey, don't say that," I protest. "Welcome back. Seriously. I'm glad you're here. You're great."

The student shrugs, ninth-grade boy style, and slouches down into a corner with his friends. I wonder if he hears this enough, that he is valuable and interesting and fun to be around. I wonder if anyone hears that enough. Later, he crosses the room to silently offer me a stick of green gum. In the wordless gesture, a gift to his teacher, I hear the other half of the proverb: "And he who waters will himself be watered."

I think of the other ways my students have encouraged me already. Of the students who call out "Good morning!" as they pass my room on the way to their other classes. Of the ones who write thank-you notes and leave them in my mailbox. Of the girl who was excited to hear we were reading Othello aloud in class yesterday, saying, "Well, it's just so much better than the movie!" And I realize that any generosity I have shown to my students, those too-few moments I spend listening or encouraging, has made me quite prosperous, indeed.

Saturday Snow

It's snowing outside as I sit by an inky black window on Saturday night. Beside me is a brand-new Grand Fir Christmas tree, and indie carols play on the stereo. I've spent the day sewing and shopping for books and used furniture, and I will spend the evening watching a movie and decorating my house with friends.

I realized today that it is rather grown up to be able to enjoy snow on a Saturday. I mentioned to the Guests earlier this week that I hoped for snow on the weekend, and they scowled at me.

"On Saturday?" they moaned. "What's the use? We won't miss any school."

"No," I answered. "I guess not. But it's still snow, isn't it? Still wintry and quiet and nice to look at."

"Eh, whatever. It'd be better on Monday."

So I am feeling adult today, taking pleasure in snow that doesn't mean cancelled work, enjoying the pause always seems to accompany a Northwest snowfall, even on a weekend. I read the books I bought today. I make gifts and watch Christmas movies. I stay in on a Saturday night and do not feel like I'm missing anything. What a delight.

Third-Generation Apple Pie

At 2:30 PM on a Wednesday, I am at home in an empty house. The day before Thanksgiving, in a complicated nod to a holiday that the school district denounces as racist and offensive, traditionally ends one hour early. The classes, which are 45 minutes instead of 50, are not so much shorter that the day is rushed, but it magically wraps up at 1:15 PM. A miracle. Furthermore, since I have been showing a movie all week at the end of a writing-heavy unit, I have caught up in my work enough to sweep the floor, enter a handful of scores, and shut the door behind me with a sigh, several hours earlier than my usual departure at dusk.

Now I am sitting in front of a bowl of green apples, a Christmas movie playing in the background, as the cold, tart juice from the apple I'm peeling runs down my hands. Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and I am making the apple pie. This has become a ritual for me. For the last few years, as the large, quasi-family celebration grows with marriages and births, and those of us who were children about fifteen minutes ago grow up, get jobs, and move out, our parents have started entrusting us with corners of the menu. The corners are well-suited to us, custom-delegated by families who know us well. The one who can bake bread brings the rolls. The one who works at a coffee shop naturally gets to provide the decaf, after-dinner coffee. And I bake an apple pie.

It's been years since I graduated from the subcontracted grinder of flour and shortening to actually preparing the whole pie by myself, arduous apple-peeling and all. Some people like making food in groups, parceling out tasks and chatting as they fill a kitchen with steam and spicy smells. Though I admit that this is one of the loveliest times of community that I ever experience, preparing a feast with friends or family, this afternoon I am thankful for my empty house and the bowl of apples I'm peeling alone. I am at rest, not watched or scrutinized or even seen by the careful observers who fill my day. I once told them about a Thursday evening in which I came home, baked cookies, and ate them while watching The Office. They thought it was a little sad, given that they think that twenty-three is a wild gallop through bars and clubs, and firmly believe that the reason I'm not married is that I am not carefully searching for a husband in those same bars and clubs. Their sad teacher, going home to an empty house to bake for herself. I remind them that this is how I like to rest, in a quiet house with easy recipes and ingredients that generally do what I expect. They think this is pretty sad, also. Oh well.

But the truth is that I'm not quite alone this afternoon. As I throw away the apple peels and get out the many-wedged apple slicer for the next step, I remember one of my grandmothers, who would have shook her head, pursed her lips, and said, "Now, that's not how I do it, Kristi. What is that, anyway?" When I was a teenager, I actually used a Salad Shooter to slice the apples on several occasions, upon which she shook her head seriously and turned to chop up the pastry dough with two knives, milling it to a perfect consistency with her experienced hands. It was this grandmother, though, who melted a slice of cheddar cheese over a wedge of my first pie, took a bite and pronounced it just as good as hers. Even with all of the gadgets that had produced it. I never received a higher baking-related complement.

Later, I roll out the dough on my white formica countertop with a wooden rolling pin, and remember the tearful and deep-sighed times that my other grandmother spent teaching me to roll out the dough and then, maddeningly, roll it up back onto the pin and across the pie plate. I remember hours of this, of watching her do it perfectly and then trying to copy every nuance to that my dough wouldn't fall to pieces on top of my spinach pie. I remember crusts so moist that they stuck to the counter, or so dry that they crumbled back to dust under the rolling pin. This grandmother was always around to fix it, to magically coax the straw-colored dough into a smooth sheet over a pile of filling. She assured me that it only took practice while I uttered pre-teen wails and tore the pastry to shreds. Back then, I rolled out pie crusts on a grey marble countertop with a blue marble rolling pin, and this baking luxury follows me here to taunt me. Surely, I worry, this will be a disaster. I don't even have real tools, and I certainly don't have the right skills. The pie won't turn out, and I won't be able to go to Thanksgiving at all. Why would they trust me with this? It's apple pie! Grandma's in town. She should have made it.

I lift the crust nervously, and it is as if both grandmas are watching, nodding approvingly even as the dough tears and I look over my shoulder and pinch it back together. I pour in the apples and wonder if I'm doing it the best way. I chop up bits of butter to melt under the top crust, and realize that neither of them did this. I cut the top crust in the pattern that Grandma N. invented, and flute the edges like my mother and her mother showed me. I glaze the outside with egg to make it shiny, an addition all my own. When I'm finished, the pie is my family in a circle of pastry, four women's knowledge poured into a little blue pan and baked by the youngest of them.

As the pie bubbles cinnamon-apple juice in the oven, I think of my grandmothers, think of thanksgiving. Both in their eighties, one widowed thirty-five years ago, the other five months ago, they surprise me by the gratefulness with which they live. The everlasting thankfulness, even when some things, or everything, did not turn out as they had planned or hoped. I flip through the wise words they have written and said to me in twenty-three years, like a nursing student with a stack of index cards. Pie-making was just the beginning. They remind me now, the tired teacher unwinding from a day, a week, two months that have exhausted me mentally, spiritually, and emotionally, that love, God, and family are constant sources for thanksgiving. No matter how this third-generation apple pie turns out, the people who consume it will love me just the same.

And it is this love, unconditional and not attached to performance, that I will remember on Monday, holding onto it with the same white fingers that grip the rolling pin, when I return to a world of tests and standards, of relationships and individuals, of hopes and fears and decisions. The people for whom, in the end, I am still thankful.

Vocabulary and Hot Water

Lunchtime. With the quarter recently ended, I am relishing the quiet of these thirty minutes; for weeks, I have spent most of my lunch fishing photocopies of assignments that were due in the middle of September, so that students can scribble answers and receive half credit for their late work. Their learning hovered next to nothing, and my searching for assignments added up to a stressful non-break in the middle of the day, after which I slumped down into a pile, with a cup of tea and a terrible attitude, when fifth period began. The whole process was rather disillusioning, for their efforts and mine seemed like a mere sham by that point.

Now lunches are back to normal, a grey and cool half-hour filled with reading that I don't get to do during the regular day. A half-hour of quiet and rest and solitude. Well, almost solitude, and almost quiet. It was truly this way for about two weeks at the beginning of the school year, and lunches were calm and soothing. That was until the Guests arrived.

To understand the Guests, it is important to know that my class load this year consists of five sections of ninth grade English. At my school, roughly three out of every five members of the class of 2011 are boys. The honors classes, of which I teach none, consist mostly of demure, clever girls. This leaves me with zillions of boys, so that every day I wade deeper into a bizarre and surreal world run by fourteen-year-old boys. They are a funny bunch, but they think they are even funnier. The Guests are two such boys.

They arrived months ago, two students from different classes, who just wanted a place to sit down. And no wonder, I thought. The halls were tornadoes of giggling girls and boys hurtling wildly toward the exits, and only the boldest freshmen had ventured into the dangerous neighborhoods. I glanced up from Three Cups of Tea at them, giving but a very cursory notice to their presence. They sat across the classroom from where I holed up behind my gigantic desk, and spoke in hushed tones. Perhaps the classroom intimidated them, but at the time I just thought they were quiet. They munched on sandwiches and whispered and eventually one of them put in earphones and played with a new iPod, while the other one stared out of the window. I read my book, unconcerned. As they left, the one without earphones looked up and said, "Hey... Could we eat in here, like, every day?"

"Sure," I shrugged, and looked back down at the book.

I don't know what I expected, but what I did not expect was to really see them every day. But I did. Every day, they wandered in and sat down across the room, murmuring and fiddling with handheld video games, always preserving the quiet in a way that I liked. The lights never came on. I was never bothered much, actually. It might have stayed that way, a silent symbiosis with the Guests and I, had it not been for the hot water pot.

A useful tool I was given before going off to college, the hot water pot has taken up residence on a rickety green desk this year. I had taken to making tea for myself during lunch, and one day one of the Guests noticed the steaming water.

"Hey. Wow, does that make the water hot?"

I nodded. "Yes." I am not terribly talkative during lunch.

They came closer, crossing the room cautiously, like deer in a meadow, coming to observe the novelty of the water pot. Right up to the desk the Guests came, until they stared down into the steaming spout of the pot.

"Wow," said one. "That's neat. You just plug it in."

I nodded again, sitting down in a student desk and sipping green tea from a flowered Starbucks mug.

"Wait," remarked the other Guest, holding his hand up in the midst of an epiphany. "Could we bring Cup-O-Noodles in? And, like, get hot water from the pot?"

"Sure," I answered. "That would be fine. Bring them tomorrow."

And they did. From that day on, the Guests have brought noodles every day. As often as I can, I fill the pot ten minutes before lunch and plug it in, making sure to heat the full 1.5 liters so that all three of us have enough water for two noodle meals and one cup of tea. Sometimes I forget the water, and they go fill it during lunch, and all of it has become an unspoken ritual, a focal point like a wood stove in a chilly house. And now they are sitting on my side of the room, talking to me as I eat a salami sandwich and set down the book I had been reading halfheartedly. At a pause in the conversation, I turn away from them to check my email.

"What are you doing?" one of the Guests' friends asks me.

"I'm going to play a game," I answer without thinking, and open a window with a vocabulary game that donates rice to third world countries. An English teacher's dream.

At the word "game," their ninth grade boy ears perk up, and before I know it they have surrounded my chair, peering over my shoulder at the simple multiple choice quiz on my screen.

I correctly identify a few words, filling the little virtual rice bowl to my students' delight. Then, remembering I am teacher, I start making them answer. I start asking questions.

"Well, what do you think 'festoon' means?" Mumblings behind me, and I turn around. "Come on, now, what do you think?"

I glance at the answer, "decorate with flowers," and think it improbable for ninth grade boys to identify. But they do, and almost immediately.

"How did you know that?" I ask, amazed.

"Cause it sounds like, you know, 'festive' or 'festival,'" reasons one of the original Guests.

We do this for a while, me referring the questions to them, until they realize that I know the real answers and are letting them choose the wrong ones.

"This is serious, Ms. D," they scold. "There's rice for hungry people involved. Look, we've only donated 110 grains. You need to guess, too!"

We play for another ten or fifteen minutes, five boys standing behind me and shouting out words like bulwark, predestinate, and somnambular, often with correct meanings arrived at through circuitous but sound routes. I realize how much alike are our approaches to language. Not one of us has a dictionary to look up these words; we simply rummage through the files and bins of our experience, our reading, our sound associations, until we have a good enough guess. We accumulate several hundred grains of rice and spend most of our lunch in this way.

I realize, as I close the game and they make their noodles and chatter along, now in the desks on my side of the big classroom, that I have lost my quiet lunch. That I have just spent most of it playing a computer game with the ninth grade boys, a word game that is the very opposite of quiet. I realize that I may never go back to the lunchtime solitude, just me and a book and a cup of tea. But here, with the Guests and their friends, the game and the hot water pot, I have begun to discover the meaning of hospitality. And that even a hospitality as passive as a shrug and a few cups of hot water can take me by surprise, seeping across the cold meadow of my empty classroom and creating a space of warmth, grace, and even peace for a little while.

Twenty-Three to One

Almost noon on a Thursday, and I am walking off the high school campus, coat and purse in hand, while several of my students call, "Hey, where are you going? Will you be back for fifth period?"

"No," I reply. "I told you about this yesterday. You have a sub. I'm going to a class. Be good, now!"

I always laugh when preparing the class for a substitute, placing brightly-colored labels and writing detailed notes about the lesson, the students, the classroom. It's as if I am talking to a babysitter (the babysitter that I was only a few years ago. "Now, they will want to talk during this work time, but they shouldn't. They get too loud if you let them change seats..."

While the training, held at our district headquarters, would prove to be tragically dull and redundant, falling far short of the last two exciting classes of my school day, it does afford me a reason to drive ten miles south through no traffic at all. This autumn has been full of dramatic and unpredictable weather, so cold that the leaves have turned early, but so dry that they stay on the trees, dropping delicately and hesitantly, in twos and threes, to lawns or sidewalks. Being outside or on the road in any circumstance is a treat, to witness the seasonal spectacle that we are fortunate enough to see in our city.

This day, however, I pass through two torrential rainstorms on the drive down, when I fear for the state of my broken windshield wipers. All through the training, I envision the monsoon traveling south to where we were, and dreaded the rush-hour commute home. I am stunned to silence when I instead emerged into the late afternoon to see the sky a pile of majestic white clouds.

I often, rather unreasonably, think of the sky as a flat backdrop to our world, and consider that it is probably near enough to touch, that cool blue or wooly grey. Today, however, the buildings of downtown are dwarfed in comparison to the vastness of the sky, like a dollhouse inside a cathedral. How small and fragile they look, these geometrical blocks scattered on the streets, underneath the almost supernatural vastness of the titanic clouds above. It is almost funny to think that on an ordinary cloudy day, I marvel at the height of these "skyscrapers." Today, they do not scrape the sky; the buildings are toddlers on tiptoes, and they only come up to the sky's knobby, cloudy knees.

I have been considering, lately, the balance between my place as advocate and mentor in an urban school with much more brokenness than I am often prepared to admit, and the deep and overwhelming feeling that I am a tiny block of a building spinning out in a universe of trouble. I see my students for only one out of their twenty-four hours, and I am just beginning to see and hear how they occupy the rest of their time. Some return to houses of chaos, while others while away evenings alone while parents work to support them. A few don't come to school much at all, popping in just enough for me to remember their names and faces, and be haunted by thoughts of what they do when they are not here.

Before school began, I wrote of wanting Room 120 to be a safe place, a refuge from the darkness of the world outside. I still so deeply desire this peace, for them and for me, despite the clouds looming overhead. I'm beginning to realize my size in the world, understanding the limits to what and who I can change. In the end, I know that while I can call and persuade these students to come to school, my responsibility is to the day-to-day business of loving the ones who arrive. I may never take on the clouds, may never be big enough to battle the systemic evils of humankind that find their way into my students' lives, but I strive to offer what shelter I can, in my hour a day, from the scrapes and bumps they may find in the other twenty-three.

The Joy of Joining

It is 6:17 PM, and we are standing in a dark hallway, purple mood lighting interrupted by flashes of the battery-operated strobe lights duct-taped to the ceiling. Half a dozen eleventh-graders remain, sighing with pleasure at our handiwork.

"All the stress," the class vice president sighs. "It's so worth it!"

I look around and nod in agreement. We have swathed the lockers, walls, and floor in about four hundred yards of colored butcher paper. Stuffed paper Disney characters dangle from the ceiling, along with several glowing planets, some shooting stars, and a dozen tikki paper plates that I proudly hung myself. They've covered parts of the floor with sand, carted in by wagon and skateboard, from the beach four miles away. Soft Hawaiian music floats up from somewhere. THe library doors are covered in a beach tablecloth, and the adjacent classroom is also inaccessible, barricaded with red paper. Cutout stars, the hard work of two girls, three hours, and some very sturdy scissors, are scattered over the black paper floor, so that we float in outer-space as we survey the other-world our hallway has become.

Perhaps if I had shared in much of the actual stress--borne mostly by three ingenuous student officers--I might not think it was worth all the trouble. Apparently, my mere presence as the class advisor lent legitimacy to the proceedings, but I was a figurehead, a puppet leader. I was an extra pair of hands this afternoon (and several extra pairs of scissors), an obedient worker who happened to have a room full of stuff at her disposal. A teacher convenient for her tall stools for standing, and the occasional listening ear. And that's fine with me.

The instructional duties of my day ended four hours ago. I taught my last chaotic lesson, shut the doors, and entered Homecoming Land, where my only task was to cut out Disney characters and talk to students. A merciful break from planning--they had planned it all, already. I think about the relative weights of these two parts of my day, curricular and extra-curricular. Cognitive and affective, they would have called them in college. Leading and following. Teaching and being taught.

"You'll learn so much more than what they tell you in the classroom."

That's what I heard about college, and I remember laughing at it. In high school, I was Classroom Girl. Blessed with no more impressive skills than an endless capacity for memorizing facts, it is no wonder that I valued academics most. This business, the decorating and cheerleaders and football players yelling in the halls, I never noticed. "Secondary," I would sigh over the wasted resources.

But it was true, as I see today. The classroom is not the end of learning, even when it is my classroom. I see students learning to listen, learning to work together and to organize and take real pride in their work. And I am learning, year by year, what it means to "enter in" to the lives of my students, sharing in their passions as I ask them to share in mine.

"Yeah, Harry dies in the end! Gandalf stabs him."

-Student trying, unsuccessfully, to reveal the ending of the Harry Potter book he obviously didn't read

Things My Students Say #1

On the overhead:

Protagonist: Yertle the Turtle (wicked turtle-king)
Antagonist: Mack (small turtle at the bottom who questions Yertle's political strategy, i.e. "I am the ruler of all that I see")
Secondary Characters: mule, cat, blueberry bush, nameless turtles, butterflies, cow

We have just finished reading Dr. Seuss's Yertle the Turtle--a text that, I explain carefully, has a great deal of complex characterizations, given that the protagonist, Yertle himself, is a greedy dictator, content to build his kingdom literally on the backs of his fellow turtles. This is deep stuff, and they know it. We have a list going of characters.

Student: Cow? Where was the cow? I didn't see no cow.

Me: The cow was back with the cat and the bush. You know. Things that Yertle can see.

Student: There wasn't a cow. That was a cat.

Me: No, remember? He was "king of a cow, king of a mule."

Student: Whatever. I don't see why there had to be a cow. And a cow can't be a character, anyway.

But turtle kings, a throne of stacked turtles, and a ninth grade literature lesson based on Dr. Seuss are completely plausible...

Any Age?

If you could be any age for the rest of your life, what age would you be? Write a multi-paragraph essay for your teacher identifying the age you would be and explaining why you would choose this age.
-Tenth Grade WASL Writing Prompt


"OK, so I have good news and better news for you," I say wearily to my last class of the day. I'm not feeling well, so I'm sitting down at a table at the front of the room. The usually-wild class is compassionately calm and receptive.

"What?" someone asks.

"Well, we're doing our last beginning-of-the-year thing today. That's the good news."

"Can't wait for the better news," one disgruntled ninth grader mumbles to his neighbor.

"Oh, right," I say, as I start to pass out the writing assessment. "The better news is that tomorrow I'm going to read you a story. You know, relaxing Friday storytime."

"So much better," they roll their eyes, passing the tests backward along the columns of desks.

"So here it is," I answer, sitting back down. "Here's the question. Who's seen 13 going on 30?"

A few girls slide their hands in the air. One snatches it down again, realizing she was thinking of some movie infinitely more cool.

"It's a good movie!" I say defensively. "Anyway, that's the deal here. If you could wake up tomorrow and be any age you want--for the next 65 years or so--what age would you choose?"

Squeals of delight coem unevenly as they realize the implications. Several start writing immediately.

"Hold on!" I cry. I know I'll have to read these later, and I have glanced down at too many of one number today. "Don't just write '21' right away. Think about it a little. Can you think of more than one reason? If not, you'll be pretty worried after you've written 'So I can drink' on your paper, and you have a one-sentence essay."

Some of them protest, but they all get to work. I consider their most obvious choice, thinking that it's madness. At 21, I had mounds of homework, a job that paid me next to nothing for some of the hardest work I've done (perhaps until now), and a bleak uncertainty about the future. I was grateful to enjoy this youthful lostness for a year and move on. Stay there forever? No, thank you.

Hours later, I am sitting at home and breaking one of the looser rules that I've made about teaching by reading their essays by candlelight in a pleasant, quiet living room. Grading at home often feels too much like homework. But I had glanced into them in the afternoon, and found these particular essays so interesting that I was willing to dip into them for sheer enjoyment's sake. Between baking cookies and watching a rerun of The Office, the essays provide some excellent diversion.

And once again, these assignments that I approach with such casual expediency ("Well, I guess I should get a writing sample. Here, this should be fine.") floor me by giving me real and honest glimpses into my student's hopes, dreams, fears, and passions. I barely know them now, only a week into school, and I have been dismayed to find myself thinking of them as a teeming mass of questions and needs, rather than individuals. As I read their essays, faces and voices come to the fore and, as usually happens, I like them more than I ever have.

I laugh when I see a student wants to be 19--a particularly awkward age for me--until he explains that 19 is the age that Mexican soccer scouts seek out up-and-coming players. Another wants to be a pro bowler, and feels that 21 is probably the best age to try for it. Several want families, and place their eternal ages in their mid- to late-twenties, allowing for comparative youth but plenty of relationship and responsibility. A few would rather simply be four or five, so that they can sleep as much as they want and be the smartest and strongest students in their elementary schools. One student coaxes me into letting him choose to be 300 years old; he explains that he wants to see what happens to the world in the next few hundred years. I envy his courage.

Several of them, scared away from the 21 stereotype, write that they want to be 22. This, they believe, is the ideal age. Finished with college, at 22 they would have excellent jobs, the beginnings of families, and the cars and homes of their dreams. They believe that the early twenties are times of wisdom and maturity, the golden "middle age" of life. The twenties are their paradise, a hoped-for era of freedom and pleasure.

Though unhappy with neither my twenties nor the shape my life is taking in this third decade, I do smile to see my own age flashing up from the page. I wonder what they would think if they knew, that life might hold things better than fast cars, more liberating decisions than purchasing alcohol, and more rewarding payment than an hourly wage that exceeds $10. They must not know that I am still seeking wisdom and maturity-that my ideal age is floating somewhere in the forties or fifties, when life settles a bit and relationships are rich and deep. Probably none of us will ever be quite satisfied with where we are, always hoping to push on a bit--to learn more, experience more, grow more.

"But I don't want to be one age forever!" cries one student, jabbing a period at the end of an impassioned essay.

Thank goodness we don't have to be. The joy is in the journey...

The Wildernesses

Returning home from Dr. Doug Thorpe's reading of his recent book, Raptures of the Deep, his words about wilderness haunt me. As someone commented on his lack of "urban oases" in this book full of outdoor ruminating, I felt rather smug. I, of course, appreciate the wilderness. It is home for me, daughter of island, mountain, valley, with no fear of heights because no one told me about the terror of falling from those dizzy heights, only the ecstacy of seeing the ocean from this pass or that summit, just over there. I have spent many pieces of summer on this wilderness, chasing down the natural world, as I try to remember its stars and smells and quiet through the dripping pre-dawns of winter in the city. Oh yes, I know this wilderness, this apartness of which Dr. Thorpe writes so well.

But no, says the professor softly. Though nature provides a metaphor for wilderness, his wilderness is more and even other than simply exisiting outside. "It is your edge," Thorpe said, bobbing his head emphatically. "Your place of vulnerability."

I think of my edges. Of the cities where I wandered alone. Of the crowds of high school and college freshmen in which I have been lost, shorter and quieter than the rest. And then, another wilderness, I remember the quiet classroom I shut at 3:15 this afternoon, the classroom that will tomorrow fill with 160 ninth graders.

A room full of strangers: this is my wilderness, my edge. Oh, they will be friendly strangers, mostly, eager to please and be pleased. They are at their edges, too, these new high school students. They have left behind places they knew--perhaps precious and perhaps painful--places in which they were known. As I leave the comfort of a summer with people who know me, people with whom I no longer worry about impressions, I am comforted to know that we enter this wilderness together, my students and I. Let it be as nourishing, as challenging, as beautiful, as the wild places I leave behind.

Dust and Shades of Peach

Don't you love New York in the fall? It makes me want to buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.

You've Got Mail

Room 120 is holding its breath.

In a way, this is almost literal, as they are glued shut. The thin, half-century-old windows on the south side of the school building were condemned in June, after another spring in which classroom temperatures topped 90 degrees. Apparently, my library annex was not the only warm place last year. A few weeks ago, I stepped into the empty room that has become my new home, and marveled to discover that a few of the windows had no panes in them at all. I tiptoed across the room and pushed my head way out into the courtyard between the main building and the one next door. The following day, the hole was replaced by a board.

With new key in hand, I struggle with a bundle of Ikea merchandise and plastic letter trays, trying to push my way into the door without dropping all of my parcels. This would be a good time for a useful colleague or construction worker to offer help, but no such person arrives, and I stumble into the room.

Though all of the windows have been replaced, today it is still in the upper 80s inside. The windows, never opened, are caulked shut. It smells faintly of chemicals and a thin layer of old window dust covers floor and desk tops. There are only 25 desks in the room (I have 34 students in my largest class) and no desk at all for me. The walls are exactly the shade of my legs in the dead of winter, while the beams are painted to match the worst sunburn I got this summer.

I couldn't be happier with Room 120.

I set down the packages, which I will unpack tomorrow, struggle with a window until it opens stickily, and sit down in a student desk. The desks will have to be rearranged, and pictures hung on the walls. I will write my name on the board and, if I'm allowed, repaint at least the sunburned beams. When we can, we will paste up projects and dance photos. Maps and assignments, grammar reminders and expectations. I will become familiar with the view from these tall, sticky windows. I will sit on that table and stand in that doorway, drinking tea and learning.

I am happy with this new place, and eager to make it my own. How easy it is to believe, now, that I can create a microcosm of safety in this little room, where I will protect myself and my students from the dangers we face outside, in the halls and the streets. How deeply I desire, as I enter a second year in the whirlwind of high school education, to be a person of peace, and to reflect that in an oasis of a classroom.

Another voice, the tired and nervous one, scoffs, "Oh, that won't last long. They'll mess up your clean desks, break the new windows, shout while you're trying to drink tea. There is no peace in teaching." There will be arguing and crying. There will be doodles on the desks and crumbs on the floor. The inevitable pain of the world outside will come in with all of us, like the November mud on our shoes.

Of course it will never be perfect, never the ideal of a summer dream, I tell myself, bracing against disappointment. And yet, here in this student desk that will fill five times with a still-unknown teenager, I pray for peace. For them. For me. For Room 120 and the school around us.

Distraction

Period six, again. My head is pounding at the end of a long day, in the middle of a long week. The last two weeks of school seem long to students, but I never thought they would seem so long now. With so much to do, I expected time to fly. Days like this one crawl by endlessly, as I repeat lessons two, four, or even six times in just a few hours. Only the students change, whirling through the library classroom as I try to catch up. Usually, I can keep pace, but today I am tired.

Four students sit at the table with me, their spiral notebooks open to a page about the censorship of rap music. They have read the page five times already. I have read it twenty times. I am weary, and so are they, the cycles of this class grown old and weary at the end of the year. I give them cursory instructions, and they sigh and begin to write in the notebooks.

I quickly return to the business from which my students interrupted me when the bell rang. I had been poring, absorbed, over their test scores. The intimidating WASL test, the test for which I was hired to prepare them, had been taken, graded, and returned to me, their teacher, before the students themselves. I do not like secrets much, especially from them, but in order to have all the information I scan the badly formatted Excel spreadsheet, searching for familiar names, hoping to discern happy futures for them from among the rows of letters and numbers.

For several minutes, I hunch into the paper, lost and unaware that the four students have long finished the task I assigned them. They gaze off in all directions, fidget, begin to flip open phones or doodle on the desk. I look up, distracted, and glance over their books. The answers are in disarray, and I see where they have gotten lost, mistakes that could have been avoided had they, as they deserved, had a teacher to help them. Ashamed, I put away the spreadsheet, once again worried by the statement I've accidentally made, ignoring the live students in front of me, the lesson of the day, to gaze at faraway standards, at the futures none of us control now. The test scores are important, I know, but they can be nowhere near as important to me, right now, as the hands, faces, and minds that earned them.

Perspective

It must be 80 degrees in the library classroom as I peer over at the clock, wishing away the minutes until I can coast down a series of hills to my doorstep. I have vowed not to drive my car to work on any more sunny school days, and so most of my afternoons these days end with a quiet ride through the Broadview neighborhood, sliding between the cemetery and a row of spacious backyards. Today, it is this cool, green place I am craving while I stare out at the hot, blue-white sky. 80 degrees in here, and I have even taken the proper precautions, pulling the shades down as far as I can bear, cracking the windows and leaving the doors open. It is unavoidable, and we begin to wilt in the heat.

"It's so hot," I moan, probably far more emphatically than any of my students.

"We're dying!" cry the Seattle students, shaking their heads and plotting what outfits they will wear (or rather, NOT wear) to counter the early heat wave. "We're going to burn up in here!"

We surely will roast, I am thinking, dreaming of the tall bottle of water with which I will ward off the rising temperature. A young Islamic girl, wrapped in a veil, long sleeves, and a floor-length, flowy skirt, raises her eyebrows at me.

"Seriously, folks. It's supposed to be 85 tomorrow!"

Another student, from Somalia, wakes up from his reading as I slouch listelessly across the laptop keyboard, teacher poise tossed aside like an unnecessary garment. I glance over the top of the screen to see him grinning.

"Oh!" he cries. "It's good, it's good, it's good, good, good!"

I begin to laugh in the hot, quiet classroom, where my diligent students deal with climate better than I. After a moment they ask why I am laughing, and I can't tell them why. I am laughing about perspective, the lesson I taught so carefully this morning but have forgotten now. I am laughing at myself, the whiny young teacher who can't bear to be cooped up inside during these last four weeks of school. I am laughing not with derision but with delight, delight for my students who waited patiently through eight rainy months and are now rejoicing in the sunshine.

The Spider and the Saw

“Hey, did you ever see Saw II?” The question is not new, and I have not seen the gruesome horror flick since the last time this student asked me.

“No. Never.” I shake my head and scowl. I probably will never see any of the Saw movies, as they fall into a genre that seems to consist of gory violence heaped onto meager plots, carried out by flavorless characters who mostly die in the end, anyway. Of course, as I am not a consumer of horror movies, I cannot fairly move further than generalizations, but even without particulars I am repelled by covers, posters, previews, and the retellings to which I’m subjected the Monday after one of these gems hits the screen. Always the same wide-eyed awe at scenes of especial brutality. Always the same grimacing, writhing horror as they recall the sights to me, their faces and hands wrinkled up in distaste.

I have been baffled this year by the preoccupation of teenaged boys with this particular brand of violence. In a recent essay in Time, Richard Corliss discusses the effect that “R” ratings have on the teenage audience they mean to keep out:

“The MPAA needs the teen market. Tougher than most other national ratings boards on sexual images in movies, it's far more lenient when it comes to violence. In many countries, Saw was forbidden to those under 18. In the U.S., your 17-year-old could go and chaperone his younger siblings. The argument may be that sexuality is real and disturbs kids more than pretend maiming. But these ratings teach that sex is forbidden and killing is cool. They also tell the world that America is a place where violence rules.”

As this kind of exploitive violence begins to fill the screen—a medium that dictates in such a powerful way the conversations, priorities, and fascinations of our adolescents—I am increasingly skeptical of the teenage response: “Hey, don’t worry about it. It’s just a movie. We know it’s just a movie.” How can that much of that not affect you? And, if that is the case, I’ll be just as worried about the callousness that makes a fifteen-year-old capable of consuming violence without thinking.

Cut to yesterday afternoon, when I went to see Spiderman 3 with my family. For a long 140 minutes, we were wrapped up in a world of Good vs. Evil where, even when the sides were blurry or complicated, right could always be clearly sifted from wrong. A wonderful way to spend an afternoon, escaping into a place where the heroes stumble and fall and rise again, and where the only characters who are truly lost are those who choose to be.

As we left the theater, I bristled at the word “cheesy,” which I heard floating over Market Street from the crowds pouring out into the sunshine. Cheesy? I suppose so. As the shots twisted and turned between New York City skyscrapers, I may have thought that there were holes in this story, or that the pacing was uneven. Fine.

In the end, though, I am unable to mock Spiderman 3 for its shortcomings. The overwhelming voices of pop culture today are screaming that manipulation and violence are the only means to success, and that a giant stack of cash is as good as it gets. The top-grossing films among young people generally end with pools of blood and nameless victims. When I see the grotesque values implicitly and explicitly peddled to teenagers, I can’t help but applaud a mainstream blockbuster that tackles friendship, forgiveness, and unscrupulous ambition. If one of my ninth-grade boys for once leaves a theater considering how forgiveness is related to friendship, then I am willing to forgive far more clumsy storytelling than that. Spiderman 3 was meant to have a record-breaking opening weekend. For my part, I hope that it did.

New Seasons

“Hey, Ms. D,” a student greets me as he walks in a few minutes after class has started.

“Welcome,” I reply, glancing up from the lesson I’m teaching.

“Sorry I’m late.” He sits down quietly, gets out his binder, and begins to work on his independent project. Just like that. No coaxing or cajoling. He just starts writing.

I stare at him for a moment in unmasked curiosity, but he is too busy to notice. He apologized for being late. He never apologizes. In fact, he usually begins on the defensive, entering the room and saying, all in one breath, "ImnotlateIhaveapassdontmarkmelate!" Today he apologized.

“No worries. Thanks for being here.” I return to the lesson; he bends his head toward the paper in concentration. I understand after a few minutes. He was not apologizing for being late. Or not ONLY for being late.

I think back to five hours before, when he was in my first class, of an irritating interaction with him that ended with a wordless stare from the front of the room. I have often found this silence a better—and safer—correction than anything I can say. Now, he is working quietly, a model of politeness and generosity. This is his apology.

The sun is shining again in the library, while my students read busily. We have reached a rare equilibrium, that comfortable place where I can trust them to work hard and they can trust me, in return, not to bother them too much. There is a time for direct instruction, for those lectures and announcements at the front of the room, but this is not it. For a moment, I am silent, free to enjoy the return of light.

The routines of life here at Ingraham—perhaps as a teacher, in general—allow me to appreciate fully, as I never have before, the seasonal nature of life. Before this, years have been divided into artificial sections by activities. I had Cross-Country Season, AP Test season, College Application season, Playing-Frisbee-on-the-Lawn-Behind-Hill-Hall season, SMC Application season, Frappucino Season, and (as an accountant’s assistant) tax season. Like real seasons, these had their routines, things I could expect as the times returned each year. Unlike them, however, these seasons were not constant through the changes of my life. As I left high school, jobs, and finally college, I left behind the seasons that had marked my life.

Now, I have new artificial seasons, which divide life into Summer and School. Summers are short and unpredictable. The long school year, on the other hand, stretches through three seasons, carrying the earth from summer through autumn, winter, spring, and back again to summer. Each day, between 7:00 and 7:20 AM, I turn north off of Greenwood and greet the sun in a new place in the sky, hanging eagerly over the Cascades in the early morning. Daylight savings affords me extra sunrise drives, extra hours when the sunlight spills golden down the eastward-facing hallways in the school, reflecting in gilded pools on the linoleum. My five weekly apples get expensive and mealy in time for me to purchase oranges, then grapes, strawberries, bananas. And the year spirals around on itself. Winter, miraculously, turns to spring again while we go through the rituals of our days together.

This pendulum is so symbolic, for me, of the relationships I have developed with my students. I had once believed that student-teacher relationships were static, for better or worse, decided by circumstances very early in the year. I now know that, like the length and temperature of days, there are cycles, patterns, to each one. Just like any other relationship, we have our ups and downs. We make mistakes and jokes. We hurt and apologize. We forgive. We forget. We laugh again.

This student, now diligently reading across the room, has traveled from cruel to kind in under six hours. Neither version of him was false. There are days when I leave school delighted, and others when I wish I never had to return. Every afternoon, however, I know that I will return the next morning. We will have to solve our problems, get to know one another, understand when to speak and when to remain silent. There is no escape, and for that I am daily thankful. The hard days will not last forever. They may not even last a whole day.

Grace vs. Three Tries

“Oh, good news! The District is pre-registering you all for the WASL!”

Such declarations, no matter with how much enthusiasm I introduce them, invariably bring groans of angst and rage from my Academic Reading students. Perhaps they have forgotten that “Academic Reading,” even though it looks excellent as an elective on their transcripts and even though their teacher explains that “reading is an essential part to living a full and successful life,” is primarily a preparation for the Washington Assessment of Student Learning, or WASL. Most of them are eleventh graders and have taken the test already. They do not relish the thought of returning again to a room full of sophomores and revisiting the test that threatens to keep them in high school indefinitely.

“Wait, we have to take it again?” one student jokes.

There it begins, an onslaught of questions about the test, which will take many minutes to untangle. I hope that this is a testimony of the focus of their learning, that they are becoming lifelong readers and writers and that the test will merely be a blip in a year full of such pursuits.

“Hold on,” one girl interrupts, as I explain the testing schedule for the seventh time. “What if we don’t pass it this time?”

None of them have verbalized this fear yet, though it certainly keeps me awake at nights. I look at all of them, waiting expectantly for some loophole that will whisk them and their diplomas magically off to college in eighteen months. I understand why we must have standards, understand the dangers of inflated diplomas and backsliding schools, though perhaps they do not. Still, I wish I had a better answer.

“You can take it during the summer. At the WASL college. You know, summer school.”

They don’t like this, but they seem to grasp the gravity of the situation.

“But what if we don’t pass it again?” another student sighs. She quickly realizes the answer, and gasps, “Senior year? We have to take it again senior year!”

“Three more tries!” I cry optimistically. “You can get there. Just don’t panic! And the good news is…”

“…the District is pre-registering us!” someone finishes, imitating my excitement.

“Exactly. Now, let’s take the practice test. Always practice.”

They get to work, and I try to imagine that their pencils move more fluidly than they did a few months ago. Certainly some of them have gained confidence, which will be a valuable ally as they approach the fearsome exam. Perhaps, like little Davids, the sundry pebbles of reading and writing skills they have learned this year will be enough to conquer the Goliath test.

This test invariably takes me back to thoughts of grace. These students have three tries to complete this requirement before their graduations are delayed. What if I had only three more tries to become proficient in love, to master forgiveness, to achieve grade-level patience? How marvelous does this endless supply of grace, this new-every-morning-faithfulness, appear as I continue to work in a place where chances for success are few, and too many failures can alter forever the course of their lives. How thankful I am that I can learn the same lesson again and again, in the circuitous paths of my life, each time seeing more, rubbing away at the fog of insecurity, fear, and pride to reveal the clear windows of truth. How precious does this grace appear...

The Snowman

The day has been short, as most days after these snowstorms have been. Classes are reduced to a meager 35 minutes, an awkward amount of time that is just enough that I have to plan something meaningful, but not enough for the students to focus on it. The memory of a pleasant Tuesday, spent basking in front of a woodstove in the company of friends, is not fixing this Wednesday. By fifth period, I am in a hectic mood, juggling the tasks of teaching with the tasks of stretching, twisting, and cramming the material of the last week into a few days.

It is into this fell mood that one of my students unwittingly stumbles. Though he comes to class sporadically, he is quiet and amiable and I am glad to see him here today. I know little about him, except that he loves chicken and passes most of his time with video games. He looks up from the book he has been non-committally reading and stares at the laptop computer on the table.

The laptop, perhaps as a concession for the lack of desk, chair, bulletin board, clock, overhead projector, and other classroom amenities, was granted to me by some mysterious district funding early this year. It is a Dell, speedy but unreliable, riddled with enigmatic error messages and random "breaks" from the nextwork connection. Still, the laptop is brand new, and as such it is a revered object for all of us. My student now watches it intently, and I follow his eyes.

"What are you looking at?" I finally ask.

"The laptop. Does it play DVDs?"

"Yes. They all do. All of the new computers."

He smiles, a rare occurrence, and looks back at his book for a moment. Only a second later, he looks back at me.

"Hey."

"Hmm?"

"Can I play a DVD on your computer?"

I raise my eyebrows pretentiously and shake my head without giving it much thought. We are too busy for DVDs I have not seen. Anything could be on that DVD. Of course not.

"Probably not. We have class to do today."

He looks back at me skeptically, then at the other students, who are reading next to him, but he wisely remains quiet. "If we have time? At the end of class?"

"We'll see," I answer primly.

Class passes by in all of its reading glory, and I cling to the feeling of frantic hurry. We have to fill every moment reading, because we have already lost FIVE DAYS to the capricious weather. I finish reading Jerry Spinelli's Stargirl, which we have been reading for months, and ask them questions about the end of the book. Oddly enough, their input dies down several minutes before the end of class. The patient student brightens.

"Can we watch it now?"

I am out of excuses and, amazingly, out of activities. "What is it? Will this get me in trouble? Is it appropriate for class?" My questions are naive, perhaps, but I have to ask.

"It's just a movie I made yesterday," he hesitates, then adding. "It's what I did on the snow day."

"What is it?" I repeat.

"We... we knocked down a snowman. It's just two minutes. Please?"

I have never seen him so interested in anything, and I am curious, so we put in the DVD, dubiously titled "Snowman Gets Owned." I can't get the sound to work on the laptop, so we watch a silent film of my student and his neighbor. It is edited, with repeated clips and slow motion scenes of the two boys, building, jumping on top of and against, and finally tackling a giant snowman. I can tell he is proud of it, proud to show his work to this small class, proud of the giggles he recieves from his classmates.

I am humbled by my skepticisim, properly rebuked for my arrogance. Again I ponder the balance between academics and community, the balance I saw so clearly in college and again struggle with here in high school. So easy to feel too busy to listen, too busy to pause, too busy to laugh. The lesson was important, but perhaps not the only important thing. Where is the equilibrium, a classroom in which students are both challenged and safe, learning new skills and honored for their gifts?

The bell rings as the credits roll, and students head for the door. "Hey," I call after him. "That was nice work. Thanks for bringing it." He shrugs, seventeen again and shy of success and retrieves his masterpiece with a smile.

But I Have Promises to Keep

The woods are lovely, dark and deep
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost is on my mind as I trudge through eighteen inches of new snow at the Lake Wentatchee YMCA camp, where I am staying with the Bethany Community Church youth group over New Years'. Silent woods surround me, grey and black, barren trees conferring together on the pale, glowing ground of snow, mysterious woods calling with almost audible voices. But the plastic sled I drag behind me reminds me that I have a task to complete, that I must stay on the path and save wandering in snowy woods for another night. I am going to the woodshed.

"How did you sleep?" I asked a fellow youth leader at breakfast this morning.

He yawned and responded, "Oh, not good at all. I was up all night, keeping the fire going in our cabin. It was worth it, though," he nodded, smiling with satisfaction. "We were warm this morning. You?"

I grimaced at the memory of waking up to a below-freezing temperature inside my insulation-free cabin, pulling on icy jeans in my sleeping bag. "We were a little colder."

"Did you let the fire go out?"

"I... well, I was expecting... yes," I muttered. Excuses were plentiful. Yes, I spent many years in homes with wood heat, learning all the principles of not touching hot stoves and hauling split wood onto the porch, but at age eleven my responsibilities had ended there. I knew nothing about fires--how could I be expected to make one last through the whole night?

Excuses aside, the cold-morning truth was that I had gone soundly to sleep after I shoved a log into the woodstove at midnight, and did not wake until I could see my breath in the dim light of dawn. I, and no one else, had let the fire go out.

Like Frost's wanderer, I now have a promise to keep--I have promised four high school girls that they will pass a better night, and wake to a warmer morning. I pull the sled along the path and weigh it down with logs and kindling. I return to the empty cabin and carefully arrange the many sizes of wood, blowing and fanning the flames, gaurding the hot iron box as if were the only test of my responsibility, my adulthood, my love for these students.

I wonder who was waiting for the forest-loving traveler, what promises he had to keep, and if he regretted leaving the snowy woods behind him? As I sit near the warmth of a glowing fire and listen to the crackle of burning wood, knowing that people I love will be warm in the morning, I have no regrets.