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.