Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Nothing Gold Can Stay


It's the last day of September, and I've climbed a tree in Discovery Park.

I didn't come out here to climb the tree. I had a much more mature reason for entering the park at first; I was pursuing the entirely sane goal of running in a great big circle around it. Running and I have a long and tumultuous history--full of harsh words and ecstatic moments, disappointment and fondness--and today is no different. I left grudgingly, in annoyed anticipation of going out for dessert later, slamming the door behind me and jogging without passion up the drab sidewalk behind my apartment.

The circle I ran is actually a serpentine loop through forests and meadows, flirting briefly with the sea but mostly lounging in dim forest. I grew up running around a lake of the exact size as this giant park loop, but I've found that running through a forest is harder and more solemn than circumventing a lake. The paved path around the lake is packed with people, anyway, on every nice day in Seattle, while this root-strewn gravel trail is deserted at 5:00 PM on a weekday. Just right for a contemplative and half-hearted run at the end of a long day.

Every so often, a curve of sweetly crunching leaf-strewn path will remind me of cross country races, back in that brief moment that I thought I loved running. It was the leaves I loved, of course. I adored the hours I spent in the forest in autumn, drinking in the dual pleasures of fire-leafed woods and the cheers of my best friends around me. It doesn't surprise me that I have never recovered, in a sense, that first love for running. Take away the exhilaration of competition, the bus that took me out to those nice parks, and the teammates to encourage, and running becomes, for me, just pounding my feet down a path, running from the devils of diabetes and heart disease. Yet here, on the lonely Discovery Park trail, I thought I could recall some of that long-ago affection.

Other than these flashes of cross country, it is mostly the present that occupies my mind today. Even the teenaged running memories bring me back to the present, for the loneliness of running a race is the loneliness of teaching and perhaps everything else. Though I ran with others, there were often long stretches when, like now, I could see no one. I was aware of their presence around me, on the other side of trees or bridges or hills, but I couldn't see. I was--I am--the only one who saw what I saw, who ran just now, right here. In that way, nothing has changed.

Three miles of running and I am almost back home, when the tree--a large madrona that splits into a peaceful two fingers near the ground--catches my attention. Without much consideration I climb up into the Y in the tree. It proves more comfortable than I expected.

I wonder for a while about the maple leaves I see above the madrona tree, then trace their origin to the stout tree beside me. I plot an escape route over to the stronger tree next door if a bear appears, by some dire catastrophe, in my park. I consider the consequences of being bitten by one of those nickel-sized spiders on the bushes a few feet down. Attention wanders and flits, eventually settling on the layers of green leaves between me and the pearl-white sky.

I have always loved the fall for its quiet majesty, so regular and lovely, so resigned and stoic in the face of endings and hibernations to come. Yet today, on one of the first days of autumn, I find myself mourning these green leaves. Even though they are faded and tired, and soon will be an honest blaze of color on the branch, I wish that they could stay. Today, just for a breath or so, autumn seems a deep sadness preceding a long sleep.

To love seasons, I know, is to love change itself, and to enter fully into the depth of each time. To love the barren winter with a passion beyond mere thankful certainty that spring will eventually return. How, I continue to wonder with my Rushdie-reading students, can I invest fully in the truth of each day, even ones that fall in grey and dormant seasons?

The leaves, which today fill the forest with delicate light, will fall soon, inescapably, fluttering to splendid ends. As I sit below them, I long to embrace change as they will, celebrating with loveliness the close of some times, preparing myself for others with grace and truth.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Weird



Do you remember how that life yearned out of its childhood for the "great"? I see that it is now going on beyond the great to long for greater. For this reason it will not cease to be difficult, but for this reason too it will not cease to grow.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet


"This book is just... WEIRD!"

I look up from Haroun and the Sea of Stories, hearing this breezy sigh of exasperation from the back. Glancing around my classroom, I see many furrowed foreheads, hunched shoulders, and chins leaning in irritation on fists, all these fierce faces glaring at me. Looking back at the book, where I see a description of a water-walking weed-being called a "Floating Gardener," I consider for a moment before replying. As I consider, the murmur gains more force, is echoed around the room:

"Yeah, it's weird."

"Too weird."

"Why do we have to read this, anyway?"

"Why can't we just vote as a class and pick our own book?"

"Why, Ms. D? Why are you doing this to us?!"

I smile at them to mask a moment of panic. Yes, I had expected this. I knew when I chose an allegorical fantasy about censorship, Islam, and the value of stories, that there would be rebellion. I remembered the state of many young imaginations, lulled out of existence by Google image searches and online video games, which would not respond well to the demand that they picture a blue-mustached genie, giant robotic bird, or this recent floating gardener. I am even prepared to agree with them this morning, that the book is weird, and that they are right to identify it as such. In later classes, I will be better at preparing them for the plunge into a fantasy city that they must take today, but it's still early on Monday morning, and I had forgotten how strange all of this sounds when it's unfamiliar.

"So, just to summarize," I begin in a break of complaints, "You don't like this because it's weird. Am I hearing you?"

"Weird!" the first voice reiterates.

"So you're uncomfortable? You're reading this and it's not what you get or what you like?"

"Weird!"

"Hmm," I shrug. "That's OK."

"OK?" the crowd cries. "But we don't like it!"

"Maybe not. In fact, maybe it's better that you don't like it."

How is this possible? I hear them asking, though for once they are stunned enough not to verbalize their outrage. I still hear it, though, in the silence, as they fight back against the counterintuition of my words. How can be OK to do something that we don't like? What about that is OK? We don't like it. We don't want to do it anymore.

And I'm not judging their logic. God knows--really--I've used it myself. Blurry edges and shaky scaffoldings are as uncomfortable to me as to anyone; I simply don't encounter the unfamiliar in literature as often as my students. These things visit me outside the classroom, where they are seldom my first choice of company. I have a hard time seeing myself choosing a book equivalent of doubt, or trying to slog through a chapter of confusion, simply because some teacher somewhere told me it was good for me. But I have begun this lecture on perseverance, so I suppose I have to finish it.

"It's OK not be comfortable while you're reading. Remember? I told you this would happen. This is hard stuff, not easy. And you're right: it's weird. And out here in the weirdness you're growing. Learning to imagine strange things. Trying to figure out this wacky allegory that sounds like it's written for kids but is really, really deep and meaningful on a level that you, as teenagers, can understand now. You're already asking the central question of the book! 'What's the use of stories that aren't even true?' That's fantastic! Keep asking. Maybe we'll know before the end."

It's not the answer they were looking for, or even an answer at all. I can only hope that they feel heard, and take comfort in my assurance that this is difficult, instead of the well-intentioned but demeaning teacher assurances of "Oh, this is no problem, kids!" In the end, I'm giving them the same words I am repeating to myself: Be present in all circumstances. In rainy commutes as well as golden sunrises. In ambiguity as well as certainty. Pay attention, because this wilderness of oddity is where the growing happens.

Monday, September 15, 2008

Green Tea in the Storm


Fall is here.
Hear the yell,
“Back to school!”
Ring the bell.
Brand new shoes.
Walking blues.
Climb the fence.
Books and pens.

I can tell that we are going to be friends.

The White Stripes, “We’re Going to Be Friends”


“Isn’t it ready yet?”

Four brand-new Ingraham students are loitering near the window—two sitting patiently, two wandering with restless curiosity—and they are waiting for the water to boil. They are waiting because there was a promise of tea if they can be patient enough to wait for it. Green tea from their teacher’s desk. What could be better?

“Not yet,” I shrug, looking up from the email I’m writing. “It’ll be ready soon.”

One boy kneels down next to the rickety green desk that holds a basket full of tea things, a plant, and the now-decrepit electric hot water pot. He’s staring at the empty teapot, a white two-cup affair, which is waiting for the steaming water.

“That’s the smallest teapot in the world,” he comments.

“Nope,” a companion replies sagely. “There are prob’ly smaller ones somewhere. It’s just regular small. Not the smallest.”

I smile and say nothing. I am surprised they are here at all, actually. This is only the fifth day of school, and at this time last year most of my students were too shy or too busy to wander into my classroom at lunch. But two of them are in my fifth period class, which has only eight students (consequence of many minor miracles of registration and staffing) and has grown extraordinarily chummy in this first week. Seeing me standing outside the classroom at the end of lunch, always holding a steaming cup of tea, they voiced the demands that immediately came to mind.

“Hey, can I have some coffee?”

“It’s not coffee. It’s tea,” I replied.

Unperturbed by this information, the duo persisted. “Can I have some tea then?”

“Not now,” I shrug. “Maybe if you come at the beginning of lunch I’ll make you some. But not it’s time for class. So no tea today.”

This was repeated a few times in the first week of school, until today, when they both arrived twenty minutes before class, taking me up on my halfhearted offer. Oh well, I thought. It’s a cup of tea. So I got out two Styrofoam cups from the cupboard, asked them to fetch a bottle of water from the water fountain, and began to boil it.

The two original boys now pace the room, wailing about the slowness of the tea and wondering aloud if it was worth it at all, while their friends wait for tea. I get the sense that the friends are curious if they are going to be included in the impromptu tea party. Also that they might actually like it more than the first ones, who seem to be essentially testing the limits of my good nature.

My thoughts and energy return to the classroom as I wrap up my email. It’s a pleasant place again, the scars of June healed and washed away by the promises of September. I have hung new posters on the walls, moved the furniture to include some computers and tables for the journalism class that I am teaching this year in place of one of my ninth grade English classes. At the windows are the familiar curtains and twinkle lights, covered with the origami balloons that two of my students made as decorations on our final presentation day last year. I told myself a few weeks ago that I was purging the class in an effort to keep things clean and simple, since I never want to be a teacher weighed down with eight file cabinets full of examples and mementos. Perhaps I also wanted to start over, and bare walls were the solution.

How naïve of me. Though all but a few cherished drawings have long since gone to the recycling bin, last year’s students remain. They are in the halls, calling jokes and news as they rush off to their new classes. They are outside after school, still watching the boys’ football practice, even though now we laugh about it, while back then I told them they were embarrassing themselves and all teenage girls. They are in the classes of my colleagues, from whom I hear tales of genial class clowns and abrasive untapped potential.

And my students, the ones who brought me through these last and hardest twelve months, are here. In Room 120 at lunch. Telling me about teachers and summers, classes and cell phones and new outfits. They whirl in from the dramatic sophomore world, in which feuds and friendships seem to have picked up without interruption, stepping through the doorway with a sigh. Some come to talk to me, sitting close and telling stories. Others have dropped by in pairs, or come in, realized that the dependable group of guests has dispersed into the sunny streets of Upper Aurora, and rushed out to bring them back again. Today I am hearing one of them strategize how easy it would be to steal a fanny pack, should they ever come back into fashion, while another peers out of the window, looking for someone. One sophomore girl decides to do all her homework in one lunch, while her friend laments how difficult her new LA class is.

I wonder what they’re looking for here, back with me now that I have no formal role in their lives. I wonder who I am to them now, so nervously aware the input they seek will no longer fall within my areas of expertise. They will ask about relationships and the future, not books or mountains, and I know that these questions will challenge me more than any that have come before. Yet I am filled with gratitude and joy every time I see them here.

I stand up as the water clicks off with a satisfying boiling noise, reaching over to pour it into the small teapot.

“Can we drink it now?” demands one of my new guests.

“Not yet. In a few minutes. It’s not ready yet.”

“Tea takes forever!” wails the second tea-drinker. The quiet friends merely watch, wide-eyed, as I get more cups from the cupboard.

“Do you want tea, too?” I ask them. Mute nods and half smiles reply.

I remember thinking, during my first year of teaching especially, that in most places in education the relationship between teacher and student was broken, perhaps beyond repair. In our mythical battles, teachers were the villains that threatened kids’ free time with meaningless tasks, while students were the ghouls that threatened adults’ sanity with their ceaseless noise. It was no mere wall that divided us—our positions were fixed on opposite sides of a barbed-wire fence. As I decant four small Styrofoam cups of tea to the mixed reviews of ninth grade boys, while tenth-graders bask in their experience and try to hide their confusion, I feel the barriers falling. Sharing green tea in the storm of urban high school, we begin to know one another.