Vocation Revelation

The temperature has plummeted below freezing as I stand on the sidewalk, turning lethargic and useless fingers and toes that were once pleasantly active. I have not dressed for this, I think to myself, shoving my hands deep into the pockets of a wool jacket. I'm listening to Christmas music on headphones, standing on Fourth Avenue in downtown Seattle, surrounded by a swarm of irritated shoppers, all marooned in a slushy city two days before Christmas. Grimy grey snow turns the streets to hardened arteries, slowing traffic to a standstill and somehow eating most of the city's Metro buses. Every other bus is headed back to the terminal, and most of the ones stopping at this ill-fated stop are headed north to the suburbs. Of the three buses that go back to my neighborhood, the rumor on the street is that only one is still running.

I'm thinking ironically of the newspaper article I read a few days ago, back when we were still in the part of the storm when school should have been happening. It was called "Five Antidotes to Cabin Fever," and it listed five charming distractions available to families after they took the bus to downtown Seattle. The comments under the online version became increasingly annoyed over the next few days, as the buses stop running and downtown becomes something of a trap. You can get here, for work or play or shopping, but you may be stuck down there until the snow melts.

I peer up the hill, south along Fourth, there is a bus in the distance, and I vow that if it is not my bus I'll walk home. It is a foolish vow, one easily broken, but I'm just cold and irritated enough to attempt it. I have no idea how far it is, really, or how exactly I'll get there. I know that between here and home there are several rather busy arterial roads and at least one gigantic bridge, which may or may not have a sidewalk. The other alternative is a bike path through train yards. I am cold enough and mad enough to do either, if this bus is not the right one.

"TO TERMINAL" reads the bus.

"We've been abandoned!" I wail. "That's it. I'm walking."

This statement, made aloud for no particular reason, catches the attention of a woman standing nearby. She is much older than I am, wearing a knit hat, thick ski gloves, and shiny red vinyl shoes. She looks up.

"Are you going to Magnolia?" she asks then, not waiting for a reply, declares, "I'll go with you."

This is a surprise, and not entirely a pleasant one. To my shame, I am often a genuine representation of my city, outwardly friendly for extremely brief encounters. This will not be a brief encounter; our remote corner of the city is not close, by any means. A better part of me scolds the aloof part soundly, and I pull the headphones out of my ears and stuff them in a pocket. I'm going on a trek with a stranger.

We talk for a while about the weather. This is crazy weather for Seattle, we agree. The buses are deeply flawed, and the disservice done to a whole neighborhood is unforgivable. We walk along the bus route hopefully, checking in with the stranded at every stop, asking for news of buses and feeling vindicated in our decision when we learn that none have come in hours.

As we near the edges of the skyscrapers, we begin to talk about work. I learn that she is a weaver and works from home, but this seems like a recent career change. Before I can gain any further details, she turns the question back on me.

"What do you do?"

It is only much later that I will be surprised at the difference three years has made in the answer to this question. The words are the same, of course, but the tone, the posture, the feeling behind them has all transformed. I used to shrug resignedly, even sigh, my tone all embarrassment and apology. I felt plain and common, and projected judgments from my interrogators back onto myself. Today, the words come easily and proudly.

"I'm a schoolteacher. I teach ninth grade English."

"A teacher!" my walking companion sighs delightedly. "I was a teacher. I taught high school French. I loved teaching high school."

"What was your favorite grade to teach?"

"Tenth. They know... nothing. They are just so awful. But so wonderful, you know? So much fun."

I do know. Incredible, the sense of understanding that comes with a shared vocation! We compare notes of her girls' Catholic school to my urban public one. We praise snow days, the delight of loving them as adults, beginning to reconcile with the snow that has necessitated this quest. We talk about language and literature, learning and travel with young people. For miles and miles, a discussion of teaching carries two teachers from downtown along the waterfront as the winter sun sets.

When we part ways in Magnolia, I walk home amazed by the conversation. I have been so unsure about and hurt by teaching in the past that I have hesitated to even admit that I work at a school, much less claim the title of "teacher." Today, I have spent hours telling and hearing stories about students. I think of my students and my school, every day there, with fondness and affection. Not because it is easy, though certainly it is easier now than it was. Without knowing how, I have grown into this calling, beginning to love it out of more than mere duty.

Othello

I am watching a student's head this morning.

The classroom echoes hollowly with the tripping syllables of ninth graders reading various parts of Othello aloud to one another, one at at a time. We are two days into a three-week taste of Shakespeare, and already I am sensing that it will be a challenge for first period, especially.

The students of Period One are well-mannered and docile, charmingly supportive of one another and compliant in even the most tedious of homework assignments. They have the highest grade average of all of my classes, and usually I am incredibly pleased with them. Our class frequently ends with an expression of thanks, on my part, for the twenty or so students that have begun the day on such a cordial note. I like this class. I am grateful for this class.

Still, this is not the class that will love Othello, or any piece of literature pulled from the centuries-old canon, dusted off, and sold to high schoolers as important. I've already given them the speech, revealed the secrets of education that they will be expected to know once they graduate. "You'll be at these parties, folks, in fifteen years, and someone will say something about Shakespeare and they'll expect YOU to be able to have a conversation about it! What are you going to say?" They shrug.

"What kind of parties have people talking about Shakespeare?" mumbles a skeptic.

"Not the kind I'm going to, that's for sure," grumbles a second.

My promises of cultural literacy are lost on them, these sleepy first students of the day, for whom dreams of being executives and actresses require too much imagination, too early in the morning. Nor are they impressed, overall, with the story in comparison to the amount of work it takes to understand it through the mists of 16th century English.

So, as a few brave students wade through Act I, Scene 3, I'm closely watching one student, trying to trace the progress of one of my biggest Shakespeare critics. At first he holds the book lightly, as if it is filthy and he is afraid to touch too much of it with his hands. He rests his elbows on the table, propping the pages barely open with his thumbs. I can't imagine how he can see any of the words. Irritated sighs occasionally flutter the pages in front of him.

After a few lines, he slumps over the top of the desk, straightening his arms until his hands and wrists dangle, palm up, off the front of his desk. His head attracts the most interest: he has placed his face--nose, eyes, and mouth--between the still-open pages of the book. I stare at my student incredulously for a moment, until I remember that the teacher stare only works if the students can still see me. This one is clearly hiding.

"Hey," I whisper. "Wake up." He's only a few feet from me, and I can hear his words through the barrier of pages:

"I AM awake," he grumbles. "I'm reading."

* * *

I love teaching Shakespeare plays to this group of students, to new teenagers in the city, even though the first time they open the books, littered with notes and unpleasant syntax, they look up at me with expressions of betrayal and bewilderment, as if I'd just handed out Camus in the original French. "Don't worry!" I crow. "It'll be hard at first but it'll get easier soon! Stick with it."

I can remember feeling that lost. I recall reading Shakespeare on buses and checking notes every other line, trying desperately to make sense of the thick blank verse, or lying on the top bunk of a dorm room and spending hours on just a few pages of Milton criticism. I hear Chaucer's Middle English, as a professor read "Canterbury Tales" aloud to us in the evenings of a study abroad trip, and we struggled to keep awake. Struggled to find our way out of the thickets of confusion created by too-old language on too-young ears.

But I also know, because I have been lost before, the deep satisfaction and sense of genius that comes when we finally begin to understand. Every year, I am surprised by the students who show up every day during these difficult sections of the class, ready to roll up their sleeves and work incredibly hard at decoding this story that they never imagined they would be able to read. I feel like a revolutionary, initiating these young people into a discussion that has been unfairly dominated by academia for hundreds of years. I'll never forget the college professor who, when asked why she had never taught secondary school, shuddered and said, "I don't even know if high schoolers can learn literature." I was horrified, and perhaps I have been working ever since to prove her wrong.

Because they learn it. Today I taught Othello using Lego men and a photograph of Venice. I drew a map of the Mediterranean and traced the movements of Venetian and Turkish fleets. Students pointed to one another to explain the complicated web of lies and love that makes this story brilliant and difficult. It is not theory or criticism, not restricted to theme or technique or characterization. There are days that I long to retreat, away from the noise and apathy and discipline, back to school, to get a degree that earns me the right to teach motivated students in a quiet college classroom somewhere. But these days are filled with reasons to read Shakespeare and Lego men and boys falling asleep with books on their faces and kids who will grow up feeling they can learn anything. And I'm glad, once again, that I'm still here.