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.
Friday, November 9, 2007
Sunday, October 14, 2007
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.
"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.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
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.
"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.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
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...
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...
Thursday, September 13, 2007
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...
-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...
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
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.
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