Our prophet was an unlikely fellow. A hip-hop artist, cleverly calling himself MC Language Artz, joined us for the morning in my difficult third period. He was only a little taller than I, and apparently my own age, but the weight of the serious hip-hop underground community lay heavy on his hoodie-clad shoulders and baggy-jeaned knees, so that I felt, as I do so often among the truly hip and urban, like a sheltered child, less experienced than even my own fourteen-year-old students, much less this guest.
He had come to talk to my students about the critical importance of expression as a doorway to freedom and adulthood. I sat in the corner on a tall stool, leaning against the wall and thankful just to have an hour to remain silent and listen. I had been losing my voice all week, fighting a cold and regretting the decision to read stories aloud to my students at the end of the semester. The three days of stories were not connected to any unit to come, and we had done almost no writing at all about them. "We're just going to enjoy some stories together this week," I'd told them.
"No homework?" they asked.
"None."
"No assignments?"
"I doubt it. Let's just relax into some stories together."
They didn't understand this, really, but I did. It was like those teachers who show movies to their students when they're tired of teaching. But I'd already done that this year, so like the conscientious parent I dredged out some stories to tell my children. This is peace for me, and even some kind of healing, that we hear the same stories and, despite these huge divisions, can share one little experience in the vastness of our collective memories. And we'd enjoyed it, but now I had no voice. So I listened to the hip-hop guest speaker talk to my students about literacy.
He was harsh. He told them things they didn't want to hear, that they were isolated and pretentious and too concerned with being cool. He told them that state governments used elementary reading tests to forecast the number of prison cells that would be needed two decades down the road. He told them that one in four inmates in high-security prisons was illiterate. And they shuddered in silence, my squirrely third period class, in the presence of this stone-faced young prophet.
The guest speaker shared a piece about racism and the achievement gap between rich and poor, issues that I see every day among my students but could never express with such grace or relevance. And as I listened and watched the faces of my students, feeling like a guest in a world to which I do not belong, I thought about the importance of language. That I could have told them the same things, but that he, hip-hop prophet, knew the words they would hear, the tones that would crash through ninth-grade indifference and hopelessness, enough to frighten and inspire.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Friday, January 11, 2008
At the End of the Day
It was an aptitude she had, never to look half finished; when she was really exhausted, as she often on her return to Hetton after these days in London, she went completely to pieces quite suddenly and became a waif; then she would sit over the fire with a cup of bread and milk, hardly alive...
-Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust
A few times a week, I fall into a trance at the end of the day, staring into space and trying to forget the last fifty minutes. These dazed minutes come on the days when the last class drives me to distraction, when I spend more time in the hallway, talking to individual miscreants, than inside teaching anything at all. At the end of such a class, especially on a Friday, no amount of grading, planning, or preparing on the horizon can drag me from the meditative state, nor can I get anything done until I've spent a few indulgent minutes reading movie reviews on the Seattle Weekly web site. No, the Times will not do. The real paper is for when I'm mostly alive and awake--times like these call for cynicism to match my own.
It is two boys and a teacher who interrupt me today. I look up slowly, carefully, and take in the presence of guests. I'll have to pull myself together enough to have a conversation. With the teacher, I discuss plans to attend the basketball games this afternoon, which sounds less and less attractive with each passing Friday minute. Then, our conversation turns to the two students who are obviously waiting for my attention. One of them is quiet and sweet, and he sits pleasantly in a desk to wait while I scowl at his companion.
The friend is tall and lanky, the captain of the freshman basketball team, and had contributed to the demise of my third period today, which crumbled to chaotic ruin about halfway through. He now bounces on the balls of his feet eagerly.
"When's the last JVC game?" my colleague asks him. He shrugs. Typical, I think with scorn.
"Can I use your computer to check, Ms. D?"
I raise my eyebrows skeptically, and shake my head. "Nope."
He laughs. "She thinks I'm going to eat her computer, or something. Just cause I got sent out today."
"Well, just let me know when you find out," my fellow teacher is saying. I consider the captain, standing there with his hands in his pockets, and I know he'll ask about his grade in a minute and request some assignments I've already given him. Still, it's just a computer, I hesitate. Maybe I'm being a little protective. With an overly-dramatic sigh--a teenager sigh--I stand up and motion to my wooden desk chair.
"Oh, you're going to let me use it!"
"Wait, stop! Are you taking a bite?" the other student jokes.
Fifteen minutes later, after I've given the good grades lecture to both students and the other have gone, the team captain lurks at a desk while I stand up to straighten up the tornado disaster of my classroom. I still have papers to grade, a spreadsheet to create, and an assignment to write before I leave today, but I can carry on a conversation while I clean. And it's clear that he has more to say. We begin to talk about the varsity team, which seems to fall apart toward the end of every season as its players' grades dwindle.
"You just need to promise me that you will still have good grades when you're a senior," I say, picking up dropped pieces of paper from under a desk.
"Oh, I know. We'll be great." There's something amiss in this answer, though, coming from the tired captain at the end of a losing season, some disappointment at the prospect of three more seasons like this one.
"No, really, you're great people," I insist, tossing the paper in the recycle bin and poking at the media projector on the ceiling with a broom to turn it off.
I hope he understands, that he can see far enough ahead to realize why it might mean something that he has a collection of outstanding gentlemen on his basketball team. For me, it means not worrying that we are training athletes only, grooming them for a life on the court that they can't sustain beyond it. It means knowing that they are stellar all-around. For him, it will mean four years with the same team, with boys who grow to young men of responsibility and consistency. I'm not a coach, but I would have great hopes for this team if I were.
He nods, but does not reply. After a minute, he looks up at me, watching me chase fragments of paper around the classroom floor with a broom.
"Hey, can I help? Like, can I sweep, or something?"
As I hand him the broom and begin gratefully to sort the assignments scattered across my desk, I'm thinking that the freshman basketball team has a great deal of potential with this sort of leadership. But I'm mostly considering the ways I feel kindness. This act of service has redeemed the day and brought me back from the brink of cynical despair. I remember a few months ago saying that I didn't mind that no one ever brought be flowers or took me out for opulent dinners; the most romantic gesture I could think of was someone coming and mowing my lawn or fixing my car. At the end of this dreadful day, the boy who is silently sweeping the floor, without being asked or offered any extra credit, has given me something worth a thousand bouquets of flowers.
-Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust
A few times a week, I fall into a trance at the end of the day, staring into space and trying to forget the last fifty minutes. These dazed minutes come on the days when the last class drives me to distraction, when I spend more time in the hallway, talking to individual miscreants, than inside teaching anything at all. At the end of such a class, especially on a Friday, no amount of grading, planning, or preparing on the horizon can drag me from the meditative state, nor can I get anything done until I've spent a few indulgent minutes reading movie reviews on the Seattle Weekly web site. No, the Times will not do. The real paper is for when I'm mostly alive and awake--times like these call for cynicism to match my own.
It is two boys and a teacher who interrupt me today. I look up slowly, carefully, and take in the presence of guests. I'll have to pull myself together enough to have a conversation. With the teacher, I discuss plans to attend the basketball games this afternoon, which sounds less and less attractive with each passing Friday minute. Then, our conversation turns to the two students who are obviously waiting for my attention. One of them is quiet and sweet, and he sits pleasantly in a desk to wait while I scowl at his companion.
The friend is tall and lanky, the captain of the freshman basketball team, and had contributed to the demise of my third period today, which crumbled to chaotic ruin about halfway through. He now bounces on the balls of his feet eagerly.
"When's the last JVC game?" my colleague asks him. He shrugs. Typical, I think with scorn.
"Can I use your computer to check, Ms. D?"
I raise my eyebrows skeptically, and shake my head. "Nope."
He laughs. "She thinks I'm going to eat her computer, or something. Just cause I got sent out today."
"Well, just let me know when you find out," my fellow teacher is saying. I consider the captain, standing there with his hands in his pockets, and I know he'll ask about his grade in a minute and request some assignments I've already given him. Still, it's just a computer, I hesitate. Maybe I'm being a little protective. With an overly-dramatic sigh--a teenager sigh--I stand up and motion to my wooden desk chair.
"Oh, you're going to let me use it!"
"Wait, stop! Are you taking a bite?" the other student jokes.
Fifteen minutes later, after I've given the good grades lecture to both students and the other have gone, the team captain lurks at a desk while I stand up to straighten up the tornado disaster of my classroom. I still have papers to grade, a spreadsheet to create, and an assignment to write before I leave today, but I can carry on a conversation while I clean. And it's clear that he has more to say. We begin to talk about the varsity team, which seems to fall apart toward the end of every season as its players' grades dwindle.
"You just need to promise me that you will still have good grades when you're a senior," I say, picking up dropped pieces of paper from under a desk.
"Oh, I know. We'll be great." There's something amiss in this answer, though, coming from the tired captain at the end of a losing season, some disappointment at the prospect of three more seasons like this one.
"No, really, you're great people," I insist, tossing the paper in the recycle bin and poking at the media projector on the ceiling with a broom to turn it off.
I hope he understands, that he can see far enough ahead to realize why it might mean something that he has a collection of outstanding gentlemen on his basketball team. For me, it means not worrying that we are training athletes only, grooming them for a life on the court that they can't sustain beyond it. It means knowing that they are stellar all-around. For him, it will mean four years with the same team, with boys who grow to young men of responsibility and consistency. I'm not a coach, but I would have great hopes for this team if I were.
He nods, but does not reply. After a minute, he looks up at me, watching me chase fragments of paper around the classroom floor with a broom.
"Hey, can I help? Like, can I sweep, or something?"
As I hand him the broom and begin gratefully to sort the assignments scattered across my desk, I'm thinking that the freshman basketball team has a great deal of potential with this sort of leadership. But I'm mostly considering the ways I feel kindness. This act of service has redeemed the day and brought me back from the brink of cynical despair. I remember a few months ago saying that I didn't mind that no one ever brought be flowers or took me out for opulent dinners; the most romantic gesture I could think of was someone coming and mowing my lawn or fixing my car. At the end of this dreadful day, the boy who is silently sweeping the floor, without being asked or offered any extra credit, has given me something worth a thousand bouquets of flowers.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
The Greener Pastures
It was snowing Tuesday morning as I drove in the dark to school. I had sloshed through a meager quarter-inch of melted snow on the sidewalk, and by now, twenty minutes before dawn, it was too warm for the snow to stick to pavement. My tires squeaked along merrily on the shining black road, as I rounded the corner onto Greenwood and the tragic snow splashed down heavily ahead of me. It was not even white enough to show up in the headlights, only identified by the crystalline puddles it made on my windshield, cold and grainy like ancient photographs. If this day were the setting of a book I was just beginning, I would gird myself up for doom, for disaster. As it was, I was already bracing for the day. Wild students, a tired young teacher, a dark, wet day that would have been a snow day except that we're slowly melting the earth by a process I haven't yet gotten around to understanding.
I pushed into a breath of warmth in my classroom, pulled up the shades to realized that it had stopped snowing exactly as the sun came up dimly from behind the clouds. I looked at the floor of my classroom, which I still remembered sparkling clean at the beginning of the year. It read like a log of the past few months, like the tabletop at my parents' house, where somewhere in the wood grain are the remains of my uncle's algebra homework and my mother's sewing projects. Over there was where the boys were rough housing during break and spilled a carton of chocolate milk. There's the splashes of hot cocoa from the holiday party. Here's the splashes of chalk dust that a certain student made when he used to violently throw the erasers at the floor.
Sitting down at my desk, reflecting on the affectionate chaos of the day before, our first day back from vacation, I was prepared to look at the dusty floor with a shrug. Floors get dirty, I thought. Kids spill milk. No use crying, right? I returned to that room hours later, dusty and exhausted from a day of research in the library, my feet sore from circling the computer lab, my head hurting from the endless tapping of chair levers, and my ears still echoing with the day's chief command, "No, don't you roll your chair over to me. Stand up, for heaven's sake. Stop rolling!" The floor did not look so good then. In fact, it was so dirty that I would have mopped it if I didn't have to prepare a plan for a substitute. So I glared at the floor while gleefully writing Post-It notes to the sub, contemplating the one-day retreat ahead.
I was going to a training. I look forward to trainings several reasons. They afford me hours at a time where I need not say anything if I don't want to do so. I can simply listen, luxuriating in the deep bliss of having nothing to do but learn. I am allowed to interact with adults, to stay mostly clean and neat, and to drive downtown, staring at the tall buildings and dreaming of what it would be like to commute. Trainings are a novelty, a brief shake-up in the routines of my life. I had an unusually nebulous concept of what this one was about, but I was excited, all the same.
The next day, at lunch, I found myself staring down an Escher-esque hall on the upper floor of our district headquarter building. The training, for which I had held such high hopes, had already proved to be dull, and would have been disillusioning if I had been paying better attention. I had escaped for a moment from lunch to find a past mentor, who I suspected had an office somewhere up here. The "up here" has always seemed clean and quiet, if a bit sterile, and on harrowing school days I think with longing of their giant windows and cool grey carpets that are probably free of chocolate milk puddles.
This hallway, though, is different. It is colorless and silent, and endlessly long--so long that I suspect an illusion, some kind of mirror trick, and wave to see if I can find a tiny Kristi waving back in the distance. In the absence of a mirror, I venture down the hall, which has windows along one side and the grey cloth walls and doorways of cubicles on the other.
The dull buzzing of the cubicle floor simply adds to the grim impression this day has already made. Many times throughout the morning, I have stared at the clock and daydreamed of the activities I had planned for my students in my absence, wondering who was making trouble and who was going to finish his or her project on time. In the hesitant, testing-the-waters questions of my colleagues, I begin to crave the straightforwardness of teenagers. I long to get up and move, to be involved directly in the learning of another person, rather than manipulating a garble of hypothesis and data. I can squint and see myself, an educational consultant or a district employee. I can see myself clicking through the PowerPoint and saying the right words, the words I still remember because I was in college just moments ago. But as I walk down the quiet hallway, thinking how very different is the colorful hall outside of Room 120, I know I wouldn't be happy here.
I reach my mentor's cubicle after miles of hallway, turn to the left and meet her smiling welcome. She tells be about her newest job, tells me about the pre-school teacher she is just heading out to observe. She is happy this year, doing something she loves and believes in, working with students she knows she can help. We talk about some students we shared, about the direction in which my career is heading, about the future and the past. After a delightful ten minutes, I have to return to the training and she has to go out to a school, so we turn down the long hall.
"So, you have your own little cubicle down here," I comment unnecessarily. I don't mean to be pejorative, though I am immediately afraid she'll take it as such.
I am staring down the hall, down to where I'll need to find the stairs and return to the training like far less than my own classroom. She is looking out the window.
"Yes," she nods, looking with deep satisfaction at the sky that is starting to clear up. "And I have a window!"
I pushed into a breath of warmth in my classroom, pulled up the shades to realized that it had stopped snowing exactly as the sun came up dimly from behind the clouds. I looked at the floor of my classroom, which I still remembered sparkling clean at the beginning of the year. It read like a log of the past few months, like the tabletop at my parents' house, where somewhere in the wood grain are the remains of my uncle's algebra homework and my mother's sewing projects. Over there was where the boys were rough housing during break and spilled a carton of chocolate milk. There's the splashes of hot cocoa from the holiday party. Here's the splashes of chalk dust that a certain student made when he used to violently throw the erasers at the floor.
Sitting down at my desk, reflecting on the affectionate chaos of the day before, our first day back from vacation, I was prepared to look at the dusty floor with a shrug. Floors get dirty, I thought. Kids spill milk. No use crying, right? I returned to that room hours later, dusty and exhausted from a day of research in the library, my feet sore from circling the computer lab, my head hurting from the endless tapping of chair levers, and my ears still echoing with the day's chief command, "No, don't you roll your chair over to me. Stand up, for heaven's sake. Stop rolling!" The floor did not look so good then. In fact, it was so dirty that I would have mopped it if I didn't have to prepare a plan for a substitute. So I glared at the floor while gleefully writing Post-It notes to the sub, contemplating the one-day retreat ahead.
I was going to a training. I look forward to trainings several reasons. They afford me hours at a time where I need not say anything if I don't want to do so. I can simply listen, luxuriating in the deep bliss of having nothing to do but learn. I am allowed to interact with adults, to stay mostly clean and neat, and to drive downtown, staring at the tall buildings and dreaming of what it would be like to commute. Trainings are a novelty, a brief shake-up in the routines of my life. I had an unusually nebulous concept of what this one was about, but I was excited, all the same.
The next day, at lunch, I found myself staring down an Escher-esque hall on the upper floor of our district headquarter building. The training, for which I had held such high hopes, had already proved to be dull, and would have been disillusioning if I had been paying better attention. I had escaped for a moment from lunch to find a past mentor, who I suspected had an office somewhere up here. The "up here" has always seemed clean and quiet, if a bit sterile, and on harrowing school days I think with longing of their giant windows and cool grey carpets that are probably free of chocolate milk puddles.
This hallway, though, is different. It is colorless and silent, and endlessly long--so long that I suspect an illusion, some kind of mirror trick, and wave to see if I can find a tiny Kristi waving back in the distance. In the absence of a mirror, I venture down the hall, which has windows along one side and the grey cloth walls and doorways of cubicles on the other.
The dull buzzing of the cubicle floor simply adds to the grim impression this day has already made. Many times throughout the morning, I have stared at the clock and daydreamed of the activities I had planned for my students in my absence, wondering who was making trouble and who was going to finish his or her project on time. In the hesitant, testing-the-waters questions of my colleagues, I begin to crave the straightforwardness of teenagers. I long to get up and move, to be involved directly in the learning of another person, rather than manipulating a garble of hypothesis and data. I can squint and see myself, an educational consultant or a district employee. I can see myself clicking through the PowerPoint and saying the right words, the words I still remember because I was in college just moments ago. But as I walk down the quiet hallway, thinking how very different is the colorful hall outside of Room 120, I know I wouldn't be happy here.
I reach my mentor's cubicle after miles of hallway, turn to the left and meet her smiling welcome. She tells be about her newest job, tells me about the pre-school teacher she is just heading out to observe. She is happy this year, doing something she loves and believes in, working with students she knows she can help. We talk about some students we shared, about the direction in which my career is heading, about the future and the past. After a delightful ten minutes, I have to return to the training and she has to go out to a school, so we turn down the long hall.
"So, you have your own little cubicle down here," I comment unnecessarily. I don't mean to be pejorative, though I am immediately afraid she'll take it as such.
I am staring down the hall, down to where I'll need to find the stairs and return to the training like far less than my own classroom. She is looking out the window.
"Yes," she nods, looking with deep satisfaction at the sky that is starting to clear up. "And I have a window!"
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
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.
-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.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
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.
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, December 1, 2007
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.
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.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
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.
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.
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