Earlier this week I was perusing some of my old poetry, hoping to cull that mine of raw material for something worth polishing. Rather than walking away with a sparkling new poem, I found a more valuable resource: an epiphany.
My poems fall into only three categories. There are the light-hearted or experimental poems that I write for students, there are the serious poems based on passages of Scripture that I write for myself, or there are poems about school and teaching (that I have no intention of sharing unless my brother Gabe tries to impersonate Anne Bradstreet’s brother-in-law who published her poems without her knowledge). While I certainly knew that I had written a poem marking the beginning of each school year, I had not realized how many other occasional poems I had written about school from either student or teacher perspectives. And just by reading the poem, I can tell which school year the poem came out of, whether or not the lines have anything specific of my experience (which they so rarely do). Even in some of my poetry “experiments” I end up with a school theme. For example, my students and I were working on parodies. Usually when I write parodies, I go to Emily Dickinson. I’m not sure why; I’m not really an Emily Dickinson fan. (I’d much rather read Edna St. Vincent Millay’s sonnets or short poems like “Grown-up”: “Was it for this I uttered prayers, / And sobbed and cursed and kicked the stairs, / That now, domestic as a plate, / I should retire at half-past eight?”) But to stretch myself as a poet since my students cry foul when I don’t push myself too, I went for the Bard and ended up with this: To teach, or not to teach, that is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler, in silence, to allow The barbs and insults of outraged youth Or to fight against of sea of immaturity And, by instruction, end it. To teach, to instruct-- No more—and by the lesson to say we end The ignorance and the thousand natural follies That man is heir to. My examples of more difficult forms of poetry like the pantoum or sestina are also school-themed. And even my favorite epigram is the result of my first teaching experience (and the 19th century British authors I was reading at the time): The leaders here have taken care To ignore the wheel and invent it square. I find it curious that as another school year begins, I still have no poem to commemorate it. In fact, I don’t even have the beginnings of one. Instead, I have a rough draft of a story, in parable style that is capturing my thoughts for a new year. And instead of hiding this one away with the other first-day-of-school poems, I want to share this one and plan to in my post next week. I suspect that this marks a turning point in my teaching career.
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I love coffee shops. Not entirely for the coffee. (If I want a good cup of joe, I’ll make it at home. After all, I am a barista; knowing how to make good coffee has turned me into a coffee snob.) The truth is that I love people-watching. When I fly, I feel a little gypped if I don’t get at least an hour’s wait in the airport. I try to be subtle about it: an open book visibly sitting on my lap, headphones passively announcing that I’m not interested in engaging with those around me. But I’m watching the humanity around me, forming theories about where people are from, where they are going, what kind of people they are.
And since I don’t get to enjoy airports regularly, I visit coffee shops. Where else could I overhear a gem like this: “I want to be one of those extras that dies because I can”? (My working theory was that this girl was on a first date and trying to use her acting ability to secure his interest. People don’t usually brag about their ability to die.) Recently, a friend and I were travelling and decided to stop at Starbucks to get coffee. (Usually I prefer mom-and-pop shops, but it’s harder to find those right off the interstate.) We parked beside a middle-aged lady in a convertible. In the backseat of the convertible was the lady’s dog, not wearing a leash. As I entered Starbucks, I heard her say to the dog, “Stay here in the car; I’ll be right back.” No sooner had the lady reached Starbucks’s door than she realized that the dog was following her into Starbucks. She firmly led the dog back outside to the convertible, saying, “I told you to stay in the car. You are being bad.” Still leaving the top down on the car and still leaving the dog unleashed, the lady re-entered Starbucks. Finally achieving the front of the line, she glanced back to see her dog sitting on the sidewalk staring at her. “I told you to stay in the car,” she said again when she stepped out to rebuke the dog. “Okay, I’ll give you a choice. Do you want to wait here on the sidewalk, or do you want to wait in the car?” After a moment’s pause she continued, “Okay, if that’s what you want, you may wait here at the door.” Apparently, her dog had indicated that he preferred that option. Again, the lady returned to the line. And again, before she could order coffee, she noticed her dog running around the parking lot. When my friend and I left with our coffee, she still hadn’t managed to stay inside long enough to order. Years ago (yet significantly after the show had originally aired), I stumbled on a verbal exchange between young Lex Luthor and Dr. Bryce in Smallville that resonated with me. In the scene, Lex is questioning the doctor’s decision, and she replies with “I’m second-guessed for a living, Mr. Luthor; it comes with the territory.” Immediately I connected with her quip. How often does someone share what their doctor has prescribed for them only to have a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger in line at the grocery store suggest their own superior recommendation without knowing the medical history of the patient and without having any medical training? Frequently as a teacher, I have jokingly referenced this line because it’s just as true about teachers.
I have met with students extensively to help with a project or to conquer a troublesome concept. After thinking that we have made progress together, I’m flabbergasted when the student reverts to a previous concept or draft because someone else told them it was “right.” Last year, I had a parent “force-feed” a new paper draft to her child and threw away the draft that I had spent conference time helping him with, convinced that she was helping him create a better final draft (which matched none of the requirements laid out in the project description). At times, it can be discouraging to have students, parents, colleagues, administrators, politicians, and the public at large discredit our training and experience and offer their educational equivalents to homeopathic medicines (which I have nothing against, but I wouldn’t completely disregard a doctor’s diagnosis and treat my friend with my own remedy). As I stand there, saying, “Here, let’s try this method that my training, experience, and longitudinal research suggests might help you succeed,” I too often hear, “Oh, but I saw this better idea on Pinterest. I’ll try that instead.” And I have such an honest face, to paraphrase Rory Gilmore. But recently, I realized someone has a harder job than being second-guessed for a living like doctors and teachers are—flight attendants. While few second-guess flight attendants, passengers offer a greater challenge. Flight attendants are ignored for a living. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome onboard Flight—” and the flight attendant has already lost the attention of at least half of the passengers. Even though I have flown enough to have the pre-flight safety spiel memorized, I still try to look pleasantly engaged as I stare at the nearest flight attendant. Sometimes, it’s hard, like when I can’t actually hear them because the two men behind me are loudly gossiping about how some girl named Brittany at their office won’t have a job once they get back from their conference and how much they can’t stand people gossiping about work drama and how inconsiderate people can be. (Ironic? Yes.) Thinking about it, there are a lot of similarities between air safety regulations and classroom procedures. Perhaps I can work some of the pre-flight announcement into my lesson openings this year: “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Room 2010 with service from rudimentary knowledge to experience. We ask that you please take your seat at this time and secure all rucksack-sized bookbags underneath your seat so I don’t fall flat on my face when I pass out papers. Please turn off all personal electronic devices, including laptops and cell phones. Smoking is prohibited for the duration of the class. Thank you for choose Miss Lane’s class. Enjoy your lesson.” On a typical day, I am mildly annoyed when people ask, “How was your day?” While the intent of the question is polite interest, for an over-analyzer like me, suddenly I’m forced to evaluate my day to be able to give an honest answer. And some days, I don’t want to admit my day’s successes and failures.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been out of the country with unexpectedly no means of communicating with those back home. The trip was not what I had been anticipating, but when are expectations exactly right? In spite of the surprises every foreign trip brings (or perhaps because of them), I was able to be immersed in my hosts’ culture without the distraction of what was happening back in the States. (And this was a culture that thoroughly appreciated the value of sobremesa!) But as my visit drew to a close, I began to dread a worse question than “how was your day”: How was your trip? How do you capture the essence of the experience in a brief, casual answer? I could try the nebulous “It was good.” But it was so much more than good. Yet some parts were very hard. Individual aspects of my trip were awful by themselves, so my answer could be “It was very hot!” But even that doesn’t fully capture the weight of the humid air that made breathing work. And the total experience was more than just sleep-deprivation because of the constant scream of power-tools that was actually a swarm of cicadas (that 100-decibel concert is really hard to sleep through when combined with a heat index in the triple digits). Among those in the group I traveled with, we discussed the successes and failures of trip with ease because we had shared the experiences. We understood the emotional complexity of being tired but still glad for the opportunity to help effect change in others’ lives. When we regrouped after a long day of work and asked, “How was your day?” what we really meant was “I’m right there with you, and you can make it.” Sometimes we even meant, “My day was terrible, and it would encourage me to hear that yours wasn’t as bad.” We ask and answer impossible questions like that this every day. Perhaps the routines of daily life help us by providing formulaic answers to the “How” questions that dominate our social protocols. Most of us probably don’t stop to evaluate our days when asked “How’s it going?” Few people who ask that question truly want a carefully thought out response. The question is really just a means of showing interesting in each other’s lives. Those coming back from foreign humanitarian efforts know that is impossible to explain how wonderfully hard and rewarding such a trip can be to someone who thinks you really were just on vacation. But I suppose that asking if my vacation was fun is another way of saying, “I noticed you were gone and missed you,” which is a nice sentiment. When my friends picked me up at the airport after I had been awake and traveling for almost two days, they gave me the kindest gift they could have in those circumstances: they helped me with my bags, asked me if I were ready to talk about the trip yet, and filled me in on their news when I said I still needed some time. How did I get such amazingly understanding friends? |
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