From Sausenburg

    The pavement bends up behind the Catholic church, and we leave the smallest city in Germany down in the valley, turning a corner to find ourselves in the bottle-green halls of the summer Black Forest. It’s been a long time since my trail map was a constant companion, since Emily and I traced these little diamond-marked…

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Better, Stronger, More Realistic and Complicated

As my first period takes the first final of Exam Week, I’m reading news updates from Seattle, where a gunman recently opened fire on the campus of my alma mater, Seattle Pacific University. Yesterday, I read this letter to my students, promising that while the general discontent of American Literature is an honest response to…

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Hurdles

The hurdlers are not happy. From where I stand at the end of the long jump pit, waiting for my seven jumpers to come bounding down the runway, to land with a sandy splash in front of me, I can see the hurdlers, shivering in their navy warm-ups, less than eager to start their race. “We like…

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Beyond the Hallways

We’re driving away from our last exploration. Switzerland is damp and cool this April day, unseasonably grey for the spring Senior Day trip to Lucerne. Upon our arrival to this touristic hamlet on the shores of Lake Lucerne, I’d sent them off with a small walking map and instructions that included “walk across the cool wooden…

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The Curriculum of Disappointment

“I wish I had a sister like you.” The line hangs in the air, as the reader pauses in disbelief. Junior jaws drop, a few of them shaking their heads, as if to clear away the last line uttered by Jim O’Connor, gentleman caller and secret high school crush of the hopeful Laura Wingfield in Tennessee…

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experiments

love is more thicker than forget more thinner than recall more seldom than a wave is wet less frequent than to fail E.E. Cummings Friday afternoon, and I have only three students in my fifth period American Literature class. It is language field trip day, when the French class drives to Dijon, the German class…

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Oh, The Places We’ve Been

The times we had oh, when the wind would blow with rain and snow were not all bad we put our feet just where they had, had to go never to go “Postcards From Italy,” Beirut The view from our castle tower is stunning, the lights of Saturday-night Nürnberg spread out below us in sequined splendor. We’re…

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What Are We Doing Today?

“Woe to him who strives with him who formed him,     a pot among earthen pots! Does the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’     or ‘Your work has no handles’?” Isaiah 45:9 Last spring, I contributed a “Teacher Translation Guide” to the yearbook. Mostly satire, it contained phrases that students should never…

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To The {Book} Fair

…I’m coming to get you, I hissed, as I entered the library like a man stepping into a freight elevator of science and wisdom. “The Literary Life,” Billy Collins It’s a busy Friday night at Black Forest Academy. Upstairs, the junior varsity boys basketball team plays one of their last home games of the season….

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Richer Than Hemingway

“But then we did not think of ourselves ever as poor. We did not accept it…. We ate well and cheaply and ate well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other.” A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway “Are you ready?” I ask my Period 3 Honors American Literature class as they file in,…

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