We’re sitting in a rectangle of desks on Friday afternoon, ready for Round Two of poetry presentations in American Literature class. Yesterday, the class was a showcase of teenaged creativity. I’ve arranged their projects on the low bookshelf that runs along the back of the room: a model village to illustrate E.E. Cummings’s “anyone lived…
Tag: Learning
English Teacher Neverland
“I mean, if you have to spend almost all of your money on something–” I begin. “–it should probably be a book,” he cuts me off with a solemn nod. “Exactly.” Honors American Literature, Winter 2013 I remember the war between kids and reading. It was a Genesis 3-style feud: And I shall put enmity between teenagers and…
“Worth The Sadness”
I know that it’s English teacher heresy, but I find Dead Poets Society impossibly sad. Peter Weir’s 1989 film has become a personal classic, falling into the genre of “teacher movies” that I consume with the same emotional voracity that some men I know attach to sports or war movies. I love these movies, and watch them…
Of Returning
My students have obligingly pulled their chairs into a rough circle on the second afternoon of school in 2013. We’re reading Emily Dickinson aloud, each student sharing his or her favorite from last night’s reading, explaining why it was so special. My classroom fills with the call and response of familiar words in familiar voices, punctuated by…
Trying to Play Soccer, And Other Dangerous Endeavors
I’m completely soaked by the time I get to the soccer field, near the end of my 5k afternoon run. It’s been raining for ages, you see. Four or five days. And it’s that cold, wet rain that would be snow if it had any decency, but it doesn’t, so it just keeps raining and raining….
A Junior Farewell
I’ve loved this year. I spent today, the last day of classes at BFA, as I’ve spent many days with this year’s group of students, sitting on the grass by the river, talking about books. Thankful tonight for the blessing of working with these students I so deeply admire and will miss dearly. In lieu of…
On Messes
Living in this beautiful mess is who we are. From “All I Am,” by Most People I’ve never loved messes. Not that I’m compulsively neat, of course. I have my blind spots, like everyone–mugs that sit on the counter longer than they should, that piece of paper still on the floor of my room, which is…
Romania: Raising Walls, Raising Children
For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot says, “Because I am not a hand, I am not a part of the body,” it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body. And if the ear says, “Because I am not an eye, I am not a part of the body,” it is not for this…
Now I Know in Part
“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.” I Corinthians 13:12 From the back of the gym, I look over a sea of heads to the stage, where our speaker for…
The Way Home 