“He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy… One autumn night, five years before, they had been walking down the street when the leaves were falling, and they came to a place where there were no…
Tag: teaching
Risking Our Cool
“Who’ll read Uncle Paul? You have to read with a voice ‘like hard cheese being grated.’ Anyone?” A student’s hand shoots up instantly, and he snatches the highlighted short story out of the air, scanning his part seriously. The last class on Friday is gathered in a rectangle of couches in the Student Center, whose…
The Use of Stories
“What’s the use of stories that aren’t even true?” Salman Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories Snow is falling hesitantly, halfheartedly over Kandern this Sunday afternoon. Our living room is the picture of calm, complete with soft Christmas music and my sister, Holly, cutting out snowflakes while Emily’s brother, David, writes emails. I compare…
Gifts, Poems, Accidents
Furthermore, as for every man to whom God has given riches and wealth, He has also empowered him to eat from them and to receive his reward and rejoice in his labor; this is the gift of God. For he will not often consider the years of his life, because God keeps him occupied with the gladness of his heart. Ecclesiastes 5:19-20 I’ve never…
Knowledge of Good and Evil
The epilogue of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible hangs in silence in the last minutes of class, images of haunted farms and wrongly-executed non-witches dispersing like smoke into the sunny Friday afternoon. I congratulate my students on finishing the first book of the year, and ask them what they think. The reply is nearly unanimous: We don’t like…
Miss Gruwell and Miss Potter
Like all good teachers, I went to see the 2007 film Freedom Writers as soon as it came out. As some people are with sports or science fiction movies, I am with teacher movies. I love them. Long before I was a teacher–even when I was struggling with teaching as a calling–I would watch Dead Poets’ Society or,…
To My Students
Today was our last day of classes at Black Forest Academy. Though finals are still ahead and plenty of events loom in the schedule next week, I thought I’d acknowledge this momentous day by posting the letters I read to my classes today. Thanking God, tonight, for the grace and prayers that have made this…
The Explorers
We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding” I’m not the leader of this expedition. I’m usually a leader these days, whether in the classroom or on the track or, as…
“I’m Not in the Book!”
Supplies: Pen or pencil Journal TEXTBOOK! “Wait, what?” Students filter in slowly from the hall, rummage around in backpacks for pencils and journals, then do double-takes. “What’s this textbook business about?” “Can I go get mine? It’s at home.” “Um… we have textbooks?” I nod and start to pull the class set out of the…
Sharing and Chocolate Economics
I don’t teach sharing all that much. It’s not that I don’t believe in it, I promise. I just get the impression that it’s a huge lesson in elementary school–getting kids to share the scissors and markers without too much drama–but since I never went to elementary school (gasp!) I can’t be sure. By the…
The Way Home 