This semester I am reading the novel A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines with my students. As I do every semester before we begin to read together, I devote a class session or two to a discussion of the selected title and, sometimes, I also distribute a supplemental article, essay or poem that provides essential background. These discussions serve as a way to generate interest in the chosen book and to engage my students in a bit of inquiry before we actually begin the process of reading. Pedagogically speaking, I am preparing my students to read. In other words, I am working hard to help my students find a way to make a connection to a book that they have been told they have to read to pass my class. Simple right? After all, this is a college class. The sad truth is, every semester I have to work that much harder to sell my students on the title. By the end of the semester, I know that a handful of students will have completed the book in its entirety. Another handful will have made enough of an effort to read the book in order to complete the accompanying project. There will be a few who never even bother to purchase the book. Instead, they will do their reading on the Internet with the help of an assortment of SparkNotes-inspired sites.
I have learned to take what I can get. My students make their own concessions. They accept, for the most part, that by not reading the book they will take their chances with their final grade. Still, despite this negative forecast, I do manage to have some good conversations with my students about the book we are reading, its themes and how those themes, even in some small way, translate into their lives.
So what sort of teacher does this make me? Am I a realist or have I surrendered? The truth? I often feel that I am a bit of a dinosaur. I work very hard to get my students interested in the act of reading, an increasingly challenging feat in our all-screen, all-the-time culture. What my students don't understand when they sit down in my classroom every semester--not all of them, anyway--is that they are in the process of becoming our next adult generation. As such, they need to know how to do their own thinking. Reading and writing remain two best practices for learning how to begin to do just that. These practices involve both time and effort. It does not matter how many iPads school administrators put into the hands of students. There is no app or push-button approach to learning these skills. Ultimately, what my students need to learn, what students everywhere should be encouraged and guided and cajoled into learning, is that they are the teachers they have been looking for.
I have taught long enough to know that I do not always--or all that often--have the answers. Not even most of them. Who does, right? In fact, the longer I teach, I discover that I really do not have very many answers at all. I have, however, learned to be an honest voice in the classroom by knowing on any given day where I want to go. That may sound like a very small thing, and, in a certain sense it is. But, in the short time that I have the attention of my students, that very small thing is, in fact, so much more than the thing itself. It is captial "E" everything.
It's a tough thing, teaching. It's a balancing act, at best. Other times, teaching feels more like a parlor trick. In that way, teaching is a lot like my yoga practice where I work at a balance between breath and posture against the illusion of control. While my yoga practice has helped me preserve my cool while balancing what the curriculum mandates with the ever-changing realities of the classroom, the day-to-day act of teaching lies somewhere along the continuum between exhilarating and exhausting.
No matter how good one becomes as a teacher or how much one enjoys the process of teaching, I do not believe any teacher can escape this truth. Not even my beloved yoga teachers. In recent years, I have watched some dedicated yoga teachers lose sight of where it is they wanted to go. As a result, they began to lose their luster, which students, me included, are all too eager to extend. Eventually, the honest voice once heard and trusted from our mats in the shala fades, and a falseness begins to creep in, and even the most sincere and eager and devoted student understands that the teacher has lost his way.
Learning is a unique opportunity to meet ourselves and to meet parts of ourselves we never knew belonged to us. Teaching holds a similar opportunity. Every semester, I have my students complete what I refer to as a Personal Inventory as their first formal homework assignment. By completing the inventory, my students get some easy points, and I learn some valuable personal information about my students. Personal like: What is the first memory you have of reading? Do you own a library card? How much time do you spend each week with the plethora of electronic gadgets and access agents? I also pose some open-ended statements, which I ask my students to complete. For example: Today I feel...; I would read more if...; Teachers need to.... Every semester a handful of students will write "Teachers need to relax more," and I really love every one of those students for completing that statement in this way. They remind me, no, they teach me the importance of being relaxed, which means I reside a little more in my own skin while in the classroom, which means my voice remains more honest, which therefore means it is easier for me to keep an eye on where it is I want to go.
Poet Daniel Ladinsky is well-known for his translations and renderings of both eastern and western saints and mystics. He is most renowned for his renderings of the Sufi poets Rumi and Hafiz. For all of Ladinsky's scholarship, what I admire most about his poetry and his translations is his ability to be playful. In one of his many poetic renderings of Hafiz, Ladinsky admonishes the scholars to "Lighten up!" Maybe this is the true path to enlightenment. In other words, teachers, yogis, yoga teachers, scholars, Congress men and women, religious leaders, national leaders, parents, etc, etc, etc, "Relax more!" We might begin to hear things we have forgotten or things we haven't yet heard. We might even get a shot at hearing our own still voices again.
I have learned to take what I can get. My students make their own concessions. They accept, for the most part, that by not reading the book they will take their chances with their final grade. Still, despite this negative forecast, I do manage to have some good conversations with my students about the book we are reading, its themes and how those themes, even in some small way, translate into their lives.
So what sort of teacher does this make me? Am I a realist or have I surrendered? The truth? I often feel that I am a bit of a dinosaur. I work very hard to get my students interested in the act of reading, an increasingly challenging feat in our all-screen, all-the-time culture. What my students don't understand when they sit down in my classroom every semester--not all of them, anyway--is that they are in the process of becoming our next adult generation. As such, they need to know how to do their own thinking. Reading and writing remain two best practices for learning how to begin to do just that. These practices involve both time and effort. It does not matter how many iPads school administrators put into the hands of students. There is no app or push-button approach to learning these skills. Ultimately, what my students need to learn, what students everywhere should be encouraged and guided and cajoled into learning, is that they are the teachers they have been looking for.
I have taught long enough to know that I do not always--or all that often--have the answers. Not even most of them. Who does, right? In fact, the longer I teach, I discover that I really do not have very many answers at all. I have, however, learned to be an honest voice in the classroom by knowing on any given day where I want to go. That may sound like a very small thing, and, in a certain sense it is. But, in the short time that I have the attention of my students, that very small thing is, in fact, so much more than the thing itself. It is captial "E" everything.
It's a tough thing, teaching. It's a balancing act, at best. Other times, teaching feels more like a parlor trick. In that way, teaching is a lot like my yoga practice where I work at a balance between breath and posture against the illusion of control. While my yoga practice has helped me preserve my cool while balancing what the curriculum mandates with the ever-changing realities of the classroom, the day-to-day act of teaching lies somewhere along the continuum between exhilarating and exhausting.
No matter how good one becomes as a teacher or how much one enjoys the process of teaching, I do not believe any teacher can escape this truth. Not even my beloved yoga teachers. In recent years, I have watched some dedicated yoga teachers lose sight of where it is they wanted to go. As a result, they began to lose their luster, which students, me included, are all too eager to extend. Eventually, the honest voice once heard and trusted from our mats in the shala fades, and a falseness begins to creep in, and even the most sincere and eager and devoted student understands that the teacher has lost his way.
Learning is a unique opportunity to meet ourselves and to meet parts of ourselves we never knew belonged to us. Teaching holds a similar opportunity. Every semester, I have my students complete what I refer to as a Personal Inventory as their first formal homework assignment. By completing the inventory, my students get some easy points, and I learn some valuable personal information about my students. Personal like: What is the first memory you have of reading? Do you own a library card? How much time do you spend each week with the plethora of electronic gadgets and access agents? I also pose some open-ended statements, which I ask my students to complete. For example: Today I feel...; I would read more if...; Teachers need to.... Every semester a handful of students will write "Teachers need to relax more," and I really love every one of those students for completing that statement in this way. They remind me, no, they teach me the importance of being relaxed, which means I reside a little more in my own skin while in the classroom, which means my voice remains more honest, which therefore means it is easier for me to keep an eye on where it is I want to go.
Poet Daniel Ladinsky is well-known for his translations and renderings of both eastern and western saints and mystics. He is most renowned for his renderings of the Sufi poets Rumi and Hafiz. For all of Ladinsky's scholarship, what I admire most about his poetry and his translations is his ability to be playful. In one of his many poetic renderings of Hafiz, Ladinsky admonishes the scholars to "Lighten up!" Maybe this is the true path to enlightenment. In other words, teachers, yogis, yoga teachers, scholars, Congress men and women, religious leaders, national leaders, parents, etc, etc, etc, "Relax more!" We might begin to hear things we have forgotten or things we haven't yet heard. We might even get a shot at hearing our own still voices again.
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