A few months ago, I had my students read “The Interlopers” by Saki. It’s a cool little story about two men whose families are feuding over a worthless piece of land. The kids liked it, and I decided to have them read a related nonfiction piece and since I had just finished reading the March issue of National Geographic with its fascinating story about the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone, I had them read that.

“The Interlopers” involves wolves and the National G story focused on the feud between humans and wolves over land, which made it a good piece for our state standard that focuses on the way similar themes are presented in different genres. The kids really liked it, and the discussion afterward was lively and interesting, and beyond the appropriate connections regarding theme and genre, conflict and resolution, they found a new way of seeing the pointlessness of feuds, and learned a lot about the importance of predators in an ecosystem.

But toward the end, it went were discussions of large predators typically go when a roomful of boys, even teenaged ones, is involved.

“What would happen if a wolf met a mountain lion?”

“That lion would eat that wolf.”

“No way, wolves travel in packs. That wolf ain’t alone.”

“Yeah, but one-on-one.”

“The Lion, probably.”

“What about a wolf versus a bear?”

“How about a wolf versus an alligator?”

“Wolf vs. hyena?

“Wolf vs. …?”

I let it go as we were toward the end of class and they were clearly enjoying themselves, which is an important part of education. Too often, it’s easy to forget to just have fun, but any teacher can tell you that if the kids are enjoying your class they’ll follow you almost anywhere.

I asked later if they enjoyed reading the article and they unanimously said yes and wanted more. A few asked for an article about big cats, and I suspect they’re already cooking up the “What about a tiger vs. …” questions for that discussion.

A couple of weeks ago, I ran into two former students—at a bookstore, no less, which truly warmed the very cockles of my English teaching heart. Both were students I’d taught as seventh graders and then again as eleventh graders in regular public schools (this was prior to my getting into teaching in an alternative setting).

It’s always good to run into these former students from time to time to see that they’ve transitioned into adulthood and managed at least some of the attendant challenges, but it’s especially nice when one takes the time to tell you what an impact you had on them. They come and go through our classrooms so quickly year after year, and we never really know if we’ve actually helped them, taught them anything lasting. It’s almost a gamble and we teachers have to have faith that what we do will pay off somehow, someway we’ll likely never see.

One of the two I ran into made it a point to tell me just how important I was to her as an English teacher and debate coach. She told me she probably never would have gone to college if it hadn’t been for me. That surprised me coming from a kid I remember as being smart, studious and motivated, but then I grew up in an environment where college was an expectation and it’s an easy trap for a teacher—or anyone, really—to assume that we all grow up with the same expectations. Still, whatever I did or said in class must have had some effect and for that I’m grateful because we don’t always know what lessons our kids are really learning in our classes. We hope they’re learning what we’re teaching, but they learn other things too: lessons they take from how we interact with them, speak to them, and treat them. How we approach our subjects too.

Education is an endless process of discovery and there is joy and humor in that—fun, even. Sometimes it’s tough getting there, but the rewards are so great, so fulfilling, that kids who see that in their teachers can’t help but be inspired to some degree. Whether that inspiration leads to college or just getting tomorrow’s essay in on time, it all leads in the same direction and our job is to push those kids a little farther down that path to wherever they want to go.

As educators, I think the most important part of the job is to pass along the love of learning to our students and then teach them the tools they’ll need to teach themselves the things they want and need to know. I’m always telling kids that my job isn’t to solve their problems for them but to help them figure out how to solve them on their own.

It was nice to hear those words from that former student, now an adult with her own family (yet still referring to me as Mr. Brush, as they always do), especially since she was among the very first students I ever taught. I remember that first class on that first day, thinking Good Lord, what if I teach them everything I know and it only takes 10 minutes… what do I do with the other 186 hours and 40 minutes for which I’ve got them this year? I still remember those seventh graders staring back at me—I doubt any teacher ever forgets the kids he teaches in that terrifying first year—and I never would have thought I’d learn as much from them as (I hope) they learned from me.

I guess I knew more than I thought and somehow that love of learning, that curiosity, that drives me must have rubbed off on a few of them. That’s always been and probably always will be the most important thing I teach. But then, you don’t really teach that do you? You have to live it.

My students freeze—
how out of place

that slope-intercept
equation on the whiteboard

in this literature class.
Scrawled in blue, graphed

and correctly worked.
It’s poetry, I tell them.

Sorry, kid. You’re on
your own today. Just
you vs. the State of Texas.
Give ‘em Hell, remember
the Alamo & your #2 pencil.
Should you not pass
(we won’t say fail) you may
retake this test, repeat
this grade or possibly
redo your whole life.
Don’t work too fast either:
these tests may cause nausea,
dizziness, double-vision,
vomiting, hallucinations,
panic attacks, bitterness,
resentment, depression,
and a profound distaste
for school, education and
even learning in general.
And Remember, don’t panic.

Words drip
from dictionary
lips—

challenges
& curses

stain the classroom
carpet.

OK, then.

Let’s mop these
words up off
the ground

turn them into
something

you can use.

A student once asked for
something interesting to read.
Something good.
Something you can feel, she said.
Something honest.
Something real.

I asked what that would be like.

There would be misspelled words,
she said, a few bad sentences.
Not sufficient to interfere
with the story, mind you,
but an honest flaw or error
here or there so you’d know
it wasn’t perfect,
wasn’t meant to be.

Just enough to get a glimpse
of the true imperfect person
behind the artifice.

—

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt from Read Write Poem (#21: Perfectly Flawed) provided by Kristen McHenry asks us to consider the idea of perfection. It’s an interesting prompt that reminded me of a conversation I had with a student in one of my sophomore English classes a few years back. Further thoughts about perfection in literature were sparked by an interesting post, poetry by concession, at slow reads, which is very much worth checking out and probably influenced this poem.

The guy from the attorney general’s office
blamed the nouns, sources of all trouble—
people, places, things.

Combined with certain verbs—
assault, distribute, trespass and possess—
these nouns form gangs of complex sentences,
fragments of lives half-lived and run-ons
rambling through the detritus of car crash lives.

The simplest, though, tell of kids locked up,
looking out at the free, positions of attention
in the parking lot, half-listening
to mockingbirds refining their own syntax
as they mimic the ringing fire alarm
while we wait to go back inside
where we’ll try, again, writing

sentences that don’t mimic the past,
sentences that aren’t destinies.

“Your choice today. Continue
with your GED lessons or
watch the inauguration.”

That GED can mean a new
start, early release, a second
chance, freedom, hope.

All eight turned their backs
on history, to earn a ticket
back out to The Free.

But a few snuck glances back
at the TV. Those looks lingered,
turned to stares and held.

When they said, “Please rise,”
four kids rose and stood at
attention. I joined them.

One young man said, “I can’t believe it.
I can’t believe it. I’ll tell my kids
I was locked up, but I still saw

Obama become president.
I can’t believe it.” After the ceremony,
they went back to their work,

compelled by new determination
to get all the answers right.

—

This is for Read Write Poem’s weekly prompt to write something about Obama’s Inauguration or about new beginnings.

When I was teaching at a junior high, I once had a kid ask, “What does e=mc² mean?” Clearly, whatever point of sentence construction I was elaborating on wasn’t sinking in with this kid.

“Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared,” I said as I underlined a predicate.

He squinted his eyes a bit, probably wondering whether or not he could trust an English teacher on this, but then nodded and jotted something down in his notebook. He looked up again. “Okay, what’s the speed of light?”

I stopped and looked at him. “186,000 miles per second.”

He nodded and scribbled the equation in his spiral, his number two pencil working madly. “Whoooaa,” he said, looking up.

“What?”

“That’s a lot of energy. Even if the mass is just 1.”

I nodded. “Yes, it is.”

He stared at his notebook, trying to make sense of the enormity of those numbers. “I mean, you could probably blow up a whole city with that kind of energy, right?”

I think the next few sentences we analyzed were about nuclear bombs.

I found this great little writing exercise on Danigirl’s blog. It seems to originate as a professional development project based on George Ella Lyon’s work. I thought it made for a cool post, but the next day one of my fellow teachers suddenly started talking about the heretofore unknown (to me) poet Lyon at an in-service meeting. Well, thought I, that’s some synchronicity for me.

Anyway, It seemed like a cool project to do with my kids, and being the good teacher that I am (and also the kind of person who enjoys these kinds of writing exercises) I figured I should test drive it first…

Where I’m From, an exercise in identity…

I am from maps, from National Geographic and surplus bombing charts of Vietnam used as tarps below our tents.

I am from green soccer fields, orange slices sucked through teeth at halftime and 2..4..6..8…who do we appreciate.

I am from the lonely buoy bell clanging in the bay on open-window summer nights. I am from old forests with forgotten headstones hidden in the undergrowth.

I am from the Smithsonian, concrete bunkers overgrown by jungle, that old monastery on the hill. From birdless gray Octobers and the golden light of northern summer, a fox curled up on the lawn.

I am from the scrub oak, juniper and palms, summer tomato plants and morning glory growing thick on a wire fence. I am from bluebonnets and prickly pear embedded in my palm.

I am from tacos and tamales on Christmas Eve. From Trivial Pursuit and gentleness, from Brushes, Griffins, Tomlinsons and Trouts. From the parrot we birdsat, who never learned to talk, but in our house, learned to laugh.

I am from meals with talk instead of TV, from books and magazines and a telescope pointed at Saturn’s rings.

From books are our friends and may the force be with you.

I am from the King James Bible, New England churches surrounded by three hundred year old graves. From Doubting Thomas and endless questions.

I’m from the cold Narragansett, “King” Arthur’s Illinois basketball court, both sides of the Revolution, and the Valley of the Sun, from home-baked cookies kept in the freezer, tortillas in the ‘fridge.

From Grace who said nothing of her past, from Dorothy who told everything, from Jim whose cursing made me laugh (my parents cringed) and Cecil whose tales I never got to hear.

I am from cluttered closet time capsules, vinyl photo albums, instamatic shots and slide shows of the sea, from treasure boxes and neat ordered files of school projects, drawings, homemade cards.

I am from the Colonial coast, the edge of jungle, the ring of fire, the ruins of Rome, the settled Comanche hills I now call home.

* * *

As a side project, I followed the links from Danigirl back along the trail of meme to see where it began, all the while enjoying the various takes along the way. It goes: Daysgoby to Spanglish to Lolabola to a staff development website.

Here’s the page that explains how to put it together. Give it a whirl.