Teaching in the Age of the Supervolcano
What compels a person to return to a thing better left dead?
Ms. Johnson, the kids will say, you told us never to begin with a rhetorical question. You are very right, my loves, but I am 35 and make frequent mistakes. Watch as I resurrect a blog space, that was never very good, five years after blog-writing was already irrelevant. Certainly, I will hide the shame of it by hiding most of its older posts, but I am a narcissistic person in a narcissistic age. Besides, I have need of it, friends. In three days' time I go to Branson, MO.
Ok, not Branson exactly. Not really. But to the Arkansas border. To the Ozarks. And I think to myself, aren't I too young for this? I know nothing about Missouri except all the jokes at other people's expenses. I will drive a thirteen-year-old car 10 hours down, alternating between pop music and audio books, and I will spend a week drinking too much whiskey on a kayak that I will have inflated with my bare hands. It's essentially what Thoreau would do in our modern age, so why this sudden need to blog?
Because I am 35 and have only just recognized that I am a terrible and pretentious observer of life. My innate and rather flippant, if not listless, instinct is to criticize, and though I am meanest of all to my own character, I am not very kind to what irks me. And so much irks me these days. Perhaps so much should, but I have grown up believing that trading snarkiness for sincerity would somehow make me more intelligent, and it's taken me too long to admit that it has only made me joyless. And mean. And not very smart.
I am beginning to peel away at this. Yes, certainly, I am wholly depressed by my inept maneuvering of my 30s, my childlessness, my stagnant solitude, and yes, it makes me coil in on myself and judge where I should not, and yet I have wrought it. And have done little to change it. I am too young for Branson, surely, and yet I am excited to try my hand at it, to spend my week reading more pages than I have in a long time, laughing with the family who taught me to love a rural town and miss it when I left it.
Because the thing about 35 is that, if you're lucky, you get the chance to apologize. And here I mean apology not in its original way but in our current way, for there should be no defense of rudeness. I have been rude and critical and condescending and dismissive. And I apologize.
And I must do better because I still hold the job I thought I would have given up by now.
It's the strangest thing, but I have reached the point where I no longer play at teaching. I used to feel I was pretending, since I still felt myself a student enamored by so many of my own powerfully influential teachers. But now, without my being prepared for it, I am the teacher students go to for teachery things. It's a strange, euphoric but hazy revelation: I am the teacher in the room.
Last spring break, at the brink of this revelation, I spent a couple days in Rock Island and met Dr. Peters for a beer. For perspective, this is akin to my drinking with Ralph Fiennes: I treat this man with a reverence he really doesn't deserve except that he does because he's the most intelligent, influential teacher I've ever had...and I find him really attractive...so it's very difficult to talk to him. But damn it, I had a beer with the man, almost eight years after I had seen him last, and for that hour or so, we talked about teaching...and basketball...but mostly teaching. We mocked and lamented many things--that is our way, after all--but some of you are fortunate enough to know that for all his snarky, asshole-ish swagger, Dr. Peters has a very sincere devotion to education. And I remember thinking, what if I do not love my job the way he does? What if I can never move students to want to write the way I wanted to write for him? What if I am a fraud and just too old now to change it?
When you leave a person to whom you owe a great debt, you wish for some sort of perfect resolution, the ending that puts to rest your jittery, nervous need to articulate all the right meaning. But it so rarely comes. And so I went back to my hotel, despairing that I did not say to him the things that made me worthy of being both a student and a teacher, but when I arrived, there was an email waiting from a senior of mine. She was just sending me some photos for yearbook, nothing particularly pressing, but she signed off with “Thank you for shaping me as a writer and a woman,” and I laughed out loud. When had I become the teacher who receives such lines? Wasn't I pretending?
Because it’s really very easy to speak cynically about teaching; in fact, it’s easier to do that than try to make sense of its merits and its pull on otherwise rational people. But if I’m honest, I teach for a school where I am actually necessary in part to its stability, which is to say that what I do and how well I do it matters to the kids and to the organization. It’s the closest thing I’ve got to Wendell Berry’s conception of place. And it’s a strange burden because pretty soon your entire self-worth becomes entangled with a profession you’re not quite sure you understand.
Which is to say that Peters had it right: humility is the thing. We should endeavor to be worthy of that which we claim to know and of those with whom we share the knowledge. This was the lesson implicit in everything he taught; it’s the lesson I try to teach by now. It’s meant inadequacy at every turn—it’s meant guilt every time I step into a damned elevator—but I never can shake his mantra (forgive the paraphrase) that the book judges us.
All of this is to say that I can’t talk about education with any semblance of articulation, but I tote Peters' words with me on walks and elevator rides and long drives in the car. And, it turns out, I care that I am that guide for someone else.
Because teachers often forget that not everyone is zoning out...or vaping…or watching The Office. Some kids are paying attention. And even while 35 feels very difficult to me and I am often sad, even while I feel that pesky, somewhat debilitating regret that I have not built a life of meaning, I feel also that I have carved out a space within a school that does a lot of good.
So by the time I'm 40, I would like to be financially solvent, yes, and married to Richard Madden, but also kinder. And softer. And more sincere. Until that innate need to mock, to grasp at weakness, to criticize, fades a bit more. Until I am worthy of my students. Or until the supervolcano erupts. Either way, the endeavor's the point.
Ms. Johnson, the kids will say, you told us never to begin with a rhetorical question. You are very right, my loves, but I am 35 and make frequent mistakes. Watch as I resurrect a blog space, that was never very good, five years after blog-writing was already irrelevant. Certainly, I will hide the shame of it by hiding most of its older posts, but I am a narcissistic person in a narcissistic age. Besides, I have need of it, friends. In three days' time I go to Branson, MO.
Ok, not Branson exactly. Not really. But to the Arkansas border. To the Ozarks. And I think to myself, aren't I too young for this? I know nothing about Missouri except all the jokes at other people's expenses. I will drive a thirteen-year-old car 10 hours down, alternating between pop music and audio books, and I will spend a week drinking too much whiskey on a kayak that I will have inflated with my bare hands. It's essentially what Thoreau would do in our modern age, so why this sudden need to blog?
Because I am 35 and have only just recognized that I am a terrible and pretentious observer of life. My innate and rather flippant, if not listless, instinct is to criticize, and though I am meanest of all to my own character, I am not very kind to what irks me. And so much irks me these days. Perhaps so much should, but I have grown up believing that trading snarkiness for sincerity would somehow make me more intelligent, and it's taken me too long to admit that it has only made me joyless. And mean. And not very smart.
I am beginning to peel away at this. Yes, certainly, I am wholly depressed by my inept maneuvering of my 30s, my childlessness, my stagnant solitude, and yes, it makes me coil in on myself and judge where I should not, and yet I have wrought it. And have done little to change it. I am too young for Branson, surely, and yet I am excited to try my hand at it, to spend my week reading more pages than I have in a long time, laughing with the family who taught me to love a rural town and miss it when I left it.
Because the thing about 35 is that, if you're lucky, you get the chance to apologize. And here I mean apology not in its original way but in our current way, for there should be no defense of rudeness. I have been rude and critical and condescending and dismissive. And I apologize.
And I must do better because I still hold the job I thought I would have given up by now.
It's the strangest thing, but I have reached the point where I no longer play at teaching. I used to feel I was pretending, since I still felt myself a student enamored by so many of my own powerfully influential teachers. But now, without my being prepared for it, I am the teacher students go to for teachery things. It's a strange, euphoric but hazy revelation: I am the teacher in the room.
Last spring break, at the brink of this revelation, I spent a couple days in Rock Island and met Dr. Peters for a beer. For perspective, this is akin to my drinking with Ralph Fiennes: I treat this man with a reverence he really doesn't deserve except that he does because he's the most intelligent, influential teacher I've ever had...and I find him really attractive...so it's very difficult to talk to him. But damn it, I had a beer with the man, almost eight years after I had seen him last, and for that hour or so, we talked about teaching...and basketball...but mostly teaching. We mocked and lamented many things--that is our way, after all--but some of you are fortunate enough to know that for all his snarky, asshole-ish swagger, Dr. Peters has a very sincere devotion to education. And I remember thinking, what if I do not love my job the way he does? What if I can never move students to want to write the way I wanted to write for him? What if I am a fraud and just too old now to change it?
When you leave a person to whom you owe a great debt, you wish for some sort of perfect resolution, the ending that puts to rest your jittery, nervous need to articulate all the right meaning. But it so rarely comes. And so I went back to my hotel, despairing that I did not say to him the things that made me worthy of being both a student and a teacher, but when I arrived, there was an email waiting from a senior of mine. She was just sending me some photos for yearbook, nothing particularly pressing, but she signed off with “Thank you for shaping me as a writer and a woman,” and I laughed out loud. When had I become the teacher who receives such lines? Wasn't I pretending?
Because it’s really very easy to speak cynically about teaching; in fact, it’s easier to do that than try to make sense of its merits and its pull on otherwise rational people. But if I’m honest, I teach for a school where I am actually necessary in part to its stability, which is to say that what I do and how well I do it matters to the kids and to the organization. It’s the closest thing I’ve got to Wendell Berry’s conception of place. And it’s a strange burden because pretty soon your entire self-worth becomes entangled with a profession you’re not quite sure you understand.
Which is to say that Peters had it right: humility is the thing. We should endeavor to be worthy of that which we claim to know and of those with whom we share the knowledge. This was the lesson implicit in everything he taught; it’s the lesson I try to teach by now. It’s meant inadequacy at every turn—it’s meant guilt every time I step into a damned elevator—but I never can shake his mantra (forgive the paraphrase) that the book judges us.
All of this is to say that I can’t talk about education with any semblance of articulation, but I tote Peters' words with me on walks and elevator rides and long drives in the car. And, it turns out, I care that I am that guide for someone else.
Because teachers often forget that not everyone is zoning out...or vaping…or watching The Office. Some kids are paying attention. And even while 35 feels very difficult to me and I am often sad, even while I feel that pesky, somewhat debilitating regret that I have not built a life of meaning, I feel also that I have carved out a space within a school that does a lot of good.
So by the time I'm 40, I would like to be financially solvent, yes, and married to Richard Madden, but also kinder. And softer. And more sincere. Until that innate need to mock, to grasp at weakness, to criticize, fades a bit more. Until I am worthy of my students. Or until the supervolcano erupts. Either way, the endeavor's the point.
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