A Measure of Stardust

The spring semester rushes by in a torrent, a blur of lesson plans and grading, family and board games—and, always, writing. My favorite moment of each school year is also my most busy: publishing my school’s literary magazine.

My ragtag group of writers, artists, and unsung heroes never fails to amaze me. Their passion and talent spill across the pages as they design and create content for the yearly publication. The magazine is the culminating event of months of reviewing pieces, submitted from students throughout the school, and countless hours of effort. I love to watch as my students’ vision unfolds and everything—typically at the last moment—comes together.

I created this literary magazine class because I wanted a space that celebrated the creative arts. But more than that, I wanted students to embrace their identity as creators at an earlier age. And each year, I have the privilege of witnessing that happen. These teens write as writers; they paint and photograph and sculpt as artists. And yearly our school community is blessed with their works of beauty.

There is so much in the world today that doesn’t encourage hope. From the humanitarian crises to the political landscape, the future often appears heart-rending and dark, fit more for a novel I’d write or read than what I hope for my son as he grows older.

But these teens exude such wonder and curiosity and life. They organize protests and play impromptu D&D; they juggle afterschool jobs and forensics tournaments; they listen and ponder, laugh and cry; they fumble and stumble through all of life, mountains of stress and expectation weighing on them in ways I cannot imagine, and through it all they inspire such hope.

I’m thankful for the privilege of this time they pass through my classroom. I’m grateful for who they are, and the measure of stardust they leave in their wake.

A Teacher's Retrospective

At the close of each school year, I am always drawn to reflect on my successes and failures, tallying plenty of both.  This year was no exception—though one success stood out to me.  About halfway through the year, I decided to try out something different with my students—an Ask a Grownup life advice question and answer series. 

My inspiration came from an episode of This American Life I happened to have listened to that described a project by an online teen-girl-targeted magazine called “Ask a Grown Man” (readers would write in for life advice, and then celebrities such as Stephen Colbert or Seth Rogan would respond in a video).  So, I assigned my students to do the same, to submit anonymous questions that I would answer as best as I could. 

I knew that nothing encourages a disaffected teenager listen to an adult’s advice like a patronizing lecture, so I pointed out that they are often swimming in a collective sea of their own ignorance.  When faced with the myriad dilemmas of high school life, they often say to themselves, “Hey, I know who has the perspective I need to help me face this challenge!  The chemically imbalanced seventeen-year-old next to me!” 

On a more serious note, I told them that life was messy and plagued with uncertainties, but that I would share honestly about my own successes and failures and offer what wisdom I had gleaned in my thirty-four years.  I had no idea how it would go.

It was weird.  It was awesome.

The questions ranged from poignant to silly.  My first question was a tough one: “Why aren’t eyebrows considered facial hair?”  But the ones that followed showed the broad array of pressures my students experience.  I answered queries about how to manage finances, what to consider when choosing a college major, how to navigate political or religious differences with parents.  I addressed bullying, mental health, life’s elusive purpose.  Sometimes we neared tears.  Other times our sides split with laughter.

I loved a lot of aspects of this school year, but these moments we carved out of our class time to wrestle with the insecurities and dilemmas intrinsic to students’ lives were among my favorites.  I believe strongly in educating the whole person—equipping students with not just my discipline’s essential skills but also with those skills essential to living a full and worthy life. 

After my class, I hope my students find themselves leaning into their better selves more—practicing more grace and forgiveness, agitating more for justice, inclining their hearts more toward love.  And year after year, I find my students inspire me to do the same. 

To light a fire...

"Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire."  —William Butler Yeats

If the intervening weeks between my last post and this one weren’t a clear enough indication, the school year has started.  And the deluge has begun.  Lesson planning, grading, lesson planning, grading, winging it, and more grading—such are the rhythms of a teacher’s life.  Yet—what a life it is!

Each year I am struck more and more by how confounding the profession of teaching is.  It is dynamic and at times grueling, a job that always comes home with you, but beyond the frenzied madness of it all I find it deeply rewarding.  I spend my days investing in the lives of teens, prodding their minds and urging them onward toward depth and nuance.  And along the way I get to delve into my favorite works of literature and unveil them before my students’ untrained eyes, watching as they experience so many firsts with the written word. 

Every week I utter the phrase, “I love this job.”  Some weeks, it’s every day. 

These first few weeks I have been edging slowly into literary analysis with my students, examining a single aspect of a short story at a time.  At each turn, students are discovering that there is so much more “texture”—to borrow a term from Bradbury—to literature than they initially expected.  We’ve explored the works of such luminaries as Tobias Wolff, Raymond Carver, Flannery O’Conner, Hemingway, Donald Barthelme, Aimee Bender, and Tim O’Brien, and at each new story students confess that they’ve never read anything like that before.  After years of lying dormant, their sense of wonder regarding literature is beginning to awaken.  Being at the helm of their experience is exhilarating.    

Granted, I should state that, due to whatever cosmic fate, I have landed in one of the best school districts in my state, teaching AP-level classes in a community where striving for excellence is a part of the culture.  I recognize this is not the norm.  I have teacher friends who labor in vineyards so foreign from mine that their experiences have almost no overlap with my own.

But for all of us who feel called into this profession, it is the light in our students’ eyes when at last the cogs whir to life in a new and surprising way that draws us again and again to the classroom.  When the stacks of grading grow too high, when the administration outlines yet another superfluous or ill-concocted policy, when the teenagers who fill our classrooms exasperate us for behaving exactly how teenagers are wired to behave—it is good to remember why we entered the classroom in the first place.  In that way, my students teach me again and again to never lose my own sense of wonder. 

I love this job.