“beyond confusion”

Teaching in the classroom is always unpredictable. It is always a high-wire act. It is always glorious. Meetings, on the other hand, are stultifying. Duties in the dorm are tedious and pedestrian. Such is the way of life probably in boarding schools around the world.

But back to that classroom thing—it is so much like good piano playing, learning to strike the percussive keys with just the right balance of warmth and power. The history stuff is great, but it is the tuning of the instrument, those dozen or so instruments in the classroom, and the ability to calibrate those instruments that never fails to grab me.

And like great piano playing, classroom teaching takes practice, attention, and finesse. My grandmother, an indomitable woman and gentle spirit, who taught everything from Sunday School to High School over the span of sixty years, once told me about piano playing, “It’s in the touch, John Boy. (It was the era of The Waltons on television with the lead character of ‘John-Boy Walton’—don’t mock my grandmother now!) Anyone can hit the keys. A master has a certain touch!” A decade later, as I strode off to the North Carolina piedmont, the same wise grandmother offered a corollary of advice: “Teaching is like that piano, John Boy—those students need the right touch too.” At the end of her advice she reminded of that powerful Latin salvo: Per Aspera Ad Astra.

A month ago today I predicted that my young scholars at KA had come to the end of the terrain Stephanie had proclaimed as “Itch.” They had reached a plateau, and I looked forward to what might be the next stretch of territory for us to conquer. I had a speculation immediately from one of the great whiz-kids of all time, my former student Adam. Sometime I will have to devote an entire blog entry to the experience of knowing Adam over the last dozen years, but, for now, I will just say that Adam holds a secure place in the pantheon of the greatest students I have met. I could easily ascribe to him the words I used in the beginning of this blog entry—Adam is unpredictable, a high-wire act, and yes, glorious.

Adam offered this comment to the blog entry query a month ago about where the young historians were headed next: “You've reached The Poke. The students are starting to get it, though some need to be nudged a little bit more. In addition, pokes are discrete. An itch is felt continuously, but not as many students are causing you discomfort any more. And once most people have really gotten it, you'll have reached The Tickle, because you'll feel all giddy. And once everybody's gotten it, you'll find The Soothing. And when the year's done, you'll find The Relief.”

As I look back on the last month—a major test covering the years 1000-1500, a major essay involving comparing documents and causes and effects of at least two medieval societies, homeworks, discussions, I have the pleasure to say that Adam has hit the nail on the head. It is as if he knows these guys! In a moment of foreshadowing the place called ‘Poke,’ a father and I had an interesting exchange in late November:


Father: Why Mr. John is Farah not doing better in your class? She enjoys it.
Me: Well, Sir, Farah is what we might call unmotivated. She doesn’t really do her homework.
Father: I think what we need to do then is get a big stick and poke her until she does that homework!

This father’s image is not really far off from a model of good teaching—someone who believes in these teen-agers, leads them on to the next plateau, poking them with a sharp stick called truth.

I have the pleasure to say that this Farah has been an amazement ever since exams in January—she has not missed a single assignment, and except for the aforementioned essay, she has earned a high grade on every assignment. Her zeal, her interest, her insights have been remarkable. Welcome to Poke!

But as Adam wisely noted about the conditions of Poke, it has ups and downs. Recently, Rob had a sentence in his essay comparing Muslim and Christian attitudes toward trade in the early modern period in which he succinctly summed up the major difference: “Muslims supported trade, while Christians reluctantly accepted it.” Then, after class one day I asked Rob about missing homeworks, and we realized he must have been sending them to the wrong email address. He replied, “I never had any idea it could be my fault.”

Qusai used the word, “perdition” in an elegant way in his introduction to his essay on the Black Death, while another student wrote: “As a conclusion, I’m really happy that we didn’t exist at this scary period of time the time of tension, fear, misery and horror.” Okay—clumsy, yes, but this was a student who last time forgot that quoting from sources was an important thing and ended his essay with the finale, “God Bless Women!”

I’ll be honest here—I mean we’re all friends, right? The last week has been kinda hard. We have been working on a project, a murder mystery about Spain’s King Philip II that I designed, and some of the students have been especially laissez-faire about their participation. “I can’t find anything about my suspect Martin Luther,” whined one girl. Really??? “What if I only write a paragraph? What’ll you do?” The numbing “how long do you want this to be?” coupled with “You don’t expect me to actually write a whole page, do you?” It was clear that some still lacked the self-awareness of their own responsibility in this learning enterprise. Alas.

As we reach each plateau, sometimes I forget that there is still work to be done, still balancing to do. I don’t get “low” often, but I was a little low these last few days. How much more “nudging” do I have to do??????

Can’t we just skip to the “Relief” Adam envisions???

As I made out invitations to my little pity-party, a colleague Chris, walked into the Faculty Room, excited about a Robert Frost poem she was about to read to her 9th grade History students. She planned to recite the poem to her class, for memory yet, and explain the
virtues of mastery. I had never heard this poem, and as I read it, immediately I knew I had a
roadmap through Poke! Here is a portion of the poem, “Directive”:


And if you're lost enough to find yourself
By now, pull in your ladder road behind you
And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me.
Then make yourself at home. The only field
Now left's no bigger than a harness gall.
First there's the children's house of make-believe,
Some shattered dishes underneath a pine,
The playthings in the playhouse of the children.
Weep for what little things could make them glad.
Then for the house that is no more a house,
But only a belilaced cellar hole,
Now slowly closing like a dent in dough.
This was no playhouse but a house in earnest.
Your destination and your destiny's
A brook that was the water of the house,
Cold as a spring as yet so near its source,
Too lofty and original to rage.
I have kept hidden in the instep arch
Of an old cedar at the waterside
A broken drinking goblet like the Grail…


Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.

Those last few words just said it all—Frost’s “directive” is to go and find our own version of salvation, your own “Holy Grail”—whatever it takes to restore ourselves. Look at the last few lines again:


I have kept hidden in the instep arch
Of an old cedar at the waterside
A broken drinking goblet like the Grail…


Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.


The last week has been a challenge—hey, not a new challenge, just the unpredictable, high-wire, glorious challenge of Poke. I must remember to find that nexus of memory and hope, a “goblet like the Grail,” and then I will find the soothing comfort that each difficult moment, of course, has the potential to open my eyes and open my heart. All I need to remember is that we can “Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.”