I think that I have figured it out...well some of it, anyway.
Some of it is about who I am, but a lot of it is about why I became a teacher. I think that the "romantic, change the world, debate the philosophies of life" possibility is what drew me to teach English in the first place. And I'm sure that a lot of you started off in the same way. This evening I watched my daughter catch frogs in our garden and the more time I spend with her, the more I am inspired by her wide-eyed wonderment. Wonder. That is what I need to expect and look for in my life and my teaching. As adults, we tend to block that sort of amazement off to children, and we envy their naivety but feel that being an adult precludes ourselves from it. Why? In the same coincidence of an evening I watched a movie about a guy who inherits the ability to travel time. It's not the sort of thing that the stereotypical eloquent English teacher should be watching, but it still made me think. At one point the time traveller is whispered a secret from his dying father, the secret to happiness. It goes something like this: live every day over, but the second time around, notice and appreciate the little things. Simple. And thinking back on my week, the lessons I remember the most are the ones where the class and I fed off each other's wonder because I noticed the little things. Given, this might not happen very often, but I think that is because I always look for the brightest lightbulbs in class, and not for the little flickerings. Those flickering are so much more important because when they come together it adds up to something gigantic and uplifting. They are small things like a turn of phrase in a Matric essay, a smile when a grade 9 finally gets an obscure metaphor or a message that resonates with a grade 10 in a Wordsworth poem. Kids are filled with joy, and I need to nurture that alongside their imagination: what better way to do it in a subject like English. I guess that's why I love teaching the Grade 10s so much, because I am inspired by what the boys come up with in virtually every lesson. And I notice the little things in those lessons. I write this all because, I worry that the remarkability of teaching is being replaced by files of neatly cordoned off reports, minutes and lesson plans. And that is not true. Amazing things happen in our classrooms every day and beneath the skin of our students, epiphanies are like rumbling dominoes that we just forget to listen for. There is so much wonder and our fingertips, and if we don't look for it, we will get caught up in the mundane, tick box analysis of teaching. Now more than ever we need to remember that. Fascination erodes a path in the lives of our students alongside the curriculum and in many ways it is far more important that the syllabus. I just forget that sometimes and need to write something like this to remind myself. This rambling started off as a memo to myself, but after reading it, I thought that maybe some of you find yourself in the same place and I thought I would share it with you...just in case. I think that the life of a teacher is an extraordinary ordinary life, and perspective makes all the difference.
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Today I have been rattled, and I can't sleep. I found out that my mentor over the past 21 years is moving to Canada with his family, and with his departure, I know that my space in teaching will be poorer without his presence. You see, he has been instrumental in why I am where I am today. And working in the same space as the person that one looks up to makes candid and guiding conversations easy. When they live on the other side of a great bloody ocean, not so much. His move, which will take place in about three months time, has made me realise that I might have not appreciated what I had, and I might not have prioritized our friendship as much as I should have. It has also made me think of some of the other important people in my life that have moved away overseas, and the impact each of their departures has had on me. One of my closest friends moved away to Switzerland followed by another of my closest friends that took his family away to America to live. I miss them all daily, and the irony is that with technology, I should be keeping in easy contact with them. There is email and WhatsApp and Facebook and Skype...so many choices to connect. And yet our friendship has been reduced to sporadic half-conversations on social media. I see what goes on in their lives through the pictures that they post, but don't get to have an actual resonating, meaningful conversation. I have no excuses as to why this is the case, but I think it has something to do with the ease of communication that technology provides. It is too convenient, and therefore contact never becomes a real priority until one is shaken into a moment of clarity as another friend departs to start a new life far away. And all of this makes me think of my Grandfather, Gramps. He had a writing desk made of a deep, rich wood. It was a thing of beauty with an array of small drawers with tiny brass knobs. He used thin personalised paper and wrote on a large maroon blotter. Gramps penned out many letters to me in his distinctive handwriting whist I was overseas, just after school. Many of them I have kept and still have today. I think about him bent over that desk, with perhaps some classical music keeping him company as he rolled over the content of each letter in his mind, spreading the news of his life and inviting a reciprocation from his friends. Gramps didn't just write these letters to me; he wrote them to all of his friends that had moved away. His friends warranted the effort. I am envious of this attention. Putting pen to paper takes time. It requires the consideration behind a choice of words and a balance between brevity and substance. There is far more thought that goes into writing a letter when compared with choosing an Emoji or short-handing a WhatsApp. And perhaps that is what is missing in my correspondence. Because those departed friendships are special and they deserve something special in return. They deserve being paid up with the most precious of modern currencies, time. Because in a letter, the substance of the words are matched by the effort used in their creation. I think that social media has made us miss a trick in this. I think that we need to reconnect by putting in the effort of physical correspondence and certainly, that is what I am going to do. So when my mentor leaves for another country, I must get his postal address. I must find out if I can still by stamps. I must source a letter box. I must take the time to write. And I must pay the same courtesy to all of my other friendships as well. |
ContentSome thoughts about things, sometimes philosophical, sometimes just musings. The world through my eyes... Archives
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