“I believe that in all men's lives at certain periods, and in many men's lives at all periods between infancy and extreme old age, one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local ring and the terror of being left outside.” --C.S. Lewis

Last week I was lucky enough to attend the Homecoming pep assembly at my high school and then, the next day, attend University of Michigan’s homecoming.  Both events contained the same elements: teens dancing and screaming to deafening music played in the hopes of spurring the home football team on to a victory.  They were both loud and smelly, intense and bizarre.  I went into one of my weird dualistic observation modes and realized as I watched both events--our pep assembly and the UM football game--that these young adults were willing to sacrifice pretty much anything in order to fit into the “local ring” they perceived.  Friday night was freezing, but the high school boys were still shirtless with their chests painted to represent their class.  At the UM game on Saturday, the cold drizzle soaked every student who stayed despite the whupping the Wolverines were giving the Fighting Illini.  Nothing could separate these fans from the love they were giving their respective schools. 

Watching these frenzied displays of school spirit, I was struck again by the power of the group.  All the people at both events were gathered because they all felt a draw, a kinship to the greater goal of the group.  In these two particular cases, the goal was to win a football game and celebrate a specific school.  But the power of the group is not simply one of teams or schools or even a common goal.  The power of the local ring, as C.S. Lewis calls it,  rests in humanity’s basic need to belong.  We need a place where we can find community and solidarity.  We long for others who share our ideals, our jokes, our desires, our goals. To be in not out, to be with not solo, to be joined not isolated is one of our most basic needs.  People need people.  It really is that simple.

So once again I turn to school.  We are becoming more isolated as we inundate ourselves with technology.  Yes, social networks allow people to communicate with everyone all over the world, but I question the authenticity of that communication.  With Facebook or Twitter or Posterous or Google+ or any other social medium, we are allowed to avoid much of the mess of interpersonal communication.  When we communicate via the computer, we communicate in a sterile environment.  A computer screen buffers our real selves from the selves we present to the world.  This constructed reality presents some major problems for education.  

Our students flourish when they create authentic, organic relationships with others.  Programs like Link Crew prove that.  Unfortunately, there is no app for chatting over coffee.   And while I do admire the commercial that shows a young tuba player performing his recital to his father’s face held up on an iPad, I question where all of this is taking us.  Where is the app that allows kids to sit down, face-to-face--with all the sensory overload of a deep conversation--and experience interpersonal exchange?  I am not pushing against change; I am questioning the logistics of the change.  Humanity has needed community since antiquity--we are programed for it.  As we reprogram how we teach, we need to keep the interpersonal at the forefront.  

Take Me Back to the Start

I watch Glee.  Every week.  I DVR it, I watch it, I re-watch it, I download the music.  I admit it: I might be a Gleek.  BUT!  In defense of a teen show that is often badly written with story plots that are convoluted at best and intellectually bizarre at worst with characters who are way too often caricatures and almost dangerous, simplistic stereotypes sometimes silly, I find myself challenged by the better episodes.  

Last week’s episode, “The Break Up,” hit upon a raw nerve that the current antagonistic political culture has exposed.  Throughout the episode, the characters are all dealing with profound change--stay together or break up, forgive or walk away, offer total support or lose love.  I thought about the dichotomy these oversimplified story-plots offered and then I thought about what I always think about: my job.  

I’ve been in a committed, faithful relationship with my job for the past thirteen years. Yes, I strayed once for one year when I wanted to see if teaching really was what I wanted, but the proverbial siren song of education called me back to Fraser High School.  We’ve been a good combination, and I feel as if we’ve made each other grow.  Teaching has challenged me, has made me laugh, has taken me on dates that last all night and sometimes even extend into the wee hours of the morning.  We fight like all couples, but teaching is patient and the papers it gives me never go away.  Teaching has given me some amazing presents on our anniversaries:  passion, purpose, the ability to multi-task, a freakish sense of hearing for the F-Bomb.  Teaching has sharpened me and I like who I am when I am with it.  

But somewhere along the line, teaching changed on me.  I don’t completely recognize it anymore.  I know it isn’t teaching’s fault; outside pressures, financial stress, an inability to communicate clearly have all contributed to my frustration with my job.  Teaching keeps asking more of me, but I am givin‘ ‘er all I got, Cap’in.  So teaching and I are in a rocky spot in our relationship.  Which brings me back to Glee.

Each couple hit the dip this week. Each couple had to make a decision to fight or to quit.  The kids all broke up; the adults haven’t...yet.  I am in the dip with teaching and I do not want to quit.  But I don’t know how to keep going forward sometimes.  Between the pressure from politicians, parents, technology, the need to evolve, I find myself looking at teaching with jaded eyes and I sometimes take it for granted.  I had a good, albeit busy, week last week, but when I sit here on Saturday almost dreading next week, I need to back up and consider what is going on in this vital relationship in my life.  

My other relationships--the ones that are so much more important than my job, the ones that fill me completely--have taught me that this is a storm I must weather.  Deep down, I kinda love this gig.  I can’t quit you, teaching, but you are really giving me a run for my money this year. 

Keep the Wit, Give Me Generosity

My Great-Auntie Miriam died in July at the age of 99, and as I read over her will,  I realize again what an exceptional women she was.  

I remember learning the world “steward” as a kid at church.  Literally, a steward is one who manages something: an estate, an airplane, a train.  In the Evangelical world, being a good steward means giving generously, living humbly, loving strong; it means managing well all the blessing God has generously given.  My Auntie Miriam was the ideal steward of time, money, and--most importantly--people. 

I remember hearing a story about how she helped my mom avoid a spanking because of a mis-cut sandwich.  Family legend has it that young Rita wasn’t willing to eat a sandwich cut along the boring horizontal status quo of sandwich cutting.  Instead, ever the rebel, young Rita wanted her sandwich cut diagonally.  My grandparents were Canadian Mennonites and were not often given to such frivolous, childish antics.  As such, young Rita found herself in a world of trouble over her refusal to consume said sandwich and her subsequent crying jag.  Ever the steward of people’s feelings (and, in this case, fannies) Auntie Miriam stepped in and cut the sandwich.  And my did she cut that sandwich.  She cut it in about 16 different pieces of random size and shape.  I'd like to think there were swirls and bunnies, but that might be too much to ask. The story ends with young Rita eating the sandwich, bumm intact and peace restored.

Above all other stories, that story is my Auntie Miriam.  She was patient and kind, gentle and wise, calm and deliberate.  She took a daily “constitutional” walk around her town of Kitchener, Ontario.  She fed the finches every single day.  She read voraciously, went to church every Sunday, and fought for what she believed in.  

She is as generous in death as she was in life.  I am awed by the amount of money she left to 25 different charities.  Even now she is a steward to others.  As I think about what it would be like to be 99, I can only hope that I leave a legacy as striking as her’s.  She taught me more about being a teacher than any class or lecture or TED talk or book or film.  She taught me to cut the metaphorical sandwich in new ways; to walk around my school in order to become invested in it; to care for the people who can’t necessarily care for themselves; to fight with dignity and passion for the causes in which I believe; to give all that I have because at the end of the day, I certainly can’t take it with me.  I keep one of her old sweaters in my classroom to remind me of who she was and how she dealt first in kindness and then anger.   

My Auntie Miriam was one heck of a lady, and she was the ideal steward.