Lugging
Rocks: Building Chartres
When you have taught for about
fifteen years, former students begin to ask, “Are you still
teaching?” as though teaching is something you should move
beyond, like graduate school or camp counseling. Later, people
ask why you don’t move “up” to administration?
When you are 50, folks ask, “How much longer do you have?”—as
if teaching were a prison sentence—or, “What are you
thinking? Why haven’t you retired?” Last year, even
Phil told me it was time to leave, that teaching past thirty years
is financial foolishness. “Why are you still here?”
In fact, I know why I am still here. For me, teaching has always
been the perfect emotional match. I’m the oldest sister,
born a little bossy, as many of you know, in a big, noisy family.
I like the messiness and intensity of schools. I don’t like
to sit in meetings talking about other
people’s work. I like to do the work. And I’m a glutton
for human contact. Once, I counted how many people I interacted
with in one day—185. Seemed about right to me.
Teaching is also the perfect intellectual match. In education,
I do not find answers, but I do find questions worthy of a lifetime
of thought.
Here, I can Live the Questions, as Rilke advises. How do we prepare
the next generation for a world we can’t imagine? What is
worth teaching?
How do minds work? Sadly, I will leave this profession just as
we begin a primitive understanding of the brain. Imagine! Even
ten years ago, we didn’t have a term for Aspergers’
though we all saw that pattern in students.
I stay because teaching matters. Having never missed an opportunity
for personal angst, I’ve never had a single day of professional
angst. Every day I wake up knowing the work will be interesting,
even when I am boring, and the work will be worthwhile, even when
I am complaining. As a nation, we need citizens who think critically
(Just look at the last election).
When I want to give up on a student, I remind myself, “One
person, one vote. ” So, I keep working.
Teaching is my creative outlet, my form of self expression, my
only talent. Sometimes teachers ask me to be in Moonlighting,
the talent show. Kathlene and Lynn and Christian Dance, Ben and
Carolyn play multiple instruments. I imagine myself sitting on
a stool at the back of the stage grading papers, or writing or
reading. I have no other talent.
On the best days, when classes sing, I sense that my teaching
has moved to an art form. It is rich and vulnerable and tough
and gentle. It is creative and transforming. On those rare days,
I think about the class as a whole, each individual, my own presentation,
the material and the possibilities. At the risk of sounding arrogant,
this is my creative and artistic work.
Of course the world doesn’t see it this way.
If I were an artist in any traditional sense, no one would say
to me, “When are you going to quit playing that cello?”
Or, “You’ve been painting long enough. time to take
up golf.” The Times recently asked Mike Wallace about retiring
now that he is 87,. Wallace replied, “What else would I
do?” I would add, “And where else would I have such
FUN?’
I stay in teaching because I love telling and hearing stories.
Schools are a swirl of narrative. Stories of triumph and failure,
sports, politics, romance, biography, mysteries. Stories from
all the students, the social workers, the mentors, the new teachers,
the administrators—everyone with a different point of view;
everyone trying to make sense of our world.
I would like to read a story that sometimes clarifies my days.
It goes like this:
A traveler through France encountered three laborers. When asked
what they were engaged in, The first replied, “I am hauling
rocks because I have a family to support and get only a few francs
a day for my work.”
The second said, “I am learning to carve stones, but it’s
hard, hard work.”
The third said, “I am building Chartres.”
What an interesting description of three workers, with three
different models of work: the drudge who worries about the salary,
the apprentice who complains, the visionary. How illuminating.
What nonsense. What a crock.
Teachers, the workers I know, do not divide into these tidy categories
of workers. All of us move back and forth among these positions
every day, sometimes every hour.
All three workers are right. The first one is correct to complain
about the pay. The Vatican will make money on Chartres for centuries,
and they could have paid a living wage. The first worker puts
the work in perspective. She worries about her family.
The second worker sees the task as artistic, but doesn’t
glamorize it. I like her best. This worker began by carving as
she was instructed, following other people’s plans, checking
the internet for stone-carving tips. She knows how hard the work
is, but she has moved beyond the skill of carving onto the stone,
to the artistic task of looking for the beautiful shape inside
the rough stone—as do all the great sculptors, and teachers.
The third laborer, like the third speaker in any tale, should
hold the truth. But she gets on my nerves. She is too perky, too
self-righteous. Concerns about working conditions are beneath
her. Worse, she’s too taken with herself. She says, “I
am building Chartres.” Obviously, it should be, ”We
are building Chartres.” No individual builds a cathedral
just as no one teacher educates a student. On the other hand,
she holds the larger view and can see past daily toil.
We identify with all three workers. We haul the rocks (IPR’s
were due today), we carve the stone, and on good days, we see
the Cathedral. We hold in our minds all roles at the same time:
we focus on the daily toil and put our work in perspective; we
learn our craft until we can move to art, and we hold the vision.
In this town, we are so, so blessed to have teams of people supporting
our work. Without their support, our lives would be less interesting
(no going to the arctic to study fungus), and our work would be
much harder (bad schools exhaust and mistreat their teachers).
We owe much of our success to the support of these teams of people,
who often volunteer: the Brookline Education Foundation, The PTO’s,
The School Committee, The 21st Century Fund. I do not say thank
you enough for helping us build Chartres. Thank you.
Much of the time, I’m not building Chartres; I can’t
even get the foundations laid. Let me give you two examples. I
once taught a class of new immigrants, the novel The Song of Solomon.
One boy’s response was, “That was the best book in
the world. Nothing will ever be as good. I’ve made a big
decision. I’m never going to read another novel ”
Another student asked me, as I collected books after two weeks
of teaching Hiroshima, “So, who dropped the bomb?”
“We did,” I said. “Who we?” “The
United States.” “Did many people get killed? ”
I started with the last question. We tore apart Boston Phone Book,
and plastered the pages on three walls of the classroom, floor
to ceiling. Every name represented a dead civilian. After we figured
out how many names on each page, the students saw that the walls
showed only 2/3 of the casualties.
All of us have stories of trying to get to the big idea, only
to find ourselves dumbstruck that foundation needs a lot more
concrete.
One year, based on the foundation laid by all of you, I saw the
whole Cathedral.
One September I had to be absent for the first four days of school
because my father died. I begged my department chair to let my
classes begin without me. She said, reasonably enough,“
They don’t even know you. it will take only one kid to say,
“she’s not here, let’s leave.” “True,
“I said, “but they have been educated in Brookline;
they might take responsibility for their learning if we give them
a chance.” She agreed to no substitute.
And I began to lug the rocks. I wrote on newsprint elaborate
syllabi, directions and lesson plans which I taped to the blackboard.
I made piles of attendance sheets, materials, books. I also left
a nine page memo which explained my expectation that should act
like adults.
When I returned, I slid into class, and couldn’t resist
saying to Diana Paquin, “Ok. I’m the one behind. Tell
me what you have done while I was gone. did you leave class?’
“Of course not,” she told me. “We can take care
of ourselves. We followed the syllabus and started the course.
We checked out the books, read the assignments, and filled out
your paperwork. Now, we’re discussing the book.” All
four of my classes were exactly where they were supposed to be.
I was thrilled. Those four days remain the best teaching of my
career—and I wasn’t even there.
The students weren’t just following directions. They had
thrown themselves into academic questions with enthusiasm. They
were arguing fiercely about central issues in the assigned literature.
They owned the intellectual task.
This triumph does not belong to me. In fact, I deserve barely
any credit, since my students had not even met me. But the parents,
the elementary and high school teachers and administrators and
secretaries and counselors and social workers who interacted with
these juniors and seniors before I did, all of you deserve the
credit. You taught them to believe that education is worthwhile
and even enjoyable. You taught them to take responsibility for
themselves, each other, and their education Congratulations to
you.
You create the Cathedral of Chartres. Congratulations.
Now, this sounds like the logical place to stop, but I haven't
mentioned an important truth. Notice that the three workers are
not building a shopping mall or a government building, but a Cathedral,
a holy place.
Here is a final truth. Education is sacred. Many of you literally
save lives. We all change lives. We offer students an intellectual
base. We insist on moral and civil behavior. We offer emotional
support. We act with love, which I define as wanting someone else's
growth.
This act of transforming lives is sacred work.
One year I put pictures of Sacred Places (from an old calendar)
on my bulletin board. A student took a Polaroid snapshot of our
classroom and added it to the pictures. Underneath, he wrote in
large letters, “Here, also.” When I saw it, I was
thrilled. I thought, “My god, they got it. This is what
I am trying to do: to show them that education is sacred.”
Then I took pictures of the pictures.
My parents and my teachers made learning sacred. I had an exceptional
high school education, where every day we had to record how we
learned the material. So, we thought of ourselves as learners.
I have tried to pass on that gift of how to learn to my own students.
“Here, I'll show you how to read difficult text, like Dante.”
Or, “You can use writing to find out what you really know
and want to know.” Or, “I'll teach you how to move
from specifics to abstractions.” I want my students to know
that they do not know everything, but they can learn anything.
My students want to think about Big Ideas, even if explained
in little words. I begin in September with reading Sendak's Where
the Wild Things Are, and acting out Plato's "Parable
of the Cave." I ask students about the journeys of their
lives, and how they plan to get out of Plato's Cave.
This week, my seniors are discussing how to say goodbye in healthy
ways to an institution, people, and a stage of their lives. Yesterday,
we read what poets say about loss and endings. To me, this week,
with my seniors, teaching feels sac red..
I am so grateful for this blessing in my life. Thank you, Brookline
Education Foundation. Thank you, Brookline Public Schools.
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