Closer to Fine

“So now you’re looking to dead poets for advice?” This was the message I got after I sent Meg a text containing a quote by Thoreau that essentially said ‘let’s teach kids real stuff and not the stupid stuff we keep insisting upon teaching them in school’. Obviously that is not verbatim but Thoreau is wordy and requires a good boil down of his prose. After a rocky start to the school year during which we educators, learners, and parents all plugged into the matrix at the same time (and crashed it), I can think of worse places than the Transcendentalist writers to look for advice. So, yes, I do take advice from dead people. What’s wrong with that?

Regardless of my deep-seated desire to be able to use the phrase “What Would Henry David Thoreau do?” in approaching all of life’s challenges, I am well aware of just how impractical that method would be. After spending a whole lot of time in nature as Thoreau would surely recommend, I confronted the reality of our education situation head on. Scared and befuddled, when the school bells rang, I hopped on all my Google Meets. I acted like a total goofball in front of a bunch of teens and have quietly prayed that they find my webcam quirkiness endearing and funny. Here’s hoping. As much as I think Thoreau had a point about what kids should be learning, I also firmly believe in the purpose I am serving as a foreign language educator. My students, my kids, are already learning to write poems that introduce themselves in Spanish. That has to have some merit. And wouldn’t HDT approve of teaching poetry in the first week? I think he would have.

The instability and turmoil of the last few months demands that we all commend ourselves for staying sane. Getting back to school is part of that sanity. Our country does not run on Dunkin’ like we New Englanders seem to think, it runs on the buzz of children and teachers joining forces for the sake of learning. It is what we humans do in order to become better at being...human. This pandemic has forced us teachers out of our comfort zones. As a result, we are reimagining and recrafting how and what we teach as Thoreau may have suggested we do. I have found myself to be far more focused on big picture stuff than on minutiae with the lessons I am curating. I ask myself why I want my students to learn something and decide if it is worthy of their time and mine. It’s kind of refreshing and reinvigorating. Is it perfect yet? No. Is everyone happy with how this is being done? No. Have I had ‘I want to tear my hair out’ moments? Yes. Am I scared? Absolutely. That’s why God invented brownie batter, right? 

Because the past couple weeks have been chock full of new routines and readjustments that no dead poet could help me with, I have looked to Thoreau in my personal life instead. This weekend, I did not plug my bleary eyes into the matrix, I went to the Berkshires and wandered a trail in Mohawk State Forest. I listened to the gentle gurgling of the Cold River. I thought about my grandmother who used to name every plant and flower we passed on our walks; I could have sworn she was there when a blue jay made its presence known on the river bank. Somehow I feel connected to the deep roots of trees and I know that sounds weird but I do. Refreshed, I plug in to the matrix again this week with a new Thoreau quote in mind: “This discipline, which we allow to be the end of life, should not be one thing in the schoolroom, and another in the street. We should seek to be fellow students with the pupil, and should learn of, as well as with him, if we would be most helpful to him.” Now that is dead poet advice worth taking.