Category Archives: Teaching

Articles concerning the craft of teaching as well as general issues in education.

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Breaking Spring

Today is Wednesday, but the students are treating it like a Friday. For Black Forest Academy, Spring Break starts tomorrow, and it lasts for over two weeks. While many (including me when I first discovered this) may groan in resentful envy at a 17-day Spring Break, it has been this way for several years. Many of the students actually spend their first week of the break on mission trips to various countries. This year, student teams are preparing for excursions to Tanzania, Macedonia, Tajikistan, Greece and Burkina Faso.

However, unlike last year, it really does look and feel like spring outside. The sun is shining for the third day in a row. The temperature is up to sixty-four degrees today (in Fahrenheit – I still don’t know what that might be in Celsius, nor do I understand what kind of day people are describing when they say, “Hey, it’s s’posed to get up to 18 tomorrow.”) Nevertheless, in Fahrenheit or in Celsius, the birds are chirping and flitting from branch to stairwell banister to rooftop. The Kander, which flows through the heart of Kandern, ripples along, fed by a gradual thaw from the mountains. Students blow off any actual advanced study hall work and choose instead to lounge outside, soaking up the sun for the first time since last October.

And then there is me. I sit inside at my little teacher-prep desk, click-clacking out a blog post because I feel one is overdue (and it is). There’s a large window to my right. There is a sunbeam on the floor. My last class before the break starts in ten minutes. When I enter my classroom, my eyes will fall upon a stack of Poetry Project portfolios, analysis papers and a collection of Honors literature tests still in need of grading. After school today, I will change into more comfortable attire and head over to the gym where I will assist in the set-up for an international Christian educator’s conference hosted here at BFA. Later, I will man the “hospitality desk,” offering directions and advice to outsiders about how to navigate our tiny German campus. Most likely those portfolios and essays will be sitting in front of me at the table.

When I wander back to my classroom in … now seven minutes … it will not feel like Spring Break has begun. However, all I have to do is look outside and see overwhelming evidence to the contrary, at least in terms of the first word. And the first word is the one that holds lasting joy. The students may be all smiles today because of the second word, but I know that their budding feelings of freedom exist only because the sun is shining and the birds are chirping and the temperature has risen out of the Ice Age. Without “spring,” Spring Break is nothing more than a long, boring weekend.

So, let’s have one more literature class, and then let’s close the books (for now), loosen the tie (for now) and step out into the sunshine. Some Vitamin D will do us some good, even if the essays and the tests won’t leave us alone.

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Love in the Time of Swine Flu

Swine Flu.

Six months ago, it was just another fly-by-night disease with a funny animal name, following in the footsteps of such classics as Bird Flu and Monkey Pox.

Three months ago, it was a serious problem, but one that dwelled far away in the mystical land known as Somewhere Else.

Today, it is a mind-warping, logic-breaking, pain-in-the-curly-tail bastard of a disease, spawned from the putrid, unholy depths of the ninth circle of an apocalyptic lake of fire. I half-expect the next development in this living medical nightmare to include either flying monkeys in bell-hop outfits, or chain-rattling ghost pigs rising from some local farmer’s pig pen that was accidentally spread over an ancient Anglo-Saxon burial ground.

My school is seeing attendance in classes drop left and right as more and more students fall victim to the fevers, the coughs, the vomiting, and all the other wonderful things that this latest global catastrophe has to offer. It doesn’t help that the administration here is continuing to take the “let’s wait and see” approach even after having more than one confirmed case and a local doctor telling us that the school should be shut down. The humor in all this – or is it irony? – is that my wife, the Head Nurse at the school, is forced to remain at home this week and the next, this out of precaution because of her pregnancy. So she is out of the loop, unable to help. What is more, today I and several other teachers who have susceptible family members were asked to wear face masks and Latex gloves while working with students. Have you ever seen a dentist teach American Literature to smirking high school students? Had you been in one of my classes today, you would understand what such an absurdity might look like.

Right now, there is a lot that remains up in the air. The school might close, per the insistence of the Gesundheitsamt, one of Deutschland’s equivalents to the CDC. The school might remain open despite serious concerns. The school might mangle another week’s schedule by sending students to their dorms for the majority of next week, then calling them back for a Friday-Saturday catch-up. The school might be turned into the world’s first ham-from-humans processing plant. All I know is, I’ll most likely be at home, taking the “better safe than sorry” approach, watching movies with my wife and probably blogging more ridiculous wonderstuffs.

In the midst of all this, it is nice to know that love, affection, friendship and tenderness still exist. And when those four crazy cohorts are out to lunch, there remains the silly ritual of boys at Black Forest Academy creatively asking the girls to the upcoming Christmas Banquet. Below you can watch some of this awkward goofiness unfold in my very own classroom, as one of the members of my small group takes advantage of a poetry reading exercise to pop the question to his date. I told them I felt like Cupid, but really I feel like Cupid’s grouchy and “toof”-less Uncle Roy – the one who owns the ranch down the road from Mount Olympus. The one who is shaking his fist at the sky and cursing Zeus and his pals for making bacon so delicious. “If i’ weren’, we’d'n’ have no Swine Fwu ta bagin wif!”

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Latter Days

“I really think I’ll be okay / They’ve taken their toll, these latter days…”

So sings the hauntingly beautiful voice of Karen Berkquist, the mesmerizing vocal behind Over the Rhine, the songsmiths that most closely capture my moods of late. It is true, these “latter days” have been quite taxing, and now I sit in my little cubbyhole desk in the teachers’ offices, hunched with specific care over my computer so as not to further aggravate the lower back pain I am suffering today (that’s what three and a half hours of Monday night, blow-off-steam, adult basketball and volleyball will do to a body). Spread around me is a smattering of work I need to catch up on, but like any stretch of free time that comes as a blessing, I cannot help but squander a small portion of it by taking time to update the ol’ blog. The seventy or so essays by my 11th grade students will have to wait a little longer. My red pen is running out of ink anyway.

I have never been proud of the way I deal with stress. In college, I met stress as tranquil as a banshee with a migraine. I might never have come off as dapper as a Dr. Jekyll on a normal day, but I could certainly pass for a Mr. Hyde while engaged in combat against stress. I am still embarrassed by the manner in which I often conducted myself before such trivial stresses as set-up snags for the college coffeehouse I directed, or contending with the network printer when trying to print out the final copies of a class project. I would never be mistaken for a jolly, care-free individual. And, lately, I recognize the same mood swings as an easy temptation in which to fall.

“One thing at a time, World!” I want to scream. Even after two months in Germany, there are still so many things that are not properly established and still require so much help that I am losing track of what I need to do next. Recently, I found out the reason our Internet was not being set up by Telekom was not because they were slow, but because, according to their records, our account did not include it (forget about the fact that we asked for it and complained about it to them numerous times). Not only this, but Internet itself is impossible to receive at our farm apartment, way out in the cornfields, unless you have a satellite that can accept service being beamed from a nearby town. This costs A LOT of money. We have a friend working on this for us right now, but I am not getting my hopes up, and so Internet-usage has dwindled to the few and far between moments of free time Leigh and I can find during our busy days at school. Once we are at home amidst the corn, we feel cut off from the rest of society, and, in reality, this is not far from the truth. In addition to this major problem, we still have banking issues, shipping issues, and I just found out that Match.com is charging my credit card for services I never requested (until today, I have never even been to that ridiculous site). So, obviously, the stress is here. And still, to my right sits the folder full of essays and a stack of rubric sheets awaiting a grade.

The worst feeling that accompanies the rolling waves of stress (for they always come in crashing waves, rather than one gentle lap against the shore of my equilibrium) is that I often do not feel as if I have arrived, as far as life itself is concerned. There is always the dangerous thought that, eventually, everything will be squared away and I will be fully engaged in the living of a life that I have, until now, only been growing into. One day I will have time. One day everything will make sense. One day I will be the person I have always wanted to – or dreamed I would – be. 

Lies! It never ends. In one way or another, the waves do not stop. And it is not simply a missionary thing…

And so, I will plan to get to those essays tomorrow, to finish them and hand them back to the students before the week is over. I will wait to hear from my friend about the Internet mystery. I will bring the correct banking documents in order to work with another friend on our account troubles. I will hope some boxes arrive in the mail soon. I will keep taking Ibuprofen in hopes that my back pain will subside. I will keep thinking. I will keep breathing. And, in the midst of it all, I will pray for an awareness of the Presence. Perhaps the simple knowledge of Its nearness will comfort the stress, will still the raging waves.

May you come to an awareness of the Presence. May you not become captives of the thousand inevitable stresses of this life.

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Some images from the last few weeks…

 

Atop Hochblauen, overlooking Switzerland

Atop Hochblauen, overlooking Switzerland

 

Chillaxin' with Mark and Luke on Adam's balcony

Chillaxin in Riedlingin w/ Mark and Luke on Adam and Laura's balcony

 

Andy, Roy, and Meredith from The Office

Andy, Roy, and Meredith from The Office

 

Ryan, Roy, Kelly, Pam, Andy, Meredith, Jim, Angela, Dwight

From left to right: Ryan, Roy, Kelly, Pam, Andy, Meredith, Jim, Angela, and Dwight

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Teaching and Learning and Glimpsing

To be a teacher, an educator; to make a difference in the lives of those who sit before you, some rapt with attention with ready pens and note paper to spare, and others with sluggish eyes and drooping bodies not yet divorced from their beds despite having staggered into the classroom – this is a weighty thing. It was the early Church leader, James, who, in the Epistle attributed to him, writes, “Not many of you should presume yourselves teachers, for you know we will be judged with severity.”

This is day three of my new job, in this new school, in this new country with all its new rules, new policies, new routines, new grocery store layouts, and old, old history. I sit at my little desk during a quiet fifth period – a time I am attempting to set aside for reflection – a brief respite in the middle of a jam-packed day of instruction. The periods fly by, fifty minutes in length, as if in defiance of the amount of information the teachers would like to convey. And while the students are dedicated to hearing us out, they are, it seems, also as concerned with whether or not they need to lug in their heavy, thick spine textbooks everyday, and if the seating arrangement prepared for them on the first day of class is going to be upheld for the rest of the year.

It is a funny thing, an institution of learning. Life unfolds before my eyes in a myriad of ways every hour of every day. And I smile and I read with as much feeling as I can muster (for even I am fighting, at times, not to drag as those sleepy-headed students are) and I encourage these students to dig. I implore them to seek the Truth that lies underneath all of this literature and history and grammar, believing myself that, yes, there is indeed Truth underneath it all, flowing like a subterranean river behind the lines and paragraphs and pages of words we read.

Underneath us all, there is Something more. There is Truth beyond which we would be able to handle were it to suddenly unearth Itself and reveal Itself in the stark majesty and glory in which it is filled and encapsulated. May we come to sense it. May the soft flow of it resound in our ears. May the wind of it brush against our cheeks. May we, in time, catch a glimpse. On this side of heaven, that is all we need.