music: Top Shelf- 12/3/2005, Boston, MA
Five years ago this week I woke up, packed all my worldly possessions into a U-Haul truck, and drove them from a barn-like yellow house on 276 George Street in Providence, RI to a funny-smelling yellow house in Jamaica Plain, MA. When I finally returned the U-Haul truck and that monumental day had ended, I can remember siting on the couch-come-cat scratch post in JP in complete stupifying shock. College had ended. The total distance spanned that day was probably less than 50 miles, but in more personal terms, that drive from Providence to Boston was an ocean crossing into a new and unfamiliar continent. Before the final semester of my senior year of college, I’d never really given much thought to what came after. Five years completely removed from such a rich personal pantheon, I realize that I’ve been subsisting on that strange new continent called adulthood long enough to stake a claim to it. This weekend marked the completion of my fifth year of life after college. And to commemorate such a herculean act of survival: an honorable invitation from the old homestead to come back and celebrate the passage of time with old friends.
Because of the manner in which things ended for most of the class of 2001, things were very open-ended. There were very few acknowledgements amongst the faithful of how the events of late May, 2001 would mark a very significant end to the what will prove to be one of the best experiences of our lives. There would, of course, be no going home again, because home was not as much a collection of buildings on campus as it was the collection of people who worked and learned and slept in those buildings. To have a critical mass of those people in that place once again was positive beyond all imagining. There were friends who I haven’t seen since our own graduation, people I’d largely taken for granted during our time in college, and having so many of them reunited in one place was a testament to what we had, as well as a reminder to me that I am a very lucky person to be able to contribute to that environment. I have never experienced so many inspiring and amazing people in such close proximity as I did in college.
This from my notebook on Satruday afternoon:We intersect with others’ lives and often take the time we share with them for granted. Being back here is a blast in the face of how much we share with others and how quicky and completely it can slip away. I’m sitting on Brown’s Main Green right now, on a bench next to Sayles Hall, looking at the graduation stage. Alumni of all ages and experiences walk past me, each reminded in their own way of a time they shared with others here and those experiences and people that defined four of the most incredible years of their lives. I miss what I had here now that I’m back in it, immersed in it. I’ve almost forgotten, and it is supremely bittersweet. Beautiful because of right now, this moment, this weekend; sad that the once brilliant intersection of my life with college has passed.
In a very palpable way this revisiting of the place that was my world, for better worse, allows me to let go of it a little more. Seeing this place, knowing that I can still look in from the outside (and that I really can only look in from the outside) and more importantly realizing that I still can connect with those who have left with me gives me some sense of finality. Brown was the reason why I moved East. This is the beginning of the end of my time here.
One of the highlights of commencement weekend is a highly ritualized and traditional procession that seniors, alumni, and faculty participate in. The procession inverts at one point as to allow you to acknowledge and applaud everybody else that is walking. It is an incredibly meaningful occassion, and above all else ties you into a very disperse-yet-strong community. For most of us seeing the head of the procession lead by what remains of the classes from the early 1900’s is an incredibly moving experience. Alumni are always welcome to participate in the procession, although it is only usually done when your class has a significant reunion anniversary. This year, despite the best of intentions, I did not walk. In its place I hauled to Middletown, CT to witness my younger sister participate in her commencement exercises. It was a beautiful and sympbolically appropriate way to wrap up the weekend to witness one of my family in exactly the same place I was five years ago: saying goodbye to a blissful world and expecting great things from the next, on the brink of a voyage to some unexplored continent. Reunions are for celebrating what was, and for that they are amazing and beautiful, but without starting something new from a weekend of reunion something is lost. Commencement is, after all, a beginning. For my sister, there definitely is a new beginning. And after 5 years of life out of college, perhaps there is one for me as well.
music: Paul Simon- Surprise
The past two weeks at school have been a torrent that surpassed even the biblical rains washing Boston clean of an unnatural winter. Things are picking up steam in preparation for the end of the school year, but most of the recent crunch has been due to my workload redoubling. The student teacher that I have had the fortune of working with this year finished her practicum, leaving me with the work that, in the end, is why the city of Boston pays me the big bucks.
I’ve never heard of a second-year teacher taking a student teacher. At first when I was asked if I would serve as a mentor teacher I declined because I was worried that I would have nothing to offer anyone as a mentor. I am still stumbling through the finer points of this profession, still splashing around just enough to keep my head above water most days. But I was asked again, and agreed. Don’t think of it as mentoring, I was told, think of it as co-teaching. Whatever. On the simplest level I was thankful to have someone in the building to talk with about curriculum. That was last summer, when this school year was largely theoretical.
The first semester of an internship is somewhat excruciating in that there is a lot of observing and note-taking and not a lot of front-of-room action. It’s difficult to be forced to crawl when you’re ready to walk. It was only two years ago that I was the one taking notes in the back of the room, getting restless, waiting to log enough observation hours to be allowed to actually do something. But now I was the one being watched, I was the subject of the observations and notes, and the target of all sorts of meta-reflective questions about pedagogy, grading systems, behavior management plans, and the like. I found something incredible in being a mentor here: in forcing me to be explicit about my decisions, thoughts, and resultant actions, it was actually helping me do a better job. Mentoring became less a matter of me disseminating the answers, and more a matter of me prompting the right questions. I believe that teaching is less about forcing conformity and more about fostering mental freedom, and as such of course mentoring another educator-to-be would not be about creating a clone of Missa Toss. So much of what comes out in the classroom is rooted in personality and style, and it’s ridiculous to try to bend someone to mimic my quirkiness. Instead, it’s better to guide another to find and embrace their own quirkiness, while helping them through some of the trickier obstacles in their formative months as educators.
Darwin teaches us how information is transmitted and refined over aeons by processes of biological evolution. Genes are effective in their mission, but they require a scope that tries any mortal’s patience and lifespan. Instead, Dawkins proposes, that cultural artifacts are subject to many of the same laws governing biological evolution, but with one significant difference: cultural evolution occurs at a greatly accellerated rate, and between people who are not biologically realted. And if you are the one who does the transmitting of information, you send a small piece of you with the information. If Darwin says you live on through your children, Dawkins would extend that to your students. And student teachers.
At camp we had a saying: the counselor from whom you learned the most as a leadership trainee was the one that “made” you. It was a big thing to have an LT acknowledge that you “made” them. Here was cultural evolution at its grandest, and at its most flattering. Last week I attended a congratulatory reception for this year’s batch of student teachers, and for a brief moment found myself in the company of my just-graduated student teacher on one side and my own mentor teacher from two years previous on the other. I think that in any line of work there is a cultural bloodline, but it is especially pronounced when you are in the business of promoting self-actualization. So now I’ve been apprentice, and I have taken an apprentice. It was not always smooth or easy, but in the end everything came together. The process of education has come full circle, and now I’m beginning to fully understand that beautifully paradoxical term “student teacher.”. I think my student teacher and I both benefitted incredibly this year. Now that her time with me is over, I am reeling. From the newly inherited workload, yes, but also from the somewhat knowledge that I’ve added my own link to the intellectual chain. And that’s really what this whole teaching business is all about.