Old Dog, New Tricks

I’m not now, nor have I ever been a gangster. And I’m certainly not ‘gangsta’ by any stretch of the imagination; though I have been known to bust a rhyme from time to time. But if I were ‘gangsta’ and lived the gangster life, I’d only be the guy who runs the dry cleaners as the ‘front’ for all the seedy things goin’ on in the back. I’d be the geek who actually knows all about pressing pants but nothing about laundering money. I’d be Sheldon, not Santino.

Sometimes as a teacher I feel pretty gangsta because, truth be told, I do have a front. It’s called my curriculum. While it is full of fascinating essential questions about our place in society and cool stuff about literature, metaphor, and character arcs my curriculum really is only a front. What I actually explore with my students every chance I get is what it means to live a good life.  You know, in the Socratic sense of the unexamined life and all that. Not that I am an expert on this, but I am pretty sure living a good life has something to do with being kind, reflecting carefully, laughing a lot, and rummaging around for the truth.

So while my students and I are grappling with grammar, playing with poetry or fumbling with the future, I seize every opportunity for us to talk about being human and what truly makes life worth living. We toss around important ideas like beauty, love, freedom, responsibility, and friendship so that when my students leave my classroom they have something more to take into their lives than just when to capitalize letters and why the Greeks were so dang cool.

I know it’s not very gangster, but it seems pretty ‘gangsta’ to me.

There’s a story about a mother who dragged her young son before Mahatma Gandhi and implored him to tell her child to give up sweets. ‘He eats too many. It’s not good for him!” she complained. Gandhi thought for a moment and asked the woman to return several days later. She hid her disappointment, bowed to Gandhi, and left.

After a long journey she returned several days later clutching her son’s hand. They bowed to Gandhi and he said, ‘Little brother, please, give up sweets. They are not good for you.’ The boy nodded. The mother, unable to contain herself, cried, ‘That’s it? That’s all you have to say? Why didn’t you just say that the first day and save me so much trouble?’

Gandhi smiled and said to her, ‘On the first day I was eating sweets. I could not ask your son to give them up until I was able to do so.’

I’ve read some amazing teacher and student blogs, and have come to see how valuable they can be as places of collection, reflection and learning. I’ve thought a great deal about getting started on blogs with my own students.  But I knew that before I could really convince my students- some of the smartest people I know- that blogs were so wonderful and valuable, I thought I better start one of my own.

I’ve been a little apprehensive about creating my own blog. I was excited by the prospect but I worried that I’d wouldn’t really know what to write. But I just had to go back and read some more of the amazing blogs out there written by students and teachers to realize that my blog is a place where I can explore my thoughts, grapple with questions, test out ideas and (this is the really cool part) connect with other thinkers. This is the kind of place- like school, but much bigger- that I want for my students. More than this, I want my students to have a place where they can share the work they’re proud of and keep for…well, as long as there are servers.

So, I will consider my blog officially launched. And now, though Ghandi would abstain, I’ll go celebrate with a cookie.