Just like a TV show

I wrote this well over a year ago, before the start of the COVID pandemic, to try to convey a sense of the craziness and utter chaos that can so easily envelop a class, even when you have two relatively experienced teachers in the room.  Looking back over it now, and having experienced 15 months of soulless drudgery, I will take this kind of day any time over Zoom classes and even over in-person instruction with masks, plexiglass, and other restrictions.  It’s not even close. 

Give me the madness again.  Please.

The bell rings for the end of lunch and the start of 5th period, which means it's time for one of my co-taught freshman English classes.  

Having taught upper level classes for the vast majority of my career, this past three years of co-teaching has been, as they say, a real eye opener and no mistake.  About half of the students in this class have some kind of legally required academic accommodations, yet it is a college prep class, so my co-teacher and I are constantly trying to balance rigor with accessibility.  This particular class has a number of students who are particularly challenging to manage.  One, who when I asked him to put his phone away launched into a string of obscenities, called me a passive aggressive asshole ("Well, you can be passive aggressive," said one student afterwards) and stormed out of the classroom, has thankfully been moved to a different program. 

Nonetheless, my co-teacher and I generally tend to laugh a lot in the class.  The kids are funny, good-humored, and generally fine, but the potential for complete degeneration and chaos is never too far below the surface. 

We usually start Mondays with Power Writing, eight minutes of sustained writing.  It's a nice routine and an easy way to get class started first thing in the week.  Today, for the first 4 or 5 minutes, all is calm.  Simon, who has severe ADHD and who is so work averse that he will take 5 minutes to extract a notebook and pencil from his backpack and do anything in his power to leave class to go to the bathroom or the nurse, is not in class, but otherwise things seem fairly normal.

5 minutes into class, Simon walks in, accompanied by the school nurse.  She beckons us outside.   "He is not going to make it through today," she says.  "He didn't take his meds."  

He’s not going to make it.  What on earth does that mean?  It sounds so...ominous.

Simon goes to his desk; he is almost vibrating with barely suppressed energy. The nurse has given him a sticky note with his plan for the next two hours.  Go to English.  Stay in English.  Ask for a pass to the APs office…. And so on.  I ask Simon three times to take out his notebook and start working.  He starts tapping his feet. Loudly.  Brittany, the girl who should have done honors English and has probably regretted her decision ever since, loudly asks Simon to stop tapping.  He stops.

I look up.  Barry, a student with autism who frequently plays the Russian national anthem loudly on his phone and who once dramatically and loudly called out, "Satan!" in the middle of class, is squinting, chin on his hands, looking as if he wants to sneeze.  I look at him, eyebrows quizzically raised.  He continues to squint.  My co-teacher barely suppresses a giggle.  The whole class eventually notices me looking at him, at which point he loudly apologizes, saying that he only got 3 hours' sleep last night.  General hilarity ensues while I go over to Barry and reassure him that all is good.  We are not reading Lord of the Flies today so he won't be making eye contact with his buddy Gary (I call him "Big G." ) and giggling at every word or phrase that might possibly be construed as sexual.  So I am already counting my blessings.

I hear a jangling noise.  Simon has started to shake some keys, bizarrely attached to a strap of his backpack.  I take them from him and zip them inside a compartment in his backpack, my patience starting to fray.  I am 90% sure that Simon is doing this for attention, and it's working.  No-one is writing now.  Simon starts making a clicking sound with his tongue. 

I am determined not to just send him down to the APs office.  I can't be bothered to go through all the steps necessary to refer him (exhaust all “Tier One” options, call home, fill out a form) and I am pretty sure sitting in the APs office is exactly what he wants to do and I am determined not to let him have his way.  It's petty and small-minded, I know, but I have to get some kind of victory from these interactions. 

So I send Simon outside.  I ask him to wait out there, and as the door closes he slips the strap with the keys on it into the gap so that when the door shuts, there are his keys, jingling on the end of a strap in the classroom.   At this point, my co-teacher isn’t even pretending to put on her “we are not amused” face; I know that she finds this absolutely hilarious.  I pick up a chair, take it outside, come back, pick up a desk and start moving towards the door with that, too.  The students, realizing what I am doing, burst into applause.  Simon isn’t exactly Mr. Popular.  There isn't the slightest attempt at even a pretense at doing work.  

As I open the door, hauling the cumbersome desk, I almost walk straight into an occupational  therapist, who wants to know if "it's a good time" to pull Gary out for some OT.  "No, it is jolly well not a good time to take him!" ...is what I want to say, but I don't.   Instead, I place the desk and chair in the corridor, tell Simon to sit down and ask the therapist if she wants to go in and get Gary, or if she wants me to get him for her.  She looks at me, looks at Simon--he grins, maniacally--and glances warily into the classroom, where everyone is watching the three of us outside.  She can’t be older than 23 and she could easily pass for 16.  I know that she has no intention of going into the classroom. It might as well be a lions’ den.  I ask Gary to join us outside, and despite the fact that he has had this school-provided service once a week for several years, he looks both clueless and terrified as they depart.

 

I give Simon his work, tell him he can tap and jangle all he wants now, turn on my heel, and, leaving him in the corridor, stalk back into the classroom.

You have probably realized what happens next, and a split second later, so do I.  Too late.

Sure enough, almost immediately, a deafening racket emanates from the corridor.  Simon is not just tapping; he is stamping.  I try to ignore it, but all the kids can hear it.  I tell them not to worry, that he'll get bored soon, but the stamping on the concrete floor echoes down the corridor.  

The phone rings.  This is my and my co-teacher's trigger point.  We are constantly told that instructional time is valuable and that we are to make the most of all our class time.  Obviously, this class period so far has been the epitome of quality instruction.  Needless interruptions, then, are very annoying indeed, so I pick up the phone and tell the speaker that no, you cannot speak to my co-teacher because she's, you know, TEACHING.  (I told you I was passive-aggressive.)  Actually, she’s at the back of the classroom, trying to refocus students while simultaneously trying not to laugh out loud at Simon’s antics.

Within a minute there's a knock at the door.  Now, I really want to throw something, and it is everything I can do to maintain a professional demeanour as I leave my co-teacher to deal with the rapidly unraveling class. I open the door. A yellow-jacketed campus supervisor is standing there, a severe look on her face.  Simon sits to the side, puppy-like in his mingled satisfaction and expectancy at what might happen next.   

“We’re getting complaints from other teachers about the noise,” says the supervisor.  At that point, I remember Simon’s sticky note from the nurse.  Ask for a pass to the AP’s office.

But that's exactly what he wants, I remember. I can't give in now. You'd think that this would be the cue for a titanic struggle between expediency and pride. Not any more: my pride is shredded. Simon has broken me.

“You know what,” I venture, “can you take Simon down to the AP’s office for me?”  

The supervisor looks doubtful, but she nods her assent.

As Simon packs up his things, I breathe a sigh of relief, turn to go back into the classroom, and almost collide with Barry, who is standing uncomfortably close behind me, backpack clutched to his chest.

“Uh, I’m leaving,” he blurts out.  I look over his shoulder into the classroom, where there is loud hum of laughter, comments, and conversation.  It’s not exactly the quiet, structured environment Barry needs, and he does have an "anytime pass" to his case manager’s classroom, which basically functions as a homeroom for him.

“Sure,” I reply. “That sounds…”

But Barry has already fled.

Our much-vaunted Power Writing is in tatters; most of the students have written a couple of lines at most.  I catch my co-teacher’s eye and we both agree: wrap it up and move on.  It’s over.

Charlie, another one of those really smart but generally underperforming kids, is sitting at the back with a smile lighting up his face.  I want to apologize to him, to the class, for what has just transpired.  Instead, he turns to my co-teacher, who is standing nearby.

“I love this class,” he says.  “It’s just like a TV show.”

Two teachers, 28 years of experience between us, and this is what we have been reduced to: entertainment.  Luckily, I have recently learned that my ego and even my dignity are not the most important things when it comes to teaching.

But these are the days we remember.  And fondly, too.

These are also the days our students remember.  I recently got an email from Brittany, the student who probably should have been in an honors class.  I had asked her how distance learning was going and she wrote this: I would do anything to go back to a day in your class, even with Barry's AirPods he wouldn't ever take out, and Simon’s constant pencil tapping. I miss the class environment so much. 

We reach students in the weirdest ways, I guess, and it’s one of the great mysteries of teaching: you never know how or when you’re going to impact a student, and quite often, it’s in a very unexpected or unintentional way.

In August, my co-teacher and I will start our 5th year together.  After the hell of distance learning, we are both ready for more chaos, laughter, and quality material for our TV show. 

The Reality of Facilitating Distance Learning

Well, week two of distance learning is in the (virtual) books, and I've got some time to dispassionately reflect on how it's gone, especially now that I've purged myself of the angst and negativity I felt during the first week.

To be honest, so far, the results have been—on the surface at least—encouraging. Participation and work completion isn't dire, although it's certainly worse than normal, and the general feedback is positive.  I'm in a bit of a routine now and I can see some patterns emerging that require a little more objectivity —not ranting —to analyse. Let's say I have a more well-rounded perspective. Here's what I have come to understand:

It still sucks. Perhaps even more than it did a week ago.

A month or so ago, when it became clear that distance learning was going to be the way forward, I smugly went over a litany of reasons why this episode would make us appreciate the value of public schools. I envisioned articles, Facebook posts, memes, and maybe even a politician or two lauding the amazing work public school teachers do because it's well nigh impossible for the average family to educate their children at home. I imagined emails, public recognition, free Starbucks for teachers, maybe even a parade or two.

What I've come to realize is that we're not even ready to think about this, although perhaps I secretly wish people would. Part of it is that most of us are either in survival mode or hibernation mode and can think of nothing else. But the other part of it is that what we are doing is not actually distance learning as education experts and pedagogical gurus understand it. What we are doing will not be used as a future blueprint for how teachers can effectively develop our students, academically, physically, socially, and emotionally without being in the classroom. Not even close.

What we are doing is emergency distance learning, and that's completely different.

On one hand we are trying to triage—and this is not a hyperbole—a potential educational catastrophe. We are desperately trying to do whatever it takes to keep students engaged in some form of the educational process at a time of year when many teachers feel it all starts to come together. Most of these kids cannot afford to switch their brains off between March and late August. Every year, there are students who—despite the best efforts of teachers—fall through the cracks. It's the nature of the system. Since emergency distance learning began, those cracks have become crevasses—picture the kind Bear Grylls likes to explore— and I am already seeing the consequences, and I can't overstate how heavily this responsibility is weighing on me.

At the same time, we are being asked to do pedagogically sound distance learning. My administration has, on the whole, been supportive, understanding, and utterly reasonable in what they're asking us to do. But now we are being asked to address essential skills, make our instructions as succinct as possible, gather data, and ensure that we are on the same page as our colleagues. I am working at least 10 hours per day just trying to ensure students have meaningful engagement with me and my subject. Anything more complex or coordinated might just make my brain explode.

A Wordle I made a couple of years ago based on a conversation I had with some new teachers on assessment.  It struck me that I've used hardly any of these words in the last two weeks.

The best analogy I can give is this: in this situation I'm an ER doctor and a nutritionist. At the same time. They're both connected to keeping people healthy, but they have completely different roles and sets of skills. An ER doctor isn't going to give you advice about developing good eating habits when he's trying to give you stitches for a gash in your head.

There are the things in my job that I am contractually obliged to do. There are the things that I know I must do if I am to succeed at my primary job, which is to ensure my students learn the skills and habits of mind necessary to meet whatever standard is required of them. To go back to the analogy, that's where I'm the nutritionist. I'm trained for this. I'm an expert in this field. As I have become a better teacher, the time required to do this has gradually decreased, but not by much because I don't use the same material or teach the same classes year after year.

At the same time, time spent on things that I am not contractually obliged to do -- let's call it things that I feel morally obliged to do -- has increased dramatically. Additionally, these are things that I am not actually an expert in: counseling, trauma, suicide prevention, coaching, motivation, conflict resolution. This my ER doctor role. I've had a little bit of training in these things, but not much. Nonetheless, my emotional bandwidth has been increasingly devoted to this aspect of the job.

Emergency distance learning has increased the stakes in and the time spent working on both realms of my job -- contractual and moral -- and I am really struggling to do either. I know I cannot do both.

To be honest -- and let's persist with the imperfect analogy here -- I have been increasingly more of an ER doctor ever since I realized the mental health calamity that our youth are facing. This awakening has been accelerated and clarified by my opening up about my own mental health struggles and by my teaching of a much more vulnerable population of students. That was long before March 13th.

I am not an expert on trauma, but I do know that it impacts the same area of the brain that learning uses. I also know from experience that a student whose social and emotional needs are not being met is not going to be able to learn. So issues like depression, divorce, sexuality, and abuse force their way into my consciousness because they prevent me from fulfilling my contractual obligations to the best of my ability.

But helping kids navigate their school day and creating an environment where they can learn or at least feel secure when everything around them feels as if it's collapsing requires physical presence. Dozens of my students are struggling, and now I can't see them. So now the focus is on reaching out and trying to engage those students in some meaningful way so that I can check in with them. It's not even learning at this point.

I am working so hard just to keep them engaged because if they're engaged, I keep telling myself, then maybe they'll learn or maybe they'll at least "show up" on the days they'd otherwise skip. And if they do that, then maybe they'll not be so far behind when they come back to school. 

I am banking on the capital that I've built up in my students during the year by showing myself to be someone who cares and who knows what he's talking about -- and let's face it, there are times when I have to fake both -- to keep the students motivated and willing to engage. That somehow their lives will be better if they log into Google Classroom every morning. That they would do it out of respect for my wishes and efforts.  I know some are doing precisely this, and it means the world to me.

My co-teacher and I (we teach 9th grade college prep English classes in which over 40% of the students have some form of learning disability or legally required accommodation) have talked about this.  The little interaction students have with us during our Google Meets is great for them.  It's healthy, educational, meaningful participation in something useful.  It's not great for us.  We end the meet feeling down, discouraged, and missing our students.  Most of the time, we spend time sharing our grave concerns about individual students whose educational needs are not being met.

I will end this with just a small example.  During Friday's Google Meet, one of the students -- let's call him Lorenzo -- was confused on the directions.  He needed several explanations, re-directs, and reminders before he was able to do something that we have been doing every other week for the entire school year.  Lorenzo does not have a diagnosed learning disorder.  He is just a regular kid who has problems reading and following directions.  

Reading directions and asking questions: it seems like such a small thing, but we have dozens of Lorenzos who need this kind of intervention multiple times every single day and who, unlike Lorenzo, lack the motivation or conviction to ask for help, either because they don't know that they don't understand or because they don't care enough to understand since they have other, more important things to worry about.

And those tasked with solving this are people like me, sitting in my bedroom at a makeshift desk and armed with nothing more than a laptop and a moral imperative.  

Yeah, it sucks. 

I know I should be grateful, but this isn't what I signed up for

Before you read this, a warning. This will come across as selfish, self-indulgent, and self-pitying, and any other adjective you can think of that starts with "self" -- except selfless. Apologies.

OK, now that's out of the way, here comes the rant...

Yesterday was the "first day back". The first day with students engaged in distance learning, a phrase that, truthfully, I had never heard a month ago. The first day seeing the faces of students I had not seen since March 13. The first day sitting at my makeshift desk in my bedroom, going "live" with my students. And to be honest, in many ways, it felt like the first day of school: I was nervous, I was sleep-deprived, and I was underprepared.

My first class was at 8:30, and although I had worked most of Monday afternoon and evening, I still needed a couple of hours in the morning to frantically record those last few screencasts and post them on Google Classroom. It felt a little bit like preparing for having a substitute teacher.

For those of you who are not teachers, it is important to understand that preparing for a sub, preparing for when you are not going to be in the classroom -- which is exactly what I was preparing for -- takes far longer than planning for a normal lesson. Trade secret: this is the reason why so many teachers, myself included, only take sick days when they are at death's door. It is too much effort to take a couple of hours to write those sub plans, make the copies, and ensure the directions are simple enough to be understood by an 8 year old. Just dose yourself up and go to work so you don't lose a day of instruction.

Anyway, that's what it felt like. The instructions had to be perfect and the links all had to work. There was a video on Google Meet etiquette that I needed to make. I know there is so much information out there to help, but, trust me, we have been overwhelmed with information -- dozens and dozens of emails touting strategies, training, links to webinars, resources, blogs -- to the extent that I can't handle it anymore. In that sense, I feel like a first year teacher again.

A first year teacher making sub plans. Great.

Oh, and did I mention that I have no way to make the students do the work I set them?

On the bright side, at least I'm not going to get a snotty note from the sub about how the instructions were too complex and how the kids spent too much time on their phones.

To their credit, most of my students were actually "in class". They watched the screencasts, attended the Google Meet, and waved dutifully at me and answered the basic questions I threw at them. I thought it would be energizing and uplifting to see them all again, but something was missing.

On the plus side, my workspace is tidier than it's ever been.

It was physical presence.

I couldn't high five anyone. I couldn't catch someone's eye and say hi. I wanted to reach out and connect but I didn't know how. Each class over the course of the year establishes its own routine: the same kids arrive first, the same kids rush up to me to spill the latest tea or rant about their science teacher, and I greet the same kids in pretty much the same way every single day.

These are the myriad small moments that add up to a genuine relationship, and they are impossible to generate in a Google Meet with 36 students. Not having this made me feel powerless: I don't see a way to establish the kind of classroom culture I know I am good at fostering. Sure, I made a cute Flipgrid assignment but that actually made things worse because now they were speaking to me individually in their videos but I couldn't respond in real time.

And if classroom culture and authentic connection is important for teachers, imagine what it means to students. That's another post for another time, though. It's all about me today. I told you this was going to be self-indulgent.

These are kids whom, until March 13th, I had seen for 5 hours per week since August and -- there's no other way to say this -- I love them. They are the reason I do what I do. It was a very strange rush of emotions as the familiar faces popped up on the screen. I feel like I've already had to say goodbye to these kids and seeing them again made me realise exactly what this pandemic has cost me. And, truth be told, it hurt. In eight weeks I'll have to say goodbye again, but who knows whether there will be any semblance of a connection at that point.

A case in point: at the beginning of the break, over a month ago, I told one of my classes I didn't want them to do anything except read. As I watched their Flipgrid videos and looked at their faces in the Google Meet, it became patently clear that they'd done absolutely no reading of note. Despite my pleas in the various videos and letters I'd sent out them and their parents, urging them that they'd be losing valuable opportunities to improve the one thing that will help them in so many ways, it all fell on deaf ears. I felt so discouraged, especially since I knew that I'd be able to hold them accountable if they were physically in class with me.

And, moving forward, I don't even know if the kids are going to get anything out of this at all. They don't have to do any of the work (see my previous post for an explanation), they are not especially cognizant of this moment (hardly surprising, I suppose, since they're teenagers), and now they're dealing with a teacher who is basically lost.

Of course I also miss my colleagues, and I suspect I'll feel their absence more keenly as the workload gets more intense and the frustration and exhaustion rises. More than anything, we are each other's support system. I spoke to one of my colleagues this afternoon and she was already in tears. She is fed up of being alone in lockdown and today, although providing her with an opportunity to connect with students she hadn't seen in a while, merely reinforced that reality.

By now, I am totally aware that I am being self-indulgent and ungrateful, so I'm going to shut up in a minute. I don't want to come across as selfish. After all, I have a job. I'm healthy, and so is everyone in my family. We has enough food, good wifi, and a decent supply of toilet paper. I am not suffering like so many people. This is our new, albeit (hopefully) temporary, reality. I also know this will get better; it was only the first day, after all.

But as I fell into bed, exhausted and brain still whirring -- it actually hurt to close my eyes, yet another new sensation -- I could only come to one conclusion. I'm either going to hate being an online teacher or I'm going to be a terrible one, which in education is essentially the same thing. "Doing what I do" now looks totally different, and I feel cheated. Worse still, the kids are being cheated, and I'm not sure they even realise it.

Rant over. Time to get back to work.

"Coronabreak" has forced me to admit that I need my students more than they need me

It's been, to put it mildly, a strange time to be a teacher.

On March 13, I left school weighed down, both by the massive pile of grading in my backpack and by the uncertainty about the future. On April 13, we will start up again. The grading will be electronic, and probably considerably less, but the uncertainty is still very much there. What will class look like? How will I connect with students? How do I reach those who are unable or unwilling to engage in distance learning? How do I have video calls without children or piles of laundry embarrassing me in the background?  And, most importantly, can I do all this while still in my pyjamas?

Plenty to do during the "break".

A frustration has been that at our site at least, teachers have been moving a lot quicker than the district, which has been moving quicker than the county, which has been moving quicker than the state, which has been...You get the picture.  Finally, though, there seems to be some clarity to the plan moving forward, although what that will really look like on a day to day basis is anyone's guess.

One of the initiatives our district has put in place during this time of distance learning is a "do no harm" policy when it comes to grades. Any work students do during this time period can only help their overall grade in the class. It cannot lower it. When I consider the difficulties and stressors faced by many of our students at home, it makes sense. Being at school levels the playing field somewhat, mitigating some -- but certainly not all -- of the impact that children's very different home experiences have on their education.

This, however, was not my initial response to the policy. Like many teachers, I was deeply skeptical. A student who had an A on March 13 is now guaranteed that A at the end of the semester and has no obligation to do any work whatsoever. My mind reeled with the change: the traditional carrot and stick approach is now all carrots. And who wants carrots when you can have cake?

Of course, there were the platitudes from administrators about focusing on the learning and not the points. You come and teach my class, I wanted to say, before essentially preparing to present the same argument to my students.

As I hosted a Google Meet for my AP Literature students last week, I explained the new policy. And as I did so, I suddenly felt powerless. So much of the authority I wield as a teacher lies in the fact that students have to be there and that I have the power to impact their futures with my assignments and assessments. When I think about students who fail my class, the one trait they all have in common is that those things do not motivate them. These, it is no coincidence, are also the students who present the biggest behavioral problems.

So that was my first "gut check": my power to mandate and enforce has vanished. I will now have to rely on my ability to appeal to students' intrinsic motivation. And there are many strong arguments for continuing to learn when the rewards and consequences are not immediately obvious. I have been challenging my students in the lead up to this next Monday -- when we "go back to school" -- to embrace this unprecedented moment when they can learn without fear of failure.

My own fear of failure, however, looms large whenever I sit down at my makeshift workstation in my bedroom. During the three week break only about 30 of my 80 AP Lit students participated in my Google Meet readings of Hamlet; a handful reached out via email to ask what they could do to increase their grades, and still fewer listened to the podcasts I made every day.  If only 50% of my AP students, who have huge exams coming up in May, were engaged during this time, it doesn't augur well for my other classes.

The truth is, I want my students to want to participate in my activities. I'm insecure. My ego needs massaging. Put it any way you want: I take it personally when students don't do my work. I feel like a failure as a teacher when I realise that the only reason students are doing my work is because they have to. Sure, they -- mostly -- enjoy my class. They appreciate my attempts to meaningfully connect with them. But what do those smiling faces, kind words, and fun banter count for when it's no longer mandatory? I pour a lot of myself into my classes and my students, but I worry that they're only doing it for the grades and not for the meaningful interaction. Who am I kidding? They're high schoolers: of course they're doing it for the grades! That's the system's fault, and I am an integral, complicit part of that system.

Worse still, I am coming to the realization that many of my students don't actually need me at all. My AP students, for example, are talented kids, many of whom are much smarter than I am. They don't really even need me to prepare them for this year's truncated AP test. 45 minutes to write an essay on a prose passage? They have the whole internet at their disposal and 5 weeks to prepare. I was watching an AP Lit review webinar this morning. There are going to be about 25 of these daily lessons. They don't need me at all!

Yes, I know that there are a lot of my students, particularly my freshmen with special needs, whom the federal government has spectacularly and unforgivably tried to claim are no longer our responsibility, that desperately need guidance. They don't do their work a lot of the time. Those classes are often chaotic and very difficult to teach effectively. I know for sure many of them will see words like "optional" and see the writing on the wall. That will lead to a different kind of sadness: the sadness of seeing young people wasting their opportunity and not valuing their free public education.

One of the perks of being a teacher is the feeling of fulfillment that comes with knowing you're making a difference. I would love to claim that it it's a pure, noble, altruistic feeling, but to be perfectly honest, it's also a massive ego boost. And now that's gone, too.

I also think that one of things that makes me a decent teacher is the ability to connect with students. I do make an effort. I do care. It's an emotionally exhausting but wonderfully rewarding aspect of my life and it's why graduation is such an emotional occasion for me. It's also why it takes me several days to decompress after the end of the school year. I think it's because I'm grieving. And that grieving process has already started.  I really miss my students, even the knuckleheads. Especially the knuckleheads.

It's been hard to come to terms with this truth, let alone admit it, but my students don't need me anywhere near as much as I need them.

Literature is life, and we're all going to die.

When my AP Literature students walk into my classroom at the beginning of the school year, I am aware that I need to try to change the way they think about literature in a number of ways.  I've given this speech—or a variation of it—to my AP Literature students early in the school year for the last two years, and, in preparation for the start of this new semester, I thought I'd write it out in full.  I usually get some horrified looks from my students as my monologue unfolds, but before I start my rant, I ask them to consider the phrase "Literature is Life" and discuss with their table partners what they think it means.

How many of you noticed that the literature you read in high school tends to have sad endings?  Have you ever wondered why that is? Are your teachers trying to depress you? Do they take pleasure in ruining your faith in mankind?  Maybe they are trying to prove Wesley's quip in the Princess Bride: "Life is pain...Anyone who says otherwise is selling something."

It actually comes back to the phrase we talked about earlier: "Literature is life".  I want you to say it with heavy emphasis on the second word. 

Literature is life.

Literature is life just as two plus two is four.  Literature is representative of life. It reflects life.  It is a snapshot of life. Hamlet says that the purpose of drama is "to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature".  Its purpose is to illuminate the human experience. And other than being born, every human shares one universal experience.  Dying.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but one of the reasons that there are so few happy endings to novels, stories, and plays is that there aren't really any happy endings in life.  We all die. In other words, if books worth studying (studying, not just reading) are meant to teach us about what it means to be human, then they are being disingenuous when they claim, "And they lived happily ever after."  "Messily ever after," perhaps. "In seasons marked by both joy and grief for the rest of their days," perhaps. But regardless of how we live, we will one day stop breathing, and die, our bodies decaying under the ground or reduced to ashes in a furnace.

If literature is supposed to help us understand the human experience, then it has to include death, doesn't it?  Just as the love of Romeo and Juliet is made more dramatic set in a society torn apart by hate, the writer who wants to convey the majesty and aching beauty of life must juxtapose it with its counterpart: death.

In many ways, though, death is not just the biological reality of this world.  In literary tradition, going all the way back to the story of Adam and Eve, death is connected with and even created by human foolishness.  It is the ultimate penalty for stupidity, for sin, for vice. And so literature becomes, as much as anything, the story of mankind's folly. In East of Eden, John Steinbeck claims that there is only one story, and that "all novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves between good and evil".

We cannot escape this reality, for if we are honest, we live it every single day.  That is why we shouldn't read to escape the real world; rather, we should read to immerse ourselves in it and learn more about it.  And we can't learn about life if we insist on happy endings, on characters who are like us, on people we understand immediately. There is beauty, however tragic it may be, in our recognition of another human's struggles against his own frailties.  More than that, there is deep empathy gained when we see ourselves in someone who initially seems foreign and incomprehensible. So although many of you cannot immediately understand the hubris of Okonkwo, the narcissism of Hamlet, or the aloofness of Mr. Darcy, when you remember that these characters are simply part of a great human tradition—as you yourselves are—of choosing folly over wisdom, the text becomes instantly more accessible.  These are characters unlike anyone you know in person. But they are human, and how wonderful it is to know that! And, yes, they are fictitious, but it doesn't mean we can't learn from them. So we need realism, for it is only in realism that we can see the world for what it is: broken and messy.

A hastily made list of the works of literature I teach or that I've taught in the past.  I think it speaks for itself!

Now, this does not mean that literature has to be depressing, for we know that so much of life is glorious and beautiful.  We are not living, to quote Switchfoot, "in the world of if onlys, stretched tight in between our birth and our graves". For a start, while literature may reflect our lives, it does not have to define them.  I think that there are actually very few stories that fail to offer hope. Our mistake is, I think, in always looking at the ending. If we measured our lives by how they end, then we are all, by definition, unsuccessful, because we ultimately fail at living!  But scattered throughout the pages of all literature—and our lives—are those transcendent, transformative moments where good rises out of bad. Redemption coming out of suffering, forgiveness when it isn't deserved, power in weakness, and victory in defeat. That's why we read.   These are universal traits of the human spirit. Of course, the most memorable and beautiful stories often have these moments at the end, but the reality is that we can find them anywhere in good books. Most significantly, though, while there is plenty of literature that celebrates the triumph of the human spirit, we read, not because we have escaped foolishness through our moments of glory, but because we can only find true glory through, after, learning from, or even in the very midst of our moments of foolishness.  Or, as one of my students put it, "We read because humans have been fools for thousands of years."

I think there is one other thing that literature offers us.  Beauty. You may not see this in all literature, just as you may not see beauty in all aspects of life, but both life and literature shine a light on things—like sacrificial love—that sometimes make no sense in this world.  We can't put our finger on it, but there are things we can never explain about literature. C.S. Lewis suggests that beauty is a mere reflection of something greater: "the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited".   It is why it is a travesty to claim that Erich Maria Remarque's masterpiece, All Quiet on the Western Front, merely teaches us that war is bad and that it takes away soldiers' humanity.  To reduce the meaning of that novel to a clean, precise phrase—which is, unfortunately, what I will be trying to teach you to do in order to pass the AP Literature exam—is to merely look at it scientifically, splitting it up into all its component parts.  And when we write about literature, we can't really avoid this. But perhaps I can convince you, as you read and discuss, to linger over the magic of words and the way they stir our souls in ways we can't accurately express.

So as you journey through the world of Shakespeare, Achebe, Bradbury, Austen, Ibsen, Chopin, and Baldwin, I hope you will discover the sometimes paradoxical truths that these writers illuminate and embrace the fragile, ephemeral, complicated existence we all share, whether you like it or not.

I, Claudius?

At the end of this past school year, my brain addled by the almost 1,000 AP Literature essays I had read during second semester, I assigned my students one final — but slightly different — piece of writing. I asked them to write about which character from Shakespeare’s Hamlet resonated with them personally and why.

I think the sign of a good essay prompt is that it tempts even the teacher to write. And so it tempted me. Look, it had been a long school year; writing an essay was the last thing I wanted to do. But if you’ve ever read, seen, or experienced the tale of the Danish prince, you will probably understand my compulsion to write. The play delves so deeply into the human experience that if we interact authentically with it in any way, some form of response is necessary.

So what follows was initially designed to be an exemplar essay that I could use for my students next year—hence the citations — so the tone may seem a little un-bloggy, if that makes sense.

Humans are designed to live in community. Whether you hold the view that the traditional, nuclear family is best, or you see benefit in other, non-traditional family arrangements, it’s easy to see that humans thrive when they are in supportive, loving, and united communities. The antithesis of living in community is living in isolation. Isolation robs humans of the empathy that contact with others provides. It traps people inside their own minds. Most of all, it deprives us of essential support systems that even the strongest among us needs. Perhaps the most dangerous form of isolation is when it afflicts those who seem to live in (or have convinced you that they are part of) a healthy community. William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, is full of characters who appear to the outside world to be in a thriving community yet live in isolation and suffer its pernicious consequences. Gertrude, bereft of her first husband, is shunned by her own son and cannot be honest with her new husband. Ophelia, without the guidance of her absent older brother, is shamelessly used by her father and dies broken and alone. Hamlet, of course, is the first to show the effects of isolation. For him, Denmark certainly is “a prison” (II.2.262), but it is the twin monsters of grief and mistrust that greedily devour any meaningful connection he has with other people. Much as I see myself in Hamlet — that’s a story for another day — it is Claudius and his relationship with isolation that fascinates me. In not only suffering from but also in actively fomenting his own isolation, the usurping King of Denmark showcases our — and my own — tendency to shut ourselves off from others. The cost of this is simple but devastating; it is nothing less than our humanity.

Claudius has spent time curating the perfect image of a king: he is a shrewd diplomat, an effective ruler, a loving husband, and an apparently indulging step-father.   A closer look at his actions, however, would suggest otherwise.  We, of course, find out quickly that he murdered the previous King Hamlet — his brother — and then hastily married Gertrude, his former sister-in-law.  His villainy is clear, but I think it is intentionally maintained and increased by a lack of real intimacy with others.  Even when he refers to himself in the first person plural (the “royal we”), as he does throughout the play, it creates a false sense of togetherness. “We” and “us” suggests connectivity and communal decision making, but nothing could be further from the truth; at the heart of all Claudius does lies the one thing most humans crave: control. Claudius’ court is one of surveillance and spying, where “madness in great ones must not unwatched go” (III.1.202), where the watchmen can only "whisper" (I.1.91) their theories for why they seem to be in a state of war, and where he and Polonius, "lawful espials,...see[ing] unseen" (III.1.35-36), observe Hamlet's interactions with others.  This all serves to provide the King with information, but it also ensures that he protects himself from unwanted intimacy. Or any intimacy, for that matter.  Polonius does all his dirty work for him and passes on the "tea" so that Claudius can stay informed.  In the same way, I often rely on my wife to have those conversations with friends, the kids, even my own family members and then relay that information to me.  It's easy, clean, and the emotion greatly diminished now that it's a second-hand account.  I'm up to date but not really involved.  Facebook — when I was active on it — was the perfect way to do this: people giving you permission access to their intimate moments, albeit perfectly curated ones, without really making any of the kinds of meaningful connections that make life both rich and messy.

As a side note, it is perhaps worth pointing out that Claudius actually perpetuates isolation in others, even as he criticizes it. As Hamlet “persever[s] in obstinate condolement” in mourning for his late father, Claudius castigates him, calling it “unmanly grief” and accusing Hamlet of having “a heart unfortified” (I.2.96-100), and insisting that he stays with his family in Denmark "in the cheer and comfort of [his] eye" (120).  Claudius's inability to appreciate — itself a byproduct of his lack of emotional connection with his new stepson — the mechanics of grief merely deepens Hamlet’s own isolation.  To many, Claudius is simply saying the wrong thing, but his words are indicative of the real damage we can do when we attempt to help those who are suffering.  When my wife's brother died suddenly in 2005, I didn't know what to say, even to my wife or my in-laws.  My clumsy attempts at condolence were no better than Claudius's, and they exposed my lack of real intimacy in those relationships at that time and forced my wife into her own isolation of grief.  It was a dark period in our marriage.

As a Christian, I am usually comforted by the knowledge that God is with me and that He is the ultimate protector and comforter.  The times when I have felt separated from God have led to the most profound feelings of remoteness, and Claudius, it would appear, has done just this.  We first get the sense that Claudius is more complex than simply being a villain in Act III, Scene 1, when in a brief aside he refers to his duplicity and his "heavy burden" (62).   Then, in Act III, Scene 3, there is a remarkable moment where Claudius kneels alone, wrestling with profound ideas of sin, repentance, and forgiveness.   Admitting that his "offense is rank" (40), he claims that his guilt — the very conviction that he has done something wrong — is paralysing his attempts to make amends.   He knows full well that God has the ability to make his soul "white as snow" (50), but cannot bear the prospect of admitting to his crimes and giving up the benefits he has reaped from them.   He finds the notion of simply saying "Forgive me my foul murder" (56) ludicrous even as he knows that true repentance is the only way in heaven, where power and influence cannot "[buy] out the law" (64).  The climax of the speech comes with these heart-rending lines:

Try what repentance can.  What can it not?

Yet what can it, when one cannot repent?

Simply put, while Claudius longs to be free from the guilt and shame of his murderous, adulterous actions, he cannot bring himself to ask for forgiveness.  It is the story of so many of us when it comes to wrongdoing, of any kind.  It is amazing that we actually choose to feel guilty and to live with regret instead of asking for forgiveness.  We would rather stay isolated than return to the fold.  We would rather stay with brokenness than risk the renewed intimacy of healing.  The darkness feels safer than the light.  God's light of forgiveness exposes every corner of our hearts and many of us would rather hold on to those dark recesses, even if it risks separation from Him.  Even on his knees, Claudius still chooses isolation.

The start of Claudius's soliloquy: "O, my offense is rank..."

After this profound experience, Claudius's isolation is so entrenched that he cannot bring himself to talk honestly to his wife.  At the beginning of Act IV, Gertrude and Claudius have their only private conversation (fewer than 40 lines) in the entire play.  Much of what the king says to his wife here seems to be either the product or the instigator of isolation: there no grief for his trusted advisor Polonius, whose death at Hamlet's hands Gertrude is recounting; rather, he is focused on self-preservation and how to best limit the damage to his own image, saying that "this vile deed we must with all our majesty and skill both countenance and excuse" (1.30-33).  The real give away, though, is not the lack of any mention of his deep regrets and inner turmoil — we can perhaps understand why he wouldn't confide in Gertrude his past murder of her husband and his future plan to murder her son — but the use of the decidedly cold and impersonal "your son" (3).  Earlier, in an attempt to ingratiate himself to his new stepson, he refers to him as "my son" or at least tries to get Hamlet to see him as a father (I.2.66, 111-112, 121).  He has now emotionally withdrawn from both Hamlet, which makes any possible understanding of Hamlet's erratic behaviour impossible, and his wife, who, perhaps sensing her husband's duplicity, seems to be withdrawing from him, too.  In our most difficult times, we need to be honest and transparent with those around us, especially with those with whom we would claim intimacy.  I feel this keenly, particularly with the malicious impact of depression, which often forces me deeper into myself and stiffens my mask instead of making me seek support and solace from friends, even from those who love me and who know me best.

Death, of course, is the ultimate isolation.  In the play’s denouement in Act V, Scene 2, Hamlet, who has just come to terms with his own mortality (234-238), dies in the arms of his best friend, whereas Claudius’ last orders, “Do not drink” (317) and “Help me, friends” (355),  are notable in that they are not obeyed. Claudius dies alone, hated, and victim of the ultimate truth: that tyrants’ paranoia is rooted in the fear of those they rule.  One of Hamlet's obsessions is ensuring that Claudius dies "unshrived" — without a chance to confess his sins — and I wonder whether, in his final moments, with the poison coursing through his veins, Claudius thinks back to his missed opportunity where he was so close to repenting in Act III, Scene 3.  Either way, as John Steinbeck suggests about people who die unloved, "his dying must be a cold horror".

I also think that isolation is becoming more and more a Western problem.  In April 2018, I spent a week in northern Jordan with Syrian refugees. When I returned home and started back at work, I was convinced that the trauma I had witnessed and heard about was far beyond anything my students in middle-class San Marcos had experienced.  And perhaps it was.  However, I quickly found myself feeling far more pity for many of my students who were experiencing hardship and suffering.  Most of the Syrians I met lived in the community of an extended family.  They shared meals and beds, but they also shared the heavy burden of grief and trauma.  Many of my students have iPhones, but they don't have extensive support systems.  Like most of the characters in Hamlet, many of them go through stress, anxiety, and pain on their own, often pretending that everything is fine.  It is no way to live.

Truthfully, I actually often take real pleasure in being remote.  I'm an introvert, so I do need to be alone in order to relax and recharge.  However, I often seek sequestration because I just don't want to be around others and because I don't feel like being vulnerable or even honest.  This is, of course, patently unhealthy.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian martyred by the Nazis just weeks before the end of the Second World War, put it this way: "One who seeks solitude without fellowship perishes in the abyss of vanity, self-infatuation, and despair."  It is here that we meet Claudius, where we are forced to acknowledge that even our very needs can have dark consequences.

Shakespeare, as he does so often with antagonists, humanizes Claudius in a profound and powerful way.  The beauty of literature is that it allows us to see ourselves in even the most villainous, which then helps us see the villainous things in ourselves.

A good man is hard to find

Just before the US presidential election of 2008, I remember having a conversation with someone about Senator John McCain, who was running against Barack Obama.  After some back-and-forth discussion about McCain's policies and record, she said, with an air of finality, "He's a good man."

I've been thinking recently about this and about the idea of legacy.  What is it that makes a person good?  At what point can you look at someone's life and objectively say, "He was a good man"?

Let's leave aside the obvious answer that someone we know, love, or already admire is going to have much more of an opportunity to claim that title.  Not knowing someone, their story, or their background leaves us, I feel, much more liable to judge harshly.

Clearly, the reason that this is problematic is that none of us are perfect.  Like drops of black paint added to a bucket of white, each of our mistakes, errors, failures, sins—call them whatever you want —changes the balance of good and bad in our souls, in some cases barely perceptibly, but as anyone who's ever painted a bedroom or a bathroom will tell you, almost white is not white.

Yet we can all recite a list of people whom we consider essentially good: Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, Grandma, our children.  Ourselves.

So if we have these two truths—some humans are good, and no-one is perfect—then we must have a measure or a standard of goodness.  Maybe, like the ancient Egyptians, we have some kind of cosmic scales on which we metaphorically weigh our hearts.  Maybe there's a way to add up all the good we've done and place it next to all the evil we've done.  And if so, what's the tipping point?  50%?  If I can say that I've done more evil than good over the course of my life, then I can claim to be a good person.  Right?  That seems fair.

But now we run into some other, more murky issues.  Do some deeds count more or weigh more heavily than others?  Is murder 1,000 times worse than running a stop sign?  If I then run 1,001 stop signs over the course of my life - come to California if you don't believe it's possible - am I now worse than a murderer?  Or does committing murder make me evil, regardless of how much good I do before or after?  And what about good deeds?  Do some count more than others?  Is holding the door open for a lady a good deed, or is it just basic human decency?  Or is it condescending and archaic, thus adding to your myriad run stop signs and other nefarious deeds in your life?

Maybe we can agree on just making sure we obey all laws.  If you don't break the law, you're a good person.  This is problematic too.  What laws are we talking about?  Different countries have different laws.  Heck, different families have different laws.  I know you can't go to prison for teasing your younger brother (although I'm willing to hear arguments for it), but just like any society, our household operates under certain rules.  Or are minors exempt?

Aren't some laws, let's face it, inconvenient or foolish?  And aren't some—Jim Crow and other segregationist policies—downright immoral?  And surely it's possible to keep all laws and still be a horrible person.  It's not against the law, for example, to lie to my wife and tell her that I've been working diligently in the garden when I've actually been binge-watching The Great British Baking Show.  It's not even illegal to cheat on one's spouse, but most people would agree that it's a pretty despicable act, all the same.  There are many people who make a very good living out of helping people do lawful, but arguably unethical actions, such as managing our money so that we pay as little tax as possible.  And that's the key, isn't it?  "Arguably".

It is very hard to establish whether someone is "good" or not when we have considerable differences of opinion over what is right or wrong.  And if that's the case, it must be true that we do not all have the same standards of morality.

Does morality change with location?  With time?  With administration?  If I attempted to enslave my children or my neighbors, people would be outraged, yet Thomas Jefferson owned slaves and he seems to have been given a pass by most of us.  The discussion over statues of historical figures, such as Winston Churchill, whose lives, actions, and thus legacies, are rendered far more complex after an objective view of history or a rethinking of our values, is another good example of this.

A good man?

So, to recap, we don't have a way of determining how much good a person needs to do to be considered good.  Nor do we have a universal standard against which we can measure actions and determine them to be good or bad.

It's a bit of a mess, and we haven't even looked at actions that could be deemed immoral but "don't hurt anybody" or unintentionally committed crimes (or even accidentally committed good actions), or thoughts and ideas that are immoral but aren't acted upon.

I don't think it's a stretch to say, though, that regardless of the apparently arbitrary standards we set for ourselves (or is it only for others?), we have all done things that are either illegal, unethical, or immoral, even if we've never been caught.

So where does that leave us?  None of us are Jesus.  None of us are as evil as Adolf Hitler.  Most would say it is reasonable to assume that we all fall somewhere between those two extremes.  Where on that spectrum does good end and evil begin?  And who determines that?

It seems as if many of us have fallen into one of two camps.  First, we have those who have a sliding scale of morality.  It changes by situation, location, time period, and intention and becomes a personalized morality that we essentially adjust as necessary.  The cynic would say we do this so that we make sure we fit somewhere on the good spectrum, along with our friends, family, and those who vote the same way we do.  Realistically, then, the only people we can truly judge are ourselves because we know that others have a different idea of what is moral.  Or worse, we expose ourselves as hypocrites because we overlook or even excuse actions we would usually consider immoral in people we know or like, such as our preferred presidential candidates.  It's an "us versus them" approach to morality.

The other camp consists of those of us who basically say that everything is permissible.  Because we cannot agree on what constitutes moral behaviour, and any attempt to enforce it creates unfairness, unnecessary restriction, and abuse of power, then we leave people to their own devices.  "Hey, do your thing.  As long as you're not hurting anyone, who am I to judge?"  It sounds good, doesn't it?  What's interesting, though, is that by not judging, we are actually judging.  When we say, "I'm not judging you", I am not only making a judgement, I am implicitly judging your behaviour as acceptable.

There is a third camp, whereby you assume that all humans are evil.  William Golding, particularly in Lord of the Flies, has a lot to say about this.  So does the Bible.  So do, interesting enough, a lot of pieces of literature which explore the darker side of humanity.  Personally, I subscribe to this point of view—that humans are redeemed but inherently immoral—but there aren't a lot of people I know who consider themselves evil.  In a recent interview on NPR, archeologist Sarah Parcak said, "In spite of all the terrible things we have done to each other, I think we're 51% good."  While this is clearly meant as a statement emphasizing the speaker's hope for humanity, rather than an empirical evaluation, it does speak to the tendency we have as humans—even as we recognize evil in others and not in ourselves—to believe the best of our race.  And while believing the best in others can be wonderful, it can also cause us to be myopic.

In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Harry is confronted by the complex legacy of several characters about whom he had very clear-cut beliefs.  Albus Dumbledore, his hero, was seduced as a young man by Grindelwald's ideas, causing great suffering in his own family.  Godric Gryffindor took the sword, which only presents itself to the valiant in times of need, from the goblins who made it.  Remus Lupin, another mentor, attempts to abandon his wife and child.  And then, of course, there's Severus Snape, whose hatred for Harry cannot be disregarded even after we find out the depths of his bravery and love.  Harry's conflicting emotions regarding Dumbledore, in particular, threaten to derail his entire quest to defeat Voldemort, and he has to learn the nuanced view of humanity that his godfather Sirius tries to teach him two books earlier: "The world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters."  We always struggle when someone we idolize turns out to have previously unknown faults: witness the fallout over the recent discovery of Ronald Reagan using racist language.

If there's a story that helps us understand our difficulty with processing morality, it is Flannery O'Connor's short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find".  In it, a prim southern grandmother comes face to face with an escaped convict called The Misfit.  At the start of the story, it is clear who is good and who is evil.  By the end, we see the selfishness and arrogance of the grandmother and we listen to the background and rationale of The Misfit's actions, and as we honestly evaluate their characters, we are forced to objectively and baldly conclude that they are essentially the same—or at least that they are no different.

It seems that we could apply some of the nuance required to study literature to our own views when it comes to the innately flawed people on whom we pass judgement.  Neither we nor those we love are as good as we think.  By the same token, neither we nor those we despise are as evil as we think.  I don't think it does us any good to claim that someone's legacy is anything other than complex, and if we are convinced otherwise, we should at least be prepared for legitimate challenges to our view.

To do otherwise is to propose that those we put on pedestals—both figurative and literal— are not human.