saying yes
In January 2010, I taught a short term class called The Songs of Bruce Springsteen. I had a co-teacher this time around, Taylor Smith, a former student of mine, Paideia class of 2003, with whom I shared then and now a love of Springsteen’s music. After the second day of class, waiting until the kids filed out, he turned and, with a pleased look of delight, said, “These kids are great--so smart. I’m surprised. They’re really getting it.!”
I wasn’t surprised at all. I have spent my entire adult life in the presence of the young. Taylor was seeing the Paideia student—which he once was, only eight years ago—from a whole new perspective.
In my thirty-third year of working with kids, I see little miracles of carbon, water, and light. I say yes to these shining beings. I say yes all the time. Love comes in different ways from different people. From some it comes through ribbing and jokes, from some through the wisdom and discipline of the material, from some by information and knowledge; some push precision, some say no or almost, some create order, some acceptance, gentleness, a hug. I love by saying yes.
We human beings, each of us, needs to be seen, to be held in the attention of others, to be beheld, to have that sense that we carry something worthwhile, that we are useful to the tribe. My three children when young gave voice to this need, crying over and over, “Watch, Daddy, look at me! Watch!"
Like a work of literature, we all have our themes. Each life has one or two. This process is quiet, but it stays with you your whole life, working through you. It is the particular key you carry, looking for doors to unlock. Your cells vibrate to this tune, this fork struck at your soul’s birth.
My theme is love. My goal in life is to love more. My lack of love hurts. My fist-sized heart sometimes closes and doesn’t open; it stays closed and can pummel and hurt. When it seizes up like that, I wince. I notice when I’m less than kind. The love is there, like gold, and I mine for it, in me and in others. Love is the animating force of the cosmos, from the whirring song in my cells and how they organize and chorus to create an ongoing living being, to all of us working together, and whirling maybe even into the galaxies themselves.
I fail at loving all the time. I fall short, I criticize unfairly, or I am blind and unobservant, or I let kids get away with poor work or effort. I try to catch all of this, but I fail.
Where in an English class does the potential for goodness intersect with reading, writing, and talking about literature? What if you don’t read well or write well? What if you tend to be quiet in a group? The skills of school—or any particular class--can call on a very narrow range of what we human beings have to give.
In class, in school, I know we gather for a reason other than to be loved. We gather in our hive every day, rubbing antenna, to make each other smarter, more attuned, more moral, more aware—we make each other better people. The collective wisdom of a group can emerge when the climate is right. Kids think thoughts they have never thought. The roof of each skull rolls back and sky light dances in. The telescope of their minds sees further and further into light that has been coming their way since before they were born. And I say yes to that. I say yes to every little thing that carries a spark. I want to welcome and kindle the individual sparks into a collective conflagration so that young people are not afraid of testing themselves and their ideas out in the open. For some that is very difficult. It may be dangerous to voice an opinion or an idea. You can be shot down--or already shut down. At our school, I am proud of how many young people do find a kind of voice. I believe that many of us feel this way.
The skills of school are valuable and necessary; I promote them every single day. I am thinking of the skills of reading and writing and thinking, of course, but also the skills of disciplining attention. We become what we pay attention to. And one of the major tasks of adolescence is learning to harness mental energy and direct it in useful and productive ways. But without the invitation, without being beckoned, wealth and riches remain hidden and buried.
Between classes, at lunch, after school, kids are steeped in whatever is popping at the cultural moment, whatever is on YouTube, ESPN, their iPods—they worry about how they look, whether they carry this year’s stamp, the North Face jacket or the skinny jeans or high boots, the froth of celebrity-obsessed culture. Not that all of our free time and free culture is frenzied and trashy, I do not mean that. You will find me in front of the Super Bowl or American Idol, but too much of that, or only that, will leave us undernourished. Effervescent, sweet, and fleeting—those novelites do not nourish.
Loud, noisy and boisterous, our students most likely are not talking about the subjects of our classes, and so the skills of school are a necessary ritual, a formal gathering, a time to say yes to the serious modes of communication and thinking, the deeper work of civilization, the catching the whiff of an idea, the making contact with the accumulated knowledge of our species. Evolution is slow and long, but it is happening right now, every day in our school and in our lives. Our ancestors cheer us on, our descendants plead.
Where else but in an adult-sanctioned gathering like a class would a group of teenagers be talking about difficult, hard-to-handle subjects like race? Unless the climate is right, a young person will not venture something profound and tender like a student of mine did, a young African-American male speaking about his grandmother who, although hungry for higher education, was prevented from going because she had to do manual labor instead. He knows he is carrying her dream forward, but he still feels the pain in her thwarted life. In his words, in the tone of his voice, and in the feeling carried through them, all of us present experience a profound moment of education—and healing. Our hearts become larger. Our species evolves. And precious moments like this happen all the time in school. Yes, they do.
Or, another way of thinking about it: we are all at the bottom of a sea of a contemporary culture that presses in on us. The pressure is enormous. We have to build inner lives, inner fortitude, to withstand it--otherwise we will crumple, cave in. That is what we help the young to do, to reflect, sort through the artificial, the purely manipulative, and to find what is valuable and worthwhile. I say yes to the promptings and branchings of that inner structure.
Violence may be required. Sometimes you may have to drill to get to something that is trapped. Sometimes a caesarian procedure may be required. I don’t think I work as well with those operations. We can’t be all things to all people. But some do—more power to them.
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Saying yes does not mean you can’t say no. Sometimes in a class, once you get the sense of the tendencies of personalities, you have to say no to some people. Some people talk too much in a group, some hardly at all. I have to say no to the person who will dominate a group. Of course, that no is a kind of yes; it’s a yes to others, it’s a yes to the talkative person’s potential for listening and potential for moderation, and perhaps a yes to a need for inhibition and self-regulation.
Or, I might send a student out of the class if he is repeatedly unwilling to act in accordance with my rules. Say, if he continues to talk with someone privately. |
I jump on it immediately. I see it as a sign of disrespect. During discussions, we are gathered to listen, to share, to see whether we can make all of us better or smarter or wiser or more aware than we were before the class started. And as for the student I temporarily exiled, I will talk to him and tell him what I expect of him, tell him what I say yes to, and of course invite him back in for another chance.
To the kid in my office who is wondering whether he should choose a college in order to be near the girl he loves, I become love’s assassin and say, “You have to make the decision without her in the picture. You have to consider it as though you and she will break up.” I am saying yes to reality, and no to his dreaming heart. I say yes to ambition and hope, but this kind of fantasy can be a burden, and he needs to be one dream lighter.
To the young person who operates out of a misguided need to be perfect, who is functioning on little sleep and is driven by an overstimulated need for achievement and is experiencing little joy in life, I say no to that narrow and dry vision of herself. I say yes to the courage to be facing it. I say no to that desert path, while simultaneously trying to affirm her sense of value and worth even if she does not see it. If it means tears, I say yes to rain.
God knows that human beings do the worst things to one another and to the earth we share. The world turns and terrible grindstones crush vulnerable beings every second. Inequities abound. I am comfortable, clothed, fed, not living in fear with every breath. I know these things, but to say yes to the good that emerges when it’s there in front of me, to love as well as I can when I can in the moment--that is valuable.
One time a student scolded me one time, “You want us to be one big family—but we aren’t.” Yes. That’s right, I do. We are. And I know that families have conflicts. But I do say yes to our unbreakable connections.
I often give my students seven or eight minutes to spend at the beginning of class free writing, which is exactly as the name implies, completely free. I always join in. Sometimes I provide a phrase as a prompt, which the students can use or not. In October of 2009, I wrote this with the prompt “I am”:
I am sitting here on a Thursday afternoon
in a room full of breathing young men,
their souls just jumping out,
eager to take on the world.
I am their critic
who questions and picks at their thoughts
wherever I see weakness.
I am their warden
who holds them here on this preserve,
keeping their wildness in check.
I am an eagle’s eye
watching for movement,
a sign of life
in the high grass
of their teenage terror.
I am a policeman
hitting the blue light,
pulling them over,
putting the cuffs on.
I am a spectator
enjoying the game
of growing up,
watching these hormonal giants parade
their muscular confidence.
I am their champion.
They don’t know how loudly I cheer inside--
the megaphone is at my lips,
I do back flips for them.
I am a priest mumbling prayers
for the goodness of their souls,
and for the benefit of this aching world.
While the skills of school can be narrow and while likely better ways of educating the young will be found, school experience is monumental. We all go through it and each of us has a multitude of experiences about ways in which teachers and schools either wounded us or celebrated us, passed us over or noticed us. And we adults wield enormous power in this role. Although my temperament has always leaned toward the celebratory and towards that of appreciation, having spent all these years with young people has no doubt increased my hopefulness. The young pulse with radiance in the present moment, and they bear a promise to the future. They are alive right now, and this intensity in the present carries such open-ended possibility for what is to come. We count on their flourishing, on their ever-affirming yes.
And as I come to the end of this, I am pleasantly blind-sided by this thought: Paideia, too, has said yes to me.
To the kid in my office who is wondering whether he should choose a college in order to be near the girl he loves, I become love’s assassin and say, “You have to make the decision without her in the picture. You have to consider it as though you and she will break up.” I am saying yes to reality, and no to his dreaming heart. I say yes to ambition and hope, but this kind of fantasy can be a burden, and he needs to be one dream lighter.
To the young person who operates out of a misguided need to be perfect, who is functioning on little sleep and is driven by an overstimulated need for achievement and is experiencing little joy in life, I say no to that narrow and dry vision of herself. I say yes to the courage to be facing it. I say no to that desert path, while simultaneously trying to affirm her sense of value and worth even if she does not see it. If it means tears, I say yes to rain.
God knows that human beings do the worst things to one another and to the earth we share. The world turns and terrible grindstones crush vulnerable beings every second. Inequities abound. I am comfortable, clothed, fed, not living in fear with every breath. I know these things, but to say yes to the good that emerges when it’s there in front of me, to love as well as I can when I can in the moment--that is valuable.
One time a student scolded me one time, “You want us to be one big family—but we aren’t.” Yes. That’s right, I do. We are. And I know that families have conflicts. But I do say yes to our unbreakable connections.
I often give my students seven or eight minutes to spend at the beginning of class free writing, which is exactly as the name implies, completely free. I always join in. Sometimes I provide a phrase as a prompt, which the students can use or not. In October of 2009, I wrote this with the prompt “I am”:
I am sitting here on a Thursday afternoon
in a room full of breathing young men,
their souls just jumping out,
eager to take on the world.
I am their critic
who questions and picks at their thoughts
wherever I see weakness.
I am their warden
who holds them here on this preserve,
keeping their wildness in check.
I am an eagle’s eye
watching for movement,
a sign of life
in the high grass
of their teenage terror.
I am a policeman
hitting the blue light,
pulling them over,
putting the cuffs on.
I am a spectator
enjoying the game
of growing up,
watching these hormonal giants parade
their muscular confidence.
I am their champion.
They don’t know how loudly I cheer inside--
the megaphone is at my lips,
I do back flips for them.
I am a priest mumbling prayers
for the goodness of their souls,
and for the benefit of this aching world.
While the skills of school can be narrow and while likely better ways of educating the young will be found, school experience is monumental. We all go through it and each of us has a multitude of experiences about ways in which teachers and schools either wounded us or celebrated us, passed us over or noticed us. And we adults wield enormous power in this role. Although my temperament has always leaned toward the celebratory and towards that of appreciation, having spent all these years with young people has no doubt increased my hopefulness. The young pulse with radiance in the present moment, and they bear a promise to the future. They are alive right now, and this intensity in the present carries such open-ended possibility for what is to come. We count on their flourishing, on their ever-affirming yes.
And as I come to the end of this, I am pleasantly blind-sided by this thought: Paideia, too, has said yes to me.