A Year in the Life of an English Class

Dear Seniors,

Welcome to your last high school class.  Ever. Welcome to a new kind of school life, where you will have much more choice about where to go and what to do. In minutes, your classes will all be done; you’ll have time on your hands to study, take tests, and most importantly, to attend to the things and people you care about the most. You’re about to mark a significant milestone in life: high school graduation. Somewhere or another, you’ve been getting up and going to school for the past twelve or thirteen or fourteen or more years. In three weeks, this part of your life will be done.

But as Douglas Adams said, “Don’t panic.” Graduation will be a little bit like turning 10 (first birthday in double digits) or 18 (adulthood, whatever that means). For me, all these milestones were just markers passed on the road of life. The road rarely changes at the mile markers; you just pass ‘em. That’s not to say your life won’t change — it surely will — but the changes happen at their own unpredictable pace. In fact, it happens so strangely that some of us get caught by surprise, like Billy Pilgrim’s mother, who, in her hospital room, encounters a brief moment of lucidity, stares Billy in the eye and asks him, “How did I get so old?” When I was about to go to college, my dad said to me, “Bill, you’ll be amazed how fast the time goes between freshman week… and your 25th reunion.” I went to that reunion a couple of years ago. The old man was right.

Over the next three weeks, you may find yourself thinking about how eager you are for something to be over — your last test, your last day of school, graduation. I’d invite you to resist those thoughts, however. The phrase “Don’t wish your life away” comes to mind. And herein we have an opportunity to look at what some of the authors we’ve read over the past 20 months have said about the subject.  Vonnegut gave us Billy Pilgrim, who, by

Anna Stenning: Slaughterhouse-Five Images

giving up on himself, discovered the “good news” that time doesn’t matter and life is meaningless. Knowing he’ll repeat moments and relive his life in a continuous, spastic series of disjointed moments, he says, “Hello, goodbye, hello, goodbye, hello…” which he found comforting, but we readers can see as problematic. An infinite, meaningless existence is not for most of us.

Becket, of course, gives us two antiheroes who share a lot in common with Billy, in their own absurd way. Sadly, Didi and Gogo don’t have the thrill of being kidnapped by space aliens. They just unconsciously have slipped into a life — immeasurably long — of waiting for something. When you find yourself killing time as you wait for that next thing to happen, or to be over, remember what happens (sorry — what doesn’t happen) to our friends who wait for Godot. Didi understands that all this… existence… won’t last forever. In fact, he sees life as infinitely short. He says he’s “born astride a grave,” delivered into existence by “the grave digger,” who waits six feet below with forceps.  Didi’s aware that “in an instant all will vanish and we’ll be alone once more, in the midst of nothingness!” And yet, he can’t find a way to break out of his life of waiting. By the way, for many of the sorrier characters whose lives we’ve explored, this idea of being alone goes hand in hand with have a meaningless life. I’ve got a theory on that…

At a less abstract level, Willy Loman shows us what happens when you wrap all your life’s ambition into an unachievable, distant goal. Willy dreams of recognition, of being “well-liked” by masses of people, or at least of being the father Biff Loman, a well-liked man. Tragically, he can’t accept the love of his wife or that of his sons, or his friend Charlie — and so even after achieving (by the skin of his teeth) the American dream of owning a house and having a family, he gives it all up for the illusory promise of wealth — and maybe some celebrity — for his son. The other option, of course, is to pass through life being completely disinterested in creating any sort of meaning — in being earnest in anything but name. Oscar Wilde’s lessons, I think, provide a challenge equal to Beckett’s and Miller’s, and I’m grateful for the laughs he provides along the way.

If you’re starting to feel like this last lecture is a review of the course, well, OK, you caught me. Indulge me for another paragraph: All the authors we have read over the past years had two things in common:

• They all write beautiful and entertaining literature
• They all challenge us to be better human beings

Thanks Ana Stenning for these images from The Wind Up Bird Chronicles!

Murakami shows us that life can be filled with confusion and uncertainty, and he also shows us that when things appear to be at rock bottom, we can always go down a well and get stuck… And we can open our eyes to possibilities and reach out to discover more. We can fight the monsters we need to fight and construct the connections we long to make. William Blake’s poems demand that we look at the world through the eyes of both innocent, suffering children and “woke,” angry adults. He throws up the beauty and the ugliness of life and demands that we see it — even in places we do not want to. The tragic stories of Gatsby, the man who (like Willy Loman) wished only to be “well-liked” by a certain class of people who never would let him in, and to be loved by a woman incapable of loving anyone — and who (a little like Billy Pilgrim) insisted that you can repeat the past — and Grenouille, the boy who grows up impervious to disease and immune to the all of the foulest things people are capable of (ignorance, hatred, greed, self-absorption, mob violence) and is ultimately incapable of showing the only thing that really matters in life: love — both challenge us to live beyond the bad things we inevitably encounter.

In both of the Shakespearean comedies, family interests and human pettiness get in the way of true, natural love, and nearly result in the useless deaths of romantic heroines. Hero feigns her death, and unlike Juliet, she gets marry the man she loves — even though he’s treated her horribly. Hermia defies her father’s death threat, runs into a dangerous wilderness, and survives the vagaries of that forest — and the horrible treatment of the man she loves — but gets to marry her guy in the end, too. The thing about all three comedies, though, is the temporary nature of this happiness. Do things work out in the long run for Jack and Gwendolyn, Algy and Cecily? For Hero and Claudio? Beatrice and Benedick? For Hermia and Lysander, Helena and Demetrius? For Theseus and Hippolyta? Oberon and Titania?  We’ll never know.

And you

will never

know

either.

For them,

or for you.

I’m hopeful that your lives will be comedies: we keep going, we do crazy things, we survive, we act, and at times, things seem to work out OK. And we keep on keepin’ on while passing these happy (and sad) milestones.

On a personal note, I’ve passed a few of these recently; somewhere in February I completed my 25th year marker in professional education. Two years ago, in June, I went to my 25th college reunion. Next December I turn 50. Like graduation, these three arbitrary markers offer a chance to look back at what we’ve learned along the way. They may be relevant in this context because (believe it or not) you’ll be starting your second 25 years and beginning your work lives pretty soon. So what have I learned? Most of all, I’ve found that there’s much more learning to do. To illustrate:

• When I graduated from high school, I thought I was a musician. Thirty years later, I can hear more and play more than I possibly could have imagined back then. And there’s vast room for growth.

• When I graduated from high school, I thought I was athletic. But I had no idea of the commitment and discipline athletes have, until this very year, when I attempted to race with cyclists up and down Mt. Kenya. Now I’m much fitter, faster, and  stronger than I was back then. And I have a new goal: To complete that race next year — when I’m fifty.

• When I graduated from high school, I thought I knew a lot — about everything. Now I see enormous possibilities to know more. Thirty years later I’ve been lucky enough to live in four new countries and learn three new languages. I’ve taught a hundred different novels and plays, and read hundreds of poems from authors I’d never heard of in high school or college.  With Shakespeare, I hadn’t read and understood a single play until I taught Macbeth for the first time. Since then I’ve prepared units for and taught 9 of his plays and studied a few more. I’ve studied at the Folger Shakespeare Library and at the Globe Theatre. The good luck of living these experiences has shown me the wealth of knowledge and learning that lies ahead. You can learn a lot in 25 years; I hope to learn much more in the next 25.

For most of you, we’ve been gathering to learn about and from literature for the better part of two years. And now, for better or for worse, we’ve reached the last minute or so of our official time together.

As you walk out that door over there, know that this class has been memorable and wonderful. You’ve been a dream of a class: a curious, interested group of voracious readers. You’ve challenged me to think and rethink my ideas on these works of literature. You’ve stretched your ideas and worked and re-worked your writing. It’s been a joy to watch you perform, to revise over…and over…and over… your essays, and to share your two-year life journey with me in some small way. It might seem small, but I’ll always remember being invited me to take a class picture with you at the prom. You’ve inspired me by doing things you love: by reading and sharing your ideas with each other, by making beautiful art, by writing plays, by playing music, by playing sports, by performing theater, and by sharing kindness. Know that all these things have lifted up the world a little bit. You’re bringing us a little closer to the “world without collisions” that Sam envisions for the future. Remember Sam’s lesson: He endures humiliation after humiliation, and even in the worst moment, he finds it inside himself to seek a better world — and to invite Hally (and the rest of us) to be a better human being. You’ve bolstered this middle aged teacher’s faith in the future. As long as you and people like you keep on doing what you’re doing, we’ll be alright.

Have a great life.

BP

April 2018

This year I picked up a new elective course called “Personal Branding.” Modeled off the ideas of my good friend Jason Shaffer, the course is designed to help students get their own ideas out into the digital world — and to use the tools of social networking to discover content about things that interest them.

Here are a few examples: Check out what my students are listening to!

This is from Benita, who’s establishing herself as a commentator on current music here in Kenya and abroad.

Here’s Alina: When asked to describe her playlist, she said, “I dunno,” but I think the list speaks for itself. “It’s just me.”

Dear Seniors,

Welcome to your last high school English class.  Ever.

What’s coming up s a period of exams, studying at home, and saying goodbye to the people and spaces that have been an enormous part of your life.  I’ll be here, reviewing what we did, planning for next year, revisiting.  I anticipate solitude.  I’ll miss you.  I was going to say that I’ll be lonely, but I’m reminded of Thoreau, who talked about solitude and said, “I have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning, when no-one comes to call.”  In these hours of solitude, I anticipate the company of Shakespeare and Beckett, Seamus Heaney and William Blake, of my friends Didi and Gogo, Willy and Linda, Sam and Hallie.  The work I’ll do — planning new lessons, throwing out ones that didn’t work, adding elements to make some more meaningful — brings me company.  Reading your writing and writing back to you did the same.  In my own aspirational mind, I’d like to think this solitude is similar to a monk’s — silently, solitarily seeking a better self.  Emerson in Self-Reliance talks about work as prayer, and he quotes one of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, Fletcher, whose wise character Caratach said God’s  “hidden meaning lies in our endeavours; Our valors are our best gods.”

What I take from this advice is that that when we truly put our hearts and souls into what we do, our work becomes, if you’re religious, God’s work.   This year I’ve been repeatedly inspired by you because I’ve seen you doing things you love to do.  You’ve created beauty and shown grace.  Seeing you do what you love — playing basketball or hockey, creating art, photographs, and films, dancing, playing music, acting, making things in Moss’s class, designing a great yearbook, publishing a great issue of Brainwash,  planning events for the student government, helping other students to understand things you are passionate about — I’m inspired to try and do what I love to do:  share great literature with you.

Then again, during that review of this year, there are likely to be moments of regret — missed opportunities to ask the right question or give the right kind of praise, to pause and reflect.  You may find yourself feeling some regrets during these waning moments of high school.  If you do, here’s a suggestion:  Cut it out.

At least that’s what I take from Emerson, who said that just as when we work from our souls we are offering a form of true prayer, when we dwell on regrets we utter “false prayers.”   His solution:  “Regret calamities, if you can thereby help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work, and already the evil begins to be repaired.”  If I have somehow caused you to suffer this year, or to feel that your time is ill-spent, I regret that calamity.  If my regrets assuage your suffering, I’m happy.  But the focus will be on making this course better.  It’s my dream that some year this room will become one of those spaces that where students have created their sense of belonging, where they  feel right about school.  I see them around:  the art room, the maker lab, the drama room, the student government office, the gym.  When I get this right, some day, I hope this room will be one of those spaces.  And I hope that you will discover your own spaces where you can do what you love to do and make whatever corner of the world you land in better.

Now, however, we are here, in this space, for your last class, entering the season of lasts.  I like that word, “last” with all its ambiguity.  I hope I’ve lasted this far without boring you, and I hope some of the works we’ve read leave a lasting impression.  Looking at our classroom the walls, I hope making these collages of words have left words and ideas that last in your literary memory.

I hope you’ll continue to do the things that bring you joy and that convey what’s right with the world to the rest of us.  I hope you’ll discover new passions and interests, learn new languages, step out of routines, live new experiences.  Most of all, I hope you find love.  Looking over the works from this year, it strikes me that many of the characters we’ve gotten to know live in loveless worlds.  Macbeth?  He left it behind for ambition.  Jack and Algy? They may have changed their names to Ernest, but until they get real, Gwendolyn and Cecily will find equally real love in their fictional personal diaries.  Willy Loman?  Plenty of people try to love him, but he’s so wrapped up by the  impossible dream that he can’t feel it.  So he chases girls on the road and  bullies his family  so much that all he gets is what he thinks he wants to hear.  Strangely enough, I find the last two plays we studied strangely hopeful.  In Godot, Didi and Gogo suffer in a world where their purpose is lost.  Didi complains they’re “bored to death”  and Gogo always wants to go.  But in the end, they stick to each other.  Who could do that without hope?  Much more optimistic, of course is Sam from Master Harold.  Sam, who endures the humiliation and the violence of Apartheid, but who sees the possibility for better things in Hally.  And like his “man of magnitude,” Jesus Christ, Sam turns the other cheek when Hally strikes him with a violently racist joke.  And even when Hally spits in his face, he offers him friendship and kindness, redemption and love.  Sam lets Hally leave, but with an invitation to “fly another kite” some day.  There’s no guarantee that Hally will return to Sam and change his thinking, but if Sam doesn’t make the offer, he surely won’t.  Willy laments at the end of Death of a Salesman, “I don’t have a thing in the ground.”  Sam, on the other hand, has planted a seed of kindness, hope, and understanding.

One last “I hope”:  That at some time you’ll think, “At Last!” as you grasp and own something inside yourself that’s grown out of one of the many seeds of wisdom or knowledge or awareness or truth that are planted in the works we’ve studied. In all these books and poems and stories and plays there are lessons that teach us to be better human beings.  If you do, in some future moment, find yourself digging through roots and memories awakened in your head and excavating thoughts about things we’ve read, then I hope by some telepathy your discovery and curiosity and wonder will dive into a time-travel tube, back to today.  And in that moment, I’ll hear the future whisper to the past.  If I hear that whisper, I’d like to whisper back:  “This is not a test.  And everybody passes*.”

Have a great life.

Parsons

April 2016

*I completely ripped that line off from Tony Hoagland.  The poem is “Memory as a Hearing Aid.”

The Seniors produced some truly interesting and creative work this trimester.  There have been wonderful examples of original thought connecting the four works we have studied this year:  Death of a Salesman, The Importance of Being Earnest, Waiting For Godot, and Master Harold and the Boys.

The snow globe on the left comes courtesy of Jordynn Lurie, who represented the empty, barren world of Waiting for Godot with an empty snow globe decorated with a spiral of words from Lucky’s speech.  Another piece to check out:  Her original rap with themes and language straight outa’ the plays.  Thanks, DJOrdynn!

Alejandro Cegarra presents some brilliant connections in his blog, which he punctuates with Memes related to the different plays. His commentary on social criticism and historical readings of Master Harold, Death of a Salesman, and The Importance of Being Earnest.  Have a look at his blog from this link.

Liora Gafen did a brilliant job of combining lines from Willy Loman and Vladimir from Waiting for Godot.  Here’s a link to her post, entitled “Hopelessness Mashup.”

Kevin Shen gives us two very interesting posts about dreams in Death of a Salesman Waiting for Godot and the concept of nothing that appears in both The Importance of Being Earnest and Waiting for Godot.  Have a look at this link!