This Should Either Scare or Encourage You

I can't write his exact message here, so I can protect my friend. But, his online message to all his friends basically said, "Help, I am at the end of my rope."

This didn't seem unsual on its own. But, what caught my attention was WHO was crying out. It was like Mount Everest crying out, "Help, I am crumbling."

I've been in a place where I thought, "this could be the end." Those dark episodes of life usually end happily. Yes, my friend wrote me a message assuring me that all was well. Now, if you are reading this and wondering, "what is happening with your friend?" realize that I am just as "in the dark" as to what exactly caused him to cry out or what fixed it.

However, a later message caused me to wonder if what was eating him up was not some depression or singular disappointment. What he is suffering from ought to scare us all. (By the way, my friend is a beacon of strength, born in India, smart, good-looking, intelligent, witty, sociable to a fault, and successful.) Because his latest message mentions "living up to my potential" and "mediocrity," I realized that he is being HAUNTED by some nagging angst, some growing dissatisfaction.

Ever wake up in the middle of the night doing math problems? "I am 40 years old. I have maybe 30 years left. What have I done with my life?" Then we realize that what fueled our fight was some promise or possibility - our potential. But, it's too late, we realize, to go into sports, or acting, or dance.

Reality hits.

"Darn," I once said to myself, looking in the mirror and thinking about my injured back. "There go my chances of becoming a lumberjack (insert your own fantasy career: fisherman, fashion diva, gameshow host, or medical doctor).

Reality sucks. And that ought to scare us, the fact that we might wake up one day and realize that we weren't even chasing a dream - we were simply dreaming.

I have always tried to prevent that possibility by following my dream. I am a late career-changer. A teacher who loves what he does. And here is where I realized that perhaps I will be happy when I look back over my life. I reminded my friend of bus drivers and mail carriers who realize their full potential everyday. I am thinking of Ric Cicciorello, the happiest mail carrier in the world. Each day, Ric treated me as though I was the only kid on a foggy San Francisco street. He was pure sunshine.

I guess I am writing my friend as a way to remind myself of how grateful I am to be teaching. I feel like I am fulfilling my life's calling, the be all, end all of doing what you love.

Teaching, impossible and rewarding, talks to me everyday. Living up to my potential comes with a high price. Each minute of each day, I must be sure that I am not just teaching writing or reading, but teaching students who have their own priorities. If I am lucky, then after several year or two with me, my students will learn to love learning itself.

There is no free lunch short-cut to living up to your potential. But there IS a short-cut- eliminate what is "not you" and do more of those things that "are you." Then focus like a maniac.

My 6th graders suffer or thrive according to how well I meet their needs. Their enthusiasm, trust, and misbehaviors show me instantaneously if I am "making a difference." The other day, the quietest girl in all classes walked up to me with a candy and slapped a note onto my desk. Her note told me how I had changed her whole attitude about school. I have several notes like hers, in five months of teaching in this new school. I feel I am amassing an army of enthusiastic life-long learners, one soldier at a time.

And I saved her note. I may need it in a couple of months when I turn 40.

I Know More Than You Think I Know

I remember 4th grade English class for one reason. My teacher humiliated me in front of the class. I was at the board and was writing some vocabulary words. The word was "people." This old lady, this tyrant with glasses and chalk almost fell off her feet.

"Pople?! Pople?!" she reacted.

I had spelled the word "p-o-e-p-l-e." Didn't that make sense? If there is a useless or silent "o," then where did I go wrong? What this teacher failed to recognize was my effort at spelling correctly, at awknowledging the "o." I reversed it, and that broke her intelligence rule. How could I be so stupid?

I remembered seeing a movie with Abbott and Costello called "High Society." I also remember playing with decoding rules in my mind: "High Soshity," I would say. English is that way. One word pronounces the "ci" the way it's pronounced in "social." That is, there is a "sh" sound. Another word preserves the soft s sound in "society."

So rules are inconsistent at best. But why blame the student. What the old tyrant did not recognize was that fact.

Chomsky argues that we are born with a complete understanding of language. Okay, perhaps we can qualify that: children have an idea in mind of what the work around them says. They also know what they want to communicate. They just cannot communicate it within a set of artificial boundaries - spelling and perfectly written grammar. Instead, their sense of grammar is internalized.

Mrs. Tyrant teacher (I forget her name), I know more than you think I know. So do other 4th graders.

Actually, this teacher's name is on the tip of my tongue. I know what I want to communicate about her. I can see her in my mind's eye. I just cannot name her.

So, do I fail in this brief essay? Or have I communicated my message? Is my and my readers' sense of her preserved, or does my message stand or fall on the rules of remembering a name?

Here is a way that we can perhaps look at student's work. Sure, they break the rules, but some rules are just rules of convention. They are important, but their breaking need not destroy the flow of thought.

So your toddler-baby marches into your room in the middle of the night, announces, "baba," and throws his bottle at you. Put his message in a poem, a summary, persuasive essay, or magazine ad. It's still a message worth looking at and filled with its own nuances.