Teaching Cormac McCarthy

The Road by Cormac McCarthy was a summer reading choice for my students. The students who chose McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize winning novel are happy, happy readers. I haven't heard one complaint about the novel.

Today we had a great day. We have a lot of these. A student, for his presentation, put us into groups of four (I love presentations because I get to be a student). We had to leave the classroom for a bit while the student hid bags of food. Then, we took turns scavenging the classroom for the food, which of course was a bunch of candy. When it wasn't our turn to scavenge for food, we sat in the hallway and wrote in our writer's notebook about whether or not we would be a good guy or a bad guy as defined by McCarthy's novel.

The students who didn't choose The Road as a summer reading book are all headed to the library to get a copy. A movie was recently made and should be out in theaters at the end of this month. I am hoping to take the students on a field trip to see it. Viggo Mortenson will be playing the father.

For those of you who haven't read The Road, I suggest that you do. It is about a post-apocalyptic world where a man and his son travel along a road in hopes of finding some place that is not dead. The few humans left in this charred world are mostly cannibals. There is a line near the beginning of the book. I don't have the book with me, but the line says something like "If the words of the boy were not of God then God never spoke." It's a breathtaking book about the love of a father and son and the microscopic hint of hope that lingers in a cold and dead world.

Seriously...

I teach high school. I don't write about it often. I shouldn't care what people think, but seriously, I mean seriously, seriously, many writers think that being a high school teacher means that you aren't a serious writer. I even had a professor in MFA school give me a B+ and say (actually, he wrote it to me in an email), "I am sure you are a really good high school teacher." It was patronizing, condescending, and hurtful. I learned to conceal my profession. In my publication bios, I rarely mention being a high school teacher.

AND THAT IS SO RIDICULOUS. I'm a poet and a high school teacher. I can be talented at more than one thing.

The above picture is that of a really big candy bar that was placed on my desk in my classroom last Friday. Look at the tag. It says, "Have a puddle-wonderful day." Here are some of the other things that are written on the gorgeously wrapped chocolate bar:

The mediocre teacher tells.
The good teacher explains.
The superior teacher demonstrates.
The GREAT teacher inspires.
A teacher affects eternity; she can never tell where her influence stops.

A writer is one who gives voice to the voiceless.

They may forget what you said but they will never forget how you made them feel.

Three reasons to have a writer for a teacher:
1. endless coffee
2. an excuse for a childish mind
3. pugs

Someday I may wish to teach college. Who knows? But I must admit, (and many writers who have visited and worked with my students would agree) teaching high school can be a rewarding, challenging, and beautiful experience. I am blessed each day to work with the students who fill the seats in room 201.

I teach them how to make poems and how to practice empathy through reading and writing. They leave me chocolate bars decorated with e.e.cummings references. I know life isn't all rainbows and puppy dogs, but for some Saran wrapped cliche reason, these kids make me a better person.

We have the best days so very often. Days we will never forget. So I teach them about enjambment and I talk about my pugs and they remind how tender words can be and how happy I am, on most days, to be alive.

Some days are rough and teaching is not always conducive to my own writing, but for the most part, I can't imagine a more puddle-wonderful way to spend my days. Thank you to all of my students. I won't keep you a secret anymore.