A "journal entry / reflection" required by the Intern Program; written as the year was closing and the internship reaching its end, around April and May.
What do I want to do next year? There are two sorts of answers to this question. The first sort comes from indulgent daydreams, and the second sort is practical and applicable. Even the indulgent daydream-answers can be useful, though, because the extremities of a spectrum can indicate general trends. If I’m daydreaming, I would like to go to New Hampshire for that Harkness job; I’d like to take the French Embassy’s job teaching English in rural French towns; I’d like to do a National Parks Internship in education out West; I’d like to work in a Boston church for a Director of Children’s Ministries. (In an absolutely alternate universe I’d like to win the Ruth Lilly Fellowship and work part-time, or start the Saint Jacques de Compostèle pilgrimage.)
When I first considered this dream-list, I realized that all (except for the last absurd two) have something to do with teaching. I hadn’t expected this at all! I think even six months ago I would’ve included editorial internships at The New Yorker, graphic design internships at The Metropolitan, and a program in the Colorado foothills on sustainable farming. Apparently even the wishful fringes of my mind are occupied with teaching—but occupied with it in many variations and contexts.
Similarly, my practical answers to the question involve teaching, though in a less varied (and glamorous) set of contexts. I’m looking at full-time and part-time teaching jobs in schools in the area, as well as teaching positions in museums, libraries, and summer programs, and also tutoring positions. I’m most interested in teaching fifth grade and up—in particular, I’m terrified and fascinated by the idea of teaching high school.
I want very much to teach reading, or academic writing, or creative writing (short stories, poetry), or world religions, or ancient history—or even catechism! In fifth grade, whether my lessons turn out well or turn out badly, my mind automatically moves to ask “How might this be different?”, “How else could this work in a different subject, a different class?”, or “Would high school students have responded that way?”. If I could pick anything, it would be reading or creative writing—but really I just want to dive in and START. Or rather, start AGAIN, since this year at the LP has been the beginning of so much for me. I feel like a hidden layer to my life has been opened; so much of what I love and am passionate about is connected to teaching, but I never saw it.
In the last two weeks I’ve also been exploring in interest in enrolling in Harvard Divinity School’s program for a Masters in Theological Studies; their focus in Theological Education might allow for a balance of coursework and field education. This possibility was first presented to me at a breakfast with my mother and a teacher friend of mine. They told me that they both always took it for granted that I’d end up in or near academia in the end, and also both felt (“knew”, they’d say) that I’d be happier as a grad student than as a teacher.
The idea of going back to school at first gave me a panic attack, and then a series of exam-week nightmares , and then a series of very pleasant daydreams (while raking pine needles and folding laundry) involving Christologies, ancient Hebrew, short essays, felt boards, the Bhagavad-Gita, Sunday School classes, Sufism, and children’s songs. I’m still very skeptical of their certainty—they don’t seem to see how much I enjoy myself, in between the crises of confidence, and they don’t seem to see how fulfilling and steadying teaching is for me, compared to being a student. At the same time, I know that I feel an intense pull towards the airy excess of academia, and I’m looking forward to seeing how that will fit in my life.
Postscript: For the moment I've found a balance of waitressing and tutoring, at two establishments of which I am proud to be a part. Who knows how long I will resist the siren call of the nearby ivory towers.
Saturday, August 20
The Young Teacher on a Field Trip
Excerpt from a required "journal entry / reflection" for the Intern Program, in April 2011.
Our eldest dog, Ellie, is a mutt. She has a fine skeleton and delicate long black fur, and her sense of hearing and smell are obviously as finely tuned as her body: she is constantly on edge. She barks when a silent woman pushing a silent stroller turns the corner onto our street; she knows when a family member has woken up, even if she’s in the basement or barking at the back hedge. She must see the world as a very dangerous place, for she barks furiously at anything non-family, and is perpetually doing “perimeter checks”—going around the whole yard and the border of the house, looking and smelling and barking out warnings. She is never comfortable until we’re all in the same room and sitting down, each holding a book or some knitting as a sign of our intention to remain put.
When we go on a field trip, I know exactly how Ellie feels.
On the one hand, I am so pleased to see the kids exposed to something new—in particular the strangeness of a new place, new sorts of objects, and new ways of receiving information (e.g. what does this old campaign office tell us about politics? history? technology?). On the other hand, these new places are also unfamiliar places, past the safe borders of the school building. In this open frontier I apparently revert to a state of total anxiety. I do not have Ellie’s military efficiency, but I am inclined to do the human version of herding—walking along the edges of the short milling crowd with my arms extended, murmuring remonstrance or encouragements.
I’m not sure how much of this is reasonable behavior, and how much a product of my own hyper-awareness of potential danger. Is it either reasonable or beneficial to expect students to be as quiet and controlled in new place as they are in school? How far (how many inches? feet? yards?) should students be allowed to spread out in a given space? How might you quietly and quickly bring this group back together when there are other teaching groups in the same area? Is it possible to warn students of potential danger ahead of time without also frightening them? How do you impress the seriousness of safe behavior while also allowing a sense of discovery and excitement?
And even if the new space feels safe, I wonder about how much freedom one should allow. Are there negative behaviors which one might not focus on, in order to focus on others more relevant to the setting? For example, is a field trip the best place to remind F-- and M-- (for the hundredth time) to stop holding onto each others’ arms? Would it be more beneficial to only ask them to focus on listening, or perhaps to ask them to ponder a question which they would both find interesting and might talk about? Is a field trip the best place to incessantly ask for [Proper Learning Position] checks, when you know that some students are able to listen quite well with their knees folded up to their chins? Then again, these examples assume that the class is otherwise in order and controlled. So how do you define “order and control” for a field trip to a museum? to a botanical garden? to a library? to a community farm?
This litany of anxious questions makes it sound like a field trip is one of the rings of hell. That’s not how I feel at all! On the contrary, I think I’m aware of my anxiety so intensely precisely because the rest of the fieldtrip experience has so much potential and excitement. I enjoy the challenge of the preparation before the trip: how much information to give, how to whet their appetite for more, how to focus or frame all the information they’ll be receiving or could be interested in. In third grade, I enjoyed the prep for the Mary Baker Eddy trip; I got to give both concrete details to contextualize her life and work (so that they could make a very basic sense of it), while also hinting at some of the big-picture questions which she and her work raise. And after the trip, there’s the challenge of giving a way to process what they’ve seen, to share questions, but also to focus some of the information into a coherent picture to hold onto.
In the meantime, I’ll just try to be thankful that I don’t have to take anyone on a hiking trip.
Our eldest dog, Ellie, is a mutt. She has a fine skeleton and delicate long black fur, and her sense of hearing and smell are obviously as finely tuned as her body: she is constantly on edge. She barks when a silent woman pushing a silent stroller turns the corner onto our street; she knows when a family member has woken up, even if she’s in the basement or barking at the back hedge. She must see the world as a very dangerous place, for she barks furiously at anything non-family, and is perpetually doing “perimeter checks”—going around the whole yard and the border of the house, looking and smelling and barking out warnings. She is never comfortable until we’re all in the same room and sitting down, each holding a book or some knitting as a sign of our intention to remain put.
When we go on a field trip, I know exactly how Ellie feels.
On the one hand, I am so pleased to see the kids exposed to something new—in particular the strangeness of a new place, new sorts of objects, and new ways of receiving information (e.g. what does this old campaign office tell us about politics? history? technology?). On the other hand, these new places are also unfamiliar places, past the safe borders of the school building. In this open frontier I apparently revert to a state of total anxiety. I do not have Ellie’s military efficiency, but I am inclined to do the human version of herding—walking along the edges of the short milling crowd with my arms extended, murmuring remonstrance or encouragements.
I’m not sure how much of this is reasonable behavior, and how much a product of my own hyper-awareness of potential danger. Is it either reasonable or beneficial to expect students to be as quiet and controlled in new place as they are in school? How far (how many inches? feet? yards?) should students be allowed to spread out in a given space? How might you quietly and quickly bring this group back together when there are other teaching groups in the same area? Is it possible to warn students of potential danger ahead of time without also frightening them? How do you impress the seriousness of safe behavior while also allowing a sense of discovery and excitement?
And even if the new space feels safe, I wonder about how much freedom one should allow. Are there negative behaviors which one might not focus on, in order to focus on others more relevant to the setting? For example, is a field trip the best place to remind F-- and M-- (for the hundredth time) to stop holding onto each others’ arms? Would it be more beneficial to only ask them to focus on listening, or perhaps to ask them to ponder a question which they would both find interesting and might talk about? Is a field trip the best place to incessantly ask for [Proper Learning Position] checks, when you know that some students are able to listen quite well with their knees folded up to their chins? Then again, these examples assume that the class is otherwise in order and controlled. So how do you define “order and control” for a field trip to a museum? to a botanical garden? to a library? to a community farm?
This litany of anxious questions makes it sound like a field trip is one of the rings of hell. That’s not how I feel at all! On the contrary, I think I’m aware of my anxiety so intensely precisely because the rest of the fieldtrip experience has so much potential and excitement. I enjoy the challenge of the preparation before the trip: how much information to give, how to whet their appetite for more, how to focus or frame all the information they’ll be receiving or could be interested in. In third grade, I enjoyed the prep for the Mary Baker Eddy trip; I got to give both concrete details to contextualize her life and work (so that they could make a very basic sense of it), while also hinting at some of the big-picture questions which she and her work raise. And after the trip, there’s the challenge of giving a way to process what they’ve seen, to share questions, but also to focus some of the information into a coherent picture to hold onto.
In the meantime, I’ll just try to be thankful that I don’t have to take anyone on a hiking trip.
Evangelicals, Episcopalians, & Education
Excerpt from a "journal entry / reflection" required by the Intern Program at the end of this past March.
On the long drive home from DIA in December, my dad and I got to talking about ministry. My priest, Steve, is out in the Berkshires and working in a dying factory town; his congregation is tiny, and they talk through much of the service but love coffee hour afterwards. Dad’s advice: “Tell them to rake the leaves in their neighbor’s yard instead of going to a service!” This wise (and very non-Episcopalian) option prompted me to ask him his thoughts on youth education in the church. I told him that since starting work at the LP, I’ve been accidentally remembering reams of Sunday School songs and activities. What did he think of the churches we’d attended as Rachel and Nolan and I grew up? What did he think of how Christians raised kids in their church?
Dad thought for a moment. “Well,” he said, “by the time they get to junior high, or maybe high school, they know all the stories, they know the verses, all the ideas and the language—but the problem is getting them to keep coming, and getting them interested in applying it to their lives.” I broke out in laughter. Dad was baffled; I explained that to the Episcopal Church, that sounds like a wonderful problem! “We have the opposite one,” I explained.
We have young people (in high school) who attend church without fail, but couldn’t find the book of Amos if it bit them on the nose. We have young people (in college) who are interested in the social activism of the church, or its music, but who are terrified to talk about their thoughts and feelings about God. We’ve got folks who’ve sat through twenty Lents but who couldn’t tell you what it means (aside from “I give up chocolate”), who can’t recount the entirety of the Exodus, and who’ve heard Luke read from a pulpit but can’t tell you what Luke’s Jesus feels about poor people.
Of course, I don’t think all Episcopalians need a post-grad level of theological understanding. But I do think that much of the meaning-making that happens in a religious life starts with a familiarity with texts, traditions, and reasoning (theology). The religious follower then figures out (or decides, or discovers, or falls into) a way of engaging with these three foundations in his or her own life. For Anglicans , the texts are the canonical Scriptures and The Book of Common Prayer; the traditions include the liturgical year and the Anglo-Catholic bells and whistles; and because we are a wide-reading group, the reasoning (theology) starts with Nag Hammadi and ends with whatever new liberation theologian is popular today.
Each of these three areas is like a massive lake, which begins on a wide shallow beach and descends into a sapphire center. And in each lake there are pebbles, shells, fish, crabs, reeds, crustaceans--any number of fascinating things. The disciple decides where she’ll wade in; she decides if she’d like to splash around in one lake, or dive to the bottom of another, or spend most of her days swimming along in one lake and only gazing at the others.
Education in the church, and especially education for children, is like teaching the disciple to swim. And even before that—it’s like getting rid of any fear of water!
At least, that’s how it seems to this particular Anglican. This understanding comes from an Evangelical upbringing, a skeptical and analytical mindset, and a book-loving heart. The branches of Christianity have grown and flourished in such radically different ways, no one understanding of education can be sufficient. Each Christian engages with his/her own tradition and works to interpret it; in the last seven months, I’ve found this is one aspect of my own tradition which I hope to change.
Postscript: There are Episcopalian churches who do a good job; there are also Evangelical churches who do a bad job. But I do think these are acceptable generalizations for these churches in the United States.
On the long drive home from DIA in December, my dad and I got to talking about ministry. My priest, Steve, is out in the Berkshires and working in a dying factory town; his congregation is tiny, and they talk through much of the service but love coffee hour afterwards. Dad’s advice: “Tell them to rake the leaves in their neighbor’s yard instead of going to a service!” This wise (and very non-Episcopalian) option prompted me to ask him his thoughts on youth education in the church. I told him that since starting work at the LP, I’ve been accidentally remembering reams of Sunday School songs and activities. What did he think of the churches we’d attended as Rachel and Nolan and I grew up? What did he think of how Christians raised kids in their church?
Dad thought for a moment. “Well,” he said, “by the time they get to junior high, or maybe high school, they know all the stories, they know the verses, all the ideas and the language—but the problem is getting them to keep coming, and getting them interested in applying it to their lives.” I broke out in laughter. Dad was baffled; I explained that to the Episcopal Church, that sounds like a wonderful problem! “We have the opposite one,” I explained.
We have young people (in high school) who attend church without fail, but couldn’t find the book of Amos if it bit them on the nose. We have young people (in college) who are interested in the social activism of the church, or its music, but who are terrified to talk about their thoughts and feelings about God. We’ve got folks who’ve sat through twenty Lents but who couldn’t tell you what it means (aside from “I give up chocolate”), who can’t recount the entirety of the Exodus, and who’ve heard Luke read from a pulpit but can’t tell you what Luke’s Jesus feels about poor people.
Of course, I don’t think all Episcopalians need a post-grad level of theological understanding. But I do think that much of the meaning-making that happens in a religious life starts with a familiarity with texts, traditions, and reasoning (theology). The religious follower then figures out (or decides, or discovers, or falls into) a way of engaging with these three foundations in his or her own life. For Anglicans , the texts are the canonical Scriptures and The Book of Common Prayer; the traditions include the liturgical year and the Anglo-Catholic bells and whistles; and because we are a wide-reading group, the reasoning (theology) starts with Nag Hammadi and ends with whatever new liberation theologian is popular today.
Each of these three areas is like a massive lake, which begins on a wide shallow beach and descends into a sapphire center. And in each lake there are pebbles, shells, fish, crabs, reeds, crustaceans--any number of fascinating things. The disciple decides where she’ll wade in; she decides if she’d like to splash around in one lake, or dive to the bottom of another, or spend most of her days swimming along in one lake and only gazing at the others.
Education in the church, and especially education for children, is like teaching the disciple to swim. And even before that—it’s like getting rid of any fear of water!
At least, that’s how it seems to this particular Anglican. This understanding comes from an Evangelical upbringing, a skeptical and analytical mindset, and a book-loving heart. The branches of Christianity have grown and flourished in such radically different ways, no one understanding of education can be sufficient. Each Christian engages with his/her own tradition and works to interpret it; in the last seven months, I’ve found this is one aspect of my own tradition which I hope to change.
Postscript: There are Episcopalian churches who do a good job; there are also Evangelical churches who do a bad job. But I do think these are acceptable generalizations for these churches in the United States.
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