Teaching in the White Mountains

In New Hampshire with My 8th Grade Students
October 4, 2005

As we were packing our backpacks for the long climb tomorrow, Lauren, one of our Appalachian Mountain Club instructors, explained that we should pack with a view to accessibility, balance, and compactness. As I listened, I got to thinking about school – about the “packs” of academic skills and habits my students are getting together for their futures. I wondered if Lauren’s A-B-C formula would work there, too. Surely the students want to have their skills and habits readily accessible when they need them. They want to be able to easily use what they’ve learned in all types of situations. Unfortunately, for many students this is impossible, because their academic knowledge is buried deep in many complicated layers, like raingear at the bottom of a backpack. Equally important for my students to remember as they as they prepare for their future journeys through life is balance. In English class, I want to give them a sensible mixture of writing and reading lessons. When they’re hiking the arduous trails of life, they don’t want to be leaning to one side or the other because they’ve been taught mostly one kind of lesson by their English teacher. Finally, my students must develop a sense of the importance of compactness. They must avoid cramming their mental packs with unnecessary and unwieldy trivia. They must do what I teach them to do in their writing – cut out all unnecessary items. A zillion bits of knowledge are offered in schools these days, but all my students need is a few truly useful ones.
My thanks to Lauren for helping me understand how to “pack”.