ON TEACHING: Forty-three Miracles

I must remember today – and help my students remember – that there will be forty-three simultaneous miracles occurring each moment in my classroom. Even as I typed that sentence, I marveled at the fact that the kids and I are generally oblivious to these miracles. Each of is a ceaseless wonder, and yet we generally pass the minutes of my class in ignorance of this, as though what’s happening in those minutes is tiresome instead of astonishing. We’re in the presence of many Grand Canyons, and yet we act (at least sometimes) like we’re not especially interested. Somehow, I have to let my students know, and remind myself, that life is an endless spectacle. As we sit in my classroom today, each of us will be an ever-renewing fountain of ideas – ideas that seem to come from nowhere and are as wide and ever-lasting as the sky. Each of us will be transformed every moment – totally and beautifully re-made with a brand new idea. I mentioned the Grand Canyon, and it is an apt analogy. If my students and I were visiting the actual Grand Canyon today, we would be excited from start to finish, and yet...there will be splendor enough in my classroom on Barnes Road to surpass a dozen Grand Canyons. There will be the endless birth of ideas. There will be wisdom as astonishing as the Rocky Mountains. There will be forty-three oceans of thoughts as vast as the Pacific. Hopefully my students and I will keep our eyes wide open in amazement.