"MAZING" IN ENGLISH CLASS

Yesterday a friend told me she was “going running” later in the day, and for some reason it started me thinking about “going mazing” in English class. I realize that’s a somewhat bizarre use of the word, but it makes sense to me. As the many years have passed, teaching English has become a more and more maze-like business to me, so you might say I’m going to “maze” through my classes next week, the way my friend was going to "run" through the town yesterday. No matter how carefully I plan my lessons, still the actual teaching tends to be like locating the secret paths through a web of wonders. My lessons seem to be clear-cut, perfect paths to selected goals, but actually they are more like trails drawn on the surface of the sea, shifting and disappearing almost as fast as they are drawn, so that, sometimes five minutes into a class, my work suddenly widens before me like a mystifying maze. To be honest, I don’t mind that feeling, because working my way through a maze, or going “mazing”, has usually been a happy experience for me. I sometimes send out a silent cry of thanks that I’m fortunate enough to do some serious mazing each day with serious, maze-solving young students of English.