NEVER-ENDING CURRENTS

When I’m steering my students through a new lesson, I sometimes sense the flow and influence of many kinds of currents, as if we’re on a ship and sailing across tricky tidal waters. In a way, it’s a wonder we all don’t drown in English class, what with the crazy currents of ideas and feelings flowing around us. They’re not seen by visitors, but these streams of thoughts and emotions can make my class more like a rowdy journey than a well-reasoned presentation of an English lesson. It’s just under the surface, the steady movement of tides of ideas and streams of feelings, so that even when the students seem to be snoozing through a lesson, their thoughts are always functioning and influential, following and interweaving with each other in a never-ending stream. In some ways, I guess I could be a good teacher simply by settling in and sailing easily on these currents that are always there -- these tidal forces of feelings and ideas that don’t ever stop moving in my classroom.