Mar 7, 2013 Essays: On Books, Art, Literary Appreciation and so on, Reading, Writing, Thinking, Teaching and Learning
OR: A Day in the Life of this Eighth Grade English Teacher
©By Vijaya Sundaram March 7th, 2013Today was a day of non-academic messiness.
We had finished John Steinbeck’s book The Pearl almost two weeks ago, but were working rather late on the projects, because the materials I’d ordered would take that long to arrive. So, after their essay on the book, we moved on to our Holocaust unit, but revisited The Pearl in an oblique manner, in order to work on our “Personal Pearl” project.
In the book by Steinbeck (a terribly, terribly sad book, with almost no joy in it, except at the start), the protagonist, Kino, an indigenous pearl fisherman near the Sea of Cortez on the Pacific side of Mexico, finds a pearl, which they call “the Pearl of the World.” The pearl seems, to Kino, to be a sort of crystal ball in which he can see his future — he’s very poor, and his idea of wealth consists of seeing himself, his wife, Juana, and their son Coyotito, all clad in beautiful new clothes. He envisions himself getting properly married in a church, and getting their son baptised. He sees his son getting an education, and reading from “a great book.” He imagines a harpoon to replace the one he’d lost, and finally, he visualizes a rifle. He shares his dreams with his neighbors, and this last one makes all of them hold their breath in amazement. Ultimately, through some terrible events (which I cannot divulge), all that he finds himself with at the end of the book is the rifle. All his other dreams vanish, and when he looks into the pearl, all he sees is the recent dead past, along with the scenes of suffering he’s had to undergo in his need to keep his pearl in order to sell it in the big city (as opposed to the greedy and underhanded pearl dealers in town, who had offered him a pittance for it). Thus, the pearl becomes an extension of Kino’s past, present and future, an outward screen onto which all his dreams and hopes get projected. It has always been and will always be only a pearl, but to Kino, it’s a symbol of all the misfortune and calamities he’s suffered. The only recourse he has, at the end, is to part with it, and the way he does it, is as inevitable as the ending of a book of this nature can be.
It’s far from pleasant in parts, but the rhythm of Steinbeck’s prose is akin to hearing poetry spoken aloud by a singer. The cadence of his language, the choice of words, the sentence structures, the metaphors — these make my imagination swoon.
But because the book is so sad, and our essay on it is so serious in tone, I try to offset that by having students work on personal pearls of their own (which is accompanied by a lighter, more personal essay). These, however, are pearls which they create, and which reflect some aspect of themselves (unlike Kino, who found his pearl, and it became his soul). These pearls symbolize the work they do. I ask them to imagine that we humans are all busily creating pearls out of the travails or struggles of our lives, much like an oyster would create a pearl to deal with the irritation caused by sand in its bivalves.
Thus, today, my students were going to make a “personal pearl” with small spheres I’d bought for the purpose. On this “pearl” they were supposed to glue colorful pieces of tissue paper, and add details about some of their past achievements, or things they were proud to have accomplished — as public as winning a trophy, learning to sky-dive, learning to do several back-flips, or land an A in Spanish or French, and also as private as conquering fears or bad habits, becoming better at staying focused, speaking up in public, or gaining new confidence in themselves.
So, you can imagine the scene:
~A total of one hundred and seven students working on this project, arriving in groups of twenty or twenty-two, every forty-seven minutes (I teach five class periods), full of energy, full of the potential for deep mischief, full of enthusiasm at doing something different in an English class (Really? We get to glue things, and mess around?), and ready to tackle anything.
~Controlled chaos erupting in the back of the classroom, with PILES of beautiful tissue paper, shiny mylar paper, plus big containers of the smelliest, nastiest, stickiest but really fast-drying, and easily washable glue that leaves glued-on surfaces shiny and smooth: The charmingly named Mod-Podge.
~Chatter and cooperation, some occasional foolishness, which was quickly quelled by someone’s coevals and group pressure to do a nice job.
~And LOTS of paper strewn about everywhere — on desks, falling in slow-motion to the floor, lying in rainbow heaps on computer counters, decorating an occasional crazy student, or an object that’s not meant to be decorated.
This was our day, and it was good.
I like chaos, actually. I don’t mind it at all. People, when they know they’re going to make a nice, happy mess, change in behavior around each other. They feel and act freer, somehow. There’s lots of kidding, plenty of good-natured teasing, lobbed back-and-forth sallies between teacher and students, and license for me to say things like, “What on earth is THAT?! Surely, you’re not thinking of handing that in! It’s terrible! It’s so awful I’m going to faint. Save me!”
I can be terribly sexist (against boys — sorry!). “Look at the girls, boys! Check out how nicely they’re doing it. Learn from them. How come boys have NO clue how to be neat? Huh?” At this point, some boy will then hold up his beautifully worked-on “pearl” and I’ll pretend to reel my words back in, and eat them. Sorry! Sometimes, we can be wrong, you know!
So, the day unfolded. I collected late homework assignments, had parent conferences during our mid-day Team Meeting time (saw FOUR parents within forty-five minutes, and all of the meetings were positive ones — yay!).
I opened a window, and the wind blew in promptly making little eddies of colored paper swirl up in the air, before I wrestled them into submission, while flakes of snow whirled around outside in the little courtyard below. I wiped down the tables three times today, and swept my floor with my nifty little broom three times as well. Otherwise, the scene that would have met the custodian’s eyes this evening would have made him faint right away. And if he didn’t revive, it would have been on my head.
And I wouldn’t like that.
Besides, no one would like to walk into my classroom tomorrow morning, and find a passed-out, or worse, deceased custodian on the floor. That’s a no-no! (I mean, how would we concentrate on our studies?)
Such are the kinds of things we teachers have to worry about in order to keep our jobs!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The End~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tags: #Learning, #Teaching, A Day in the Life of an English Teacher, John Steinbeck, mild attempts at humor, Personal Pearl, Silliness, Snark, The Pearl