"Even in heaven they don't sing all the time"

Quite frankly, Michael Mazenko’s essay, “Awaiting—still—a renaissance of wonder,” irritates me. Teachers like Mazenko, who denigrate teenagers, irk me. During my thirty-three years of teaching, I’ve heard disparaging remarks like Mazenko’s too often: young people have lost their passion, their curiosity, their skills, and their hearts

Michael Mazenko writes,

"As a high school English teacher, I start the year by reading Ferlinghetti's poem aloud. During the discussion that follows, I ask my new crop of teenagers what they wonder. I'm always met with silence — silence and faces as blank as sheets of loose-leaf paper before an essay.

"My God," I tell them, "have we killed it in you already?"

Sadly, they don't wonder. Or they wonder innocuous, mundane things like, "What's our homework?" or "Is this on the test," or shockingly, "Do we have to know this?"

I tell my students that in order to be effective readers, to be effective students, to be happy and successful adults, they need to wonder.

They don't always get it. Something has been lost in their journey through school and through life — a journey that is supposed to be about discovery."

Just because teenagers don’t behave like kindergartners doesn’t mean that school has “killed” something in them. I’m a mother of a tenth grader. I was 39 when my son was born, and I’m 55 now. When my son was three years old, I too experienced what Mazenko calls that wonderful “second childhood” when the “world was huge and fascinating.” Now that my son is 16, I am re-experiencing the world through the eyes of a teenager. The world is still huge and fascinating—but now it’s full of danger.

Since the heady days of kindergarten, my son has gained new knowledge—none of it discovered in the classroom. He now knows death—of two grandparents and an uncle. Kids at his school have died—one was accidentally shot by a friend and one died in a car accident. He has seen friends succumb to the lure of drugs and alcohol. He knows kids who have experienced trouble with the law. Many of his friends have watched their parents’ marriages fall apart. He has learned that some neighbors and cops don’t like teenagers. He has become aware of his own intellectual and physical limitations: he has dyslexia and has broken bones and needed stitches. He remembers 9/11 and the explosion of the Colombia. He has watched TV images of the devastation in Iraq and New Orleans.

If a teenager is reluctant to jut his hand up in the air when his thirty-seven-year-old teacher asks him on the first day of school, “What do you wonder?” I suspect it isn’t that school has damaged him. I suspect it’s simply that the teenager has faced the tragedies in life. A teenager’s silence and blank face don’t mean “only innocuous, mundane things” float in her head.

Mazenko revels in his child’s statement, “Daddy, I wonder if there are any worms under that moss over there.” Yesterday, I was struck dumb by my own child’s statement, “Mom, I wonder if Robbie will go to jail.” You see, two days ago, my son’s buddy killed a five-year-old whose spontaneity and enthusiasm made him forget to look for cars as he rode his bike into the street. My son’s sixteen-year-old friend couldn’t stop his SUV in time, and now must live with the horrible reality that a car—even when driven slowly and carefully—can kill.

When I look at today’s 16-year-olds, I feel none of Michael Mazenko’s despair. He states, “I worry when my students stop wondering. That lack of discovery can lead us into the drudgery of adulthood.” Teenagers haven’t stopped wondering. In fact, they wonder so profoundly and so deeply that they can’t always find the right words to express their thoughts. True, they don’t jump out of their chairs like a five year old and ask about “flowers and trucks and tea sets.” They may be reticent—and even surly—but to be silent and awed by the world’s complexity doesn’t mean our students have entered the “drudgery” of adulthood.

Mazenko asks us, “Remember how fun it was to play tag? Remember how exhilarating it was to run through the sprinkler? Remember the insane joy of rolling down a hill? Remember when you just instinctively ran after lightning bugs at dusk?” I ask, “Remember how frightening it was to be a teenager? Remember how you worried about sex, violence, death, and war?”

Teenagers know the joy of life, but they wonder about its darkness as well. As teachers, we must help prepare them for adulthood (which has been anything but drudgery for me, by the way). We do so by offering them the great ideas of the past, as well as the exciting technology of the future. We share with them all the wonders of science and math and art and poetry. We must inspire them and show them that even though danger has always been part of human life, humans don’t need to be squelched by fear.

I am reminded of words from another poem by Ferlinghetti,

The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind happiness
not always being
so very much fun
if you don't mind a touch of hell
now and then
just when everything is fine
because even in heaven
they don't sing
all the time

Beginnings...

I was interested in reading Terry Sale's post, where he described this year's innovations and changes. Like Terry, I am trying to reduce the amount of homework I assign my sophomores. My own son is a high school sophomore this year, and I know how exhausting and frustrating the constant load of homework can be. I've told my students that I won't assign homework over the weekends. I believe that homework erodes family life and turns a student away from the joy of learning. My goal this year is to use class time effectively--and also to be more constructivist in my teaching techniques. That probably means I won't be able to "cover" as much content as I've done in the past....but hopefully it means the kids will be more engaged in the learning.

How does this translate into specifics? I'm still working that out, of course, but it looks something like this:

Monday--Students read for pleasure for 20 minutes. They may bring any book that interests them. They earn points by reading. I'm not planning on making them do a big project or book report. All they have to do is read. Then, for 30 minutes we do vocabulary lessons from an old text book I found in the book room. I know it sounds boring, but I'm hoping a formal vocabulary study will help them with their standardized test scores, their writing, their reading. I won't test them on huge lists of words. Instead, we'll try to use the words all week--in discussion, in writing, etc. I'll try to make parts of the vocabulary study "fun."

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday --Discussion and analysis of literary "masterpieces" from our curriculum. I love literature and don't want to teach if I can't expose the students to great writers and books. But I'm going to try to engage the kids by using constructivist techniques and TECHNOLOGY. I'll be less concerned with what I think they should know about a text and more concerned with giving them the opportunity to discover their own meaning.

Thursday--Read for pleasure and writing. This year I plan to give my students more time to write in class. Sometimes, they'll need (and hopefully want) to finish their papers at home, but the goal is to do most of the writing at school. The topics will be varied, interesting, sometimes related to the literature, sometimes not. Every now and then, we'll go to the computer lab to edit and refine a final draft that will be submitted for a grade.

So far, I'm sticking to my plan. My students--though not terribly energetic yet--are working hard and seem to be very pleased with my homework policy.