My Favorite Table Returned to Studio Eidolons
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us.
2 Corinthians 4:7
How satisfying to sit at this small, sturdy table once again! This was one of my favorite pieces of furniture in Studio Eidolons, but when we took ownership of The Gallery at Redlands over two years ago, we really needed furnishings, and this table went down there. I have missed it so! Yesterday, I finally brought it back “home” again, and this Sunday morning, with a grateful heart, I sit at it and work on this blog.
WARNING–This blog will be confessional. I’m usually not comfortable going into this mode, but what I’m about to write has flooded my thinking for several hours now, and I’m writing it for me. You of course are under no obligation to read all of it, or any of it. I’m writing for me . . .
I treasure every moment of my life when I’ve experienced a flood of inspiration from someone’s public speaking or presentation. My journals are packed with recorded notes of these sacred revival moments. And as a teacher and public speaker, I’ve always wished for that gift of inspiring others, touching others, as I have been touched. We don’t really know how to describe “presence” or “impact”. We just know it when it happens. Frankly, I’m a quiet guy. I’ve always wished I could fill a room with presence or electricity from the voice or physical gestures. But I’ve always known that I don’t really have that “It” factor. I even purchased Chris Anderson’s Ted Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking. I used it several times for college lectures, hoping to add some kind of “punch” to what I was trying to communicate. I have no evidence that any of it worked. My epitaph should read I TRIED.
Now I must confess that I have files filled with letters from folks who have told me how much they were moved by something I said in public. I take those out and read them from time to time, and I’m touched to know that sometimes what I presented made an impact.
Now I want to share one of the most precious memories from my life of teaching. I frequently volunteered to be on the program for teachers’ In-services in our school district. Most of us chafed at attending those mandatory sessions, and I thought maybe I would enjoy some of them more if I just got to “talk” instead of sitting for hours listening to others “talk.” Over the years, I presented many, many of those sessions, most of them forgettable, to me.
But one day in the fall semester of 1996, I received a manila envelope in my teacher’s mailbox, and found within a typed letter from Shauna Carroll, an English teacher in my district. I will share that letter in full at the end of this blog.
The letter launched a friendship between the two of us that didn’t last enough years. Though we taught on different campuses, we looked forward to every district event so we could seek out each other and catch up. She was truly an electric individual. About three years after we met, I still remember the first day of summer school when an administrator came up with the brilliant idea of switching out some classrooms. I gave up long ago any attempt to understand some of these administrative decisions. I was to trade rooms with an English teacher across the hall. Why? No one knows. So. As I hurriedly gathered up the course textbooks for my English subject, I heard this voice behind me shout: “Move your ass. This is my room!” It was Shauna. We laughed. “Did you request this change?” I asked. “Hell no,” her response. And that was that. But it was a fun moment.
A week later, Shauna died while driving to summer school. She suffered a heart attack behind the wheel of her car, drove into someone’s front yard, and died seated in the driver’s seat. My guess is that she was in her forties. No one saw this coming. I cannot describe the crush that overcame me that morning as I received the news. I don’t remember that day in the classroom. Or the next. But I do remember her funeral. The testimonials coming from her students still fill my memories with profound gratitude. She was loved. Adored. And funny. And the students were so pure in pouring out their sentiments that day that frankly, I remember nothing of the eulogy.
What Shauna wrote carries much more firepower than what I am able to write. So, if you’re still with me, I’ll now let Shauna speak to you.
8/30/96
Dr. David Tripp
Martin High School
Date: Beginning of the new school year
Place: Lamar High School, English Teacher’s In-service
When: I don’t know, a couple of weeks ago. I’m just now doing this.
Why: Listen. Because.
You’ve been there.
You know how you feel on the morning of in-service days, like a day-old doughnut languishing in a cup of warm milk. Weak. Coffee seems to be brewing somewhere else, tantalizing your senses, not available to you, even if you don’t want it. “How will I endure the mundane? Well, I’ve got to do it, so let’s go.” You are expected to listen. You expect boredom. You anticipate mediocrity.
But I really, surprisingly, enjoyed your in-service on teaching philosophy in literature. I really needed some umph, a bagel with some substance and a whole lot of garlic, cream cheese, chives and salt. Here’s a more realistic appraisal than the “scale of 1 to 10” form that we were given that day. Go back to the experience with me from an observer’s perspective.
You are truly irritating enough to elicit this response. Good for you. I’m proud of your audacity.
Listen.
There is a strange note in the air. Handel’s water music drips somewhere in my head, waiting to start. But it is really the sound of communication within the room. I’m hoping. I’m wondering.
A stray note on the board says, “Listen and Silent have the same letters.” Too cutesy. Too annoying.
It is not a note from our presenter, because we know that he doesn’t believe in this. We didn’t come here for this. We are borrowing this room for one hour. The inhabitants don’t like that concept on the board. But we have to endure the over-crowding, the restlessness. We talk. We listen. We exchange.
More chairs are hauled into the room. More teachers than the teacher-in-charge expected, than the administration that designed this holocaust-of-a-room expected. (Did they not have anything larger? What were they thinking? Do they not believe that there are so many of us interested in teaching philosophy in the classroom?!)
A small wrinkle appears on the presenter’s forehead; a wry smile, puzzled at the enthusiasm in the room, and we wonder, why? We all know why we are here, doesn’t he? Apparently he doesn’t believe in himself, because there weren’t enough copies of the outline to pass out to the participants. We chose this lecture, this in-service, because we want to know truth, that last horizon of philosophical endeavor, and how to teach it in today’s society within our curriculum. How to open-up kids’ intellectual curiosity.
But the room fills up quickly. Heat rises, that ghostly glare surfacing, dancing, from a black-top pavement in Texas August heat.
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The room is restless. Demanding.
Who would expect that there would be so many teachers interested in this particular style of teaching? Today, forty, fifty tops in the whole district of secondary education in Arlington. 52,000 students. We know that we are rare. We actually like questioning, answering, questioning again. We work a program that doesn’t have anything to do with a lesson plan. In fact, I call my lesson plan book a history book, because I write down what we have experienced that day in the classroom. Yes, we follow the curriculum guide, sort of. All of the sacred “Essential Elements” are there. But we teach to the students’ interests, abilities, expertise, desires. We care about their future. We want to see progress, and feel it and hear it, and ultimately sense it. It is there in our classrooms, and want it brought out.
We also know that we were right, because our students have increased their TAAS scores, that last bastion of credibility in Texas, particularly at Barnett Junior High, where we were awarded the mega-bucks to continue whatever it was that we were doing right. TEA didn’t know exactly what it was that we were doing or how we did it. We were just one of those schools that received this honor in Arlington. Non-specific encouragement. Just a lump-sum that said, “Oh, yes!” $20,000.00. OOOsh. Apparently, philosophy does matter in today’s materialistic society, and, in a spooky way, they are combined.
We care. We listen. We believe. We, in fact, Demand dialogue within the classroom.
Not silence.
The board that we are borrowing says, “Listen and Silent have the same letters.” It doesn’t know that it echoes ominously in our collective souls. We want to attack it. We’ve already said, “We don’t believe this.” We don’t agree with this philosophy. We expect a constant challenge that defies all odds, all principles. I’m antsy, write that preposterous slogan down on the back of my packet, and attack it with little dots from my pen. Disgusted with myself at that mindless activity, I look around the room at the other creatures. Who are we?
We came here today to hear a lecture on philosophical communication in literature. We don’t understand this concept of silence. We talk incessantly.
Because we don’t teach silence in our classrooms; we don’t adhere to that principle. We don’t even understand that anyone could teach this way. We are an annoying bunch of people that the administration doesn’t particularly understand, nor necessarily respects. To them, Aristotle is dead; Oh well. But to us, his brilliance is alive and intact. We don’t care about any negative attitudes that feed down to us when it comes to encouraging students to think, because we came into this profession knowing that what we wanted to do would not always be accepted, but that we had a goal a belief. If the administration believed in us, then we would believe in them. But ultimately, we needed for them to understand.
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I realize that I lucked out. The administration at my school is very positive. Glasser-oriented. They actually care about our classroom environments, and what we can achieve. My principal puts notes in our team’s boxes, saying, yes, you can order pillows for reading time if that keeps the students more focused and into reading and will ultimately improve their TAAS scores. She’s supportive. I have an Assistant Vice-Principal, that puts notes in my box on ways that I can better communicate with my students from a philosophical perspective. We communicate through the newspaper, magazine articles, essays, editorials, that we share with one another, and ultimately, with our students. We all actually believe in reading. We, as teachers, are given positive encouragement to work a program that is interesting, successful, and that broadens the minds of our students. We feel empowered to help our kids achieve.
I see my classroom now, before school starts. Within my room, there is a library of reading material, from science to math to history to foreign languages to government to origami to classical literature. There is a reading time, a moment in our day at school, structured in, when everyone drops everything and picks up a book to read. Mandatory reading. What a novel concept in education. Again given to us by the administration. Yep, I’m lucky.
If we talk about duality in the mainstream of life, about the need for harmony (“Practice Peace” poster in my room), and the conflicting need for uniqueness (multi-colored penguins that point to our own individuality, also in my room), then we ultimately come to some convergence in our literature, and hope that the concepts will blend. In 8th Grade mandatory-literature texts, there is a duality in harmony vs. individualism, and I see this in the literature of TOM SAWYER, FLOWERS FOR AGERNON, DIARY OF ANNE FRANK, and CALL OF THE WILD.
8th grade stuff.
No, college-stuff. Because these little 8th grade students are really young adults, and are figuring out their individuality (their need for acceptance as well as their rule over mankind), and their need for the pact mentality of the wolves in the CALL OF THE WILD. A blend. A wholeness.
A communication, borne out of the past, brought into a spiritual future, that has the audacity to combine that duality into the present.
And in my mindless ramblings that day that involved the charged atmosphere around me, you begin your presentation, and almost instantaneously, it ends.
Like a brief glimpse of a comet. I just thought, Wow. I felt small, like the time I was able to capture a double-rainbow on film, I wanted to be on those rainbows, both, but couldn’t. I wanted to ride on the comet, but knew that I couldn’t catch its tail. So now I am frozen in my chair, wondering how I can incorporate philosophy into my classroom.
But then I realize, I already have. Because I like conversation, dialogue, I turn to the nearest person and start talking, And in the back of my head, I begin to hear the students talking, my future students blended with the past, and know that I am now ready for the first day of school. I can’t wait for the process to begin.
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I ultimately realize that all I am doing is helping the students process information in an organizational way based on their heritage, their background, their goals.
Listen, can you hear them talking? Because I can.
They are the voices of tomorrow, and we should hear them.
Listen, can you hear them talking?
I will accept nothing that resembles silent. I adamantly refuse it.
“The two roads diverged in a narrow wood, and I, I took the one less traveled,” (Robert Frost)
I seriously believe in their future, and my own, in the cyclical rather than linear nature of life, and through as much chatter as I can irritate out of them.
Thanks for the wow. I needed that.
And I’m not even sure I understood all that you said. It was just an inspirational for me, a spur, I’m ready to go to class now.
Shauna Carroll
English-8
Barnett Junior High
Thanks for reading.
Recollections 54 The Art of David Tripp 