Tag: Education

Start of School

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Dear Students,

My symbol is the Redbud tree. I chose this symbol because each leaf of the tree is a heart. The Redbud tree displays these heart-shaped leaves to all people and creatures who come near. As a teacher I have been giving my heart to students for many, many years. I love the ephemeral process of spending a year of my time with young people; reading, writing, thinking, discussing, and growing with you all. The Redbud tree eventually must say goodbye to its leaves, and in June that will also happen with us. But while the tree is nurturing its leaves, beauty is abundant. I am a believer in trees, they give us oxygen, provide shade, and literally hold the earth together with their roots. Trees are also not in a hurry; they don’t have iPads, or iPhones, or email. I can imagine trees observing us and wondering why we don’t take more time to just be and listen. I try to listen and just be, like Redbud trees. I believe that all of us have inner wisdom that comes from listening to our own voice, that quiet place where we intuitively know who we really are. It is my hope that through this English class you will nurture your inner voice through writing, thinking, discussing, and sometimes, just being.

This Stanford Life

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Three colleges have made their mark on me: Colby College (BA), Washington University in St. Louis (MA), and Stanford University (Coe Fellowship/Unofficial 4-year student). Early on, “Stanford” was almost a bad word. I taught at a large public high school (Terra Linda) where many of my highest achieving students went to Cal or UCLA, almost never to Stanford. Stanford was considered a snobby school for rich kids. My impression began to change during the summer of 2000 when I studied 20th century history at Stanford, while living in the French House on campus as part of my Coe Fellowship. Taking classes in the history corner (building), brought me into the Richardsonian Romanesque architecture, as the campus permeated my ethos. I moved to Palo Alto in 2004, thus beginning my informal education at the school. From 2004 to 2008, I attended events/classes on campus every single week. I went to lectures, films, business seminars, education roundtables, musical performances, athletic games, and completed a weeks-long writing workshop with the author Stephen Elliott. The school won me over with its never-ending generosity to the public. I recently visited Stanford with my son and now consider it my third alma mater.

Postscript: One of my former Terra Linda students is now an English Professor at Stanford. A former high school classmate (from my 1989 AP European History class) is the Provost.

When Art Spoke

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draw like a child, wild, carefree, place fingers on clay, wet with water, let the wheel shape, smooth, soothe away pain, i hang in galleries, oil colors, old wooden frames, they want to touch me, own me, be me, hold me forever, like a sunset, a sunflower, stars, constellations, my world is an inner universe, they go mad for me, seek to possess beauty and truth, they stare at me, just stare, as if i’m their mirror, and i am, looking back at them, from the past they see me, i am goya, picasso, matisse, van gogh, kahlo, o’keeffe, joan mitchell, betty woodman, they have paid for meals with sketches of me, teach me in classrooms, with crayons and paper, portraits on refrigerators, i matter more than taxes, money is eventually forgotten, me, i live forever.

What is Wisdom?

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not old body parts: craggy eyebrows, gray hair, beard, failing eyes, not dusty books: shakespeare, socrates, aurelius, arendt, not words: erudite, precocious, sagacity, percipence, not education: cambridge, oxford, harvard, princeton, not military: combat, boot camp, target practice, bombing, not politics: president, judge, senator, prime minister, not bragging: instagram, birkin bag, nantucket house, porsche panamera, but rather: nameless nature, lakes, oceans, trees, mountains, timeless, perhaps one day dead, but still wiser than….

Yearbook 1990

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we care, we don’t care, ballpoint pen, sharpie, maybe a pencil, use words like dude, sign with love, air out grievances, i guess we did have a few little arguments this year, address complicated romance, i suppose we’ve said before that everything was a mistake, but i really don’t feel that way, attempt humor, have a nice winter! make fun of teachers, doesn’t ms. earle look like grimace when she wears the purple lab coat? express bland kindness, you’ve been really cool this year, and i hope to see you around, give unwanted relationship advice, make sure to keep your girl in line, she’ll run all over you, talk sports, oh and by the way, the Braves do not suck, comment on music, STRAY CATS RULE! forget who’s yearbook it is, jim, chemistry wasn’t great but we made it to june, and this quasi-document, could be pompeii, everything, and nothing

My Favorite Writers/Poets

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mitch albom, jimmy santiago baca, sylvia boorstein, ray bradbury, raymond carver, pema chodron, ta-nehisi coates, pat conroy, e.e. cummings, emily dickinson, william faulkner, william finnegan, norman fischer, f. scott fitzgerald, nick flynn, natalie goldberg, richard grant, doris grumbach, thich nhat hahn, ernest hemingway, tony hoagland, zora neale hurston, jon kabat-zinn, mary karr, jane kenyon, ted kooser, stanley kunitz, anne lamont, li-young lee, philip levine, patrica lockwood, gabriel garcia marquez, peter matthiessen, frank mccourt, john mcphee, thomas merton, w.s. merwin, joseph millar, marianne moore, john muir, tim o’brien, sharon olds, mary oliver, pablo neruda, jd salinger, suzanne scanlon, shel silverstein, isaac bashevis singer, john steinbeck, wislawa szmborska, richard wilbur, c.k. williams, thomas wolfe, tobias wolff, richard wright

passing algebra

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i memorized the quadratic equation, but always forgot to divide my answers by 2, this meant failing the class, which couldn’t happen, so i was introduced to a tutor, mr. marks and his dog pickle (dachshund), my new mathematical friends. i met with him most days in his basement apartment where his stomach growled and balding hair moved with the air from the space heater, but he knew algebra, had taught high school for decades, and had the patience of a man who didn’t talk to anyone all day. they always say, it was a miracle that i passed math, but my miracle had a name, it was mr. marks.

when i left terra linda high school

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drive the mustang top down to silbermann’s ice cream, marcels blue moon blasting, five years of teaching completed and they want yearbooks signed, the teenagers, my students. benevolent chaos, i feel like mickey mantle as they hand over pens and pencils for me to scribble words of love on a page. descriptions of what they added to class discussions, how much history they mastered, or their uncanny comprehension of richard wright. they surround me all afternoon, a human blanket, wrapping me in june kindness and melting mint chocolate chip.