Well, there was this fellow John Keats, I tell them, and he had watched and nursed his brother through the traumatic illness that was tuberculosis in the 1700's - and he saw his brother die. And by his own 28th birthday, John knew he himself had contracted the illness.. and that his days were numbered. And his response? He wrote a sonnet about it.....
When I have fears that I may cease to be,
before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain....
Beautiful stuff, really, and John came to a startling conclusion. That fame and love, and things temporal really don't matter all that much in the long haul. That what matters is contemplation of the "big" ideas... like life and death and mortality and immortality. And today... in amazing clarity... my kids' faces lit up and they got it. They made a connection with our friend Keats, a guy who never saw the backside of his 31st birthday. And it was amazing!
This is why I teach.
1 comment:
That must be the greatest feeling, when your students really understand a concept! It's like the night that Emily brought home long division homework in 4th grade and it took her HOURS to do it, and then the teacher never even looked at it the next day. I decided that the next time that math book came home, we were going to go over those problems again, because I wasn't sure she was quite getting it. So, a week or so later, she finally brings home the math book and we go over the problems that gave her trouble and all of a sudden it clicked. (She hadn't been picking the highest number to divide by.) She got all the right answers lickety-split and it has never been difficult for her, ever again. I think the teacher assigned a whole bunch of pages of homework, so he could just move on to the next section, but Emily almost got left behind. Now she's a senior, too, and taking AP Calculus, without any help from me.
What a neat story. Thanks for sharing.
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