650 Words

David Israel graduated in 2004. I was never lucky enough to have him in class, but I do remember him routinely beating me in a variety of fantasy sports. Of all the advice dispensed in the 650 Words blog, David’s may be the most practical. It’s about making connections, reaching out, doing the little things that put you in a position to advance in a direction you’ve set for yourself. As an English teacher, I believe in this wholeheartedly, even though the end game is different. I try to make connections in the classroom not to advance my career, but to create the conditions needed for growth and learning for my students. The best teachers I know do this. We tend our gardens. This is a metaphor, obviously, and it comes from a poem called “The seven of pentacles” by Marge Piercy. In the poem, she uses the tending of a garden as a metaphor for how we cultivate connections and relationships -- and it occurred to me that it applies very much to what we do every day, whether we’...

The 650 Words Teachers Series continues with Ginny Robinson, who graduated from high school in 1995 and taught at Francis Parker from 2004-2008. If you missed the first installment, check out Rai Wilson’s sage words from a few weeks ago. Ginny’s post is about a lot of things: the wonder of creating something of value; the redemptive power of allowing yourself to fail; the sad fact that we’re all going to die someday.  But it’s also about the wonderful salvation that comes from community. I think a lot of young people take community for granted, and why not? As you go through school you become part of one community after another -- your high school friends, your college friends, sometimes subdivisions within those groups. But when you become an adult, especially after you’ve married, had kids, and moved around, it can be a lot harder to find a sustaining sense of community. As Ginny says in her post, it can be like a “walk through the desert.” It’s certainly not impossible to ...

Reece Salmons (2016) is primarily responsible for one of the most memorable moments of my teaching career. It was after a long evening presentation of capstone projects on what amounted to the last day of high school. It was 10:00 p.m., my classroom was the only one lit on campus, and no one was ready to go home. There was a feeling in the air. A palpable emotion. Everyone felt it at the same time: this was the last moment of high school.  (For them, not me, but I was very much caught up in it.)  It was right at that palpable moment that Reece turned off the lights, shouted, “Dance party!” and started playing an outrageous track: the Fairly Oddparents theme song (trap remix). The entire class, 15 of us, started dancing in a tight circle at the front of the classroom, laughing and twirling and hugging for the whole year. The evening ended like this -- in a big messy group hug. To get the full effect, you have to listen to the song . So Reece has always had a flair for the d...

Lydia Fisher, who graduated from high school in 2010, once wrote an essay for my AP Language and Composition class about her late-night movie watching obsession. I still remember it. I’ve graded probably 30,000 essays in my teaching life, but I can still remember sitting at my kitchen table grading that piece. Lydia wrote about how she watched the same films and shows over and over again because they provided a certain type of structure and meaning to her private life. As someone who does the same thing, I identified with this practice right away, which is probably why I remember the essay. My wife and I have our own pantheon of films, each of which we will watch once or twice a year. Sideways. Little Miss Sunshine. The Shawshank Redemption. A few others. Good films -- but we go back to them less for their aesthetic qualities and more for how they make us feel. And don’t even get me started on The Office, especially the first four seasons. When we queue up season four, it’s like we...

For this post, I have handed the intro duties over to my good friend Kiernan Aiston, a former Parker teacher who is now chair of the Social Studies Department at North Shores Country Day School in Chicago. - C.H. As a teacher, I have long chased those magic moments during class discussion when the students around me are so locked-in that they cast aside their ironic detachment, forget themselves, and laugh and get serious and laugh some more and we are all there together, fully present and wholly in earnest. Safe to say, those moments are rare. Even after 17 years of teaching, I can count them on fingers and toes. I bring this up because it was in the midst of one such discussion in the fall of 2012 that Parker senior Sam Bagheri (“Sam” here is pronounced like Tom), a student in my very accomplished 6th period AP Human Geography class, decided to say something “deep.” In case you are wondering or reading this aloud--yes, these are air quotes. Here’s the thing...

Meghan Babla graduated in 2013. I was lucky enough to have her in two classes, AP Language and Composition and Honors English 12.  I say ‘lucky’ because she was a top-drawer student with a great attitude who got the absolute most out of her Parker education. Still, though, no amount of academic preparation prepares you for how to deal with the changes that will inevitably occur in your young-adult life. There are some people whose lives are defined by change. At a young age, they experience turmoil in their family lives, changes in living conditions, unspeakable tragedies. Their lives are so filled with turbulence that it becomes the expectation. Change barely fazes them. Meghan was just the opposite. Her high school experience was characterized by stability, consistency, sameness, happy routine. She was a top student, but when she trotted off to Berkeley (big change #1) she really hadn’t ventured much beyond what some call the Parker Bubble. After studying political sc...