On the exterior wall of my bedroom hangs a crucifix given me by a priest at Saint John the Evangelist Catholic Church in Waynesville. The cross had gone missing, and the priest was discarding the corpus because someone had broken off the hands. Where he saw a disfigured Christ, however, I saw a symbol. We—the priest, me, all believers—were to be the hands of Christ.
Back home, I fashioned two pieces of stained wood into a cross and attached the corpus. Though it has hung near my bed for years, this crucifix, to be honest, rates only an occasional glance. My bedroom is for sleeping and changing clothes. In addition, the crucifix is a background object, one of those items in a home that pass unnoticed. Strangely, however, or strange to me at any rate, I think about this crucifix quite a bit. If indeed we are to be the hands of Christ, then some of us, including me, fall woefully short of the mark.
Back home, I fashioned two pieces of stained wood into a cross and attached the corpus. Though it has hung near my bed for years, this crucifix, to be honest, rates only an occasional glance. My bedroom is for sleeping and changing clothes. In addition, the crucifix is a background object, one of those items in a home that pass unnoticed. Strangely, however, or strange to me at any rate, I think about this crucifix quite a bit. If indeed we are to be the hands of Christ, then some of us, including me, fall woefully short of the mark.
I don’t work in a soup kitchen. I don’t build houses for Habitat For Humanity. I give money to beggars in Downtown Asheville, but otherwise I am an irregular donor to charity, unless you count the money for the church collection and my quarterly contributions to the Internal Revenue Service.
Twenty years ago found me much more engaged. PackMaster in Cub Scouts, Sunday school teacher, president of the parish council, president and volunteer for The Friends of the Library, co-creator of a small Catholic school in Waynesville: these consumed much time and energy.
After settling in Asheville, children, teaching, and writing took precedence over volunteer work, though my son’s participation in sports demanded some small obligations on my part: gatekeeper, concession stand cashier, that sort of thing. America is a land of candy stripers—I use the term metaphorically—and its millions of volunteers laudably and without pay devote themselves to many worthy causes, but somehow my interest had evaporated.
Yet one group does receive what the Church calls “my time, talents, and treasures” Let me tell you a bit about the students I teach.
These young people, ranging from eight to eighteen, are home-educated students who attend my seminars in such subjects as Latin, history, literature, and writing. They come to me once a week for two hours—and more than that, of course, if they take additional courses—and then return home to complete, depending on the class in which they are enrolled, three to seven hours of assignments.
Our classes meet at Trinity Presbyterian Church, which for a reasonable fee rents two rooms to me during the academic year. The students sit three and four to a table facing a white board on which I scrawl notes or vocabulary words. Sometimes I lecture, but just as frequently ask questions or lead discussions. We often break into groups to tackle various projects, which the students relish. As I well know, they attend classes to enjoy the companionship of other homeschoolers as much as to learn from me, and the groups provide them that opportunity.
This situation suits me well. For one, my classes operate on a free-market system: if you dislike the class, then quit and take your money elsewhere. For another, unless they are taking multiple classes, the students see me once a week. This gap of days freshens our encounters.
Best of all, students often take classes from me for five and six years. This accumulation of days and weeks brings me the enormous satisfaction of watching students grow, witnessing them advance from adolescence to the threshold of adulthood, and seeing them develop skills that will serve them well after graduation.
To my students I do give lagniappe, that is, a gift of service running beyond my paid obligations. I write letters of recommendation for Eagle Scouts, the college bound, and students seeking employment. The Advanced Placement classes meet for free extra sessions prior to the exam. Several times, over spring break, I have taken AP students to the coast, where we rent a house, study hard twice a day, and enjoy the beach. Older students hired by me offer free tutoring. When I can afford it, I buy books for the classroom and hire student graders to help me mark essays and tests.
Except for an occasional good deed, these extras constitute my present pro bono services to humanity.
Now for a few remarks on teaching:
Some of my students dislike me, and some are indifferent, but many, I would speculate, enjoy my classroom and learn from my instruction. They and their parents reward me with treats, cash, and gift cards, and last summer a group of them sent me to Europe for seven weeks.
Whatever they find admirable in my teaching is beyond my ken. If someone asked me to draw up a list of qualities making for a great teacher, the task would be simple. If on the other hand someone said to me, “Some of your students think you’re a great teacher. Tell me why,” I wouldn’t have a clue.
After some deep analysis—ten minutes spent sipping coffee on the porch—two possibilities regarding this question came to mind.
First possibility: I don’t take myself seriously. I take what I teach seriously and I take my students seriously, at least most of the time, but being too well acquainted with my own deficiencies and my sins both mortal and venal, taking myself seriously is impossible. Serious people—earnest, sober, filled with gravitas—inhabit workplaces everywhere, but no one, I think, would appoint me to that august company. Too much of my time is spent laughing at my own pratfalls and faux pas.
Second possibility: I like my students.
Once a student—I have long lost from memory the remark that provoked him—half-shouted: “Why do you care about us anyway? We’re not your kids.”
My response to him was my grandchildren. As I explained, my children and grandchildren were going to live in the same world as the students in that classroom. My teaching might, in some small way, make that world a better place, thereby easing the lives of my own posterity.
But the deeper truth I kept to myself. The truth is that I like my students, even the ones who dislike me. Once we come to know each other, once we’ve spent a year or so together, that word “like” becomes too weak a description of my affection. (In my thirty years of teaching, only two students have, for reasons best left unexplained, roused in me an intense antipathy.)
Here are just three reasons for my affection:
Watching them reading and writing, bent over books and paper, seems to me more beautiful a sight than any mountain waterfall.
Seeing their faces light up when they’ve figured out how Latin declensions work or how paragraphs build one on the other gives more satisfaction than any other work of my experience.
Hearing them discuss their futures and what they wish to accomplish plays sweeter music to my ears than Mozart.
My delight in these young people does not blind me to their flaws. Some make a science of procrastination. Others do as little homework as possible. A few forget week after week to bring paper, pens, and pencils to class. Sometimes one of them will cheat, or will plagiarize some article from the Internet.
But no matter: I am grateful to be their teacher. And if there exists some celestial record-keeper who spends his time ticking off our works of charity, keeping track of the naughty and the nice, I can only hope he gives me a passing grade when I reach my final commencement.
Twenty years ago found me much more engaged. PackMaster in Cub Scouts, Sunday school teacher, president of the parish council, president and volunteer for The Friends of the Library, co-creator of a small Catholic school in Waynesville: these consumed much time and energy.
After settling in Asheville, children, teaching, and writing took precedence over volunteer work, though my son’s participation in sports demanded some small obligations on my part: gatekeeper, concession stand cashier, that sort of thing. America is a land of candy stripers—I use the term metaphorically—and its millions of volunteers laudably and without pay devote themselves to many worthy causes, but somehow my interest had evaporated.
Yet one group does receive what the Church calls “my time, talents, and treasures” Let me tell you a bit about the students I teach.
These young people, ranging from eight to eighteen, are home-educated students who attend my seminars in such subjects as Latin, history, literature, and writing. They come to me once a week for two hours—and more than that, of course, if they take additional courses—and then return home to complete, depending on the class in which they are enrolled, three to seven hours of assignments.
Our classes meet at Trinity Presbyterian Church, which for a reasonable fee rents two rooms to me during the academic year. The students sit three and four to a table facing a white board on which I scrawl notes or vocabulary words. Sometimes I lecture, but just as frequently ask questions or lead discussions. We often break into groups to tackle various projects, which the students relish. As I well know, they attend classes to enjoy the companionship of other homeschoolers as much as to learn from me, and the groups provide them that opportunity.
This situation suits me well. For one, my classes operate on a free-market system: if you dislike the class, then quit and take your money elsewhere. For another, unless they are taking multiple classes, the students see me once a week. This gap of days freshens our encounters.
Best of all, students often take classes from me for five and six years. This accumulation of days and weeks brings me the enormous satisfaction of watching students grow, witnessing them advance from adolescence to the threshold of adulthood, and seeing them develop skills that will serve them well after graduation.
To my students I do give lagniappe, that is, a gift of service running beyond my paid obligations. I write letters of recommendation for Eagle Scouts, the college bound, and students seeking employment. The Advanced Placement classes meet for free extra sessions prior to the exam. Several times, over spring break, I have taken AP students to the coast, where we rent a house, study hard twice a day, and enjoy the beach. Older students hired by me offer free tutoring. When I can afford it, I buy books for the classroom and hire student graders to help me mark essays and tests.
Except for an occasional good deed, these extras constitute my present pro bono services to humanity.
Now for a few remarks on teaching:
Some of my students dislike me, and some are indifferent, but many, I would speculate, enjoy my classroom and learn from my instruction. They and their parents reward me with treats, cash, and gift cards, and last summer a group of them sent me to Europe for seven weeks.
Whatever they find admirable in my teaching is beyond my ken. If someone asked me to draw up a list of qualities making for a great teacher, the task would be simple. If on the other hand someone said to me, “Some of your students think you’re a great teacher. Tell me why,” I wouldn’t have a clue.
After some deep analysis—ten minutes spent sipping coffee on the porch—two possibilities regarding this question came to mind.
First possibility: I don’t take myself seriously. I take what I teach seriously and I take my students seriously, at least most of the time, but being too well acquainted with my own deficiencies and my sins both mortal and venal, taking myself seriously is impossible. Serious people—earnest, sober, filled with gravitas—inhabit workplaces everywhere, but no one, I think, would appoint me to that august company. Too much of my time is spent laughing at my own pratfalls and faux pas.
Second possibility: I like my students.
Once a student—I have long lost from memory the remark that provoked him—half-shouted: “Why do you care about us anyway? We’re not your kids.”
My response to him was my grandchildren. As I explained, my children and grandchildren were going to live in the same world as the students in that classroom. My teaching might, in some small way, make that world a better place, thereby easing the lives of my own posterity.
But the deeper truth I kept to myself. The truth is that I like my students, even the ones who dislike me. Once we come to know each other, once we’ve spent a year or so together, that word “like” becomes too weak a description of my affection. (In my thirty years of teaching, only two students have, for reasons best left unexplained, roused in me an intense antipathy.)
Here are just three reasons for my affection:
Watching them reading and writing, bent over books and paper, seems to me more beautiful a sight than any mountain waterfall.
Seeing their faces light up when they’ve figured out how Latin declensions work or how paragraphs build one on the other gives more satisfaction than any other work of my experience.
Hearing them discuss their futures and what they wish to accomplish plays sweeter music to my ears than Mozart.
My delight in these young people does not blind me to their flaws. Some make a science of procrastination. Others do as little homework as possible. A few forget week after week to bring paper, pens, and pencils to class. Sometimes one of them will cheat, or will plagiarize some article from the Internet.
But no matter: I am grateful to be their teacher. And if there exists some celestial record-keeper who spends his time ticking off our works of charity, keeping track of the naughty and the nice, I can only hope he gives me a passing grade when I reach my final commencement.