Alliance for Catholic Education – Mysteries and Manners

In Defense of Memorization

June 8, 2015

It is not fashionable these days – nor has it been for some twenty-five years – to advocate for memorization in teaching.

You hear people saying of their favorite teachers, “He wasn’t just about rote memorization” or “She didn’t just make us memorize facts” or “They wanted us to actually appreciate X” — as if memorization somehow necessarily precludes appreciation.

Even in ACE, which inevitably adopts some of the latest teaching theories (often for good but sometimes not), I remember getting the impression that having my students internalize “enduring understandings” was far more important than having them internalize “facts.”

The National Education Association’s article last year has a title that sums up the popular view quite well: “Deeper Learning: Moving Students Beyond Memorization.”

Reread that title again, and think about the either-or logical fallacy it is using.

An excerpt:

The focus on memorization, fueled by standardized testing, has obstructed learning, according to Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford University, who argues that students have been losing or squandering most of the information they acquire in school.

But if that information is applied or actually used to solve problems, students will leave school with a much richer education. Enter “deeper learning” – the process of fusing content knowledge with real-world situations. Students “transfer” knowledge rather than just memorize it. The benefits of deeper learning, says Darling-Hammond, can’t be overstated. (Luke Towler)

It’s interesting that Towler says memorization is “fueled by standardized testing.” At least in terms of the ACT or SAT, memorization will not get you very far at all. These are skills-based tests that care very little whether or not you know what synecdoche is or what year the first Constitutional Congress met or even if you can articulate the definition of an independent clause.

It is true that the SAT and ACT are the kinds of tests one must learn how to attack — students who spend lots of money on tutoring institutions which study how theses tests work usually do far better than those who go in blind. But this sort of thing has very little to do with memorization.

Note the definition of “deeper learning” in Towler’s article: “the process of fusing content knowledge with real-world situations” (emphasis added). I can’t tell you how many times, as a teacher, I have been told to make content more relevant for my kids by making it “real-world” applicable.

The implication, of course, is that memorization of facts, no matter how true or important those facts are, will not prepare you for the “real world.” By which term, I suspect, these people mean the “world” of business and money and career. This, for them, is the “real world.”

My first couple of years of teaching, I remember myself saying to students who were anxiously peppering me before their tests, “Don’t worry, you do not have to have all of the names of the characters in The Scarlet Letter memorized — what is far more important to me is that you can discuss their internal motivations, etc.”

They would always sigh with relief. “Internal motivations” can be faked. Names and dates cannot.

I, too, often assumed a dichotomy between memorization and deeper understanding. As if memorization is easy and understanding is hard, or as if memorization is shallow and understanding sophisticated.

And yet when I went to the University of Dallas, I was required during my junior year summative project on poetry to — you guessed it — memorize a poem.

Of course, you had to do more than that.

After having dedicated your entire intellectual – (and, I would argue, emotional) – life to a great poet for a semester, you had to choose an “exemplary” poem and memorize it. This poem of your choosing had to be one that “exemplified” the key characteristics of your poet. After memorizing it, you had to prepare an explication of the poem that you presented two a panel of three professors, who afterwards would bombard you with any questions about your poet’s body of work that they wished.

In his well-written Atlantic article, “When Memorization Gets in the Way of Learning”, Ben Orlin argues “Raw rehearsal is the worst way to learn something. It eats up time and requires no real thinking.”

Well, yes. It does eat up time. I spent many hours practicing “An Event” by Richard Wilbur with my college friends that I could have spent instead thinking deeply about how meter affects meaning or how Frost and Stevens had influenced Wilbur’s style.

To make matters worse, most junior poet veterans advised us to memorize more than one poem. So I also memorized “The Beautiful Changes,” “A Baroque Wall Fountain in the Villa Sciarra,” “October Maples: Portland” and a few Emily Dickinson poems for good measure.

Yet I found, at least with poetry, that “raw rehearsal” requires a good deal of “real thinking.” In fact, you cannot really know a poem well unless you memorize it – unless you make it a part of you – unless you allow its sound, its structure, its diction to become so ingrained in your subconscious mind that when you see the wind jostling the leaves on the oak tree, you think to yourself,

I crave Him grace of Summer Boughs,

If such an Outcast be –

Who never heard that fleshless Chant –

Rise – solemn – on the Tree […]

(Emily Dickinson, “321”)

Or, when you see autumn in its New England glory, you say to yourself:

The leaves, though little time they have to live,
Were never so unfallen as today,
And seem to yield us through a rustled sieve
The very light from which time fell away.

(Richard Wilbur, “October Maples: Portland”)

As I said in my previous post, having poems committed to memory in your emotional arsenal equips you very well for the complexities of life. Even if I cannot fully articulate my experience of losing my students year after year, Elizabeth Bishop can.

And if you don’t like poetry very much, you probably do like songs. And we learn songs by heart for much the same reason. Music can express for us what otherwise cannot be expressed. Even my high school students understand that.

I would agree with the post-modern educational elite that memorization, by itself, is not a very high level of thinking. But I would also insist that it is a prerequisite for deeper thinking in many fields, especially literature. And I suspect the same is true for math, science and social studies as well.

If Calvin (see above cartoon) knows the pilgrims landed at Plymouth rock in 1620, and knows a few more meaningless dates besides, he has the groundwork for constructing a timeline for American history in his head.

For Catholics, Christians, and Jews, memorization is a key part of the spiritual life. Jesus evidently had many of the Psalms engraved upon his heart, such that even in his last agony on the Cross, he found expression for his suffering in the words of Psalm 22.

Mary, too, composed her Magnificat with the songs of Miriam in Ex 15:21, Hannah in 1 Sam 2:1-10, Deborah in Judges 5 clearly in mind (see Biblegateway).

Their “rote memorization” of biblical texts, probably in childhood, clearly paved the way for a deeper understanding of God’s mysterious working in their later lives.

Memorized texts, poems and facts cannot, by themselves, make an educated mind. But they can lay the groundwork. They can give the human heart things to hold onto when faced with true mystery.

7 Quick Takes Friday (3/21/14)

March 21, 2014

-1-

Before anything else:

Two UD alums just lost their 3 year old and 6 year old daughters in a car accident the other day. Please pray for them and consider participating in this fund for them.

Sean and Becca Lewis Fund

More here:

Elizabeth Scalia at the Anchoress

Calah Alexander at Barefoot and Pregnant

-2-

Do I say something about this or do I not?

Lewis said, when his wife died: “I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they’ll ‘say something about it’ or not. I hate if they do, and if they don’t.”

I’ve found that suffering of this magnitude often is best respected with silence — the silence of Mary watching her Son on the cross, perhaps even the mysterious silence of God the Father that drives all of us–His Son included–into anguish and loneliness and fear.

Some people conclude that this silence reveals absence. They ask “why” and of course receive no answer.

Others discover in the silence the gaze from Jesus on his cross.

C. S. Lewis describes grief better than most people–but only because, in this book, he was describing it from the inside:

“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth of falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn’t you then first discover how much you really trusted it?” (Lewis, A Grief Observed)

“Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don’t understand.” (Ibid)

“It is hard to have patience with people who say, ‘There is no death’ or ‘Death doesn’t matter.’ There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn’t matter.” (Ibid)

-3-

Also, I’m not going to apologize for being a “downer” in a (normally lighthearted) Quick Takes post. It is okay to be sad. And it is good to grieve for others. I don’t know whether it helps in any practical way, but it seems to me rather a matter of justice that we give up our own happiness sometimes to grieve for the pain of others, even those we do not know.

-4-

The Pope (as usual) has challenging things to say that we ought to listen to. (Yes I’m okay with ending some of my sentences with a preposition.)

He says (as others have said) that when we rely on other things or people besides God, we become pagans, because we turn these other things or people into idols.

But then he makes a really interesting point about being a pagan and how it affects our identity.

When we cease to trust in God, when we cease to call God “Father,” we begin to see ourselves differently too:

“Do I still have a name or have I begun to lose my name and … call myself ‘I’? I, me, with me, for me, only ‘I’? For me, for me . . . always that self-centeredness: ‘I.’”

Without God, or with God pushed to the periphery, we think of ourselves only as an “I”. And spite Martin Buber’s beautiful reflections on the “I-Thou” relationship, which Pope Benedict mentioned quite a lot in his writings, Pope Francis here suggests that all of this “I” and “me” is actually deceptive. We are thinking about ourselves all wrong.

Only in God do we receive our true name, which is not “I” or “me,” but “Son,” he said, according to Vatican Radio. But when we place our trust in others, our accomplishments, or even ourselves, we lose sight of our true worth as a child of God. (Catholic News Agency)

My true name is not among the names I (!) use all the time: I, me, my etc.

It is “Son” or “Daughter.”

We recognize our true identity with that name.

And this is beautiful:

“If one of us in life, having so much trust in man and in ourselves, we end up losing the name, losing this dignity, there is still a chance to say this word that is more than magic, it is more, it is strong: ‘Father.’”

“He always waits for us to open a door that we do not see and says to us: ‘Son.’”

(via Catholic News Agency, “Rely on God alone, Pope Encourages in Homily”)

-5-

Good news:

I will be returning to Louisiana at the end of the year to see some of my former students graduate! They were sophomores during my first year in ACE, and now they’re all grown up.

I can’t tell you how excited I am to see them!

And MORE good news:

Although for a while there was some serious doubt that ACE teachers would be returning to the Diocese of Baton Rouge…….

Some miracle happened and so they are!

I am so happy that my former school and the other schools ACE serves in that diocese will continue to receive support from new teachers. We’re not perfect, and we don’t know everything, but ACE teachers bring a lot of love to the table.

-6-

Speaking of ACE…

The ACE Bus, on it’s national tour, came to Colorado last week and I was able to reconnect with some amazing people and meet former ACE teachers who live out here.

Read about their awesome visit here:

The Peak of Excellence: Faith and Academics Collide in Colorado by Eric Prister

-7-

It has been a busy, busy week. I’ve been pushing myself to go out and meet new people and it has been lots of fun, but my Introversion is kicking in big time.

And hey, it’s the beginning of spring break.

Memory and Faith

July 14, 2013

I just graduated yesterday from the University of Notre Dame Alliance for Catholic Education program. These past two years have been, by far, the most challenging experience of my life. But I’ve been having trouble thinking about it all, or making sense of what has happened to me. Yet graduations are times for memory and telling people all the wonderful things you have learned and all the amazing ways you have changed.

During our commencement retreat this past week, Father Lou DelFra, our ACE chaplain, gave us a beautiful homily to help us process our experience. For our retreat, he chose one of my favorite Gospel readings, the story of the two disciples walking to Emmaus.

So my thoughts here are largely inspired by Father Lou’s words and a few passages from Pope Francis’ recent encyclical, Lumen Fidei.

As you know, the two bewildered disciples are leaving Jerusalem, overcome by the horrific events they have just experienced. The Lord was crucified. All of their hopes have been dashed. They are struggling to interpret their experience of the past three years with Jesus. When the Lord, whom they do not recognize, begins walking with them, they are shocked to discover that He hasn’t heard the latest news. He begins to interpret these events for them in terms of the Scriptures, and, fascinated, they beg him to stay with them for the night. Yet they only finally recognize him “in the breaking of the bread.”

Father Lou reminded all of us that our experience on retreat, which involved the famous ACE “paired walks,” was very much like that of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. We were likewise trying to make sense of all that we have experienced, and perhaps we were having some trouble doing that.

Because for every triumphant teaching story I can tell you, there are a dozen more that do not involve visible triumph. For every miracle I saw, there were a dozen more crucifixions that had no apparent resurrection. Let’s be real here. One of my students was involved in some kind of attempted murder, and is on the run, and I still don’t know what happened to him. There was another I struggled with my entire first year, who suffered terribly from psychological challenges, whom I was never really able to reach and who is gone now. I don’t know what will happen to her either. There are kids who failed my class and who, despite my efforts, did not really seem to improve over the two years. And then there are the kids I know I did not try hard enough with, who slipped through the cracks.

As much as graduation is about our accomplishments in ACE, and the stories we love to tell each other, and the students we love to remember, it’s also about all the failures and the situations we would rather not recall.

But Father Lou’s message to us was simple—don’t be afraid to remember them. Don’t be afraid, over these next weeks, months, and years, to try to make sense of it all. Father Lou seemed strangely confident that we would find Christ there if we looked for Him—that we would see He had been walking with us the whole time, even when our “eyes were prevented from recognizing him.”

I love that in Pope Francis (and Pope Benedict’s) encyclical, they express how closely tied together faith and memory are:

Yet this remembrance is not fixed on past events but, as the memory of a promise, it becomes capable of opening up the future, shedding light on the path to be taken. We see how faith, as remembrance of the future, memoria futuri, is thus closely bound up with hope. (9, Ch 1)

Faith as memory is therefore linked to hope that sheds “light on the path to be taken.” Father Lou, as well, seemed to suggest that if we had the courage to remember our experiences—all of them, the good and the bad—that we would find Him there and He would tell us where to go next.

The two disciples on the road to Emmaus tried to remember and understand. In the Eucharist, their eyes were opened and Christ showed them the real meaning of what had happened—and thus they were able to run back to Jerusalem to share their memories with the others. And the Church has been doing this ever since. She shares her memory of Jesus with us, and because Jesus gave her the Holy Spirit and the Eucharist (“do this in memory of me”), we can trust her memory of Him.

Obviously my thoughts are still forming on all of this, so I’ll just end with the beautiful words of the encyclical that I recognize not only as applying to the universal faith, but to my own personal faith that He has been there with me in ACE—even if I still cannot recognize Him.

Language itself, the words by which we make sense of our lives and the world around us, comes to us from others, preserved in the living memory of others. Self-knowledge is only possible when we share in a greater memory. The same thing holds true for faith, which brings human understanding to its fullness. Faith’s past, that act of Jesus’ love which brought new life to the world, comes down to us through the memory of others — witnesses — and is kept alive in that one remembering subject which is the Church. The Church is a Mother who teaches us to speak the language of faith. Saint John brings this out in his Gospel by closely uniting faith and memory and associating both with the working of the Holy Spirit, who, as Jesus says, “will remind you of all that I have said to you” (Jn 14:26). The love which is the Holy Spirit and which dwells in the Church unites every age and makes us contemporaries of Jesus, thus guiding us along our pilgrimage of faith. (38)

Home, and Other Destinations

June 11, 2013

One of my favorite movies growing up, but one I have not seen in a long, long time, is “The Wizard of Oz.” Our version was taped from a TV special hosted by the wonderful Angela Lansbury (“Mrs. Potts,” for those of you who don’t know her) and was interrupted by long commercials from the ‘90’s for cars, soap, and McDonald’s (thus I’ve somehow always associated those things with the Emerald City, scarecrows, and munchkins).

Anyway – the line I have been thinking of so often lately, as I drove from Louisiana back to Massachusetts, stopping in Athens, Tennessee one night, Washington D.C. the next, and later flying back to Notre Dame, Indiana, and as I now look forward to moving to Colorado next year, is: “There’s no place like home … There’s no place like home.”

Home.

Since writing this post on Setting and World Making, I’ve been rather preoccupied with the concept of place and how it shapes us, just as setting affects plot in a story. This week I have been teaching setting to little middle school students (they are SO small!)–a simplified form of what I did with my big kids a few weeks ago. These incoming sixth graders were especially intrigued by how setting establishes what is possible and impossible. After using lots of adjectives to label various parts and objects of our classroom with sticky notes, we then made a chart discussing what COULD happen in our room (“we could have fun,” “we could learn,” “we could write”) and what COULD NOT happen (“we can’t have a circus–the elephants wouldn’t fit” “we can’t cook a pizza–there’s no pizza oven” “we can’t be underwater–we couldn’t breathe/the water would escape through the door and windows”).

And I thought about what is possible–and impossible–for me, being back here at Notre Dame for the summer. I can write a lot more. I can spend time with ACE friends. I can pray in the beautiful basilica, and run around the Saint Mary and Saint Joseph lakes. But I cannot be with my high school students. I cannot observe alligators slipping slyly into the Mississippi river. I cannot enjoy drive-through daiquiris (read about these unbelievable establishments here).

Reunited with other ACE teachers here at Notre Dame, I am able listen to new stories about their kids—spread all over the country—and the funny phrases, the accents, the struggles, the absurdities and delights of all the different places that have shaped them. “Do your kids say ‘swaggin’?” “Yes they do!” “I’ve never heard of ‘cuttin’ up’ before.” “Well, neither had I!” And I thought, my goodness, we have become a part of new settings and some of us have even found ourselves at “home” there.

Yet my decision to leave my ACE school and to move to a new place, to a new state–to uproot myself, as it were, for the third time in three years–has me feeling rather homeless lately. I haven’t lived in Massachusetts for more than a few weeks at a time since high school. As much as I would love to, I cannot become an undergraduate in Dallas again. And although I plan on visiting Louisiana next year, I will be doing just that: visiting. I will be a visitor, in someone else’s home.

My Dad told me about a new book by Rod Dreher called The Little Way of Ruthie Leming, reviewed here by Michael Hannon. It’s very much about home, one’s sense of place, community, and belonging. And, in our restless and mobile age, it seems also to be an appeal to us to re-evaluate our relationship with our homes, wherever they may be.

Hannon’s description has put this book at the very top of my reading list this summer: “The book tells two distinct stories, beautifully interwoven: an autobiography of Rod himself, and a hagiography of his sister Ruthie.” Rod is the restless one—who wants to leave his native Louisiana behind, to seek home elsewhere. Ruthie is the opposite—content to remain and to grow in her beloved little community:

An involuntary outsider from a young age, Rod never wanted anything more than escape. Philosophical by nature and restless by temperament, he annoyed his sister and the St. Francisville community at large with his constant curiosity, asking probing questions about ultimate realities that they were happier just to take for granted. Despite knowing that they loved him, he never felt understood by his family or accepted by their small-minded local community. Without disparaging the simple lives they led, he always longed for something somehow grander for himself.

Whereas Ruthie was born into the place she knew she belonged, Rod always felt like a stranger in their hometown. So after college, he left Louisiana in search of a place where he too could fit in, pursuing a career in journalism and wandering all over the Atlantic coast. But even there, from Washington to New York to Philadelphia, Rod never found the sense of at-homeness that Ruthie had always known in St. Francisville. (Michael Hannon, “Small-Town Saints for Our Placeless Age”)

As I read Hannon’s review (you should too), I found myself feeling a little sad, and even a little guilty. In a way, I’m like Rod–bouncing around the country, encountering new places, meeting new people–and always wanting in the back of my mind to find home. So many of the people I admire most, like my Grandma, my Mom, my Dad, my sister, Flannery O’Connor, Tolkien, Emily Dickinson, Richard Wilbur, all seem to have a very strong sense of place, of home. My Mom still has a strong attachment for Oklahoma where she grew up. My Dad, my Grandma, and my sister are New Englanders through-and-through. O’Connor, Tolkien, Dickinson, and Wilbur are great because their reverence for place helps all of us understand what home really means.

And yet strangely, in ACE, part of our job is to be displaced and a little homeless. And our foreign-ness is often a gift to our students, many of whom may never leave their home-state and may never experience, first-hand, the adventure of travel as we have. Sometimes over the past two years I found myself tempted to encourage my students to branch out too and to see new parts of the country, to apply to that reach-college out of state, to accept the adventure. And there is good in this. As Bilbo says to Frodo, “You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

Yet of course this is a warning as a well as an invitation.

watermarked2 — created by Shaylynn on her blog “Shealynn’s Faerie Shoppe”

There is that distinctly “progressive” tendency to despise insularity, to belittle the prejudices and notions of small-town America, to complain that some people refuse to widen their horizons and see the world in new ways. It is one of the many temptations of the ACE teacher, I think. And I think Bilbo’s warning should be considered. We may encourage our students to leave–but where are we encouraging them to go? Where are we hoping they will be “swept off to”? The journey is important in and of itself, but so is the destination.

I have been swept off to many strange and wonderful places in the past few years, but I am beginning to feel what Rod Dreher describes in his book, a longing for home. And so I recognize there is a wisdom in the people who choose to stay–to go to the local college, return for your high school reunions, live near your family, remain in your home-town. It is not the popular choice nowadays.

Having cut the ties that bind us geographically, we have become in many ways a placeless people. We have lost what St. Benedict called “stability,” man’s permanent attachment to a particular home in this life. “St. Benedict considered the kinds of monks who moved from place to place all the time to be the worst of all,” Dreher recounts. “They refused the discipline of place and community, and because of that, they could never know humility. Without humility, they could never be happy.”

For Rod, the realization of this Benedictine truth required him to go home: “[If] I wanted to know the inner peace and happiness in community that Ruthie had, I needed to practice a rule of stability. Accept the limitations of a place, in humility, and the joys that can also be found there may open themselves.”

[…]

“There has to be balance,” Rod reminds us. “Not everyone is meant to stay—or to stay away—forever. There are seasons in the lives of persons and of families. Our responsibility, both to ourselves and to each other, is to seek harmony within the limits of what we are given—and to give each other grace.” (Ibid)

O’Connor also insists upon seeking “harmony within the limits of what we are given.” We are all invited to some courageous act, and for some it is the task of staying, and for others it is the task of leaving and starting somewhere new. I think my fellow ACE teachers can relate. Some of them are staying at their schools. Some are leaving. Some, like me, will continue to be teachers. Others won’t. We all carry the gift and the burden of whatever setting we have been shaped by for the past two years, though.

I guess I am still looking for home. But I am grateful that over the years, different people have opened their homes to me.

“My Way Back Home” by Dawes:

Notes from my First Year of Teaching

April 1, 2013

Here are excerpts from notes I wrote during my first full year of teaching (last year).

1. circa September 2011

“Come see Ms. Shea! Come see!”

I remembered that the other ACE teachers at my high school in rural LA had mentioned this verbal phenomenon to me before my first day of school. Instead of saying “Could you come and look at this, Ms. Shea?” or “I need to show you something, Ms. Shea,” or even “I have a question, Ms. Shea,” my sophomores, juniors and seniors consistently say, “Come see!” –even if they don’t actually want to show me something.

As I remember, the theme of the opening April ACE retreat was the invitation of Christ – “Come and see” (John1:39). Little did I know then how often I would hear that invitation in the classroom from my students! I am not sure if this phrase is particular to the local area or to all of Louisiana, but I think it is a daily gift that reminds me of my purpose as an ACE teacher.

I came to Louisiana with a lot of ideas about what it would be like—small, rural Southern towns conjure up a lot of Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor-esque images for northern English majors like me. Seeing the ramshackle houses on cinder blocks alongside my school, the black and white neighborhoods distinctly separated by streets, the bizarre Daiquiris drive-through stations, the flat, steamy landscape rich with both sugarcane and humidity was enough to bewilder me the first few days and to make me feel further from my own cultural comfort zone than ever. But one of the most important things I am discovering, with the help of my students, is the simple necessity to come and see—to put aside whatever cultural preconceptions might hinder me from really appreciating this strange, beautiful place and my strange, beautiful students.

2. circa October 2011

“She had observed that the more education they got, the less they could do. Their father had gone to a one-room schoolhouse through the eighth grade and he could do anything.” (Everything that Rises Must Converge, Flannery O’Connor)

This quote may seem rather discouraging to teachers but I think it describes with painful accuracy the challenge of getting students to take responsibility for their own learning. I have found myself falling into the trap of doing most of the talking, most of the working, most of the thinking in the classroom—and if I continue I will not only burn myself out, I will also have failed to engage my students.

Part of this failure of engaging and providing feedback for my students seems to be the direct results of my efforts find realistic and efficient ways to do both. I have started to create guided notes for my students so that during direct instruction they don’t just sit and listen passively or (on the opposite end of the spectrum) try to copy down everything from a power point presentation or lecture. Giving them a concrete task to accomplish during direct instruction helps engage them and even encourages their participation since they know what information they need to discover. However, the drawback to these guided notes is that students tend to want to listen only for the right “answer” so that they can copy it down, rather than ask intelligent questions and engage the subject more for its own sake. I have found that students are so focused on getting the right answer that they are not concerned with learning how to think critically and independently—I want to find ways to push them toward that. This is very difficult, however, since many of my students resent the ways that I try to push and challenge them already.

[…] But honestly, I feel overwhelmed standing in front of so many students. Sometimes I feel like I can really see the ones who are struggling or who are disengaged, but I don’t feel as though I have the time or energy to find a way to bring them back in since I feel like I am barely making it through lesson plans. I feel frustrated because I know there are so many things I could be doing better, or so many other “methods” I could try to help my students, but at the same time I still feel like I am in survival mode and I am just trying to get through the day. Unfortunately, I am afraid that this sense of being totally overwhelmed is both caused by and starting to result in the students working less and me working more.

But as O’Connor says, “To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness.” Somehow, I need to set high expectations for myself and for my students while at the same time realizing that teaching is much more about love and consistency than it is about visible success.

3. circa December 2011

Student A said to me a couple of weeks ago, “Ms. Shea, at first I thought you were really scary. You were so serious! But actually you’re very nice.”

I smiled and silently remembered that the reason I looked so serious all the time the first four or five weeks was because I felt sick every morning from being so nervous. Gradually, however, as I got to know the students I found myself smiling more and engaging in conversation with them—I found myself sharing, every once in a while, a little bit about my own past experiences. The fact that I have a second-degree black belt and used to teach marital arts received a particularly enthusiastic (albeit slightly apprehensive) response.

Sharing myself with my students at times (I am still rather shy and hesitant about this) I think has helped them feel more comfortable with me and more willing to take risks in the classroom—good risks, like volunteering when no other hands are raised, or arguing for an unpopular perspective. I think that knowing me better has even helped the students who I sometimes have to keep after class—a part of them sees that I am a real person with a real history; that I care about them, and that my “real” black-belt, Red Sox fan, Texan and twin-sister self is not separate from my identity as the teacher and authority figure.

The wonderful thing about this is that the sacramental view of reality—God communicating Himself to us through created things in tangible, sometimes even mundane ways—means that these simple acts of mutual trust are potentially vehicles of His grace. Occasionally I even see the fruit of this grace—like when Student B was leading prayer and suggested that all of us mention something that we would really like to improve in our lives. The honest and humble responses of each student created a special moment of shared trust and even vulnerability—the answers ranged from “patience” to “improving my attitude at school.” It was a little moment, but I think it really reflected the respect that the members of the class had developed for one another.

4. circa June 2012 (coming full circle)

“Come see, Ms. Shea! Come see!”

This is the second or third time I have written a reflection about this phrase in my spiritual life, but ever since I joined ACE it keeps coming up! As the 12 Steps of ACE spirituality indicate, this is the first invitation of Christ to his disciples in the Gospel of John—“Where are you staying?” “Come, and you will see!” It is also the first invitation of Christ to all of us ACE teachers on April retreat. There’s a beautiful Providence at work in the fact that “come see” is a daily phrase of my students in rural Louisiana. It can mean many things—but for my students, it usually is their way of saying “I need you!” So it has always been very moving and strange for me to hear similar words coming from the mouth of Christ: “Come and see, I need you.”

In the computer lab as I move across the room from student to student, trying to encourage them and push them along in revising their essays, or in my classrooms amidst the hum (sometimes the chaos) of group activities, or on my way to lunch in the cafeteria, I constantly hear that phrase. “Can you come see, Ms. Shea?” “Ms. Shea, please come see!” And no matter how exhausted or stressed I am, I love hearing those words. They always bring me back to April retreat and my first moments of hopeful enthusiasm in ACE. They have served as a reminder again and again this past year of Christ being somehow in my students. It feels like I keep being nudged or woken up, whenever I fall into the sleep of discouragement or exhaustion or frustration—I’m invited to open my eyes again. “Yes, I’ll come see.”