Class Dismissed

Last summer I read an old story called The Once and Future King.  In it, T.H. White wrote a beautiful passage about what to do when it seems as if all is lost and there is no purpose to living - he says to learn something is, 

             ...the only thing that never fails.  You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds.  There is only one thing for it then - to learn.  Learn why the world wags and what wags it.  That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.  Learning is the only thing for you.  Look what a lot of things there are to learn.  

How true?  No man can understand all the mysteries of our complex universe, and the process of learning stimulates the mind and awakens within oneself a yearning to comprehend and conquer the unknown.  To White, learning was redemption.  I've thought a lot about this quote over the past months, and in times where I've questioned my effectiveness at work, it comes back to me and holds me up, challenging me to reach at least one student, to make him question, critique, understand, and perhaps walk away a bit more enlightened.  

For the past 8 months I've been working 12 hours per week in an Austrian school as an English language teaching assistant.  Working with a team of 27 English teachers, who average 9 classes each, I've visited with nearly 2,000 high school students, ranging from age 14-23, not including several adult evening school students.  The school is so massive, that even today, my very last day teaching, I was still introducing myself to classes.  This was a recurring theme throughout the year, having to repeatedly say "Hello" to new groups of kids, and on more than one occasion, I seriously questioned if my being there would have any positive effect on the students, as with many of them, I only visited them once.  I also came into the job with several major preconceived notions of what teaching entailed, and how it should be done - both of which proved to be misinformed.  On my first day, one of the older teachers told me, "Don't take any of this seriously, and just be open to whatever they throw at you," and those words entirely transformed my thoughts on being in the classroom.  I soon realized that the best made plans might work swimmingly with one group of students, and then flounder like a fish out of water with the next.  Flexibility is key.  Sometimes the students are outrageously eager to participate, and then at other times, trying to elicit engagement is worse than having teeth pulled.  Contrary to popular held belief back in grammar school, teachers aren't maliciously holding students hostage on beautiful days, and would like to be outdoors just as much (if not more) as the students. Same goes for school holidays, the source of life and hope for teachers everywhere.  It's a hard life, and one Hell of a way to make a living, but every so often, it hits you, just how incredibly privileged you are to be exposing these kids to the world around them, even if they don't always appreciate it.

My largest wrongly informed idea about teaching was that the teacher is the source of all knowledge, and that the job consists of walking into a classroom, spilling information for students to remember, and then leaving.  In fact, I had major reservations about accepting the offer to come to Austria, because I expected to research full time and meet "real" Austrians through the university, etc - afraid that teaching would bog me down and limit my immersion abroad.  So, so, so wrong.  I got to spend 12 hours a week chatting with the people who live here on a real level, seeing how they see our world, having them challenge some of my held beliefs, challenging them, learning about our similarities, our differences, and why they exist.  How cool is that?  I now know that teaching is a far cry from the authoritarian image I had in mind.  In fact, teaching is half learning - or, as that wise teacher said, "be[ing] open to whatever they throw at you."  You can read as many textbooks on Austria as you'd like, but if ever you've the chance to actually talk with them like I had, do it - it'll change your world.  

Today was my final day.  It's over; a closed chapter in my life.  But what a chapter it is!  Funny, how the condition of my grant about which I was most dreading before arriving here has developed into my most treasured.  Of the hundreds of students I met, I'm positive my thoughts fell on some deaf ears, but I've striven these many months to touch their minds and open their world view to how someone else sees it - it's certainly worked in the reverse - and even if only a single student walks away with a spark for something we've discussed, then that's rewarding enough.  Learning - "it never fails!"

My final class presented me with an engraved hammer / screwdriver that they made in class.  On the other side it reads my name and position.  The handle is a hollowed-out drill bit, and the ball cap unscrews to form a spinning top that's designed to "flip" and balance on its axis.