My AP class ends the year with excerpts from a book, one of my favorite books of all time, Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. There are so many things about this book I love, so many chapters and lines that are so powerful, but a few years ago I started an assignment with this book that I believe to be the most powerful writing my students do in the school year. Last year I added it to my grade level senior classes as well.
The first chapter is the title chapter, "The Things They Carried". It talks about all the things these soldiers carry with them, tangible and intangible, in the Vietnam War. I talk to my students about the fact that they are coming to the end of childhood. The kind of sad part about saying that is that I know for many of them it is only partially true-- for many of them, childhood ended years earlier and they have been on their own, supporting themselves and sometimes others, for many years. Even in that situation, though, high school graduation is a dividing line. It separates the first section of your life from the next, and so I ask them to think about the things they have carried for the past 17, 18, or 19 years, and write about those things. Two years ago when I gave this assignment, I wrote my own along with them about the things I have carried in my teaching career. I am posting it below.
I just finished reading the writings from my two English IV classes and that's why my face is wet with tears. These kids who sit in our classrooms every day, they carry SO MUCH. So much hurt, so much damage, so much pressure, so much promise, so much potential.... so much of everything. Today I showed a ChickfilA training video to my AP class called "Everyone has a Story". The people in the video all have bubbles above their heads that explain what their lives are like. It's a really important thing to consider, this idea that those around us are living with and carrying weights that we will never see. I wonder how much more gently we would treat each other if we knew what the other was carrying?
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One year away from halfway through… Halfway through the “home years”, halfway through my teaching career, halfway…halfway…
The first chapter is the title chapter, "The Things They Carried". It talks about all the things these soldiers carry with them, tangible and intangible, in the Vietnam War. I talk to my students about the fact that they are coming to the end of childhood. The kind of sad part about saying that is that I know for many of them it is only partially true-- for many of them, childhood ended years earlier and they have been on their own, supporting themselves and sometimes others, for many years. Even in that situation, though, high school graduation is a dividing line. It separates the first section of your life from the next, and so I ask them to think about the things they have carried for the past 17, 18, or 19 years, and write about those things. Two years ago when I gave this assignment, I wrote my own along with them about the things I have carried in my teaching career. I am posting it below.
I just finished reading the writings from my two English IV classes and that's why my face is wet with tears. These kids who sit in our classrooms every day, they carry SO MUCH. So much hurt, so much damage, so much pressure, so much promise, so much potential.... so much of everything. Today I showed a ChickfilA training video to my AP class called "Everyone has a Story". The people in the video all have bubbles above their heads that explain what their lives are like. It's a really important thing to consider, this idea that those around us are living with and carrying weights that we will never see. I wonder how much more gently we would treat each other if we knew what the other was carrying?
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One year away from halfway through… Halfway through the “home years”, halfway through my teaching career, halfway…halfway…
In the past fourteen years, I have carried many, many things. I have carried things for my students and I have carried things because of them. Some things are so very heavy and painful to bear. I have carried the crushing blow of a college rejection, the anxiety of Spring Break trips, the heavy load of the death of a parent. I have suffered under the weight of test scores and I have nearly drowned in the flood of white with blue lines or black text that covers my desk. I have carried the knowledge of kids who work all night and go to school all day just so that they can help a parent pay the bills, of a girl who was skipping school to chase the paper trail that is beaurocracy from the Social Security Office to the bank to the Housing Authority so that she could stay in school and live in a safe place. I have carried disabilities and health plans. I have carried the stress of seniors as they feel pressured to make life decisions RIGHT NOW when those life decisions don’t even need to be made for several years. I have carried the financial burden of a student who didn’t have the money to pay her father’s burial expenses and the funeral home was going to hold the body until they found the money. I have carried the weight of an empty chair at graduation, cap and gown draped over it for a student who never came home. I have carried other students across the stage, metaphorically speaking, to receive a diploma that probably should have had my name on it as well.
But oh, the beautiful things I have carried… I have carried the bite in the air of a Friday night football game, the tears of a successful curtain call, the triumphant cap toss in May. I have carried projects that perfectly captured the theme of a literary work, bags of brown research paper envelopes that proved to some that what seemed to be impossible was very much within their reach. I have carried Holocaust Memorial Projects that took my breath away because I know that THEY GOT IT, they embodied the message and purpose of Holocaust education. I have carried checks to non-profit agencies that represented blood, sweat, and tears from Holocaust Lit kids who went so far above and beyond in their projects that it astounded even me. I have carried the words of thousands of letters of recommendations. I have carried 2100 (more or less) names and faces. I have carried five yearbooks and the staffs I will never forget. I have carried ____ proms. I have carried college graduations and military deployments and weddings and new babies and new jobs for the “kids” who will always be “mine”. I have carried millions of text and fb messages and the occasional handwritten letter that boost my spirit in a way very little else can. I have carried requests to proofread and analyze long after these people leave my classroom. I have carried the thrill of exciting news, the joy of seeing someone find his or her dream calling, the excitement of watching an athletic ability flourish at the collegiate level.
I have carried the words, the stories… so, so many words and stories. I think when you teach English, you become, in some sense, the keeper of the stories.
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