Stille Nacht

There was an incident on Thursday last that unfortunately I cannot publish here, but suffice it to say, I made a mistake. The fallout from that day lingered for roughly 24 hours - though I expected it to have lasting implications. I learned from it, my students learned from it, and we've all been able to move on.

But something I've noticed about mistakes before now is that making them some how brings people closer together. It's almost as if they affirm our humanity, they teach us both about the specific instance at issue, but they also teach us more broadly about what it means to be human. Teaching is, in many ways, the science of being human. Teaching itself is an art, but the matters confronted by teachers are for civilized society radically a part of the very fabric of life. To read, to write, to think, to debate, to decide, to conform, to stand out, to cipher, to approach problems logically, to be something distinct while being a part of something larger... education accomplishes these things for young and old alike. When students are told a teacher is a human being and can make mistakes, it is as some fact in some dusty book, detached from reality, other & separate from the here and now.

But when students witness a teacher make a mistake, well... the fact becomes more real. Just as it is far easier to teach students about the Peloponnesian War by having the two (or more) sides of the classroom take sides in the conflict even as it is lectured to them, it is also far easier for students to grasp the humanity of a teacher should they witness that humanity played out in that most "unlikely" of ways, namely, the mistake.

Friday came following Thursday as a million other Fridays have followed a million other Thursdays since time immemorial (though we skipped a week and some in 1582 when Thursday October 4 was followed by Friday October 15). Despite my past observations, this Friday flowed smoother. Students that had never bothered to pay attention suddenly felt compelled to, students that had treated me with indifference showed a new found respect... rule by fear is hardly what I desire or require, but I won't say with certainty that it was fear that drove the new order that has persisted through the momentum destroying weekend into today.

Students have begun to try for me, to push themselves. Certainly I still have the few that are not college prep material, but there again, I have others that I had discounted until only recently. The preparation for Christmas continues in all of my classes as I struggle to bring students forward in time into the Hellenistic Age and the rise of Rome. But with only minor problems, blips as they were, I am making genuine progress that would be written off by any other institution but which I must grab onto for the sake of my own sanity, progress that even I should have called impossible only two months ago. Indeed, my own writing on this blog back in its infancy might well have expressed skepticism at the life I've seen in a few of my more precarious wards.

With Christmas only a week away and as time continues to slide forward, I pause and reflect at the night that reigns. But even as I do, I cannot help but picture the three burning candles of the Advent wreath that my religion class and I gathered around this morning. We sang "Adeste Fideles" in the original Latin (the little troopers gave their best shots) and "O Come O Come Emmanuel" and then we sang one of their favorites, "Silent Night," but I printed up lyrics for several of the stanzas and I added in a Spanish stanza for my Hispanic students and for the others to practice. And then I finished with the original verse that had been written in German.

They stood and listened with wide-eyed awe at the sound of the other language as it came from my mouth. I'm not the best singer in the world, but years of choir (including one Christmas when I sang "Stille Nacht") put me in a position to bring the carol to them in a meaningful way.

I was able to get students in a Newark High School to listen to me sing "Silent Night" in German, to appreciate it, to admire it, to ask me to sing it again... I don't know how many times I will experience moments like this in my life.

However many times it is, for now, I'm just going to sit back, grade papers, and enjoy the quiet of the Stille Nacht.