Erren

As a teacher, you sometimes connect with certain students and you realize: "I was meant to teach that student." (And I get such joy when I see students of mine connect with another teacher in a way that makes that student fell so important.) I have a few of those in my current class. Students who resonate with me as a person or a learner or who maybe just need someone like me to be on their side. These are usually students who inspire me to be at my best with them and I feel like a real teacher.

Today, one of my students was down. Everything about this student was screaming teen angst, or the like. I wrote an email with a quick note to "perk up" and "enjoy this one chance in your life to be a high school senior." I got a reply with "I've decided that I'm not going to act like that anymore."

Here's what I wrote in response. Sometimes I think I need to be my own teacher, too.

You have decided you can't act like that anymore? That sounds bold, which can be good. I think bold is good, but not brash. I'm sorry that unfortunate things led you to this conclusion, but just like humans are bad at random [AP Stats teacher in me always comes out], we often have a tough time making the best decisions. It often takes getting burned (a few times even) to really learn not to touch the stove (or put your chin too close to a cup of tea, in my case). I am sure that any of the adults you know, myself included, can make a longer list of mistakes we've made than great decisions. That's not to say that we're always screwing up in life, but making mistakes, learning from them and doing better...this is what makes us who we are to a large extent.

Coincidentally, I'm listening to Pandora and a song just came on called "Mistakes I Meant To Make." Song titles like this are just great.

And finally for you: my favorite quote from one of my favorite books. It's a book called Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon. The book is autobiographical about a man who loses his job as a teacher and on the same day his wife, with whom he's separated, tells him about another man she's been seeing. Ugh! He basically gets in his camper van right away and sets off on an extended road trip...on only the blue highways, which refers to the color used on maps for the rural roads connecting towns (as opposed to the color used for major highways and interstates). The book is just fabulous. There are many books out there about trying to find yourself when so much seems lost, but I love this one the most because of his fabulous writing and how much he describes the land and its people.

p213...he starts thinking about errors that has led him to this place.

"The word error comes from a Middle English word, erren, which means "to wander about," as in the knight errant. The word evolved to mean "going astray" and that evolved to mean "mistake." ... The annals of scientific discovery are full of errors that opened new worlds: Bell was working on an apparatus to aid the deaf when he invented the telephone; Edison was tinkering with the telephone when he invented the phonograph. If a man can keep alert and imaginative, an error is a possibility, a chance at something new; to him wandering and wondering are part of the same process, and he is most mistaken, most in error, whenever he quits exploring."

I don't believe that we are really meant to ever stop wandering in life and that means making mistakes. But learning from them has to be the most important part. At least that's what I tell myself. Potentially, we could stumble upon something wonderful in life while on a misguided journey that feels hopeless.

The very end of the book finds him at a gas station and the attendant says, "Where you coming from?"

He answers: "Where I've been."

Oh man. It's so good. I need to read this book again. And I need to delight in the wandering.