Larger Purposes Tim Huey Passion Passion is the first of my two guiding purposes as a teacher. By "passion" I mean something similar to what is meant by soul in the genre Soul Music; except that in the sense that I mean passion, soul music supersedes genre. All music is soul music if it is really music. In the same sense, all education is passionate education if it is really education. As a teacher I am obligated to provide an education for my students that trains them in passion, yet one can hardly be said to be trained in passion, but one grows in passion when one is cared for and when one gives care. My obligation regarding passion then can be understood as an obligation to provide a careful education. A careful education in my eyes involves treating my students while in the classroom as valuable and as important as I would my own children. It involves carefully crafting lesson plans in which the student's personhood -not only their brain, not only their imagination, but their blood-flow and their lack of attention- is treated considerately. It involves my actively learning what the students are interested in and incorporating such topics in group discussion, or allowing such to influence what we read as a class. When I was a teen, a friend of mine released me of a self-inflicted burden when he asked me if I liked the book I was reading; I looked down at "Hard Times" by Charles Dickens in my hands and responded "no"; he said, then stop reading it; my brain, imagination, blood-flow, and attention took fire. The beautiful cherished secret of teachers' I will let out to my students: education is to be enjoyed. The baffling, or rather, logical part: today, because I did not linger on what bored me, but went on to read what genuinely interested me, -today, for me, "Hard Times" is accessible. Experience My second purpose in teaching is to provide my students with experience. What good, though, is experience if one cannot remember it? Very much indeed. I have forgotten so many of the lessons my various teachers have taught me, even the lesson of tying my shoes, though the experience upholds me. It is a thankless profession, this teaching business, but not in the sense that the students won't be thankful. If passion is the educators' cherished secret, experience is the students', but it is almost a secret hidden from themselves for good awhile. High school education is not a matter of teaching isolated, independent subjects; it is a matter of teaching youths, who often feel isolated and alone in all that they know and feel, how to make connections between those thoughts and feelings. And it is a matter of teaching them how to be independent while simultaneously teaching them how to be interdependent upon their fellow citizens. These ends though are largely sought by technical means. For example, one may learn that one idea depends upon another idea by experiencing the comma or semicolon. But then again it takes time to make those connections -one can hardly be said to be trained in passion. I hope I'm making it plain that what I mean by experience is synonymous with discernment, which are both arguably as automatic for us humans as the act of living, yet living absolutely takes practice. My students will experience being among each other in a classroom. They will get the experience of listening to a person their age answer a question they did not know the answer to. Or of one who asks a question they suddenly realize was a valuable question. That is, they will get to practice and experience true functions of social life. My students will get the experience of being in the classroom of a teacher who got into teaching after hearing a statement that a friend made (who was a junior high science teacher), gazing into the bonfire as he said it, like a dwarf ferociously bearded and bright eyed, "I've spent decades of my life outside in the wilderness, but I've never experienced anything quite as wild as a classroom full of teenagers."
Purpose of language In addition to my two guiding purposes as a teacher, I'd like here to briefly mention purpose with respect to language and communication. Today, there is a misguided idea zapping around about the purpose of language. It imagines the primary purpose of language as transaction. Supply and demand, –“if I say the magic key terms, I get what I want.” This view lends itself to peoples’ bypassing each other, self-centeredness, loneliness, and one of our time's happiest pitfall, instant gratification. Unfortunately our teenagers are on the unexperienced end of this message; they are most susceptible to accepting it, unchecked. Transaction, however, is not why language exists, nor is it its best use. The primary purpose of language is to share meaning, thereby drawing us closer to one another. I want to teach high school English because I want to help youths share. I want to help them maturely and sympathetically draw closer to one another and to the people around them, to give of themselves creatively and really. And I want to help those who are hearing to listen, so those speaking might know they are safe, and being received. I have personally pursued this quality of communication. I have accepted feedback from listeners that I have let changed my life. I have listened to the words of great authors on my tiptoes, let them inform my actions, and shared them with my voice. To teach English is to me, to share with youths in want of sharing.