Keep Always your Fire and your Silver: Why I Teach

Why do we do what we do?

The question appeared in an email the other day. It was asked by a fellow college English professor who I don't know personally. We're part of the same listserv group. He was suggesting the summer is a good time to reflect on larger questions like this. I agree.

Keep always your Fire and your Silver.

This phrase appeared on the Facebook page of one of my high school friends, Matt. I hadn't seen Matt since my college days. In high school we were not best friends; he was more a friend of a friend, yet during the last couple of years in high school we hung out quite a bit--enough that I can still remember details about him: Matt was among the funniest, wittiest, and quirkiest people I've met. He loved poetry, and he introduced me to some great music.

It was from a post from Matt's wife, Ann, on his FB page I learned Matt had died: January 17, 2017. Through a link on Matt's FB page, I was able to read his obituary, catching up on what he'd been up to in the 43 years since I'd seen him.

From the obituary I learned that Matt left university to work for a machine shop, then a tractor company; eventually returning to finish his degree and going on to receive his Master's in Education. He then worked in Substance Abuse education for the Wichita public schools before ending his career as a language arts teacher at two different high schools. He was said to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the works of Tolkien and George Martin and was described as a true wordsmith and grammarian who inspired his students to love words as he did.

On Matt's FB page, following his death, one of his students (I presume) posted a photo of a note that Matt had written to her. "Keep always your Fire and your Silver," the note said.

Intrigued by the phrase, I spent awhile Googling to see if Matt had been quoting from a poem or a song. No luck. The closest I came was a rap song ("Keep your silver, give me that gold") and the Scout song about making new friends but keeping the old; one is silver and the other gold. I doubted that either one was what Matt had in mind, so I'm going to guess the phrase was original with him.

When I saw my colleague's question about why we do what we do, I thought about why I teach; then I thought about Matt's note to his student. I hope my friend won't mind if I draw my own conclusions about his phrase and apply them to explain why I teach.

Fire = passion/intellectual curiosity/loving your subject/valuing the life of the mind. It's why I decided teaching was my calling so many years ago. I can't tell you the exact moment, but at some point as I sat in a college literature classroom at Oklahoma Christian University a professor sparked something within me. It might have been the way he got excited when explaining why Emily Dickinson chose this word and not that one or when asking why Donne began his poem with a trochee rather than an iamb. Whatever it was, the spark was lit and there was no turning back. That spark would eventually grow into a flame as I began to think about a career as an English professor. Later in grad school, I remember Dr. Bratton stopping in the middle of our discussion of Wordsworth's poetry and saying, "This is so much fun! I can't believe I get paid to do this."

I can't believe I get paid to do this. That's been pretty much consistently true for me over my 25 years of teaching writing and literature. But, of course, while it's true I love what I do (I get paid to read Shakespeare plays and Anne Lamott books and C. S. Lewis fantasy lit over and over, after all!), there's something else I've learned in those 25 years. Without students, my passion and love of my subject would be pointless. It's the chance to be the generator of that spark that eventually lights the fire in a student that brings true joy. It's seeing the light bulb go on for a student during a class discussion. It's reading the final essay of a student who has struggled mightily with the first two papers and realizing she's really understanding how to write an academic argument. It's sitting with a student in my office talking about graduate programs or how he hopes to use his writing skills in the nonprofit world. It's getting an email from a student who's just successfully completed her first year of grad school or teaching and having them thank me and our department for preparing her well. That's where the fire is. It's the fire that keeps me warm during the wet Oregon winters and keeps my spirits up in the long stretch between Christmas break and Spring break.

Silver = unique gifts/what makes students different, special, and memorable/style/personality/quirky habits/connection
If students were all the same, my job would be incredibly boring. I teach many of the same texts year after year, but it's the differences among the students who encounter those texts that keeps me interested.  There's some students I'll never forget. Like the one who, on the first day of freshman writing was sitting in the windowsill at the back of the classroom. He had not merely scooted his chair near the window; no, he had gotten out of his chair, raised the lower part of the window as high as it would go, and was sitting on the windowsill, as if he wanted to get as far as physically possible away from me and that classroom. Oh boy, I thought, this one's going to be a problem. He turned out to be the brightest light and best writer in the class, going on to become a medical doctor. While in my class, he wrote his persuasive paper on why a persuasive paper was a dumb assignment, using the argumentative techniques covered in class so effectively I had no choice but to give him an A.

There's some students I'd like to forget. No, I won't go there.

Some of my most memorable students have been the ones who've had great challenges to overcome. Like the student whose twin brother had been killed in a freak car accident when they were teenagers. She survived the accident and had to live with that painful memory. She also had impaired hearing that was not entirely compensated for by the hearing aids she wore. In spite of these challenges (or perhaps due to them), she was one of the most cheerful, compassionate, and encouraging people I've ever met. She took on leadership roles at the college including president of her service club and asked me to be the faculty sponsor. Though it was an all-female club, I couldn't say no to this student. After graduating with her English degree, she went to seminary and today serves as a hospital chaplain. Her story and those of many other unique students I treasure in my heart.

Of course, as any teacher knows, each class has its own personality as well. This explains the phenomenon I've often experienced where I use the exact same material and class plan in two sections of the same class. In one class, it leads to the best session ever; in the other, the worst. A few years ago, I had a writing class of English majors who, for whatever reason, clicked as a group. Instead of a collection of individual learners, the class became a community with its own, rather quirky, personality. Someone decided it would be fun to have themed dress days in class and convinced most of the class members to go along with it. So one week would 90s garb, the next 80s, etc. During 60s week I wore my tie dye shirt and received great applause when I revealed it by unbuttoning my long sleeve shirt. My outer shirt was one of those with the western style buttons, so I was able to make the reveal rather dramatic. Needless to say, discussion was not a problem in this class though I did sometimes have to redirect them to the topic for the day.

So why do I do what I do? I teach with hope that something I do or say or emote in the classroom will light a spark in a student. I teach because I recognize what a difference fire can make in forging a life well lived. I teach because I hope each of my students will recognize his or her unique gifts, what he or she is especially good at, what makes him or her special, will value his or her silver. I don't expect them all to become English majors, but whatever they do, I want them to do it because they've identified what their passion is (their fire) and what makes them unique (their silver). I also figured out long ago I can't expect to connect with every student. That's why I have colleagues.

Recently, I was reading some of Thomas Merton's reflections on the nature of the Bible. Merton quoted the passage from II Corinthians where Paul says to the church members at Corinth: "You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on your hearts, to be known and read by all men."

Just so I would hope whatever small part I have in helping students nurture their fire and find their silver, those students would become my letter of recommendation, taking what they can from me and using it in even greater ways for a life well lived.

To shift the metallurgical metaphor, here's what I want my students to know, in the word of John Prine:

"You've got gold, gold inside of you.
Well I've got some gold inside me too."

Postscript: I wish I could revise all those graduation notes I've written to students over the years. If I could, I would boil them all down to a single line: "Keep always your Fire and your Silver." I may use it from now on, but if I do, I'll be sure to credit my friend, Matt.