Beyond the Classroom

It was Gil Bailie who said, “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

I’ve traded with Turkish street vendors, squealed at squid on a Mykonos beach, ogled where Oedipus consulted the Oracle of Delphi. I’ve been dragged onstage, then serenaded by a Top Gun boy band, taught hula by a hunk at a Polynesian luau, and cast in Earthquake at Universal Studios. I’ve galloped in a horse-drawn carriage in a Victorian cape, danced the Charleston in a Gatsby get-up, and steadied a steed as a Medieval queen.

Whether skiing in Colorado, wave-running in Florida, or rappelling in Tennessee … whether floating on Venetian canals, punting around Cambridge’s campus, or trolling halls of a flooded school ... this teacher has been on a wild ride. All with students in tow. That is, till they catch wind and set sail, life-long learners in motion.

This is my 30th year of teaching, and I’ll start class in August with my same barbaric yawp: “Lit is life.” Since Bryan Adams and MC Hammer sold out concerts and Desert Storm and Monica Lewinsky were news, each fall commences with teens eyeing me suspiciously from under crew cuts or bangs, mullets or mohawks. Not sure if I’m delusional or downright loco, they balk when I tell them great books matter … that English class intersects with pop culture and the “real world.” Completing the mantra, I preach: “Travel is essential to education. We never really graduate. Oh, and call me crazy, but learning is fun.”

I’ve always thought so. Teaching is a family tradition. My grandmother taught in a one-room schoolhouse and worked as a teacher’s aide into her 80s. Every afternoon I’d run straight from the bus to play school with my grandfather, my pretend pupil.

A drama queen, I found the stage in high school. Teaching gave me a captive audience, literally. Thus, I began wowing students with my witch’s voice and razzle dazzling them with a mean Lady MacBeth. Students tease that I’m so animated discussing The Once and Future King they watch the window for Lancelot, hoping he’ll carry me away on a white horse.

Maybe becoming characters from books is taking the whole “model what you teach” thing too far, but creativity goes a long way. So does passion. As Yeats said, education is “the lighting of a fire.”  So if I call my students to be passionate about learning and life, I must be too. If I want them to try the road less traveled ... to take risks ... I must blaze the trail.

To help students find what makes them come alive, I assign a “Deliberate Life” project based on Thoreau’s “suck out all the marrow of life” schtick. They must explore something out of their comfort zone, something they’ve never done but want to try. Athletes take up the arts, and bookworms take to the hills. They tutor at the Sudanese Center and build houses in Honduras. Meanwhile I retreat to the woods, learn Italian, start a T-shirt company that promotes reading and sends books to Ecuador, and  run my first 5K. This year I shared my latest love, Latin dance, with my students. In Centennial Park they learned salsa, then Brazilian percussion, Carnaval-style. They made a fabulous 50-piece band and dance troupe.

We’ve eaten haggis in Scotland and Sacher Torte in Vienna. But for those who don’t go on the trips I lead abroad, they get a taste of the world in class, where we chow down on food from around the globe. While we eat, we listen to flamenco, zydeco, Beethoven, and bachata. We travel via Life is Beautiful (in Italian) and Chocolat.

In the classroom, creativity goes a long way in getting students to critically think. So does using what they already love. I teach tragic heroes with Anakin Skywalker and Wuthering Heights by Twilight. Equally inspired by movies, my super-sized imagination fancies I’m Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds, partly because my first students were a tough crowd — ninth graders who read on a third grade reading level — and partly because I love a leather jacket. And when I see college students opting for Spark Notes, I huddle with Robin Williams’ Mr. Keating. His Dead Poets Society speech headlines my syllabus:

“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love. These are what we stay alive for.”

Once students get that classics tackle their real-life issues, they join the team. Quick studies suit up while in high school, and rebels, later my Facebook friends, confess they’re now re-reading the classics and offer up new titles for me to consider.

Last week a former student came by for coffee. Recalling Advanced Placement English, the biology major said, “The books you had us read didn’t seem like assignments. They seemed more like adventures. I’ve thought about coming back to your class just to sit in on discussions. Biology is the study of life literally, but English is just as much so, maybe even moreso.”

Plumbing pain and discovering beauty, we study the likes of Kurtz and Prufrock, Kafka and Keats. We sigh with Hamlet’s “To be or not to be,” discussing the heartaches of the human condition. But we also laugh. Before “Family Guy” or “The Simpsons,” my kids ... my students ... were filming their own satires, parodies of books I’d force-fed them: Willie Loman and Stanley Kowalski in a “Dr. Phil” Anger Management Group; Blanche DuBois, Holden Caulfield, and Candide in “Real World” interviews; or Ophelia, Hester Prynne, Yours Truly, and Heathcliff in a “Bachelor” episode.

Not all of our guffawing is grounded in books, though. When my hall pass disappeared, my students photographed it around town, then sent me the pictures with a ransom note. Likewise, they kidnapped a Christmas elf from my desk; I found him in the cafeteria freezer by the Eskimo Pies. Students mass produced a picture of me standing by a Beefeater at the Tower of London. Sporting a silly grin and an 80s perm, pleated high-waters and a fanny pack, I reappeared on flyers taped around school and posted on the Internet. I’ve also been Photoshopped as Angela from “The Office.” The culprits, now graduates, sign emails as Dwight and Andy.

Is it all fun and games? No, but a sense of humor sustains my teacher’s heart. So does prayer and a willingness to change because some of the rules of engagement are different now. Technology has extended my classroom beyond borders, keeping it abuzz 24/7. Before we begin a discussion on Pablo Neruda, students have uploaded to our Ning site pictures of  Chile, clips from the movie Il Postino, and a reading of his poems by Glenn Close. Before we discuss Jack Kerouac, they’ve posted interviews, photos from their own travels, and maps for future road trips. Whether comparing Gibson’s Hamlet to Billy Madison’s, watching the trailer from Marie Antionette, or uploading a Green Day tune for a Brave New World soundtrack, students are more excited than ever about class.

But whatever the method to our madness, relationships rule. On bad days when I’m all Mr. Holland’s Opus — mired in grading students’ papers and wondering if I’ll ever finish writing my book — I open a computer file or cabinet drawer filled with cards and emails from students past and present. I love seeing them, now all grown up at reading/writing groups, play openings, band concerts, weddings, and baby showers. Some of my closest friends, now in their 30s, were once students.

Recently at a wedding reception I laughed with the alumni who took me four-wheeling in the rain. We looked like Blue Man Group Gone Brown — only the whites of our eyes showed through the layers of caked-on mud. I remember thinking as we splashed into those puddles-turned-ponds: “This is what EE Cummings means by ‘mudluscious.’”
And then I thought, I’ve never felt so alive.

Cindy McCain has been a teacher for 30 years. She’s currently English Department Head at Donelson Christian Academy, Classic Coup Owner, Nashville’s Latin Dancing Examiner, and Mom. Navigate her adventures at cmccain.wordpress.com.