Thou dost not look thine age

You may not have known this (unless you subscribe to Harper's magazine), but the King James Bible turns 400 this year. This long-standing, beloved-of-many translation has fallen out of usage due to its old-fashioned, Shakespeare-style language (in fact, the translation was started in 1604, the same year Shakespeare was at the height of his career)--but the move to more modern versions is fairly recent as these things go. Your parents and grandparents likely grew up hearing the King James Bible in church, and there are places all over the world where it is still used every Sunday. Whether you're familiar with it or not, you are surely familiar with the way it has enriched modern English with phrases like "a drop in the bucket," "a labor of love," and "bite the dust," (for real!) among many, many others.

I did not grow up hearing the King James Bible in church, but I have profound affection for 17th-century English and for the smart, secular editors of Harper's, who decided to gather seven well-known authors, have them pick their favorite verse, then write about it for the latest issue of the magazine. This intersection of ideas, writing, language and religion always makes me want to throw a party in my brain--and the variation of writing (four short essays and three poems) are all wonderful takes on the chosen verses. There is cranky atheist Benjamin Hale railing against the notion of human exceptionalism in Psalm 8; and Howard Jacobson's brilliant interpretation of the creation story with God as the original autonomous artist. John Banville re-tells the tale of Absalom through the eyes of an Israelite soldier with the personality and language patterns of a Victorian-era enlisted man. I wish you could access the article online, but you have to subscribe. Let me know if you want to read it, and I'll send you my password or a copy.

It has also inspired me to pick a verse from the King James Bibe and write a commentary of my own. This is not to put myself (ridiculously) in the category as John Banville or Marilynne Robinson. Ummmm...no. But it seemed like such a fun way to mark the anniversary of such an influential book. I invite you to do the same, if you feel so moved. I would love to post it here!

And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. --John 1:5

For much of the year, I leave the house before the sun comes up and return home long after it sets. I have witnessed countless sunrises from the windows of various classrooms and have watched the light leaking from the sky as I sit in meetings, type away at the computer or stand over a copy machine. That teachers work hard is no secret, and our relationship with light and darkness has closely linked literal and figurative sides. The turning of day into night represents the physical hours it takes to educate children with some measure of effectiveness. The turning of night to day, that switching on of the metaphorical light of knowledge is the reason every teacher puts in those long hours in the first place.

Despite my mixed reviews of the movie Waiting for Superman, I do sometimes think of my job in comic-book terms. There are the villains of institutional racism, poverty, apathy and massive budget shortfalls. Then there are the heroes: the teachers, students and families who work every day to overcome these dastardly roadblocks with a pow! wham! smash! of hard work, tenacity, and maybe even some humor every now and then.

I don't think I could be as chipper a good guy as I often am if I didn't believe in the promise at the heart of this verse: that light shines in the darkness. Always. What I love about the King James version is that the darkness is totally clueless. Most translations I've read cast the darkness in a more proactive role. The same verse in the NRSV Bible reads: The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. In this version, darkness is still losing, but it's trying to do something about it. In the King James Bible, darkness is there, but it's totally uncomprehending, a verb we use as a synonym for understand, but has its roots in Latin for "to grasp."

A light shines in the darkness (pow! bam!), and the darkness just can't get a handle on it. (K.O!)

It's a good reminder at the end of the year--or maybe at any time--that the darkness is ultimately powerless in the face of the light. It might seem like it's evil, like the Joker or the Riddler, twirling its mustache menacingly, coming up with pitfalls and snares. But, let's not forget, darkness is static, clueless, defeat-able. I speak from experience, especially at the end of the year, as former students head to college, and current students turn in final projects full of insight, organization and correct spelling. Chasing away the darkness, being the metaphorical light, is sometimes just about showing up every morning before the literal light. Or doing whatever it is you do with all your heart, day after day, with the wider world in mind. No cape, no special powers, no Batmobile required. This might sound comic-book-ish, simplistic, with no proper shading or depth--but it's also true. And it's not just me. The King James Bible has been saying the same thing for 400 years.

The power of pressing on

Last week, 70 6th graders, four other teachers, the principal and I went to West Texas for our end of year field trip. This four-day-three-night outing was the culminating reward for kids who did the right thing all year, as measured by our weekly paycheck system. It's a long-standing tradition in our charter network. Some schools (like the one next door) take their sixth graders on a week-long backpacking trips through Utah. We at our school boarded a charter bus on Monday and headed a mere seven hours toward the setting sun and the rolling gold hills between Marfa and Fort Davis.

Step behind the scenes of trips like these and what you find are multiple field trips all strung together by the teachers to make what we hope is a thrilling whole--perfect for inspiring good behavior and academic habits in the future. We kept the kids busy horseback riding, ropes-course climbing, orienteering (Yes! Hand out the coordinates! The class of 2017 will now never be lost as long as they live. And have a compass handy...), exploring and, of course, swimming and riding in the bus. Yes. The bus. At my old school in San Francisco, we joked that we could save a ton of money by simply renting a bus, driving the kids around all day, then finding someplace for them to swim for a few hours. They'd be happy as little pre-teen clams. Not surprisingly, this affection for sitting with friends in large, moving vehicles followed by a quick dip in the pool is also embraced by Texas middle schoolers. Yet we insisted on dragging them away from their peers and forcing them to sit through a (thrilling!) talk about the solar system at the famous McDonald Observatory (just down the road from where we were staying) and learn how to ride a zip line and manage their daily routine while staying in a cabin with 10 closest friends. I mean, really!

We also made them climb a mountain. Of course we did. And it was there, at the end of the year at about 5,000 feet above sea level, that I realized that the kids really do listen on a very deep level. A level that transcends physical comfort. A level that promotes determination and grit. For real! Sometimes I feel that my job, stripped down to its most basic level, involves cajoling children to do things they really don't want to do for hours at a time.

Last week on Guadalupe Peak in the heart of West Texas, I was sure of it. And it was a good thing.

I hiked the mountain (beautiful, highly recommended) with four kids who did not want to be there. I ended up with these four after confusion with another teacher left them alone on the trail, group-less. I went back to retrieve them, and we set off together. They were not in the best shape. They had absolutely no experience hiking a trail with any elevation gain, to say nothing of 3,000 feet. We did a few switchbacks, and they would collapse on the nearest boulder to catch their breath. But never once did they suggest, even for one minute that we 1) stop and wait for the groups ahead of us to come down or 2) give up and head back early. Not once. Neither did they whine (at all) nor do much dramatic moaning. Tired, out of breath and (for at least two) very homesick, they kept going up. I wanted to give them all a medal. I wanted to call up some teacher hotline and give a full report. In the minds of these kids, there was no backing down. The thought didn't even occur to them. And, believe me, plenty of other thoughts did.

JS: Ms. R, what if we fall off the mountain?
AC: What if we get lost? Are we lost? I think we're lost...
AA: What does it mean if you are hiking, and see one of those big ugly birds (vultures) are flying over your head? Does that mean you're going to die in two hours?
JG: Do you think when we get to the top, we will be able to see to Mexico? Cause we're close to Mexico, right?
Me: Where do I start?

Walk, sit, walk, sit...we didn't make it to the summit. That wasn't the point. We kept going up. I'm ashamed to admit it now, but I kept bracing myself for the inevitable loss of spirit, and it never came. Every time we turned a corner, I'd pause and exclaim about the view, the flat golden plains stretching out before us, the jagged peaks of this desert range behind us, nothing but a few windmills and the dots of small towns as far as the eye could see. For five hours of almost constant uphill switchbacks. It would have been a tough hike for anyone, to say nothing of four stocky 6th graders in old tennis shoes or (worse) Converse high tops.

Climbing mountains, as regular readers know, is our favorite metaphor at school for the process of being the first in your family to go to college. Because both are hard and require persistent effort over an extended period of time. It was amazing to see this metaphor in action on a literal mountain slope, to see kids pressing on (our class motto) not because they wanted to, not because I was forcing them, but because they had somehow figured out that there was nowhere to go but up--and not one else could do it for them.