How To Light Up A Student's Face

A colleague, Thomas, who teaches history was on hall duty, which meant he sat at a student desk in a hallway to make sure students at lunch did not enter academic hallways.  I paused to talk, and as we chatted, a young man approached him.  The student had a smile on his face, but I did not recognize the language he was speaking.  Thomas, however, replied in his language, and after a few minutes explained to me that the young man was from Jordan.  He and I then shared a few words in English, and he informed me that he had been in the United States for one year.  The student and Thomas exchanged some more in Arabic, and then the young man went his way.

I asked, already suspecting the answer, whether the young man were one of Thomas's students, and he said no.  He went on to say that he had exchanged a few Arabic words with one of our Iraqi students and that each day she has brought one or two more Arabic-speaking students to meet him. 

Chills ran along my arms.  You should have seen the smile on that young man's face and the light in his eyes.  He had sought out my friend, who was not one of his own teachers, because Thomas spoke a bit of his language, and when they had their exchange in Arabic, it was obvious that the moment made the young man's day.

Thomas has served as a missionary, which is how he has picked up several languages and is undoubtedly why he has such a heart for people.  You may not speak another language, or at least not one spoken by some of the students in your school.  It does not matter.  When you become involved in the lives of students, when you talk to them about what is important to them, when you ask questions about their activities and interests, you are speaking their language.  And when someone speaks their language, there is a shared moment of humanity that lights up the faces and the hearts of all around.

19 + 21 = Unforgettable

One of my best students used his phone in class.  I know.  We are supposed to embrace technology in education, but I found tears springing to my eyes.  This was one of my top students.  I have always loved how his mind worked, but for him to use his phone like this....  Perhaps I should explain.

It was the A.P. Latin class, and we were reading a section from Book 6 of Vergil's Aeneid in English.  The students had their Latin texts open, but each one had a different English translation from one of our bookshelves, and they were taking turns reading aloud.  

After Katie finished reading Frederick Ahl's 2007 translation of lines 562-586 in which Tisiphone explains to Aeneas what he is looking at in the underworld, Nicholas asked if he could share the rendering by Christopher Pearse Cranch that he had been following.  He was visibly excited, so I encouraged him to do so.  At the end of his reading, he talked about how much he loved Cranch's language, even stating that this was the most vivid and creative bit of writing he had read in the past couple of years.

And it was at that point that he took out his phone to photograph the pages, and I nearly cried.

Here was a young man so deeply moved by words that he had to share them.  Here, in one of the largest public high schools in Indiana, was a class with students that could share his joy and enthusiasm over the power and beauty of the written word.  But did you notice the most important part of this story?  It was the student who was moved and wanted to savor these words in the community of peers.  It was not the teacher forcing him to look at something and demanding, "Don't you think that's wonderful?"

It reminded me of the scene in Dead Poets Society in which Mr. Keating's (Robin Williams) students confront him with his old yearbook and ask what the society was all about.

KNOX
You mean it was a bunch of guys sitting
around reading poetry?

KEATING
No Mr. Overstreet, it wasn't just "guys",
we weren't a Greek organization, we were
romantics. We didn't just read poetry,
we let it drip from our tongues like honey.
Spirits soared, women swooned, and gods
were created, gentlemen, not a bad way to
spend an evening eh? 

So, yes, I became emotional when a 19th century translation elicited from my 21st century student a response that was unforgettable for us both.