Joel+Malley


 * (A few years ago I was asked to write a personal essay about how I decided to become an English teacher. Although this deviates a bit from the actual assignment of writing about "after high school stories," I think it gets to the heart of how I ended up in the classroom.)**

I was never the most practical kid. If you rented a time machine, hunted me down anywhere from 1977 to 1995, gently pulled me aside and asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I’d respond in one short sentence. For eighteen years I’d stare intently into the ground, nudge the grass, snow, sand or dirt with my foot, and say, “I want to be a baseball player.” A random survey of my 6th grade papers would reveal that I did not just include my name on the top line of the heading, but also my self asserted title, “Baseball King.” When I was twenty-one, I was nudged awake. My friend and I heard about an open tryout the Atlanta Braves were hosting at a baseball field in Tonawanda. I grabbed my raggedy Cooper mitt, careworn spikes, and delusions of grandeur and drove out to the diamond on an overcast Wednesday. That afternoon, under a darkened sky, a lifetime of eschewing the weight room and over relying on Pepsi and Hot Fries as my main source of nutrition exposed me for what I really was; a slow footed dreamer with below modest skills and a hazy sense of reality. Just as in high school, I still ran a six second, eyes closed, zigzagged forty yard dash and possessed rubber band arms which produced throws that reached the plate accurately but only after being preceded by a few infield bounces. It’d be cliché to say that I had an epiphany that day. It would be more accurate to argue that this humbling experience was one of a number of awakenings at a transitional time in my life, and this was the point in a novel when the protagonist finally crosses the threshold and begins his journey. It was somewhere thereabouts that I decided to become an English teacher. Funny thing is, I’m not too sure //how// I decided that I wanted to become an English teacher. Truthfully, I cannot identify any one point in my life when I even considered the possibility. No sit down meeting with a career counselor. No bearded, walking inspiration of a teacher, clad in elbow patches and dripping in Walt Whitman. No dog-eared novel with a permanent spot on my nightstand. What I do remember, however, are a thousand instances of English teachers opening the doors to exhilarating new worlds, which must have left hundreds of tiny dings in the subconscious of a dreamy, yet lackadaisical baseball player. An early impression was left by one of my elementary school teachers. She sat a small group of the “advanced” students down with headphones and allowed us to read //The Hobbit// while listening to the audio book on cassette. I remember being swept up in Middle Earth, so much so that by the middle of junior high school I finished the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy and the non-Elven parts of //Unfinished Tales// (I could never stand the elves…too much singing and too many similar sounding names). Similarly, in 7th grade my English teacher, Mrs. Shep, in an early edition of a literature circle, allowed her students to choose one of the novels in C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia for a reading project. I chose //The Silver Chair//, and although only required to read one, I quickly consumed all seven novels, each night falling asleep and dreaming of accompanying the Pevenses to the magical land of Narnia.

In high school my interest in the subject ebbed and flowed. I read many of the assigned books, and fondly remember //The Pigman//, //The Catcher in the Rye//, and //Lord of the Flies//. But the heroic struggles of Holden and Ralph were often pushed to the background by the mind numbing drudgeries contained in the orange //Vocabulary Workshop// books that followed me from grade to grade. Often I’ll get visions of the big, bleached white pencil on the cover and shudder as I remember years of coma inducing analogies, sentence completions, and synonym matching. Also, in high school it seemed that the ludic strolls through coming of age novels were often shoved to the shoulder by forced marches through the canon. I remember paying vague attention to the teachers’ discussions of //Tale of Two Cities//, Shakespeare’s plays, and //The Scarlet Letter// and succeeding //without// reading. I passed with above average grades simply by parroting and playing the game of school, as opposed to being deeply vested in the books I was reading. At risk of having my English teaching license revoked, I feel the need to admit that I still haven’t read Macbeth, and have only a fuzzy recollection of witches and blood from my 11th grade experience with that play. Other English teachers, whether through the encouragement of words or deeds, left more enduring positive memories. In 9th grade I wrote a short story about a fictional skiing vacation with a deranged brother, and my English teacher liked it so much he convinced me to submit it for publication in the school’s literary magazine. He later pulled me aside to share that his literary magazine staff enjoyed the dark humor. During my senior year my paths crossed with another influential teacher, Mrs. W. The course was Mystery Literature, and rumor had it that it was an easy grade. Mrs. W. was flighty and well past the recommended age of retirement, and initially her students saw her age as a weakness to exploit. In fact, those of us in the row near the window spent a significant amount of time in the first few weeks of school using our watches to redirect the sunlight to distract her while teaching, making the beams of light dance around the chalkboard and, while she lectured, refract off of her eyeglasses. Her passion and enthusiasm for her subject soon hooked us, however, and we were exposed to a myriad of mysteries, most notably Arthur Conan Doyle and the world of Sherlock Holmes. She offered us choice in the texts we read, guidance while reading, and time in class to read. She showed her students that there was a world of mystery literature to explore and she made time for us to dip our toes in these short stories and novels. Although we were only required to read three short stories during the Conan Doyle unit, I read every one of Doyle’s short stories as well as //The Hound of the Baskervilles//. I became swept up in mystery literature, devouring most of the authors in the mystery section in her classroom library. The class may have been an easy A, but I never noticed as I worked harder and read more than I ever had before. In large part, however, I fell in love with reading outside the sphere of school. My parents had a subscription to Reader’s //Digest//, and each month I would draw a hot bath and read //Drama in Real Life// while my toes shriveled like golden raisins, all the while chuckling away and dreaming of earning three hundred dollars by having a story accepted to the //Campus Comedy,// //All in a Day’s Work//, or //Life in These United States// sections of the magazine. I lived for the humorous essays of Mike Royko and Art Buchwald in //The Buffalo News//, and couldn’t wait for my weekly subscription to //Sports Illustrated// or the monthly //National Geographic// passed down from my grandfather. My mother would take me to the drab colored Cazenovia library and I would get lost in the large collection of young adult literature. Afterwards I would curl up in bed and read, sometimes finishing two books in one day. Yeats quote has become ubiquitous lately, but I honestly believe that there is some truth in it. Good teaching inspires authentic inquiry. The thousands of tiny awakenings I experienced were a result not of napalm, but of teachers throwing pieces of kindling on a smoldering fire. I am here today because of it. I love being an English teacher. I love the fact that I get to wake up every morning and talk with people about two things I love; reading and writing. As I teach, I keep my own experiences close to my vest. I provide my students choice when possible, strategies to help them develop their voice, and structure to help them succeed. I read constantly, seeking out novels and nonfiction that may help my students ignite and become lifelong readers and learners. I try to model myself after influential teachers because I think that the experiences provided by literature and the well crafted stories in //Sports Illustrated// and //National Geographic// enriched my life and provided me with an empathetic worldview. I also do it because some day, another under skilled and delusional outfielder will pick himself up off of the short grass and realize that he needs to blaze a new path.