I Believe

I believe in cultivating a life of the mind.

Although I have always loved TV and movies (including Gilmore Girls, and I hate to say it, occasionally America’s Next Top Model) I believe our culture often appeals to our basest qualities. I believe our desire can be reprogrammed for the sake of lining another person’s pockets. You hear me? I believe corporations can co-opt our very human-ness, our wanting—to the point that we barely recognize ourselves.

I believe as your teacher, I am in service to something that counters that force.

I believe honing our thinking can give us the mental equivalent of a sword, making intellectual samurais of us all. I believe our world could use more intellectual samurais, compassionate as they are smart.

I believe we all deserve to be part of an institution whose vision, goal, purpose, and practices are not regulated by profit. I believe one such institution is a school, and that is why I am here.

I believe in democracy, but I believe democracy in a classroom can approach chaos. I do however believe in dialogue and our ability to find a common ground.

I believe we are powerful. Yet I believe we often check that power by boxing ourselves up in categories like “I’m not a math person,” or “I hate to read,” or “I’m not musical.” I believe even as we find our one true passion, we eclipse other passions we may not have had the chance to discover.

Despite what you may think, I believe we are all poets.

Remember this: There is always so much to learn, so much worth knowing, so much worth doing as long as in the process we are not bringing harm to ourselves or another.

Therefore, if we get bored, I think we are afraid—afraid of what it feels like not to be small. Afraid of the bigness of the world that makes us small, we deflect that bigness, lock it out with our own apathy.

Therefore, I treat “boring” as a matter of perspective. Instead of saying something or someone is boring, I say one’s perspective suffers from boredom. Boredom can be tolerated or eradicated…if you choose to see possibility in your own intelligence.

I believe our mind is one big magnet. We magnetize our brains with everything we read, and the more we learn, the stronger its pull becomes, until nothing is beyond the reach of its force.

I believe when we develop our minds (our ability to reason, imagine, create, interpret, connect) we increase our ability to find aspects of our world interesting. I believe the more developed our minds are, the more interested and interesting we are able to be. I believe the capacity to be interested and to find material interesting is a mark of intelligence and imagination.

I believe if we reason better, imagine more, create deliberately, interpret well, speak thoughtfully and connect often we become our own entertainment, our own fulfillment. And we create more paths by which we can travel.

This why it doesn’t matter which road you take, the one less-traveled or not; it is you, not the road, that is in control. You determine the story of your life, because it is you will tell it.

I believe writing teaches us our mysteries. It preserves our pasts, keeps us in service to our memory. It makes us precious, which we all deserve. I believe each of us has a story, and we owe it to ourselves and others to bear witness to that story. When we become conveyers of our own story, we can live more fully, and more truthfully.

I also believe the ability to interpret challenging pieces of literature is a privilege everyone deserves.

And this privilege is not gifted by me, or the DOE or whatever college you will attend. I believe that ability is in service to our species, our DNA. Humans are meaning-makers, caught up in the details and ramifications of our own stories. In this class we will read and try to understand and when we do, I believe we will be honoring the very make-up of our being.

We need this skill—not just because there is a box on a college application that asks how many English credits you’ve earned.

Understanding literature can help us see the symbols, foreshadowing, images that shape our stories and become our lives, and I don’t know about you., but mine is a story I want to recognize and understand and WRITE WELL as it is happening, not once it is too late.

I believe life becomes a little better when you are past the phase when the collection of digits that make up your standardized test score becomes a major means by which you are taught to characterize your capacity.

I believe in a perfect world, grades would not exist. Yet I believe since you and I will never live in that world we need to do consider an important distinction: Do you want to HAVE the A, or do you want to BE the A student?

Think about that one….

I believe if I don’t grade it, it doesn’t mean the assignment doesn’t matter. I believe I have done my job when you no longer have to ask me “is this right?” I believe I have done my job if I make myself irrelevant.

Here’s how I believe that happens: Whatever the assignment, you find a way to discover what part of you that assignment evokes. Bring yourself to the task and you will discover yourself in it.

I believe journeys can be spiritual and intellectual, not just physical. I believe honing our intellectual swords, meeting challenges, and bringing ourselves to a task can be revolutionary.

I believe a group of people can be a sacred space. When secrets have been shared, lives discovered, voices heard, we have all been a part of something that transcends the everyday.

This, I believe.