The Absurd

Today....

And everyday.

When the students leave me in an empty messy classroom I begin to feel again like I might accomplish something as a teacher. The days drag from one missed opportunity to another punctuated with vague periods of success. The terrible part of this all is I know I need to teach in my own style, but I am not sure what my style is. Everyday I tweak and alter my game plan and I see my more naturally organized coworkers and corps members coast in between grading and filing like a bee and her hive. I am more organized than I have ever been, but I cannot help but feeling overwhelmed and frustrated... with so many students I am being prevented from getting to know any of them.

I had progress reports due last week, and they still are not done. My grades are either inflated everyone-gets-full-credit-for-showing-up, poorly recorded unjudgeable creativity projects, or tests that the majority of my kids fail. And along with all of this I never cover as much material as I want. Philosophically I am more concerned with creating life long learners than I am with teaching any single objective. However, right now I am busy trying to balance the two of them, and I am terribly afraid that I am achieving neither. The other group fifth graders began "ability grouping" this week, and I realize that I am unable to ability group because I cannot even tell you which of my kids are really struggling. I can tell you my 10 most successful, and my 10 least academic- but in the middle, the other 40 kids blur together tragically. I am trying to fix that, but I do not want to look at scores, I want to talk with kids. I want to smile at them, listen, debate books, and fully trust that by conversing like that we can learn so much more fully than by drilling small passages, but I have sooooo many kids, and so little time, and soooo many external requirements that I feel lost and ineffective.

Each time I feel ready to make a gain, each time I am ready to take it to the peak, something butts through- I stumble and must trudge down the hill for my boulder- Camus might have had it right... before I continue I must pause. I am emotionally tormented, egotistically bruised, and physically exhausted. And where do I turn- literature. In the poetry of Stephen dobyns, the lyrics of Ben Lee and Atmosphere, and the writings of Arthurian Legends, Victor Frankel and Albert Camus I find solace. In the company of literature I find wholeness- and i want to unlock that world- a vocabulary enhancing, life improving, character building alternative with accepting the now as it is. I need to offer that to my students and a curriculum has bound my hands and feet so solidly I am near tears.

So again- I turn to Camus:
One does not discover the absurd without attempting to write a manual of happiness... It happens as well that the feeling of the absurd springs from happiness. "I conclude that all is well," says Oedipus, and that remark is sacred. It echoes in the wild and limited universe of man. It teaches that all is not, has not been, exhausted. It drives out of this world a god who had come into it with dissatisfaction and a preference for futile sufferings. It makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men.
All Sisyphus' silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing. Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols. In the universe suddenly restored to silence, the myriad wondering little voices of the earth rise up. Unconscious, secret calls, invitations from all the faces, they are the necessary reverse and price of victory. there is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night. The absurd man says yes and his effort will henceforth be unceasing. If there is a personal fate, there is no higher destiny, or at least there is but one which he concludes is inevitable and despicable. For the rest, he knows himself to be the master of his days. At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that silent pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which becomes his fate, created by him, combined under his memory's eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling.
I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

I am not sure what it takes to make people succeed in education. But right now I haven't found it, haven't tried everything. But my rock, my classroom, my hill, my students await. And so I must be happy. It is my struggle. All is well.