WAKING UP

     Occasionally I softly scold my students with “Come on, folks, let’s wake up”, and just as often I say something similar to myself. There’s a strange drowsiness that settles upon me sometimes when I’m teaching, as though I’m half-asleep even while walking around the classroom, even while carrying out the particulars of a lesson. I can be bringing to light, for the students, the usefulness of participles in essays, and yet be slowly slipping across the borders of sleep.  It’s not a literal sleepiness, but a sleepiness of the soul – the kind of lassitude that makes it possible to perform duties without knowing why or what it all means. It’s similar, in some ways, to walking in a wilderness simply to see the end of the trail, all the while disregarding the beauties before my eyes. I teach in a small shangri-la called Room 2 – a place where work, to me, is more wonderful than play. My students and I share in the wealth of the world in our hearts and minds, and we make small miracles with the many thoughts and feelings that unfold within us in every class. What I want to do each day is be wide-awake to this glory and greatness that’s so freely given in my unremarkable, commonplace classroom.