I’ll fly away

2.24.11 By Kellyanne Mahoney

While dubbing those who teach as “glorified babysitters” or “hogs-at-the-trough” in the comments section of an online news story, the image the concerned taxpayer/citizen journalist has in mind is unlikely that of me in the clearance aisle of Staples, forlornly clutching the last bag of gold medals in sight. But there I was on a recent Monday night, after an I’d-like-to-think dignified bout of haggling with the store manager to check the stock room just one last time. I explained to him how much my seventh graders love the medals, and that we are planning to play Jeopardy in class tomorrow, and how disappointing it would be for the winning teams to walk away prize-less.

His vacant stare told me he did not share my sense of urgency.

Admittedly, I was a little embarrassed at this point, especially as I began to notice a couple of other customers and an employee waiting to also hold court with the manager.

My eyes darted downward to the torn plastic bag I was holding—it was short a few medals, so the manager kindly agreed to sell it to me at a reduced price.

“It’s really crazy, actually,” I said with a cool shrug of the shoulders. “I don’t know if the kids really even like them at all, or if they are just humoring me—hey, maybe they are even mocking me…” I knew this wasn’t true. “In fact, “ I continued telling the story of how when I was running out of medals during the last game we played, and I started giving the kids the option of a medal or an autographed sticky note that read “Ms. Mahoney owes me a gold medal because I am awesome,” and how funny it was that the kids started choosing the sticky notes instead!

The manager did not laugh; but he did usher me off in the direction of the post-it note aisle.

Realizing the spontaneous charm of the sticky notes would not likely endure another day with my students, I instead bought a few packages of sparkly gold bulletin-board border that I figured I could fashion into a crown with some staples.  And so with the flair of a seasoned phrenologist I spent a good portion of the next school day tailoring the wavy cardboard strips to properly coronate each winner—there were at least 20.  What made me most satisfied with this last-ditch decision—aside from the fact that, by and large, the kids chose the crowns over the offering of stray medals I was able to muster—was what I thought to write on each of them.

A bit more context: There was somewhat of a dog-and-pony show going on at school that day because a famous author was visiting to observe the implementation of our whole-school professional development plan that was partly based upon his book. I felt that the growing stream of seventh graders wearing sparkly paper crowns would lend an adorable panache to the occasion. However, I was also wary that their appearance in the corridors could be misconstrued as pure silliness. So, to add a note of austerity, I decided upon a word to write across each crown in black permanent marker: ERUDITE.

The word came to me like a reverie. Its inspiration was Mr. Sullivan, my Latin teacher from my sophomore year at Boston Latin Academy. He had a policy in his class that if a student earned 10 perfect scores in a row on his weekly quizzes, that he would write the student’s name and the word “erudite” in ballpoint pen on a sheet of white printer paper and tape it above his dusty chalkboard. If interrogated in the clearance aisle at Staples, I am not sure if he would be able to explain the uncanny motivating force of this reward system—but in judging by the lengthy rows of paper decking the front of his room by June, there was no doubt that it worked. That year his class was mostly spent translating the speeches of Cicero and scanning dactylic hexameter. But it was often also punctuated by wonderful tangential and sometimes cynical stories he would tell us that would somehow serendipitously end with how lucky he felt that we brilliant and kind students would someday be the stewards of this planet and steer the human race back in the right direction. Aside from “erudite,” he also loved the word “vicarious,” and explained to us how teachers can sometimes serve “in loco parentis,” and how special it is that adults can live vicariously again through the achievements of young people they care about.

The next day at school, I felt filled with Mr. Sullivan’s spirit again, and gave my seventh graders a longwinded speech about how pleased it made me to see them proudly donning their crowns all day long and even out the door and onto their yellow school buses. I also made a hushed pronouncement that an obvious distinction between Boston Latin Academy students and students from the “other Latin School” is the fact that our students would never march around all day wearing an unfamiliar word across their foreheads of which they did not inquire about its meaning. The humbled grins on their faces told me that they understood the implicitness of my gentle reprimand. A few took out their dictionaries right then.

When I was away at college I learned that Mr. Sullivan had died. I thought about him again a few weeks ago in class when we were having a casual debate over the gospel hymn “I’ll Fly Away.” After reading the lyrics, my students were asked to decide whether it is an optimistic or pessimistic song. Some of the students noted that their opinions had changed after then listening to a rendition of the song by Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch and being affected by the haunting mood of their voices. Most students, however, held tight to their original arguments, and most classes were evenly split down the middle. Much of their reasoning hinged upon how deeply religious one must be in order to find the song’s theme of finding freedom in death comforting.

One student’s reaction stuck out to me the most: “But even if you don’t believe in an afterlife, you can interpret it as, although you’re not physically free, you can always find freedom in your own mind. Your freedom is up to you.”  The humanistic zeal in her voice brought me back to my study of the Classics, and to the teacher who led me to believe that one’s education can be an epic thing. Per aspera ad astra! The song also made me think about the vicarious nature of teaching, and how a really great teacher never flies away for too long.