Every year at the end of the school year I get wistful. I say goodbye to three classes of senior students and watch them leave the classroom environment where they have spent most of their lives. It is the end an era for both of us.

This year at graduation I was more nostalgic than usual. I watched some of my first students, who were sophomores in my English II in the fall of 2008 when I began teaching at my alma mater, walk across the stage to receive their diplomas. As I complete my third year of teaching, I felt as if it were an end to a chapter in my life as well.

This May also makes 19 years since I received my high school diploma and embarked into the world of higher education. Next year I will attend my 20-year high school reunion. I have to face it: like everyone else who lives long enough, I am getting old.

As I sat in the seat amongst my colleagues on the floor Thursday night, all of us arrayed in our black gowns and hoods befitting the formal occasion, I thought back to that night I graduated in 1992.

It was a rough time emotionally for me. My father, who suffered from heart disease all of my life, had died nine days before I graduated. When the graduates’ parents were called to stand, my mother had to stand alone. Graduation ceremonies always take me back to that time in my life. Those two events are forever inextricably linked.

I also thought at graduation about how I now sit in the same seat of those who made an immense difference in my life. I had some wonderful teachers who cared about me and helped me to grow and become the person I am today.  

My senior English teacher, Ms. Vicki Flowers—who is now my colleague—was one of those people. I remember that she always told us that growing up was the hardest thing she ever had to do. I am reminded of the quote by the American poet E.E. Cummings: “It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”

My journalism teacher, George Souders, was another person who changed the course of my life. George, as many of us called him even then, taught me to think and see in a new perspective. Primarily an art teacher, George didn’t just dance to the beat of his own drummer; he had his own marching band. They all, of course, would have worn tropical shirts and paint-stained paints, just as George always did. I consider myself fortunate still to remain friends with him today.

I thought, too, about my high school principal. Dr. David Hurst who cam e to McNairy Central High School the year I started there as a freshman.  Dr. Hurst was an excellent principal, as he had a great rapport with faculty and students alike.

He was very generous to Mr. Souders’ journalism class. At that time, an era that preceded desktop publishing and extensive use of the Internet, our journalism class had one little Apple Macintosh computer to type our articles for paste-up. However, we had no printer. Dr. Hurst allowed us to network the computer to his printer, and we were welcomed to come into his office any time as long as the door was open in order to retrieve our printouts.

He was very supportive of my interest in writing. One of my English teachers had asked to read a book of poems I had put together on my own, and she passed it along to our assistant principal, who then allowed Dr. Hurst to read it.

When he called me into his office one day, I had no idea what I might have done wrong. I found out quickly that he wanted simply to commend me and encourage me in pursuing writing. He was that sort of principal, always positive and inspiring.

I saw Dr. Hurst this March when I went on vacation to Arizona, where he now lives. The nineteen years that have passed in the time I last saw him seem like only days. On the way to his house, I felt as if I were going to attend a high school reunion. My palms were sweaty, and I tried to conjure in my mind how he might look now.

Upon arrival, he greeted me with a hug. It felt as if I had gone back in time. We both look a little different now, but the rapport was the same as always. Spending the evening with him and his wife Lisa was nice, as we all reminisced together.

Dr. Hurst, who acknowledged me as his “colleague” now, shared some humorous stories about his time as principal that he would never have shared with me when I was his student. I found out that he, too, is interested in writing, and so we may share some online critiques of each other’s writing. I have to admit that I still feel a little uncomfortable calling him “David.”

As we get older and have more experiences, those sorts of occasions are what help soften the melancholy of endings. Everything must end—but it is always followed by a beginning. Being able to revisit and reconnect with those who have shaped the person you have become—even though that chapter of your life in which they were involved is long gone—is to be cherished.

 Me with my former high school principal, Dr. David Hurst

Another end of a year has come. No, it’s not the end of a calendar year, but anyone involved in education will know the time reference of which I speak. We educators, like the Chinese, have our own calendars. For most of us on a traditional school calendar, ours begins in August and ends in May.

I love education, and I love educating. Being able to give someone something that is part of what I love, my discipline, and getting paid to do it, is a marvelous privilege. I love getting to see people grow and develop, and in the four years of high school, adolescents make monumental strides in emotional maturation and intellectual development.

One of my favorite parts of my teaching responsibilities, but also one of the most strenuous, is the capstone experience my English IV students complete each spring. A capstone experience is a project sometimes undertaken by university-level undergraduates and most often graduate students, in the form a thesis or dissertation, which is accompanied by a presentation. While some might argue that much of what is “standardized” education may have no real-world applicability, the senior project does indeed instruct students in real-world skills.

The culmination of the senior project requires every senior to deliver a minimum 5-minute speech presented to a panel of community members who serve as judges. However, the senior project encompasses so much more than just the presentation.

Students begin work in the fall of their senior year by proposing the topics for their activities, which must involve a learning stretch. Some of the topics typically include learning to play a musical instrument, constructing a piece of furniture, or learning a skill such as cooking or sewing or rebuilding an engine. They are instructed to spend their fall semesters working on their projects, in order to face a completion deadline of February 28 the next semester.

When those students enter the English IV classroom in the spring, they begin researching a topic relevant to their projects. For instance, a student rebuilding an engine might research the Ford Motor Company. Another student crafting a wooden swing might research hardwoods and softwoods used in the building process. A student learning how to play the guitar might research musical trends in 20^th century pop culture.

Along the way, students receive guidance and are assessed on each individual component. During the overall process, I watch my students learn how to hone research skills, how to write more effectively, how to meet deadlines or suffer the consequences, how to explain step-by-step technical information to an audience, and how to present themselves to an audience as a polished “expert” on their respective subject.

I watch many of them, who had no discernible goals, suddenly realize that now they have a vocational or artistic skill they can use as a route to a career or for personal enjoyment, or sometimes both. I see students stretching towards to what sociologists would call self-actualization, which involves reaching one’s full potential.

During this process of witnessing students’ strengths and weaknesses, I come to feel closer to my students. One cannot watch another individual develop and expand without feeling this way—especially those who seem to need the most help. I know I will miss them when they have left my stead.

So with much exhaustion, a few tears, and a great sense of pride in my students who have stretched farther than they believed they could do so that I end the school year. They, along with scores of other graduates, will walk down the aisle, receive their diplomas, and exit their institutions to enter the world.

To those graduates: remember that education is not over. Your instructors may be exhausted and you may be graduated, but education is never over. And as American jurist Paul Freund once said, “At commencement you wear your square-shaped mortarboards. My hope is that from time to time you will let your minds be bold, and wear sombreros.”

 

A couple of months ago, I finished teaching the Romantic era to my British literature post-secondary students. One of the reasons I enjoy the Romantics is because of that heightened awareness of and keen attention to nature. Wordsworth is one of my favorite poets of the time, and his poems, the most famous, perhaps, “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour. July 13, 1798—or best known as simply “Tintern Abbey”—are imbued with reverence to nature.

Other non-British writers of the era—the Swiss-born French writer Jean-Jacques Rosseau and the German Johann Wolfgang von Goethe—also celebrated nature. Rosseau loved to take long walks, and the impetus of his last work are those walks: Les Rêveries du Promeneur Solitaire, translated as Reveries of a Solitary Walker. Likewise, Goethe writes about the violence of oceans in the opening of his famous, archetypal work Faust.

Today as I sit writing this column, I, like the Romantics, am enjoying taking in nature and may even retire momentarily to the outdoors. The vista outside my living room window is alluring, very nearly perfect—with the exception that the grass could use a little mowing. Yet, writing somehow seems more important than grass-mowing. Such mundane tasks can surely wait, especially when there is writing to be done.

It is difficult, though, to believe that just two to three days ago, the view all around the area was quite different. We were plagued with deluges of rain, powerful winds, and damaging hail. On Wednesday, after I sat on the couch and observed the downpour outside the window, I just as quickly witnessed the change: the sun shone, and very literally came the “calm after the storm.” All of a sudden, the storm that had continued for over a day was over.

Fortunately, west Tennessee, in comparison, was spared from the brunt of the damage of the overall storm system. It was both saddening and astonishing to watch videos of the destruction in the college town of Tuscaloosa, Ala. I visited there once, at the college campus of the University of Alabama, during a writing conference a few years ago. It is a quaint, wonderful little town. My favorite stop, of course, was Dreamland Bar-B-Que, where I enjoyed the ribs and a sauce so delicious that I had to dip it in the white bread when the ribs were gone. It was too good to leave behind.

And thinking of Dreamland, of course, reminds me of one of my very good friends, Jimmy Carl Harris, a retired Marine from Birmingham I met a few years ago at a writing conference in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Jimmy Carl is not only a fellow writer, but a man after my own heart when it comes to good “que.” I still wait to hear from him, and from the best I can discern online from others’ comments, he had a scary time of it and is dealing in the aftermath with a tree that fell on his house.

I cannot imagine what it is like to live through a storm such as the one that ravaged those Alabama towns. I am probably too complacent about storm warnings for a couple of reasons. Although the technology is a life-saving boon, sometimes, I think, we are a little too inundated with it. When the coverage goes on for hours, and the sirens are going on and off constantly, we get a little too desensitized—or “habituated,” the biological term for a conditioned lack of response, as my colleague, biology instructor Sarah Allison informs me.

Furthermore, I have never lived through such a storm or even seen a live tornado. The closest I came to witnessing such a storm was during the infamous 1991 tornado that swept through Selmer when I was a high school junior. I had never heard such hail, which sounded like a thousand hammers pounding on the roof, and the western sky behind my house was as black as night. However, actually being thrust into the middle of the storm is quite different, to be sure. In that case, I would probably have tucked myself neatly into the bathtub this time, along with scores of others who have been experientially conditioned to heed the violent tendencies of nature.

So as I love the serenity of nature, I, too, should learn to revere its fury. It is, like a clock, set in motion and not subject to our menial human desires or intervention. No matter how much we may wish for the best or offer up prayers, nature works by the principles of its own design. Hence, we take the good with the bad, the abundant display of polarized forces in opposition, of which we must ever, like those before us, remain in awe.

I had vowed after a post-Christmas excursion to New York City last year that I would be cautious where I traveled in winter. I ended up in NYC the last week in December, surrounded by several inches of snow, stuck in the middle of a Nor’easter, the locals’ appellation for such a winter storm. I walked through more piles of frozen white piles and stepped into more puddles of water from curb to curb than I can count from memory.

So this year for spring break, I decided to digress from plans I had already unofficially made involving a road trek through the Northeast and back. The forecasted temperatures did not look promising for the week, despite the impending commencement of spring.

I have never seen the desert Southwest, so I settled on that route as my road trip of choice for spring break. Surely, New Mexico and Arizona would be sunny and warm near the end of March, I thought.

After one night in Amarillo, Tex., and a long car ride along a desolate interstate, we reached Flagstaff, Ariz. We arrived in town late but decided to do a bit of exploring downtown. Flagstaff is an artsy, quirky, charming little town and didn’t feel touristy at all.

The next morning, as we slept in the dark sanctuary of the hotel room, a surprise awaited us outside. Although a couple of inches had already fallen, based on the accumulation on cars, most of it melted when it hit the ground. I was bound and determined, despite a southwestern blizzard, to see one of the most famous natural wonders in the United States.

The journey commenced. We headed west on the interstate for about 40 miles, at which time we reached Williams, Ariz., our exit to head north. We stopped for gasoline, and I went to use the restroom. I noticed the snow was growing so deep on the pavement that it piled outside the door of the restroom on the side of the gas station building. The gas station attendant suggestion we not continue our route, advising that roads would like be closed soon, and even if we could make it to the Canyon, lack of visibility would likely prevent us from seeing much of the landscape anyway.

So since it was lunch time, we settled in at a local restaurant in the quaint town of Williams called the Pizza Factory. We enjoyed our sundried tomato pesto white pie and watched the snow blow sideways in the Arizona air. In my years of growing up in the South, I had never seen snow blow quite that way. We decided by the end of the meal that we should probably discontinue our trip and return south toward Sedona where we would be spending the next two nights.

The weather seemed to be mocking us. When I checked the weather status back in west Tennessee, the sun was brightly shining and temperatures soared to the 70s. Our thermometer in Arizona was stuck at a permanent 30 degrees, it seemed.

Finally, we reached Flagstaff again after heading back east and then turned south on Arizona State Route 89A toward Sedona. We could have gone south on the interstate, but we would have had to go past Sedona and then return north to reach the town.

The winding two-lane mountain road from Flagstaff to Sedona was covered in frozen precipitation. Fortunately, it was a bit slushy but still seemed treacherous as we slid and curved down the slopes like downhill skiers in our automobile. One particular stretch curved back and forth so much that it looked like a mass of intestines or bundle of snakes on the map.

Finally, we descended the mountain, and the snow seemed to be halting. Just ahead, though, a sheriff’s deputy blocked the road ahead with his patrol car. He informed us that we would have to pull over there at the Slide Rock State Park beside where he had stopped, or turn around, return up the mountain, go down the interstate past Sedona, and then turn back north to get into town.

We didn’t really want to lose four whole hours just sitting in the car in the cold, so we began our ascent back up the mountain. The road was more heavily covered on the second attempt. At least it felt a little safer ascending those steep slopes as opposed to descending them.

Nevertheless, I never got to see the Grand Canyon on the trip, but I still experienced some breathtaking vistas. Next time, however, if I have to vacation where snow is common, I think I will choose New York City again. At least there the streets are flat and the subway makes transportation much easier than sliding up and down a snowy mountain road.

One of the most important investments in life is a solid education. This axiom is so often touted that it has become cliché, but much truth still resides in the idea. Even in today’s highly technical, specialized society, the best route is still a broad-based liberal arts education, which can then be followed by specialized technical study, if one so desires.

Liberal arts, or “humanities,” hearken back to the questions Socrates posed to the ancient Athenians. His questions pertain to definitions of “humanness” and the age-old conflict between good and evil. A liberal arts education that is strong, for instance, in the study of such general areas as logic, grammar, rhetoric, literature, mathematics, the arts, social sciences, and philosophy offer a background not explicitly for making a living but in learning how to live well.

Making a living is important, no doubt. However, acquiring the technical skill or craft knowledge sans the ethical background is not a viable approach. Every technical skill, or techne, as the Greeks called it, may be used in the service of good or detriment to society. To churn out technically-skilled graduates, or technocrats, without the foundational liberal arts knowledge seems Machiavellian: looking, in other words, toward the end without due consideration of the means. A computer programmer, lawyer, doctor, or business manager needs to possess a broad-based knowledge of the humanities.

History bears out the argument. Consider Nazi Germany, where skilled, technically advanced citizens—including doctors, nurses, psychologists, engineers, and scientists—were devoted in using their skills to exterminate a race of people at the rate of approximately 12,000 a day at Auschwitz , among other death camps. Winston Churchill is quoted in a biography as having called this episode of genocide “probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world, and it has been done by scientific machinery by nominally civilized men.”

While the Holocaust remains the most prominent example of scientific savagery, other instances abound in the name of political progress and scientific human experimentation, ranging from the Cambodian “killing fields” to a host of chemical warfare testing and disease infliction in the United States dating back to the early 19^th century. As one of many examples, in 1943, University of Cincinnati researchers placed 16 mentally disabled patients in refrigerated compartments at 30 degrees Fahrenheit for 120 hours, in order to “study the effect of frigid temperature on mental disorders.” 

Beyond virtue and ethics, post secondary education should also be a time devoted to discovery, a seeking of knowledge to help one discern what it is exactly that he or she wishes to do in life. In turn, the array of knowledge gained should be of service over the course of a lifetime.

Devoting too much, after all, to the acquisition of specific skills also seems a bit obsolete, considering the rapidly evolving pace of technological and social change. Those bent, for instance, on mastering one particular programming language today may tomorrow have to adapt and learn a new language as technological advancements occur daily.

While competition in the marketplace may be fierce and lead us to believe that a specialized, technical path is best, a liberal arts education does not mutually exclude a specialized career, and, according to research, employers are not necessarily looking at majors as a primary criterion. A recent National Association of Colleges and Employers bears out the rationale for broader education. In the survey, employers overwhelmingly stated that they look for “the right skills,” not necessarily “the right major.” In other words, the major is not actually as important as the candidate’s ability. Further, skills can be easily learned, even self-taught, while good thinking, on the other hand, cannot. A liberal arts education affords the ability for transformation, for self-expression, for that moral compass the Greeks so highly valued.

Albert Einstein, who may be deemed as having been highly technically specialized, once said, “The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks." Indeed, whether we read Shakespeare, decipher a poem, look into the mysteries of the human body, consider psychological theories throughout history, or gaze into a microscope at a sample of bacteria, we are doing much more than merely learning facts: we are expanding horizons and learning how to think independently. Those valuable facets of learning have changed the lives of individuals and the world.

As a child of the 1980s, I felt left out, as if I had been born at the wrong time. When I discovered Edwin Arlington Robinson’s poem “Miniver Cheevy” in high school, I finally could identify. Cheevy, a disheartened romantic, laments his anachronistic existence, wishing he could return to the medieval romance of Camelot.

When I viewed media footage from the 1960s, everything seemed so interesting; unrest and uprising seemed to denote the tenor of the day. From the Freedom Riders to Woodstock, from Kent State to the radical protests of Buddhist monks, the world appeared embroiled in social activism. My tween and teen life, imbued with vapid pop culture figures and kitschy fads, paled by contrast. I wanted to march or participate in a sit-in, darn it.

I hadn’t thought about these feelings for a long time until the last few weeks. Egypt seems to have started the proverbial ball rolling, and since then a chain reaction has been set in motion.

Apparently, citizens of dictatorial regimes are no longer content to live in this way. Moreover, they aren’t willing to do so in the “global village” of an increasingly technologically rich era where they are made cognizant of conditions in the rest of the world and able to voice their own concerns. I told someone this week that it would be much less likely for the Holocaust to happen in these times because of Internet exposure. Indeed, one of the tactics Egypt employed to attempt to silence its people involved the shutdown of the Internet, especially those bothersome, powerful social media.

As a child, what I didn’t realize, however, was the great tragedy that marks many protests. The Freedom Riders, for instance, faced savage attacks and arrests. Those idealistic young massacred Kent State students originally had the potential for longevity. Those Buddhist monks must have been brave and unwavering in their convictions in order to ignite their flesh.

Accordingly, as the protests of late are starting to chip away at the chains of despotism, we see that the stakes are often high in the procurement of freedom, a valuable and worthy prize. As of Thursday, February 24, according to Associated Press (AP) reports, 365 people were dead and 5,500 injured in Egypt’s riots. That same day another AP report indicated that Ghadafi forces had taken action against the revolt in Libya, killing 17 people. Ploys to retain fascist control and bloodshed seem mutually inclusive.

At home, protestors are fighting their own battles. Wisconsin public workers are battling the government to retain benefits and collective bargaining rights. “We are the people and our voices must be heard!” one female protestor said, according to a Washington Post report. Similar protests are being echoed across America, including Tennessee, where teachers and other citizens are rallying in Nashville in a show of solidarity for education.

Our American history chronicles decades of protest movements, including the Labor Movement, Civil Rights, Suffrage, Peace, and Globalization. All of these protests are sanctioned, of course, by the one short clause in the 1^st Amendment that affords “the right of the people peaceably to assemble.” According to law, governments may impose “time, place, and manner regulations” but may not restrict the content of protests. Further, the government cannot impose regulation "substantially broader than necessary to achieve the government's interest."

Sometimes, though, one must be willing to concede in order to make substantial gains in protests, as Andrew Young, aide to Dr. Martin Luther King, said: “I learned from Martin Luther King that you have to do what you think is right and accept the consequences as they come. You can't do things to stay safe.”

Ultimately, what is just is not always safe, and those willing to acknowledge that fact and take those risks emerge daily in the battle. So, I come to find, despite what I once thought, I do live in exciting times after all.