It was Tuesday night of Portfolio week for my seniors, and I was planted at the Room C table with my laptop and my tall cup of tea, ready to help any of my English IV students who wanted a little guidance on their essay revisions.
Along towards 7:30–the start of Study Hall, which is both a place and a time period at Thacher–two of my 9th grade students of two years back, Reed and Jeff, ambled by in post-formal dinner sweats and flip-flops. They were on their way to the classroom next door to study Chinese. Stopping, they leaned in the Room C doorway, and we chatted about what they were up to this year in English. The boys led with comments on The Scarlet Letter, their thoughts very definitive about Hester Prynne and, as Holden Caulfield might say, Old Dimmesdale. Stepping into the room and launching in energetically on the curious Pearl, they’d moved on to wonder about just what kind of a character she is when one of the open windows filled completely from the outside with a broad-shouldered third junior boy.
As 9th graders
Aidan.
He, too, had spent time in this room as a 14-year-old, with Jeff and Reed and me, plus nine others learning Thacher and the ways of English classes here.. And in this now, he, too, had lots to share about how he understood Hawthorne’s seminal novel. It was a lively conversation that soon moved on to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, ideas and opinions swirling around, up to the crossbeams, over them, and back down again.
Though I was impressed with their analysis, I mostly just listened to their voices–deeper than when they’d sung out their ideas as freshmen and timbred now with the kind of confidence that arises from countless classes around a seminar table.
After we’d said our goodbyes and they’d left to tend to their big-boy homework, Willie arrived to ask about one of his Portfolio essays. He’d also been a 9th grader on my watch, but a year further back from the others. He pulled his paper out and then played it out on the table: page, page, page. His best hand of the term thus far.
And there it was in black and white in front of me: the same thing I’d just listened to as the juniors had used some precious discretionary time to talk Hawthorne: growth writ large (well, truthfully, Times New Roman, 12-pt. font). Willie’s ideas and expression were leagues beyond where I’d last seen them, and in the conversation that followed, it became clear that even the essay I was reading in that moment would not be what I’d see in the final essay five days hence.
After a half-hour of talking through the possibilities and the promise, Willie headed off to his other responsibilities. And, in the brightly-lit room, at a beautiful oak table, I thought what I think at least once daily, and not just around Thanksgiving: How’d I ever get so lucky?