Friday, May. 21, 2004
the meaning of life, posted at 3:10 p.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com So the seniors have two days left. School is crazy. But I feel like my classroom is an oasis from the craziness. I keep hearing about food fights and water balloons, but my students are little lambs - quiet and studious. It's kind of cool.My classes are pairing up with senior classes who have taken their AP test and now have little to do in class. We decided to have the two grades read A Lesson Before Dying together. The kids passed their journals into me, and I passed them along to the seniors, and they commented on them. Today, three or four seniors came to each of my classes and ran a discussion about the book.
It was really neat, because I was able to sit back and be an observer instead of a participant in the class discussions. It was also frustrating, because there were so many moments that I wanted to jump in and push the discussion towards some points I wanted them to get, but this was the seniors' day and I let them have the floor all to themselves. I have to admit that their discussion made me think about the book in ways I haven't before.
One question that I thought they were going to get at, but didn't, was weather or not Jefferson would have lived a better life if he had never gone to the store, had never been accused of that crime, hadn't gone from a "pig" to a man, and hadn't been (spoiler alert!) executed at the end. I mean, what if he had just gone along the path he was seeming to be on, living from tiny paycheck to tiny paycheck, from bottle to bottle? Would he have had a better life? Would he have become more accomplished?
It's an interesting dillemma, because it really speaks to, well, the meaning of life. Would Jefferson had been better off living to 60 as an uneducated (not formally uneducated, but informally uneducated as well) alcoholic, or dying at 21 having learned to stand on his own? My own life philosophy is something along the lines that life is sometimes hard, and whatever we can do to try to make it a little easier for other folks while keeping ourselves happy and fulfilled, is how we should live. Or, at least, how I should live. And I wonder if Jefferson fulfilled his purpose, and if this is something that 9th graders can even wrap their heads around, since I barely can.
I think my drill for Monday will be a 5-minute freewrite to the question, "What is the meaning of life?". Ha!
***
I found out I passed the Praxis that I took last month. Both parts. I'm pumped and excited and probably getting drunk tonight. I'm off to that new Ryan's Daughter place in Belvedere Square. Woo-hoo.