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The Irish poet Seamus Heaney described poems as stepping stones across a stream. I would borrow that apt analogy to describe my life as a teacher. If you will join me in the metaphor, I’ll explain. I must stand somewhere in the stream of stones and lure, demand, drag, push, motivate, cajole or, more often than not, use a combination of all of these techniques to induce my students to step to their first stone. Some students I meet on the bank, where they stand frozen by circumstances both in and out of their control, unable to put their foot out towards the stream. Some are hopping up and down halfway across when I meet them, eagerly awaiting my permission to continue. Some have fallen in and need a village of trained guides to coax them out. Some keep trudging back and forth from bank to stream, unable to move forward without my carefully composed instruction. Often I have to go back to my guide books and reshape my plans for their crossing because a particular group of stone-hoppers isn’t responding to my directions. While I help each student to the first stone, I am also pondering how and where the next step will be for them; I begin to encourage them to plan and then leap independently, making their own way across, leaving me to pull the next student out into the stream. I coach as my students continue on and on across the stream and I can no longer see them.
The Irish poet Seamus Heaney described poems as stepping stones across a stream. I would borrow that apt analogy to describe my life as a teacher. If you will join me in the metaphor, I’ll explain. I must stand somewhere in the stream of stones and lure, demand, drag, push, motivate, cajole or, more often than not, use a combination of all of these techniques to induce my students to step to their first stone. Some students I meet on the bank, where they stand frozen by circumstances both in and out of their control, unable to put their foot out towards the stream. Some are hopping up and down halfway across when I meet them, eagerly awaiting my permission to continue. Some have fallen in and need a village of trained guides to coax them out. Some keep trudging back and forth from bank to stream, unable to move forward without my carefully composed instruction. Often I have to go back to my guide books and reshape my plans for their crossing because a particular group of stone-hoppers isn’t responding to my directions. While I help each student to the first stone, I am also pondering how and where the next step will be for them; I begin to encourage them to plan and then leap independently, making their own way across, leaving me to pull the next student out into the stream. I coach as my students continue on and on across the stream and I can no longer see them.
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