Teachers and students live in an alternate time plane.
The sun rises and sets, keeping time for the rest of the world, but for us time begins in September and ends in June, with several moments on this educational clock when we hit the “pause” button. Those are called holidays.
For students, the time cycle is the same year after year, although some things change: teachers, subjects, classmates. The most unsettling change is within themselves as they grow, look different, act different, feel different.
For most teachers it’s the same school, same classroom, same subjects. Only the identities of our students change. Of course we grow older, too — but those changes are far less dramatic than those taking place within our charges.
The script is much the same — only the actors change. This is why I value a script written by someone else.
For years, I have escorted students to The Shakespeare Theatre in D.C. Last week, we saw Henrik Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People,” a 19th-century look at the ethics of whistle-blowing on the issue of water pollution.
What surprises me about attending a performance is not the quality of the play or production — which is always high. I am amazed at how foreign an experience it is for students to attend a live, cultural event.
Oakton High School students are seemingly sophisticated. They have cell phones and computers and all the latest DVDs. But some have never taken the Metro. For a few, it is their first trip into D.C., or their first live play. For one boy a few years back, the restaurant meal afterwards was the first time he had ever eaten Chinese food. (He liked it.)
My students usually like the plays, too — although Shakespeare’s history plays are a tough sell. But Ibsen’s value shouldn’t be quantified in terms of their enjoyment.
They travel out of their Northern Virginia “comfort zone” and find out that in live performances —unlike in classrooms — they will not be seated if they are late. They sit together, yet can’t whisper, “What did he say?” to one another the way they do all day in school.
They discover that the real world operates by different rules. Even the laws of nature are different. In the schoolroom, the day doesn’t end with a sunset, but with a bell. And each period, not hour, is pretty much the same as the last.
But at the theater, the curtain goes up and there’s no telling what might go on between that moment and the final applause. Just when you think you know what’s going to happen, a new character walks on stage.
Students like stability and, truthfully, so do teachers. Yet it’s good to be reminded that education is not quite like life.
Going to a play has the double benefit of stimulating thought and reminding students that the real world that awaits them is different from school in its unpredictability and its entirely different set of rules. Teachers need to be reminded of that, too.
Briefly, we step away from the numbing sameness of the classroom. Then the next morning we are back in our alternate time plane, waiting for the bell to ring.
Erica Jacobs teaches at Oakton High School and George Mason University. E-mail her at [email protected].
