This was me today

The Myth of Teacher

When I was a child, my grandmother, a retired elementary school teacher, used to read me tales from Edith Hamilton's Greek Mythology. Of all those stories, the one that affected me the most was that of Sisyphus and his terrible punishment in the afterlife.

If you don't know the fate of Sisyphus. His fate is to lug a boulder up a steep mountain, only to deliver it to the top and have it plummet back to the bottom. For all eternity Sisyphus is doomed to repeat the process.

Even the hell fires that the old nuns tried to frighten me with (Imagine a mountain as tall as your eye can see reaching far up into the clouds. Then picture a raven landing on top of that mountain and taking a pebble in its beak and flying away. Then imagine that raven coming only once every hundred years. When that raven has reduced that mountain to nothing, that is your first second in hell.) didn't horrify me the way poor Sisyphus and his eternal torment did. My young mind, probably four or five, could not imagine a worse fate.

Now my grandmother, sensing my fear and horror, could easily have attached a moral justification to that tale, after all she was Catholic, and had herself a virtual monopoly of five year old labor.

"Now, Kurt," she could have said, "that is the same thing that will happen to you if you don't weed my garden or help with the dishes." However, since she was a former grade school teacher, and thus, a saint, she let me deal with my fear on my own terms.

Well, it seems fate has a true sense of irony. Twenty four years later not only am I a teacher myself, but as such, I am a real life version of Sisyphus.

In Albert Camus's essay entitled "The Myth of Sisyphus," the author depicts a portrait of Sisyphus not as a tragic character but rather a heroic figure, who may even enjoy his perpetual torment. This is how I too choose to view Sisyphus and myself as a teacher.

I squat, dig my heels in, place my shoulder against the granite, and with all my strength from my toes to my skull, I push.

Camus argues that while Sisyphus's struggle seems to be in vain, it is really just the opposite. While it is true every effort to deliver the rock to the crest of that mountain is met with disappointment, it is also true that Sisyphus has time to reflect on his return to the bottom to fetch the boulder again.

It is on his return that Sisyphus becomes heroic. Here he is aware of his fate. He does not toil in vain, as so many humans do each and every day of their lives (I think of those teachers who are content to simply teach the same year 35 years in a row), because Sisyphus, like a few rare humans who can see their lives for what they really are, is conscious of his fate. It is his fate, of his doing. Thus, he is master of it. Why?

Casmus reasons that since Sisyphus is conscious of his fate (he has no illusions about ever getting his boulder over the crest) he can take pleasure in the work, as Casmus writes, "All Sisyphus's silent joy is constrained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing."

Is it tragic? Certainly. But it is his consciousness that makes it tragic, and at the same time heroic.

The rock is smooth against my face, minute particles of dirt grind between my clinching teeth, and drops of sweat sprout on my forehead and forearms.

Each day I enter my classroom filled with students. This is my mountain. The knowledge or information that I want to share with the students is my boulder. One hundred and eighty days a year, surely nothing compared to eternity, but when one multiplies that by the number of students in each class (roughly 30) and by the number of periods in a day (3-6), you get a staggering 16,200 opportunities for me to lug my burden up my mountain.

Like Sisyphus, somewhere along the journey, the rock slips and thunders back to the bottom. This occurs in a number of ways.

First, a student can simply refuse to partake in my class. He consciously tunes me out. Mark watches the elementary kids play football across the street. He texts his girlfriend. He daydreams. He counts the holes in the ceiling tiles.

Second, I can fail to make a student understand something. I may not be able to get them to "see" the connection between Cassius's jealousy of Caesar and the jealousy the students encounter in their own lives. I may use words that confuse them. How should they know what secondary source or a primary source is? I may not meet a student's need. Cari may learn better via visual aids, but I didn't have any to accompany "The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber."

Third, I may impart, or better yet develop within a student, some form of knowledge or understanding, but did any other students feel the connection? I know Bryce understands the young narrator's need to swim through the passage in "Through The Tunnel" because he, like the narrator in the tale, has lost his father and is on his own to maneuver through the rites of passage. But did Sara relate to it?

Fourth, the student may get my drift only to become frustrated and give up later on. Jena can write a thesis statement, but she can't get her three supporting paragraphs to fit in with her thesis.

There are countless ways a teacher fails every single period every single day.

Some students begin to drift; some just don't care. I can see it in their faces. They look away when I look at them. They scribble their reactions on their paper. They look out the window. I dig in further. My lower back is white hot. My calves strain. I am slick with perspiration. I can see the peak. I push on.

However, like Sisyphus, I too return to the bottom of the mountain to try again class after class. Here I also have time to reflect on my fate. I become conscious that I will fail. It is tragic because of all of my failures, my ignorance, my stupidities, my pettiness. Just when I think I have one concurred, another one surfaces. Or when I succeed with a student, I will fail with another. I will never push the rock over the top. I too, though, become master of my fate. Why? Because I now can enjoy the work, hopeless as it may be. I can revel in the toil. I can rejoice in my effort. It is a worthy effort. Teaching is noble, sublime. As someone else wrote, "teaching is attempting the impossible." I know I will never teach every single student every single day every single thing I intend.

What is important is the work. The task. The exhaulted effort. To try and accomplish the impossible despite, or even in spite of, its impossibility. To immerse students in language, in literature, in writing, in discovery, in ideas, even when they fail to grasp it all or even some of it. As Casmus concludes, "The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy." My fate belongs to me. My teaching is my thing. It is tragic, but heroic. Just like Sisyphus.

I am almost at the crest. The boulder and I are nearly one entity. The students are skeptical. They don't buy it. They will succeed with their students. They will push their rock over their crest. I sigh. The ground so stable on our ascent, suddenly gives. The boulder rushes back down. I sigh and descend, grinning.

So the four year old boy who was so frightened by the poor damned Sisyphus realizes, many years later, that he is in the very same position: attempting the impossible, relatively happily.