Perhaps the most intensely satisfying and rewarding experience of my early working life and diverging career paths was a brief three-year period when I taught 7th and 8th grade English literature and grammar at a small parochial school in the early 1980s.
I have written and posted about that experience on many occasions over the past 25 years, mainly focusing on their creative writing, which I emphasized heavily, in addition to writing essays of various types and on many topics. But this essay is different in that the basis is a detailed lesson plan I wrote for a course in grad school that centered on teaching poetry. The idea was in large part inspired by four great masterpieces of 19th century American 19th art, “Voyage of Life” by the renowned Hudson River School painter, Thomas Cole.
I was a recent convert to Catholicism following a deep period of personal loss and depression. My revival and restoration to life from this “dark night of the soul,” imbued me with great joy and anticipation for getting back to the business of life, and doing work that was in service to others. I can think of no better career for this noble aim than teaching.
This led me to a parish church and school where, after mentioning to the administrator that I was currently working on my masters in secondary English education, I was, out of the blue, offered a teaching job at the school. I was stunned, but without too much hesitation, I accepted, nervous and excited. There was a lot of preparation to be done before I set foot in a classroom for the first time.
Not too many years prior, I had received my B.A. in English, so although I had gone directly from college into a career in newspaper writing, that was derailed unexpectedly in 1978. I then decided to look into teaching. And I had a solid background in English literature and the liberal arts to draw upon..
I took numerous education graduate courses, but certain ones stand out, including the curriculum course where I wrote the paper and detailed lesson plan in 1982 that is the subject and inspiration for this essay, just before I graduated with my M.Ed. degree. This opened the door to continuing at that parochial school if I wanted to, because the graduate degree and two years of actual classroom experience qualified me to become certified in my teaching area by the state Department of Education. Also, with this certification, I could move on to the public school arena where I could earn a salary that I could live on, unlike at the Catholic school.
Although my tenure at this small school, subsidized in part by family members, lasted only three years, what an amazing life-altering time it was for my intellectual, spiritual and religious formation and development! I was 29 when I started teaching.
As with so many things in life, this brief interlude as a teacher could not continue Public school teaching did not work out, almost predictably, and I returned to my earlier journalism career, going back to graduate school and teaching journalism at the instructor level. I had one more stint as a small-town newspaper editor.
But that third year of teaching English in the 1982-83 school year was the apex and culmination of everything I had done in preparation. It was a happy and fulfilling time of bonding with my students, and the development of a deep, shared understanding and rapport with them. I have never experienced anything like it, before or since, as far as deep immersion in, and love for, a job, which was actually a vocation. .
Always a good and conscientious student going back to grade school, I put my heart and soul into teaching English. I produced the school literary anthology and yearbook each year by myself, and guided the students in putting out the school newspaper once a month.
It was a very busy time. I learned more about poetry and short stories through teaching and student input from their own reading and writing of poetry, than I ever had before. Literature came alive through teaching in a way it never could just by reading it myself.
I have held onto for 45 years now the detailed lesson plan I mentioned earlier, part of which I am sharing here. There are some things I can never part with.
A flood of memories returned to me as I re-read the text, and I anticipate much the same when I peruse the poetry in this paper for the first time in decades.
Life is indeed a voyage, a pilgrimage down the “River of Time,” and in old age, an arc leading from youthful idealism as a teacher to my present life at 74 in retirement bridges all of the other experiences in life, good and bad, that enable me now to more wisely grasp the purpose and meaning of a life, however flawed, human and imperfect.
Life As Pilgrimage
Literature at Stages of the Journey:
A Teaching Plan
Fall, 1980
Introduction
In his famous series of four paintings entitled “Voyage of Life,” Thomas Cole, the 19th century American painter of landscapes and religious visions, set forth his view of life as pilgrimage. The four scenes are titled “Childhood,” “Youth,” “Manhood,” and “Old Age,” and include the symbolic elements of a lone figure in a boat being led by currents down a river through ever-changing landscapes, the light, mood, and colors of which figure strongly in the way the viewer interprets the passage of life or the stage depicted. Crucial also is the shifting location of the guardian angel in each painting and the powerful majestic views of Nature in its calmest and most tumultuous settings.
What Cole says in this remarkable series of paintings conveys much that is pertinent to the concept of life having a final destination toward which all human beings struggle, whether or not they are consciously aware that it is a journey. “Childhood” and “Youth” in his paintings are bright and hopeful; “Manhood,” or the middle period of life, is stormy, and the vessel upon which the man travels is reaching rapids underneath ominous, dark skies. The final scene shows an old man emerging into an opening of light in the still dark skies. His journey has been accomplished safely, he has survived, and, in religious terms, his faith is intact, preserved from the vicissitudes of life.
The following teaching plan, employing primarily poetry, but also utilizing art appreciation, audio-visual and creative writing components, is designed for parochial school eighth graders and reflects an attempt to relate literature and art to the task of helping students of any faith background, or none at all, understand the concept of life as pilgrimage and the numerous implications which can flow from this. The idea is to help them realize that meaningful poetry and art are derived from special sensitivities of the artists to the living world of God’s creation. Students will note that as we travel through life, we see that the joys and sorrows, emotional growth and complexities associated with each stage of life have a purpose in helping us all understand better that all of this is part of a sustained journey to the final destination — union with God the Creator. This concept is basic to Catholicism, and, as such, a major aim of the teaching plan is to put forth these concepts to parochial students in new, exciting, and illuminating ways.
At the eighth grade level, students are coming into their own in many respects: they are maturing physically and emotionally, and they are absorbed in themselves and their peers. It takes a special kind of initiative to enable them to see beyond themselves, even to the point of reflecting, even if tentatively, on middle and old age, and on how the stages of life all fit together. This is something which does not have to be a boring or difficult concept for youth to grasp. It is a factor in my choosing the metaphor and the reality of life as pilgrimage.
Students, I believe, are intrigued with this concept, although puzzled at first, and they genuinely want to probe and think about the difficult choices which will confront them at each of life’s stages.
With this great capacity for questioning, it is incumbent on the teacher who uses this unit to respond to student inquiry with conviction, and a strong awareness of Christian values, morals, and truths. These are unchanging for humanity. Students should also grasp the importance of making their own choices and decisions, and an understanding and appreciation of man’s great gifts of feeling and intellect as expressed through art and literature will enhance the insights necessary to make the appropriate decisions.
Koby (1975) has said that her reading and discussion of poetry with students has “enabled us to examine the values held by people and to question whether these ideals were so different just because these individuals were in a particular stage of life at that time.”¹ Also, the question is posed, “Can our ideals remain the same from childhood through old age?”² Poetry, she says, has enabled her classes to “obtain many outlooks toward values held by human beings of all ages.”³
To be meaningful to students, poetry must speak to them through the perspective and wisdom attained at all stages of life, and the reading of poetry must be a unique experience. As W.H. Auden says of poetry, “It must say something significant about a reality common to us all, but perceived from a unique perspective.”⁴
Students by eighth grade are ready to embark on many new voyages of adventure into realms of cognition unknown or unexplored by them previously. They have, even at the age of 13 or 14, a surprisingly well-formed idea of the importance of what they have already learned, of knowing where they are going (in a general sort of way), and of knowing what they hope to become, or at least having a firm sense of what “becoming” as a fully formed person means in its deeper connotations.
This was revealed to me by the results of three questions my students answered pertaining to the concept of the significance of life’s stages. They were asked what was the most important lesson they could learn as a teenager, what they thought middle age would be like, and what they hoped to be like when they were old.
Footnotes
1,2,3 Koby, Iris M. And the Leaves That Are Green Turn to… English Journal, October 1975, p. 59.
4 Stein, Agnes. Countering Misconceptions About Poetry. English Journal, October 1975, p. 54.
Some of the more perceptive comments include these:
Youth:
“The road is narrow. It is filled with obstacles. You are not guided along easily anymore. You must choose the right way to go and the right things to do.”
“We learn that being a teenager is part of growing up. It is probably the most important stage in our life — 7th through 11th grades. We learn that life isn’t anything to laugh and joke at, and that it isn’t just fun and games and dating.”
“Here we are, starting upon a staircase to the skies.”
“We are in confusion from which there seems no escape…”
“We must try to fulfill our life here on earth. We should look ahead to what or how our lives should be fulfilled, to ourselves and to God.”
Middle Age:
“I think it will be the slowing down years in my life but I want to be active.”
“At middle age, it’s probably like being in the middle of the staircase. Fun times, good memories, old friends.”
“I think middle age for me will be a second childhood. I hope to have children who trust me and have a close bond of love with me.”
“I think middle age will be like leaves changing colors — you are experiencing good things in life and bad things.”
“That will be a stabilizing point.”
Old Age:
“I want to be happy. I want to be loved. I want to feel needed and useful. I will have wisdom and be able to guide those younger than me.”
“When I’m old, I’ll understand life and know what I should have done. But most of all, I hope I’ll be satisfied with what I’ve done.”
“I want to be kind and not crabby in my old age. I want my grandchildren to ask me for advice and what it was like when I was young.”
Teaching Plan Objectives
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To show students that each stage of life holds for a person its own special wisdom.
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To encourage students to listen to and read poetry more carefully.
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To make students aware that poetry functions to bridge the gap between generations and races of people through the sharing of experiences, feelings and emotions.
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To help students understand that poetry is not a private, obscure form of literature, but a living one that can speak to them individually.
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To help students recognize the imagery of poetry and how it represents meaning and experience and a personal evocation of the poet’s life, as he or she lives and embodies it through words from their creative minds and their very souls that inspire readers and impart wisdom.
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To enable students to relate abstractions and generalizations about one group of poems to other groups or clusters of poems, tying themes and meanings together in a purposeful manner
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To encourage student response to art
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To give students an opportunity to interview older people, write poetry, and have the chance to see their writing in print. And my students did write a lot of poetry.
Here are some of the famous, and lesser known, poems I included in the lesson plan to read and discuss with students.:
Youth:
“old age sticks” by E.E. Cummings
“Fifteen” by William Stafford
“Lineage” by Margaret Walker
Middle Age
“A Vagabond Song” by Bliss Carmen
“Two Look at Any Thing” by John Morris
“Autumn Daybreak” by Edna St. Vincent Millay
“Faces” by Sara Teasdale
“The Death of Autumn” by Edna St. Vincent Millay
“Pied Beauty” by Gerard Manley Hopkins
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost
Old Age
“For My Grandmother” by Countee Cullen
“Grandfather” by Shirley Crawford
“To Earthward” by Robert Frost
“When You Are Old” by William Butler Yeats
“My Grandmother Would Rock and Quietly Hum” by Leonard Adams
“The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost
“My Lost Youth” by Henry Wordsworth Longfellow
During the ten after I left teaching, there were more terrible setbacks with depression, and years of wandering and rootlessness, until I was presented at last with the saving opportunity that led to becoming a librarian, and concluding my work life in that vocation, which was the perfect final job for me until I retired. But those good memories of teaching have lasted a long time.
Life is indeed a pilgrimage, as I have discovered over what is turning out to be a long life. Regrets are gradually falling away, and I feel thankful to be able to look back, with great attention to the details and both the realities, the mysteries, and the nuances of life. I can do this because I have saved and held onto, countless papers, photos, and many other kinds of documents and artifacts of memory. This lesson plan is a perfect example of how memories can be saved and later revealed, discussed and written about, as I have just done.
Voyage of Life, Youth
I learned a lot from my students.
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