Notes from the Classroom

A montage -- A Doll's House, Mandela, agent-seeking, city poetry, gray faces, Greek-style tragedy...

They all write pastiches of Leung Ping-Kwan’s poetry (pen name: Ye Si)¹. They go out into the city like flâneurs and write of Fukuoka, and I tell them they are not only reflecting culture through their words but creating it by the process of making art and sharing it.

One student isn’t happy with the more literal nature of his words. He tells me he has completed an experiment where he asked ChatGPT to enhance the figurative language of the original. He says, “The result was dead. Devoid of all humanity, even though it had a ton of figurative language.” He shows us and he’s right. Instead, we help him with a few images. He proudly opts to publish on our collaborative slideshow.

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In a factual tone, I share with my seniors that they turn gray this time of year. I tell them this because it’s true and because knowing they can feel a bit shit (but I say blue, after a syncopated pause, so they know what I really mean) and will still come out of it well on the other end — phenomenal even — is something they need to hear.

I was never a fan of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, but I find myself teaching it due to books purchased before my arrival. The thing about a great book — and I always knew it was one despite my preferences — is that the more closely you look at it, the more you start to like it. It’s grown on me in many ways. So there’s this scene where the foil, Krogstad, essentially tells the internally conflicted main character that he’s been there before and that she shouldn’t kill herself (even though they are pretty much major enemies at this point). The reason, he says, is because, first of all, it’s no use and, secondly, she’ll come out of it well on the other end. It’s a small blip in her life.

I didn’t exactly equate that to senior winter but they got it. I gave them sushi and sumo stickers when they found what they needed to and then some in the dramatic terms treasure hunt. They forgot about life choices (or fate handed to them) and exams for a little while.

This week, they’re quoting the play to call each other little squirrel and little skylark in mocking jest to mimic cringy pet names from husband to wife in the play. They gently pull each other’s ears like Torvald does to Nora and exasperate that he is a buffoon².

It’s Christmas time in the play and the irony is not lost on them.

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We study tragedy to learn why we should live.

Sadly, you always have to assume you have a few suicidal kids in class and, usually, I know I do. Not by some knowing mystique but because they’ve told me or they’ve told the counselor who’s told me.

So, yes, you have to be careful when you have books with such a topic. This one has it; so does the next. But also — they’re thinking about it, so let them talk about it. If we just push it aside in silence and fear, AI will give them the answers they think they want to hear.

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Fate and free will, that’s always a popular topic with teenagers. I’ve had students jump from their seats to debate one way or another when studying Macbeth and Kafka on the Shore. This time, it’s for Jean Anouilh’s Antigone, the adaptation that was performed for the Vichy Regime as a subversive act. Funny, the Nazis thought it was meant to uphold authoritarianism when they saw it. I guess it just depends what you want to see.

Anyway, we’re sort of getting started on the whole determinism topic and I can just see them oscillating between fighting against and succumbing to. It’s a wild ride. I tell them I’ll just provoke, won’t provide an answer. And they’re happy sitting in the ambiguity of truth. Job done.

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When your seventeen-year-old student stops you after class to ask if he should get an agent or self-publish a book of short stories and you find yourself replicating empowering conversations about writing you have with other authors, attempting to put away the discouraging reality of numbers and percentages…it reminds you that the real pleasure is in the writing and publishing itself.

He already knew. He had opened with: “I mean, you know my stories I write, it’s probably best if I publish them myself, right? Or is it possible to get an agent?” And you told him well, yes, but the process of querying is important, too. He should try. He should put it together, polish things up. Decide what the book is really about and why someone wants to read it. The stories are good, but he knows. “Nobody’s going to publish a book of short stories, are they?”

“I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. There’s always a way to publish. Just get them out there.”

The truth is important. He needs to know it’s unlikely. Go to university, work hard, have a fallback or an also-and. To keep hope, you tell him that this book of stories might be grabbed up and consumed by many once he writes a more marketable or viral book in the future.

However, there is difficulty in sharing the realism, like telling your child Santa doesn’t exist. He tells you someone contacted him to market his book. He says, “They’re just trying to make money off me, right?”

You sigh, “Yes, this is probably true. But,” you add — channeling that abstract optimism one always tries to maintain, “they must have thought your work was good enough to comment on. Still, I wouldn’t pay them.”

He agrees. He knows it’s what he needs to hear.

This week, he shyly but excitedly asks you to read the next one he wrote. Yes, he’ll be alright.

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I had to take over a class a few weeks ago. Let’s just leave it at that. But anyway, I decided to let these Grade 11 students choose the majority of their syllabus from many of my suggestions.

One of these books on the original big list was Pride and Prejudice. When I introduced it, the star male basketball player lit up — “You guys, it’s so good. Funny! And easy to read.” They selected it (of course). So here we go with P&P this winter.

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A South African colleague noticed a packet of printed speech transcripts for study and gushed, holding her hands up to her chest: “Oh, I just love Mandela. Are you teaching him?” I then come to find that her parents “forced” her to watch the inauguration live on television, something that she really didn’t know anything about at the time. The imprint was forever, though. She came to speak with my students and held the room in paralytic awe, as if casting a spell of experience and truth. She told them about being labelled as ‘colored’ under Apartheid (something between ‘black’ and ‘white’) and that she was the only non-white at her school after Mandela opened up new worlds for her.

When she left, the students said, “She’s not even old. We don’t understand how this could have happened.” Reminders of the need for history and the clear minds of the youth that mustn’t be corrupted and closed, instead — opened up to think for themselves.

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Kids want to know why. Why we do it, why it’s relevant, why it matters. So what? I tell them to ask. If they think something isn’t worth it, challenge it, ask me why.

I throw the same thing back to them on their papers. I write in the margins: so what? Don’t write about it if it doesn’t matter. Literature matters. We’re not studying it so we can identify a metaphor; we want to use the metaphor to understand something about truth, beauty.

Whiteout on Boston Common, Photo by Andrew Spencer on Unsplash

Thanks for reading!

We’re traveling to Boston this week on the solstice. I’m anticipating that the other side of winter break will feel more settled here in Japan, and I look forward to sharing more stories and conversations with you all soon. Have a wonderful break and holiday season.

Happy New Year!

1. I talk about this poet on the podcast here —

Framing Fiction | Episode 27

2. Profile of Torvald Helmer from ThoughtCo.