Hopefully the start of something bigger
If I’m honest with myself, one of my biggest fears is drowning. It’s not quite a phobia. But I’ve always been a little wary of water—even though I love lakes and streams and ponds and swimming pools. And rivers. I love rivers. It comes down to control, I think. I feel out of control in water. I can swim. But I'm self-taught, and I’m not the best at it.
You see, the raft was in the shallow end of the pond when I got on. It was full of kids on a muggy Virginia day, and I was a kid too—young, though I don’t remember how old. But the raft started to drift slowly out to deeper waters. I knew I couldn’t swim so I wanted to get off before the water got too deep. But by the time I jumped, it was too late. And having never been out of my depth before, it was the strangest feeling to search with my feet and find nothing, to walk and not move.
Let’s flash back further.
I remember a lake tour that explored the crannies of Lake Superior along the Michigan Coast. The tour guide told a joke: “If you fell in here and couldn’t swim, all you’d have to do is take a deep breath, sink 90 feet to the bottom, and walk to shore.”
Well, the pond’s water was only about 5 feet deep where I was (I was only 3 or 4 feet tall at the time). And the shore was pretty close. So I thought I’d give that a try. As you can imagine, that didn’t work very well. From there my memory is hazy. I somehow made it to the side, scrambled across a mucky bottom through a bank of reeds, and made my way back to a miniature beach of coarse sand, where I sat for a few minutes before once again cautiously dipping my toe in the ripples made by playing children.
Flash forward now. This time to whitewater rafting on the Wenatchee River.
The boat's name was Patch, and the name was really quite apt. Patch belonged to a friend. It was your typical, sturdy inflatable raft--no bells or whistles, nothing fancy, just air and rubber and rope. Its one luxury feature was that contained two different sized buckets that you could choose from, depending on how much bailing you had to do.
Before moving to Washington, I'd never known how dangerous whitewater could be. Every year, it seems, at least one person dies on the Wenatchee or Tieton Rivers of Central Washington. Often deaths occurred because some group of college students thought it would be a good idea to shoot the rapids with nothing more than a floating beer cooler and an inflatable pool lounger. And you can't work on your tan if you're wearing a life vest. But even experienced river guides who have made their journeys twice daily for entire summers might get a boat caught in the back wash of a bridge pylon and get trapped in the undertow.
Nothing against Patch, but it had seen better days. And when you're already wary of water... Well, let's just say that I was a little anxious--anxiety that doubled, when early on we had to pull Patch out of the water, slap some pine sap over a pinprick-sized hole and add a few more spritzes of air.
I think you can see where this is going. I fell in. I'll spare you the details. I'll just tell you that it's a strange feeling to hit a rapid and then start to move upstream. If you're ever whitewater rafting and that happens, you're in trouble.
The two sensations were totally different, being out of control in a river and being out of control in a pond. In both cases, you're out of your depth, and you're running out of time. In a swift river, though, the time you have is compressed. There are rocks to worry about and tree limbs and undertows. Keep your feet up and make it back to the raft before the next rapid, or you'll find yourself in some serious trouble.
But for all that, whitewater rafting is fun as hell.
Out of my depth, no way to get traction, obstacles ahead. Either you can't move or you're moving too fast toward something unpleasant. These are my metaphors for working as a teacher in post-secondary education, when I find myself in trouble. Such moments have been rare in my career, but these events have always made me just a little more wary of diving in.
Where to go from here:
You see, the raft was in the shallow end of the pond when I got on. It was full of kids on a muggy Virginia day, and I was a kid too—young, though I don’t remember how old. But the raft started to drift slowly out to deeper waters. I knew I couldn’t swim so I wanted to get off before the water got too deep. But by the time I jumped, it was too late. And having never been out of my depth before, it was the strangest feeling to search with my feet and find nothing, to walk and not move.
Let’s flash back further.
I remember a lake tour that explored the crannies of Lake Superior along the Michigan Coast. The tour guide told a joke: “If you fell in here and couldn’t swim, all you’d have to do is take a deep breath, sink 90 feet to the bottom, and walk to shore.”
Well, the pond’s water was only about 5 feet deep where I was (I was only 3 or 4 feet tall at the time). And the shore was pretty close. So I thought I’d give that a try. As you can imagine, that didn’t work very well. From there my memory is hazy. I somehow made it to the side, scrambled across a mucky bottom through a bank of reeds, and made my way back to a miniature beach of coarse sand, where I sat for a few minutes before once again cautiously dipping my toe in the ripples made by playing children.
Flash forward now. This time to whitewater rafting on the Wenatchee River.
The boat's name was Patch, and the name was really quite apt. Patch belonged to a friend. It was your typical, sturdy inflatable raft--no bells or whistles, nothing fancy, just air and rubber and rope. Its one luxury feature was that contained two different sized buckets that you could choose from, depending on how much bailing you had to do.
Before moving to Washington, I'd never known how dangerous whitewater could be. Every year, it seems, at least one person dies on the Wenatchee or Tieton Rivers of Central Washington. Often deaths occurred because some group of college students thought it would be a good idea to shoot the rapids with nothing more than a floating beer cooler and an inflatable pool lounger. And you can't work on your tan if you're wearing a life vest. But even experienced river guides who have made their journeys twice daily for entire summers might get a boat caught in the back wash of a bridge pylon and get trapped in the undertow.
Nothing against Patch, but it had seen better days. And when you're already wary of water... Well, let's just say that I was a little anxious--anxiety that doubled, when early on we had to pull Patch out of the water, slap some pine sap over a pinprick-sized hole and add a few more spritzes of air.
I think you can see where this is going. I fell in. I'll spare you the details. I'll just tell you that it's a strange feeling to hit a rapid and then start to move upstream. If you're ever whitewater rafting and that happens, you're in trouble.
The two sensations were totally different, being out of control in a river and being out of control in a pond. In both cases, you're out of your depth, and you're running out of time. In a swift river, though, the time you have is compressed. There are rocks to worry about and tree limbs and undertows. Keep your feet up and make it back to the raft before the next rapid, or you'll find yourself in some serious trouble.
But for all that, whitewater rafting is fun as hell.
Out of my depth, no way to get traction, obstacles ahead. Either you can't move or you're moving too fast toward something unpleasant. These are my metaphors for working as a teacher in post-secondary education, when I find myself in trouble. Such moments have been rare in my career, but these events have always made me just a little more wary of diving in.
Where to go from here:
- The fun times of being an adjunct at Central "State" U without any guidance or direction in terms of departmental or programmatic support. Making solid pedagogical choices, only to have them blow up in your face because everyone else is doing something else.
- Comments and thoughts from students that seem to come out of nowhere and upend your boat. Better get right the raft before the next one comes along.
What causes them: Little to no communication that blossoms into a colossal misunderstanding. And if I'm honest with myself again, I'm just as much a part of those miscommunications as the others who are involved.
The punchline? Let's just say I had a bizarre week and needed to do some reflecting. Though, it ended on a good note. A student from last semester dropped by to pick up his portfolio. As he was leaving, he said, "You're a really good teacher." I coulda hugged the kid. It's one thing to tell yourself you know what you're doing. It's a whole nother thing to hear it from somebody else and know they're not just saying it to cheer you up.
posted by Brad Smith at 7:57 AM
1 Comments:
Brad, I love this post, and I love your metaphor for teaching (or at least this week's metaphor). I've felt it too, that sense of wondering what I'm doing in a river of students, all of whom have lives they want to move forward as fast as possible and just want their writing classes to be checked off their lists of "to-dos." I had a confrontation with one student today about why she would lose her participation points if she left 30 minutes into a 50-minute class. The gall, the lack of resepct, terrible. Unfortunately, I think she thought she was perfectly justified in fighting with me over this stupid little issue. I hate confrontations. I told her she could leave anytime she wanted, she would still lose points for learning early. And so, my confidence rattled, my focus for the day's class shaken, and there I was again -- a first time-teacher thinking that my policies may not be the best when I really know they are fine. It's her, right? So much for all these years of teaching and education when one student can upset my "patchy" boat of teaching calm.
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