male sparrows putting on a show. by Will at Morro

The students sit during the Silent Sustained Reading with which we now conclude each day in our new schedule. We’ve begun the year reading the same book, a Pearl Buck short novella called The Big Wave, keeping a reader’s journal as we read. We’re all almost literally on the same page, which simplifies some of the logistics of the year-long project.

“Once you finish this book,” I tell the kids, “You can read whatever you want.” And so when I finish the book, I pick up a poetry collection and encounter R. T. Smith’s amazing poem (source):

Hardware Sparrows

Out for a deadbolt, light bulbs
and two-by-fours, I find a flock
of sparrows safe from hawks

and weather under the roof
of Lowe’s amazing discount
store. They skitter from the racks

of stockpiled posts and hoses
to a spill of winter birdseed
on the concrete floor. How

they know to forage here,
I can’t guess, but the automatic
door is close enough,

and we’ve had a week
of storms. They are, after all,
ubiquitous, though poor,

their only song an irritating
noise, and yet they soar
to offer, amid hardware, rope

and handyman brochures,
some relief, as if a flurry
of notes from Mozart swirled

from seed to ceiling, entreating
us to set aside our evening
chores and take grace where

we find it, saying it is possible,
even in this month of flood,
blackout and frustration,

to float once more on sheer
survival and the shadowy
bliss we exist to explore.

I think of all the linguistic hoops most of my students would have to jump through even to understand the poem let alone to find themselves floating themselves when they reach the final line. Then there is all the cultural knowledge they would need — chiefly, at least a rudimentary knowledge of the and familiarity with the music of Mozart. And the general motivation.

It’s at times like that that I understand just what it means to teach literature and writing in 2012 to fourteen-year-olds.