The theme of 6th Grade Lit is THE HERO'S (or in the case of our girls...) HEROINE'S JOURNEY; all year in Will's class, the girls have been reading seemingly most different-est :) texts that carry this archetypal arc, with all of its conventional punctuations and nuances: they started with the easy "hook" read of PERCY JACKSON & the LIGHTNING THIEF-- but at the most profound heart of this whole study was an in-depth exploration of THE LITTLE PRINCE....They've already written the most sensational thesis-driven critical literary essays about this book [back in February when they finished the book--
I wrote one too; it was about Chapter XX and dealt with a redefinition of "value" and "worth" as being not what certain objects or creatures mean to others but rather what they mean to each of us, individually...In this tiny chapter the little prince encounters an entire garden of bloom bursting roses and so realizes that his own flower is not unique but instead simply one of manymanymany...this breaks his heart and sets him sobbing...I initially thought, like the girls, that having to focus on one single chapter of this tiny book-- a mere handful, if that, of pages, would make writing this paper impossible-- but I managed to overturn my own misconception by finding magic, and rich depth for analysis in these few simple words...
So today, when a student's father-- of whom I've only, previously, seen the gruff, abrasive, truly "adult" side-- brought in his collection of dozens of editions of THE LITTLE PRINCE, gathered carefully over a so-far lifetime, I could begin to understand his characterization of this book as a Bible in his own universe of experience. "For any question I've ever encountered, I've found an answer in this book..."
We talked about naming & taming, we talked about counting, we talked about fear, and we talked about Antoine de Saint-Exupery and his inspirations, we talked about this book's open-endedness, about its capacity for interpretation, and simultaneously its primordial construction in relation to this "hero's journey" concept; we talked about what makes something a classic, and we talked about audience, and we talked about the worlds of children and adults-- overlapping, and yet so distant from one another, and our ability to, with a link to some reminder like the little prince, move between the two without losing that child-like quality of wonder retained, clarity of vision, truth of heart-- that "sees what is invisible to the eye" and therefore, what is truly important...The girls were rapt, and were fully engaged, asking college level questions and answering with little princely profundity...They wowed me; but even more was I thrilled to have my own assumptions about this growelly, grisly, bristling grown-up completely turned on their collective silly heads: his own commitment to keeping his own child-self awake was something he talked about so candidly, and so powerfully; and what I realized was that even though he clearly doesn't succeed always in living in-tune with this self, the fact that he has this awareness, and the tool by which to constantly check himself in this pursuit is so admirable, and it is what matter in the end...not the "success"....How do you measure the way in which a book has shaped your life? How can you know what your life would have been like without the impact that such a story had, and continues to have in each revisiting of its pages? Like this man said, you simply can't know...You can't quantify it either. And yet, you can't imagine your SELF without its guidance...
As he talked about his desire to have children coming out of a hope for a reconnection to childhood; expressing his delight and his gratitude in his ability to dwell in imagination, to create, to dream under the baobabs and volcanoes and bird flocks and roses that he painted on to the walls of his daughter's bedroom....I couldn't help thinking myself that, yes, this is why I teach...And why I teach this demographic specifically...They bring me back, every day, to a moment in my own life when this spirit was most alive...She was the person who believed that,
"If somebody wants a sheep, that is a proof that one exists"
& that
"Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them."
And in this space, with these girls, she is once again able to breathe, and scream, and laugh, and sing, and wonder without consequence or fear of things unsensed but just imposed as important...
And it sometimes takes a grown man exposing and celebrating his own vulnerability and connection to a Neverland that is truerthetrue, for me to remember this...and to accept it, and to embrace it....
