Let students take risks, but be ready to lend a hand.
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A few days ago, when two young men named Matt Robinson and Justen Van Dyke walked across the stage to receive their high school diplomas, no one-not even their families-cheered louder than I did. I wasn't celebrating their graduation, though that was good news. I was celebrating the fact that both of them were still alive.
Flashback four years. Spring. I was in my second year of teaching and, as the tilt of the planet had rendered my students (and me) useless for all things academic, we'd thrown in the towel and piled the eighth-graders, including young Matt and Justen, onto a school bus bound for Heron Lake. The 90-degree angle of the seats, the stink of Cheetos and diesel, the off-key attempts to mimic Sublime left all of us, kid or adult, on the edge of nausea. The moment we arrived, we leapt from the bus and ran for the shore.
Heron was low that year, lapping an ugly, mud-flat beach, but the water itself was crisp and sky-blue, and the storybook island in the middle was irresistible to the adolescent imagination. Tearing off their shirts, the students asked me if they could swim for it.
I hesitated. The island looked pretty far, but I figured they'd realize that on their own.
"Here's the deal," I said. "I'm a terrible swimmer. You go out there, you're on your own. You start to feel tired, you turn back. Got it?"
A great splash ensued, and within 10 minutes, as I'd suspected, they began turning back. The water was too cold, they said. There was a current working against them. They needed to set up their tents. One by one, they squished into their sneakers and headed for the site.
All except Justen and Matt.
Minute after minute, the two boys inched farther into the lake, their tiny arms flashing in the afternoon sun. Now and then it seemed like they were consulting with each other, or looking toward me, but they kept growing smaller and smaller. My stomach gave a flip. I turned to find Greg, my fellow chaperone, standing beside me, squinting out at what were now no more than two black dots bobbing in the current.
"Is that what I think it is?"
I nodded.
"You let them do that?"
Another nod. Greg cleared his throat. The black dots diminished. I jogged up to the bus for a pair of binoculars and for a while we tracked the boys through the lenses, but when it got harder tosee, Greg told me to wait and jogged off. It dawned on me then that I might have just given two kids permission to drown.
Had I not been so terrified, it might have also dawned on me that this, in its purest form, was "sink or swim" education. All year I'd been trying to teach by this philosophy. I was determined not to become one of those "cool," pushover teachers who let their students turn in papers weeks late, redo exams and write raps in place of five-paragraph essays. But I hadn't managed to do it-the failing kid would come talk to me at lunch and invariably walk out of my room with a second chance.
Here, however, miles from any gradebook, I'd finally pulled it off. In this lesson, there would be no redos, no makeups, no alternate assignments. Matt and Justen would sink or swim. And from where I was standing, it began to look like they were going for the former. The dots had disappeared.
I turned in a panic. Greg was shouting at me, waving me up to a neighboring campsite, where he had found a family willing to lend us their canoe. We hefted it on our shoulders, ran it down to the lake shore and began paddling out toward the island at an Olympic pace.
Pulling hard, I imagined the weight of the phone at the ranger station. The innocent "Hello?" of the mother. The useless series of apologies, the muffled cries at the funeral-
"Got 'em," Greg said.
I looked up. There they were, both of them, crawling steadily toward the island. My jaw unclenched. We paddled up beside Matt, who grabbed the side of the canoe to catch his breath. His lips were blue.
"Cold out here," he said. "I guess I'll turn back."
"Good idea," Greg said.
He didn't want a ride, and neither did Justen, but they didn't mind that we followed behind them, just in case. Together, the four of us made our way in, enjoying a wonderful day to be alive on a lake.
Four years later, as I cheered them across the stage, I wanted to tell myself that Matt and Justen were stronger and wiser for their swim at Heron, but the truth is no one grew from the experience more than me. The boys' adventure ended my struggle with "sink or swim" education once and for all. I couldn't do it. I couldn't toss my students out into the cold waters of the English language-or any subject-and wait on the shore to see how they made out. Though I still fail a student now and then, it's only after I've paddled out to him numerous times, offered to meet after school and, yes, agreed to let him write rap songs in place of the five-paragraph essays.
Call it "soft" teaching, but watching kids drown, whether in school or a lake, doesn't seem to me the best use of taxpayer dollars. The world's a tough place as it is, and life affords all of us, especially adolescents, plenty of opportunities to sink outside of school. Kids don't need "sink or swim" schools. Kids need classrooms where they can plunge into unfamiliar territories and pull for their dreams, secure in the knowledge that if things get too rough, their teachers will be there-not to witness their failure, but to lend them a hand.
Santa Fe Reporter