Teachable Moments

By James V. Colubiale

While preparing his classroom for his first day as a teacher, Jason discovered his deceased predecessor’s 180-day digital lesson plan journal on a computer file entitled “A Classroom Compendium to Whimsy and Delirium, and the 5 Other Dwarfs”. Out of sheer curiosity, he began to read from the log and quickly realized that he was learning more about teaching from this journal than from any college education class he ever took.

• Language: English
• Publisher: LifeRich Publishing
• Release date: Oct 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9781489749284

James V. Colubiale

Retired Lower Cape May Regional English Teacher and longtime High School Track Coach James Colubiale currently lives in Wildwood Crest, New Jersey with his wife Deborah. He also served as an Adjunct writing instructor at Stockton University for 7 years. Jim earned his B.Sc. in Education from Duquesne University in 1975 and his M.A. in Creative Writing from Colorado State University in 1977. A lifelong surfer, Jim is also a charter member of a local classic rock band named OLD SCHOOL composed of fellow retired Lower Cape May Regional teachers.

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TEACHABLE

MOMENTS

JAMES V. COLUBIALE

Copyright © 2023 James V. Colubiale.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

LifeRich Publishing is a registered trademark of The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc.

LifeRich Publishing

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-4897-4929-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-4930-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-4928-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023919279

LifeRich Publishing rev. date: 10/12/2023

This book is dedicated to those devoted educators who have merged the art and science of teaching into the teachable moments that ensure the child remains father to the man.

CONTENTS

Morning Prologue

The Principal Pops In

The Doctor Pays a House Call

The Support Team

Mary Cross

The AD

Lunch

Enter the Department Head

A Gentleman and a Scholar

The Good Shepherd

Coming Full Circle

A Teachable Moment

The Miracle Man

Evening Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

MORNING PROLOGUE

The clock over the closet door adjacent to the room’s doorway read 7:00 a.m. but failed to communicate that today was a Friday. He had officially lost track of the days three weeks ago, when the Crest Island School Board had called to request his presence at a special interview session for a position teaching English at the Crest Island High School. The notification that he had secured the teaching position had come the very next day. The ink on his master’s degree was barely dry, and he had already acquired a job.

But this was not just any job. This position possessed the potential of translating into the much-hoped-for career in the seashore island resort where his family had owned a vacation home since his childhood. Life was not supposed to work out this easily. However, he was not about to question destiny.

Although other factors were at play that had made the last several months bear down on him like a hurricane, the moment the board offered him that contract was the ultimate tipping point. From that moment, his days began to whiz frighteningly past him, propelling him uncontrollably into a future he could not decipher or remotely recognize.

In the spring, he became engaged, and his bride-to-be planned a September wedding day, which was now only two weeks away. Then, the day after he secured his teaching position, his father took him house-hunting and loaned him the down payment for an off-island home in a bayside development. These events took place before he had even taught one day in front of a classroom or, for that matter, earned his first paycheck. Now, they fleetingly passed before his eyes as he sat at his classroom desk.

As he focused on the countless tasks he needed to address before the start of the new academic year, all these other anxieties dissipated into the all-consuming concern of prioritizing what he could accomplish in the short span of a few days.

For his first day on the job, he decided to arrive early to commence managing as much as possible before the first-period class bell rang next Tuesday. And so much needed to be done in that short amount of time. No chapter in any teacher’s manual or lessons from his student-teaching semester could have prepared him for this reality.

The stillness in the room and hallways only amplified the pounding anticipation of his anxious heart. His nervousness resulted not from the isolation he felt in an empty building but from the overwhelming pressure and uncertainty of simultaneously beginning a new life and a new career.

As a summer resident on the island for many years, he was acutely aware of why he sat at this desk. He had heard all about the tragic surfing death of James Chairman that had occurred over a month ago. He remembered surfing on that exact day and vividly remembered the shoulder-to head-high swells that the offshore tropical storm had pulsated out to the local beaches. His body still vibrated from the pounding he had taken from the waves that day. He’d never surfed with Mr. Chairman, because Mr. Chairman was a part of a much older and more experienced group of local year-round water people. Surfing deaths are infrequent in the local surf, especially for someone as experienced as his predecessor. Even more bizarre was how local officials had yet to recover his body and establish a cause of death.

However, he now sat at Mr. Chairman’s desk, looking out at the deceased teacher’s room, which remained exactly the way he had left it, a monument to the longtime teacher’s memory and teaching style. He liked the unconventional way that his predecessor had arranged the room. Because the teacher’s desk sat in the back corner of the room, with all the desks in five neat rows facing the front blackboard, the whole front of the classroom resembled a stage. Because he had always felt that teaching mainly was theater, he quickly crossed rearrange the classroom off his need-to-do list. The room suited his vision for how he wished to run his classroom.

Mr. Chairman had left the heading MAN, MYTH, AND THE AMERICAN DREAM across the top of the back bulletin board. This bulletin board needed to be completed or redone. Either he would need to change the entire theme of the board or figure out how to utilize what the Chairman had left him. However, the materials required for this project would not arrive until later in the morning or early afternoon. However, he could spend time setting up his classroom computer, which was already delivered and ready to power up. Besides, working on the computer was something he felt comfortable doing and would also release some of his nervous energy.

After booting up the system, he signed into the school district’s PowerSchool program by entering his name, Jason Caterina and the school’s identification number: 0614. As he inspected the computer’s setup, he noticed a flash drive inserted into the USB port. When he looked for the icon on the desktop, he discovered a file inside labeled, A Classroom Compendium to Delirium and Whimsy and the Five Other Dwarfs. This off-the-wall title overwhelmed his curiosity. An overpowering urge to delve back into the past before diving into the future drove him to investigate what this file contained. Undoubtedly, this document, along with the room setup and bulletin board theme, was a legacy left to him by Mr. Chairman.

Once he opened the file, he immediately saw that it contained a journal of detailed daily lesson plans. The emptiness of the building provided a library-like atmosphere, so he gave in to his anxious desire and began reading from Day 1 of the Chairman’s journal just as the classroom clock clicked to 7:30 a.m.

DAY 1:

So begins another year here at Crest Island High School, otherwise known as the Turtle Gut School of Hard Knocks. Today’s quote of the day that all good things cone to an end, rings entirely true. Summer is officially over for me. My perfect summer made my return to work much more difficult. This summer, I scored a pass to surf the rocks (trestles or jetty)! First time I have surfed at the jetty since my college days. I experienced some special sessions at the rocks this summer, twenty in all! Yesterday morning, the winds were blowing NW (offshore), the swell was clean and chest high, and I was in the water alone until another surfer paddled out. After I introduced myself, he just looked out to the waves and said, Call me Yukon. So we both agreed that having all these waves to ourselves on such a beautiful September morning meant that we were living the good life.

As for now, I am back in the saddle again.

My class schedule this year is a virtual clone of last year’s. The only real difference is that ALL my tenth-grade general classes are now College Bound. The students are the same; only the course name has been changed to ensure no student will be left behind. Since my classes are now College Bound, I must make some adjustments. For one thing, I will not be able to read that much to the classes. A large number of my past students enjoyed my reading the novels to them. However, I wonder if they liked my reading because that was one less thing they needed to do!

The AP class is small—ten or eleven students this year. Far too early to tell what they will be like this year. Everyone did the summer readings, but the quality of what they turned in varied from student to student. A few did not even type their work.

Last year, I was in a total panic because I did not have a printer that worked with my antiquated iMac desktop computer. I experienced no such problems this year, but the district changed our attendance program from Vista Net to PowerSchool! This change in programs has been causing me quite a few stressful episodes because the program times me out, and I lose the page. So now I must reboot!

During this short-period class day, I presented an overview of the year’s American literature curriculum, which will cover Moby- Dick, The Great Gatsby, Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, A Raisin in the Sun, and Shane. I made sure to display copies of these novels where they were visible to the students while I reviewed the course of study. I pointed out that even though the curriculum will call for a significant degree of writing, I will only teach grammar lessons as they relate to each essay assignment or how each student can improve their writing style. Then I reviewed the course proficiencies and the minimum requirements for any student to pass the class. All of the above was about all I could fit into a short 25-minute class period.

At any rate, all things aside, I am ready for this year and the summer that will begin in June.

And so, I have launched myself into my thirty-first year.

DAY 2

My second day was my first full day of classes for the academic year. The school ran a regular-day schedule (no double periods), so the day unfolded at an excellent pace. Lately, the temperature has been an issue in my classroom. Since the district built the S-wing and blocked off all airflow into the building’s three other perpendicular sides, the fall and spring can feel like summer in Room B7. Today, walking into this room felt like walking into an oven. I sure do hope that some lovely chilly autumn days will soon arrive.

The lesson for today’s classes was determining a learning style for each student. The classroom had already adopted that humid sweat lodge feel to it, so the steamy atmosphere enhanced my allusion to the American Plains Indians and how they educated their children: without books, pencils, or even a schoolhouse. The American Plains Indians told their children stories that contained the myths they needed to know to be a definite asset to the tribe. These stories helped the children understand their religion, ethics, government, etc. In other words, these stories helped these young men and women connect to their cosmos. We can still learn a lot from these original Americans.

I announced that this class would focus on at least four of the greatest novels in American literature. As such, they contain fundamental myths that anyone wishing to be considered culturally literate should understand.

However, before I told them more about the novels, I stressed that each of them needed to hit the reset button and start anew for this year, regardless of how last year had panned out. To help with that new start, they should each learn what their particular gift in life is.

The American Plains Indians would take a newborn child and, before the entire tribe, place the baby at a particular point on their medicine wheel. This placement on the medicine wheel became the child’s birth gift. To make my point easier to understand, I directed the students’ attention to the bulletin board in the back of the room. Across the top, the banner-like headline read MAN, MYTH, AND THE AMERICAN DREAM. Centered below was a reproduction of a medicine wheel, which I used as a visual for what came next.

I pointed out how simple compass points—North, South, East, and West—mark the medicine wheel. I then explained how each compass point represented unique qualities, colors, and animals. For example, the North is a place of wisdom. The color of the North is white, and the animals associated with the North are the buffalo or any animal that fed the tribe, like elk, reindeer, bison, etc. Meanwhile, the South is a place of innocence and trust. The South’s color is green, the color of the earth, and the animals that populate this part of the medicine wheel live close to the planet, like mice, squirrels, etc. The West is a place of introspection, or what the Native Americans called looks-within place. The color for the West is black, which represents the darkness a person sees when they close their eyes and think deeply. The animals that symbolize the West are bears or any other animal that hibernates. Finally, the East is a place of illumination. The color of the East is yellow or gold, the color of the sun. The animals representing this part of the medicine wheel are raptors, like the eagle, the falcon, or the hawk, because these birds can soar figuratively to the sun.

I returned to what I had previously said about the tribal chief placing the newborn child at a certain point on the medicine wheel and gave the students a concrete example. If the chief put the child in the South, that is the child’s birth gift, and the tribe must assist in guiding the child through the other three points of the wheel to help the child become a whole person. When the child enters adulthood, he is sent on a vision quest to prove his worthiness to the tribal elders. When he returns from this rite of passage, he must stand before the tribal chiefs and elders and tell a story demonstrating that he has experienced all the points of the medicine wheel. He will be able to do this because his tribe has told these stories to him all his life, and he should now know all the wisdom they hold.

At this point, I told the class that in the twenty-first century, science could tell us what birth gift we have that will help us better understand and interrelate to the world around us. Then I introduced a survey called a learning style inventory, explained how to complete it, and gave the class twenty minutes to do so.

After the class completed the survey, I instructed them to add the numbers in each column and then plot their results on a graph to find their learning style quadrant. Most of the students handled the basic math very well—only one student sarcastically complained that he did not think he would need to perform math skills in English class. I responded that I strive to teach curriculum across the board.

Now that everyone knew their birth gift, or particular learning style, I explained what each learning style means. The graphs they used to plot their information placed each student in one of four quadrants. Quadrant #1 is the place of imaginative learners, and their favorite question is Why? I told them that I am a quadrant #1 inhabitant. Quadrant #2 is the place for analytic learner, who is most concerned about what the information is. Most, if not all, of American public education is structured around this learning style. This focus on quadrant #2 is why teachers tend to lecture so much. Quadrant #3 is the place for commonsense learners, who love to investigate how things work. These learners want to know how their learning can relate to real life. Finally, Quadrant #4 is the realm of the dynamic learner, who needs to know what they can do with this information. Therefore, their favorite question is What can this become?

I continued to discuss how even though we all have one dominant learning style, we all have some traits of the other learning styles as well. I stressed that just relying on their dominant learning style is not enough. Just as the American Plains Indian children must learn/experience the other three parts of the medicine wheel to become whole individuals, my students must develop skills in the other three quadrants to become whole learners. To prove my point, I asked them to plot the numbers (sums of each column) onto the graph to show their other learning styles.

In the remaining time, I showed them how each literature unit will work through each of the four quadrants. Various pre-reading activities will address the question of Why read this book? These activities will involve either reacting to some comic strips about the work, discussing some music lyrics that relate to the book’s themes or fundamental ideas or completing a book-related project to generate interest in reading the piece. Then we will move to quadrant #2, where I will theatrically read the story to them instead of lecturing. This aspect will be the most time-consuming of each novel and demands that they read along with me. I will administer short quizzes to check for short-term memory retention—did they follow along with the reading or fall asleep?

Once we finish reading the book, the students will begin the testing phase to finish Quadrant 2 work. Viewing a film version of the novel will reinforce the story’s basic plot and characters.

Process writings and writing-on-command exercises in Quadrant 3 will focus on relating these works from the past to the present to understand what they can teach us now. Finally, we will move into Quadrant 4, where the student can opt to create group (or individual) projects that show their understanding of the book’s central ideas.

In this way, each unit addresses each learning style. Every student will have the chance to shine in their respective learning style. This movement around the quadrants also means that some students will be uncomfortable with a learning style that is unnatural to them. But this is to be expected, and, hopefully, that anxiety will decrease as they strengthen their skills in that particular learning-style area.

Meanwhile, the Advanced Placement (or AP) class created their writing portfolios, and we reviewed the course of study for the upcoming first quarter. I also returned some incomplete summer reading work for updating.

All in all, the day went by rather routinely.

DAY 3

The heat is officially on in Room B7! Today, I was on the verge of sweating several times during classes because today was Jumping Mouse day!

Once I took roll, which so far has been an adventure in frustration for me, I told the students that I wanted to tell them a story that would provide an example of how the American Plains Indians’ medicine chiefs used storytelling to educate their youth. Such fables highlight the importance of seeking an internal balance between all the four points of the medicine wheel. These stories helped the tribal young to understand the importance of the harmony and balance needed to become a whole, or total, person.

Jumping Mouse is a fable about a little field mouse who learns to jump very high. On one leap into the air, he catches a glimpse of the sacred mountain. This experience has a profound impact on him. He now wants to leave his home in the woods and journey to this sacred mountain. Along the way, he gives a dying buffalo one of his eyes to restore his sight. In return, the buffalo lets Jumping Mouse run underneath him to protect him from birds of prey that hunt the desert plains. Once at the foot of the sacred mountain, he meets the guide to the mountaintop, an absent-minded wolf. For the wolf to remember the way to the top, Jumping Mouse needed to give up his other eye. The wolf, now made whole again, guides the now-blind Jumping Mouse up the mountain. Suddenly, Jumping Mouse feels that the birds are about to attack him from above. The fear is so intense that poor Jumping Mouse passes out. When he awakens, he immediately realizes that he is flying. Below him, the wolf calls to Jumping Mouse, And you have a new name: you are Eagle.

I took copies of the story and marked off 500 words. After distributing copies of the narrative to each student, I instructed them to read silently to the 500-word mark and then raise their hand. When a student raised their hand, I provided the student with the time for how long it took them to read 500 words and told them to write it on their index card, along with their answers to a few comprehension questions covering the first 500 words. Almost everyone completed the reading in two to three minutes. Before I moved on, I required each of them to figure out their words-per-minute reading speed and post this number on their index card.

Finally, I told them the rest of the story. Before anyone could ask a question, I instructed the class to briefly explain what the story meant on the back of the index card. Reviewing the comments, I noticed that most of the group held the same impression of the story, i.e., Do unto others…

This year, most of my classes are College Bound. This does not mean that all the students have the skills for college; College Bound is simply the name of the course. However, I must say that these first three days of classes show some promise.

The AP class took the TSWE (Test on Standard Written English), and the results were very diverse and varied. Nobody scored a perfect 60; a few were in the 40s. Oh well! I’ll work with what I have.

Funny, I’ve been back here for three days. But I feel like I’ve been here for three weeks!

DAY 4

Today is medicine shield day and the first Gonzo Hawaiian T-shirt Friday of the year! Several years ago, Paul began wearing Hawaiian shirts to school every Friday and challenged the department to join him. The movement has spread to a few in the social studies and math departments. I’ve even invited my students to join in and wear a Hawaiian shirt every Friday.

As each class settled in, I took roll without incident. I directed the students’ attention to the large bulletin board with MAN, MYTH, AND THE AMERICAN DREAM across the top and the replica of a medicine wheel underneath. I explained how each quadrant of the medicine wheel could relate to a particular learning-style quadrant. For example, the quadrant between the North and the East is the home of the imaginative learner from the learning style inventory that each student completed two days ago. Just like the American Plains Indians, who placed a medicine shield outside their teepee to identify those who lived inside, my students will create a medicine shield to identify themselves as inhabitants of this classroom. We will hang the shields on the bulletin board, which will help me be a better teacher. The sight of the different shields will remind me of each student’s learning style and keep me focused on addressing ALL types of learners in the class. I had already made multicolored circles the size of an old ‘45 record, and I supplied colored pens and crayons for them to create images for the shields. I showed them examples of how the American Plains Indians made their shields. They would select an animal, color, and quality from each medicine wheel point that was not part of their gift. I then suggested they follow this same procedure in creating their shields. A few students requested to use colored chalk.

While my classes worked on creating their own medicine shields for the rear bulletin board, I sat writing about my middle-age identity crisis.

And so ends my first Friday of the year!

DAY 5

Today is the first Monday of the 2007 school year. This Monday may have been one of the hottest of those thirty-one years. The recorded temperature in the parking lot of 91 degrees made room B7 feel like a literal sweat-box sauna. Nevertheless, I stuck to the plan and made my classes go through their paces. Since the district is making a shift to ALL College Bound English classes, I’ve decided to upgrade the assignments. So, I instructed the students to read the Glancing Back article in their Moby Dick study packets. They timed themselves to establish an introductory words-per-minute rate. I suggested that, sometime in June, we would do this again and measure any growth. Another classroom administrative task that I needed to address in these very early stages of the semester was having the students create writing folders. This process took them about ten minutes or so.

Since our local school district sits across the sound from an old Delaware Bay whaling town, it seemed appropriate that Herman Melville’s Moby Dick was the first work we would study. The novel should be essential in uncovering knowledge about our area’s past. Such an experience would provide an insight into what our city is like now. Since they looked through the study packets, they already possessed an idea of Moby Dick’s basic storyline of Ahab’s pursuit of the white whale.

I mentioned that in the novel, Melville presents a whole cetology of whales for his readers to review. Instead of having them read Melville’s cetology, I challenged them to create their own—as a class. So, by the end of each class period, all students knew the name of the whale they would hunt in the library’s computer lab (or in actual books) to create a page for the class’s cetology. Each page needed a photo and at least fifty words of proofread text. The hunt will end on Friday when I collect all pages.

Since the day was so well orchestrated, time passed very quickly. I even did an entire lecture in the AP class on the proper MLA format for writing book reactions. The whole time, I was sweating out loud! I was so uncomfortable that, when school ended, I left immediately to go surfing.

DAY 6

The day’s quote of the day, Let’s Roll! allowed me to begin class with the question, Where were you on the morning of 9/11? After addressing all the responses such a question generated, I told the class about my most vivid memory. I remember that morning, sitting with a group of teachers, watching Tower 1 crumble to the ground. Mostly, I remember the surreal feeling of seeing this happen. I told the classes that when I was in fifth grade, I had witnessed Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald live on television! The shock of that moment prepared me for what I saw six years ago today.

However, not all my memories of that day were sad. Since the school district had canceled all after-school sports and extracurricular activities, I was free to head home early. When I realized how shaken I was about what had taken place that day, I turned the car toward the beach to go surfing. The waves were in the 2-to-4-foot range with 3-to-6-foot set waves. The strong northwest winds kept the surf clean but made catching a wave more of a challenge.

I also vividly remember meeting fellow surfer Robbie and talking with him about the day’s events as we both watched the surf from the beach. Life certainly hasn’t been the same since then.

Today was the first double-period day of the year, and the heat still felt sauna-like in Room B7. Double periods are the administration’s attempt at block scheduling. In layman’s terms, once each week, classes meet for an 80-minute. This schedule allows for a more extended instructional period for proofreading workshops, activities, videos, and testing. Because of the heat, I had arranged for my classes to complete their whale hunts in the library—or, as we call it today, the media center. At least in the media center, the rooms are air-conditioned. The fly in the ointment was that the media center was overbooked for two of my three classes, so I spent the third and sixth period sweating out loud in heat box B7.

The first-period students completed the project’s research component very well and with time to spare. They spent extra time creating their story about their whale for their cetology page. Overall, their work was acceptable, and no one reported any difficulty locating enough information about their whale. I can see that I am dealing, in some cases, with some legitimate CB students in these College Bound classes. Everyone in my first-period class received an A+ for this part of the project. Since the students used the computer to check their spelling and grammar, their work needed only minimal proofreading on my part.

Meanwhile, back in B7, the third period came nowhere close to the first period’s production.

First, I needed to use the computer carts for my students to complete the whale hunt’s research and writing components. One of the carts (from the special ed. department) would not allow the students to print out any of their work. The tech people came down, and they could not remedy the problem. Then, the administration called all my tenth-grade students to the auditorium for a class meeting. That was all she wrote, literally. This class would never have enough time to complete the project on time, so now I must allow more time on Thursday for them to catch up with the others. So it goes in the wacky world of education.

The AP students wrote for eighty minutes (writing-on-command exercise), so that class was easy and passed quite quickly, if not uncomfortably (HOT!).

DAY 7

And the heat goes on…Although the humidity has decreased quite a bit since yesterday, the temperature in B7 is still in the 80s. Today was the first double-period Wednesday of the new year, and such a block of time was perfect for continuing the whale hunt project. Not only did the students in my College Bound classes work well individually, but they handled my suggested revisions and changes with very open minds. For example, several students did not have a picture of the actual whale they needed to research. Quite a few of them mistook a humpback for a blue whale because the humpback’s photo made it appear blue. However, once I pointed this out, the students returned to the computers and found the correct replacements.

As I made my rounds, reviewing each student’s proposed cetology page, one student in particular appeared very excited about reading Moby Dick. He looked up at me from the computer screen and explained that this whale hunt/cetology page project made him realize that the story was about going to sea. That’s part of it, I responded, "but what did you think the story Moby Dick was about? Well, he slowly responded, I thought it was a detective novel!

I began distributing the novels to the students during the final part of the class. The story’s many metaphorical levels are all beautifully interwoven into the narrative of a young man who decides to go to sea and hunt whales. Moby Dick contains what Melville learned about life, nature, and the universe from those whaling voyages. The book embeds storylines that involve history, biology, religion, mythology, politics, astrology, physics, sociology, and even literature—all of the significant topics a student would need to study to earn a bachelor’s degree from most colleges.

And so the day went by uneventfully.

DAY 8

The weather is finally breaking. The heat is relenting, and my room finally feels comfortable for a change. In a way, I’m looking forward to the fall’s chill.

Today, I explained that Melville’s Moby Dick was part of the Romantic period of American literature, which spanned 1820 to 1860. Moby Dick, published in 1850, appeared in the latter part of this period and showed how Melville was a writer about the dark side. This focus on the darker side of human nature ran against the Transcendentalism of the same period, which focused on the inherent goodness of people. This New England literary movement, led by Ralph Waldo Emerson, tried to raise man’s awareness of God through a deeper connection to nature. However, authors like Hawthorne and Melville felt that man also harbors the potential for evil. Since the beginnings of Puritan literature, evil has been a force outside us. Even before then, humanity was fighting a war between good and evil. Now, 200 years after the Puritans, the Romantic period of American literature viewed evil as potentially existing in each of us. In other words, we all possess both good and evil within us. The battle we all must wage to keep good and evil in balance within us is not only eternal but internal. While Melville was composing Moby Dick, these beliefs and ideas most certainly influenced his thinking. Other significant influences on his writing came from his immersion in the Bible and his readings of Shakespeare. As a writer, he always wondered why there were no Shakespeares writing in his time. Perhaps Moby Dick was his attempt at becoming the Shakespeare of his day.

After hopefully establishing an albeit brief literary history of the novel, I placed Moby Dick in its geographical setting of Nantucket Island off Cape Cod by locating the island on the classroom map of the United States. This location was the world’s whaling capital between 1815 and 1860, not to mention the highest whale oil-producing town in the whole nation.

To initiate a discussion of what society used the whale oil and blubber for, the classes listened to Crosby & Nash’s To the Last Whale. The duo wrote this 1975 song to raise ecological awareness of the plight of the whales in today’s mechanized whale-hunting industry. Such knowledge gave rise to a 1986 worldwide ban on commercial whaling, except for Japan, Iceland, and Norway, which have continued to hunt whales under the guise of science.

As the class listened to the song, I flashed back to one of the first times I played this song for one of my classes. Just like today, I had distributed lyrics sheets to each student so that they could follow the theme and discuss the lyrics afterward as poetry. The song begins as a hymn with only choral harmonies. Before the words could begin, one student raised his hand. He wanted to know why I had given them song lyrics if the song was merely vocalizing with no actual words. So I decided to respond in kind. I stopped the recording and apologized for my lack of clarity. I told the class that they were listening to a whale song, and that I had translated the whale language into English. They all gave each other a puzzled look before another student chimed in, Then where are we on the lyrics sheet? I quickly responded, First verse, third line. Everybody with me? With everyone now on board, I restarted the recording.

The punch line to all of the above is that Karl, the marine biology teacher, had come knocking on my door by lunchtime,. He wanted to know what I was telling my students about whale songs. I explained what happened (in three-part harmony) and apologized, saying this would never happen again.

Back to today… Once the song ended, I asked the class to list what they found as suggested uses for harvested whale oil and fat. They quickly pointed out pet food, cosmetics, and fertilizer. I reminded them that while today most countries have banned whale hunting, in the nineteenth century, all of the country’s energy came from whale oil. The heating, lighting, and cooking in all New England households from 1815 to 1860 hinged on the timely harvesting of whale oil. Also, people used this oil to lubricate the gears in the machines emerging during the Industrial Revolution. Then I pointed out that between 1815 and 1860, Nantucket Island alone produced 1,313,946 barrels of whale oil. Each barrel contained 31½ gallons! The going rate for a barrel of oil at this time was $88. So, if one does the math, this amount of oil was worth roughly $115 million back then! All from one little island off Cape Cod.

Obtaining such a large amount of oil meant that the Nantucket whalers needed to kill many whales. On average, it took between twenty-two and forty whales to produce one barrel of oil. Melville realized that such intense killing might lead to the extinction of these mammals. To prove my point, I ended class by reading an excerpt from Chapter 105 of Moby Dick:

But still another inquiry remains; one often agitated by the more recondite Nantucketers. Whether owing to the almost omniscient lookouts at the mastheads of the whaleships, now penetrating even through Behring’s straits and into the remotest secret drawers and lockers of the world; and the thousand harpoons and lances darted along all continental coasts; the moot point is, whether Leviathan can long endure so wide a chase, and so remorseless a havoc; whether he must not at last be exterminated from the waters, and the last whale, like the last man, smoke his last pipe, and then himself evaporate in the final puff.

DAY 9

The second Gonzo Hawaiian T-shirt Friday has arrived, and it is the first payday of the year. Fridays are like the last mile of a marathon. At this point, a marathoner keeps telling himself that he can run one more mile with no problem. Soon the runner’s depleted body begins to believe it can complete that last mile, and a jolt of adrenaline powers the body to the finish line. So, today, I felt energized.

However, studying my paycheck put a little damper on my enthusiasm. I was shocked that my net take-home pay for this year is about eight or so dollars LESS per paycheck than last year. Every one of the taxes has increased from last year. I smell retirement coming sooner than later.

However, today I planned another pre-reading activity for Moby Dick. Before the students entered the room, I had already written the terms allegory, symbol, simile, metaphor, and allusion on the front chalkboard. I even offered three types of allusions: biblical, literary, and historical. Moby Dick is an excellent example of an allegory. The story’s plot is overflowing with symbols and allusions. To have the students investigate the idea of literary allusions a bit further, they listened to Tom Waits’ Shiver Me Timbers with a focus on answering the typical Quadrant 1 why question: Why go to sea?

Perhaps the classroom silence that ensued resulted from the song’s somber, melancholy tone, but a few minutes passed until one student bravely broke the quiet that had settled over the room. Acknowledging her raised hand, I asked, Why do you think the speaker of these lyrics wishes to go to sea? She then suggested that the speaker’s body is not where he wants to be. So I quickly focused the class on the line, My body’s at home, but my heart’s in the wind. This tension between the body and the heart is a classic conflict in Melville’s Moby Dick. The body symbolizes where we are, like here in this classroom, while the heart or soul expresses where we wish to be. To reinforce this point, I told the class that if I were optimistic that the school board would not fire me, I would have gone surfing on this beautiful September morning instead of coming to work. Once this last comment registered, even students with heads on their desks began to perk up a bit, with a what did he say? look flashing in their eyes.

Now that I had earned their attention, I used the song’s allusion to Captain Ahab as a vehicle for introducing one of the most dominant and essential characters in all of American literature. Ahab is the captain of the whaling ship Pequod out of Nantucket Island. On his last whaling voyage, a giant white sperm whale named Moby Dick had bitten off his leg. Despite Ahab’s handicap, he signs up to return to the sea—only this time to seek revenge on the white whale, his dismemberer.

Before I could even mention the biblical allusion to Ahab’s name, one curious student began waving his hand for attention. Who is this Martin Eden guy? Is he one of those illusions you were talking about?

You mean ‘allusion,’ I politely corrected as I pointed to the term on the front board. And, yes, Tom Waits’ reference to him is an example of a literary allusion.

So, I took advantage of a teachable moment and told them the story of Martin Eden. I first asked if anyone ever heard of the writer named Jack London, and most, if not all, of them did. I owe my thanks to the junior high language arts teachers, who continue to teach The Call of the Wild. After establishing this little connection, I gave the class what I called a "Reader’s Digest" version of Martin Eden, a Jack London novel about an early twentieth-century sailor named Martin Eden who desperately wished to elevate himself out of his rough, uneducated, working-class background through a career as a writer.

Before he could even begin his transformation, his longtime girlfriend broke off their relationship. Because she came from a middle-class family, she could not consider marrying him until he reaches her level of wealth and refinement. Although Martin promised he would meet her expectations if she would be patient, she rejected him just about when he began experiencing success.

At this point in my synopsis, I told the class to remember this idea of a woman turning down a lover because of social status, and the lover then working hard to improve himself to satisfy her. This notion of not marrying outside of one’s station is a big part of the next book on the class reading list, The Great Gatsby.

But I digress. Martin Eden finally achieves the fame and the lifestyle he always envied. However, the journey left him bitter about the middle-class people who once rejected him. He never did enjoy the success he worked so hard for, and he ultimately committed suicide by drowning.

Does that help? I asked the student as I finished the story.

Yes, but how does all this relate to the song? The student’s response echoed the second part of his original question.

Well, let’s look at the line from the song, I offered so that they could see the connections for themselves.

The line reads, ‘I know Martin Eden would be proud of me.’ So, knowing what you know now about Martin Eden, why would he be proud of the narrator? I’ll give you all a hint, the answer has to do with why they went to sea.

One insightful student pointed out that maybe because the song’s narrator goes to sea to follow his heart, Martin Eden would be proud of him for that.

Since I could not have done a better job in providing a transition back to Moby Dick, I used the student’s response as an opportunity to segue into a discussion of why the narrator of Moby Dick, Ishmael, decided to go to sea.

To connect back to this question, I introduced the class to Ishmael, the narrator and main character of Moby Dick. Ishmael is a biblical allusion to Abraham’s eldest son by Hagar, his concubine. The story goes that Ishmael insulted and mocked his half-brother, Isaac. As a result, Sarah, Abraham’s wife, demanded that Abraham send Hagar and her son away. Abraham complied, forcing Hagar and her son Ishmael to search for another home. Therefore, although Ishmael means God hears, Melville uses the name to represent a wanderer looking for answers to his questions about God, the world around him, and his relationship to all of them. In this quote from Chapter 1, Ishmael explains why he goes to sea:

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me that it requires strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off— then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.

After a brief discussion of the quote, quite a few students pointed out that the sea does offer a calming effect on people. The surfers in the room also chimed in on the solitude and meditation the water provides them.

Since just enough class time remained, I ended by pointing out an off-color reference to farting that Melville placed in the opening chapter of Moby Dick. After Melville has Ishmael declare that he will go to sea, he has the narrator provide three reasons why he would go to sea as a simple sailor instead of an officer. His first reason stresses that we are all enslaved anyway and that he doesn’t mind if the officers lord things over him. These same officers have people lording over them. So, in the larger scheme of life, he is content doing the job of a simple sailor. The second reason is that he will be paid well for his efforts. Here is Ishmael’s third reason, also from Chapter 1:

I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome exercise and pure air of the forecastle deck. As in this world, headwinds are far more prevalent than winds form astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first, but not so.

I quickly drew a whaling ship on the front blackboard to allow the class to see what Melville was implying. I highlighted the quarter-deck at the stern of the boat and the forecastle deck at mid-ship. I then asked if anyone knew what the Pythagorean maxim was. This question was more or less rhetorical, since I knew no one in the class held a clue about what this term meant. I then explained that the Pythagorean maxim states that if a person eats beans, that person will get gas and fart! Sailors were usually fed beans, and because the prevailing winds at sea are headwinds, this hot air blows back into the faces of the captain and the mates. So Ishmael concludes that he would instead go to sea as a simple sailor because the air would be much fresher!

Telling the story of Martin Eden and the biblical allusion to Ishmael enhanced the students’ cultural literacy. And they had listened to a Tom Waits song, too. The bell rang, ending a rather whole, rich class.

During the twelfth-grade AP class, I reviewed their resumes, moving from student to student. I managed to finish reviewing all but two. The weather has cooled and has become less humid, so working in B7 today was tolerable for a change. I skipped the fall pep rally and graded papers in my room until dismissal.

That night, I worked on the chain gang for the first football game of the season. Cape Island lost to Bridgeton 62-7! Bridgeton scored the first five times they touched the ball. At one point, Joe B. said, This can’t get worse! And I replied, Oh no? It could be raining! And then the rain began to fall as if on cue. Lucky for us, this was only a short shower. The heavy stuff would come after midnight.

The highlight of the whole game was Joe B. making me one of his pulled-pork sandwiches. We tailgated at halftime right out of the back of his truck!

What a week.

DAY 10

Hello, blue Monday.

Today found my classes shoving off with Ishmael in Moby Dick. Except for one more activity concerning Melville’s biography, we have arrived at the actual reading of the novel. Because the tenth-grade classes are College Bound, I decided not to read aloud to them, but I selected an abridged version of the story so the students would not become lost in Melville’s syntax. On average, each chapter of this abridged version summarizes three chapters from the original text. From time to time, I will read excerpts from the book to let them hear Melville’s diction and language. This week, the classes will read Chapters 1 through 12, which cover the first part of the story about the land.

After making the reading assignment, I read the biblical story of Jonah and the whale to the students, which will be the primary focus of Father Mapple’s sermon in New Bedford Whaleman’s Chapel. I then asked the class, What did Jonah do wrong that brought such a punishment upon him? Everyone agreed or understood that Jonah’s sin was that he disobeyed God knowingly and consciously. However, I pointed out to them that this Old Testament God, who sent the whale to swallow Jonah, was also very merciful. I pointed out that while Jonah lived inside the whale for those three days and nights, he apologized to God. When God heard of Jonah’s remorse for his actions, God had the whale vomit Jonah upon dry land.

So, this Old Testament story of Jonah and the whale is not just about sin, but the parable is about redemption as well, I stressed to them. With this information in place, I tried to have the class find a connection between Jonah’s story and Captain Ahab. However, before I could do this, I needed to explain Ahab’s Quaker religion.

The ship owners, like Old Captain Peleg and Bildad, were all Quakers. This religion stresses the idea of thou shalt not kill and the divine order for work—in this case, the job of whaling. The Quakers believed they must respect all life and not harm or kill anyone. Yet, they set out to kill as many whales as they could. They justified this by focusing on the principle that God demands that they do their job. However, Ahab goes whaling for revenge, not to follow the precepts of his Quaker religion. So, in effect, Ahab is Jonah. In the end, he becomes an outcast who will suffer the same fate as Jonah. I also pointed out that although I may have spoiled the plot’s outcome for most of them, the exciting part now is finding out how this will all play out.

In the remaining class time, I read an excerpt from Father Mapple’s sermon in Chapter 9, where Melville has the priest recount one of the main themes of the story:

As with all sinners among men, the sin of this son of Amittai [Jonah] was in his willful disobedience of