Welcome to Wising Up, Together
20 Years of Me and Teenagers Trying to Figure Things Out– One Literary Work at a Time
Hello, friends!
Pre-script, 3/25—These essays have shape-shifted some and changed a bit. Nuts and bolts still the same. xo
I’m excited to share this first installment of Wising Up Together, my newsletter/column with essays and vignettes about teaching, high school, literature, and what it’s like reading and searching for meaning alongside teenagers.
Each month or so, you’ll receive an essay featuring a literary work- usually a poem— and a bit about how students and I grappled with it–in the classroom and out.
Essays will include some combo of the following:
A story/snapshot of high school, learning, adolescence, or just living/fumbling, that speaks to the featured literary work in some way;
Some context (maybe a bit about the work, writer, class dynamics, students, curriculum, school, and/or zeitgeist);
A peek into our classroom discussions–our big questions and our emerging confusion, clarity, and/or wisdom;
Ideas for good pairings (literary, musical, cinematic)
Notes and resources for teachers and learners;
An open invitation to add your insights and resources in the comments section.
And the featured poem or nugget that anchors it all in some way.
I hope this column is useful and interesting to teachers, of course– but also to anyone who’s ever felt like a misfit in high school, or has a kid in high school, or just likes to use literature and art as portals to make sense of the world.
As a writer who fusses a lot, sometimes at the expense of actually sending work out into the world, this seems like a good way to commit to writing and sharing regularly. Not perfectly, but regularly. I really hope it resonates with you. xo- Karen
Teaching: A Mini-Timeline of a Life Spent Mostly in High School(s)
The first literary installment of the newsletter will come to you next week, on the poem “A Blessing” by James Wright. Meanwhile, here’s a mini timeline of my teaching path and my rationale for doing this kind of writing:
Pinkerton Academy; Derry, NH, 1978-1981 (A public regional high school, despite the fancy name)
Those of you who knew me in high school know that I was an uninspired, and likely pretty uninspiring, student– including in my English classes. Outside of school, though, I read voraciously–any book that was reported to have sex in it, but good stuff, too. From Scruples to Robert Frost, who once taught at and lived up the street from my country high school (Frost, not Steele). Those books and poems kept me great company. I’d moved to this new school as a sophomore, and was preoccupied with the chance to refashion myself into something else. Always something else. (I wrote about this old strategy here.) No matter what new self I invented, though, the books came along.
Teaching, 1991-2019 (with leaves for babies, doctorate, concussion)
My first teaching job after grad school was at Harbor Schools, a residential treatment program for teens, where I was supposed to teach writing but spent much of the day helping or watching other staff physically restrain kids, who had all been profoundly damaged by the adults in their lives up to that point, and had every reason and need to explode. What’s all that yelling in the background? my mother would ask me on phone calls from my attic office in the school’s drafty old converted colonial house that smelled like Costco peanut butter and stale cigarette smoke. This heartbreaking place was good training for anything that could possibly come after.
I went on to teach English at two very different Massachusetts high schools: Watertown High School, and Brookline High School (in SWS, its democratic program.) I also taught in the graduate program at Boston University, and at the Favorite Poem Project’s summer institute for teachers. Now I work with teachers and young adults.
Leaving Teaching, 2019
Teaching is exciting, mundane, intimate, and I think more strange and extraordinary than most people realize. I loved it. But in 2019, after a bad concussion (and, I think, some memory loss…?...), and the realization that my own two teens would leave for college pretty soon, it seemed the right time to leave the classroom. Even teaching part time was all-consuming. I know other teachers who teach full time and play in bands and have kids and publish books, and I’ve compared myself to each of them, often. But I wasn’t getting any younger. I knew I wanted to remain a teacher in some capacity. I wanted to try and scale some of the curriculum work I’d done. I wanted to keep playing music. And I wanted to write.
Now, This, Today
Since I left the classroom, I find myself craving the same things my high school self needed and didn’t get in school, but that as a teacher I got daily: Companions in searching; new and old novels and poems and short stories and the good discussions they provoke; and the daily chance to collectively and individually make meaning of ourselves and other people through a worthy intermediary. Also, community. Growth. Beauty. Empathy. Compassion. Connection. Hilarity. Just those few things. That’s why I’m doing these essays.
So until next week, when I’ll tell you a little about my bad Boston driving, being an adult in high school, and what students had to say about James Wright’s wonderful poem, “A Blessing” and the different kinds of paying attention…
Thank you for your reading, support, and friendship!
Xo- Karen
