I suppose it’s a bit much to ask students to ponder their closeness to plants in a culture where humans barely recognize other humans. Things have broken down.
Yet this much is true:
Humans and plants share the same genetic code–we can make their stuff, they can make ours.
We both reproduce sexually in a spectacular dance of the chromosomes, mixing us up every generation, so that even the perfect among us are perfect for only a generation.
We both rely on ribosomes to build our proteins, microtubules and mitochondria to get us through the day, and an innate will to do whatever we need to see the next sunrise.
Humans and basil share a common ancestor. We share a quarter of the same genes. Many of our proteins do exactly the same thing, others not so much.
But we’re pretty damn close at the most basic levels of life. Which is pretty cool.
Swallowtail on the backyard dill
We’re even closer to insects–we share about 60% of our core genes with fruit flies.
If something effectively kills plants or insects, and you see no connections between plants and insects and humans, then you likely do not contemplate the tons and tons and tons of herbicides and pesticides poured on our food in our “war” against weeds and weevils.
Basil after a week or two of wild sex
If you don’t contemplate about food or water or folks in your neighborhood, it’s unlikely you contemplate much about anything that matters.
It’s not about passion of the teacher, finding the soul of a child, or lighting a fire in a kid’s brain. It never was.
It’s simply showing a child the world that’s herenow beyond the human noise.
Basil flower on the windowsill
The
recent rush to classroom love-fests fails to acknowledge the value of
the old curmudgeon who taught a few decades ago, gruff yet beloved,
because she was not the point of class.
The world was.
Why do you think books matter to children so much?
I used to be a doc, the real kind with tongue blades. I am now entering my 12th year of teaching. Students often ask me why I left medicine.
Artwork seen on a street in Honfleur
I used to be a doctor, the kind with a stethoscope, the kind licensed to hurt you for your own good. It puzzles children to learn that a physician would walk away from medicine in order to teach, and there are days I am baffled myself.
Students often ask me why I left medicine. Here’s what I thought 5 years ago, and it still holds.
I liked medicine. I love teaching. I did not know that this would be true when I left medicine, so while it is true, it is not enough to explain why I left. Why leave something you like, especially when it pays ridiculously well?
Every year children ask me this, and so far I have not quite gotten
it right. I thought I had it right, but high school sophomores would
kind of shake just a little bit sideways. I wasn’t fooling them.
I think I got it right now.
Horseshoe crab spine
I saw a lot of bad stuff in hospitals. I saw a lot of good stuff,
too, but good stuff can be found in a lot of places. The truly bad stuff
has a home in the hospital.
The unlucky (an elderly woman who slowly died from an infection
caused by an errant piece of metal ripping through her car’s floor,
riveting in her thigh).
The doomed (a woman burned over most of her body, still conscious,
still talking, immediately before we intubated her, rendering her
speechless–we knew she was doomed when we did this. We did it anyway.)
The curious (two babies sharing the same torso, the same heart, the same fate).
The geographically screwed (an Asian toddler who needed a new heart,
but who could not afford one, twisting away towards death as she lived
in an American hospital as an alien).
The innocent (children wasting away from a virus we barely
understood, acquired from a mother’s heroin habit or her lover’s
proclivities).
Walking on a dredge fill n Cape May
I was very good at diagnosis, and not bad at making things better once a diagnosis was made. A few were better than me, but not many.
When you are surrounded by hurt, there are two ways to respond if
you want to remain functional–fix it, or pretend it does not exist. I
did a lot of fixing.
If you do medicine long enough, and if you are paying attention, you give death its due. It’s real, it’s usually ugly, and it’s inevitable.
I can’t beat death–took me awhile to get to that realization, but I got there. And it’s liberating.
FIshermen’s Memorial, Cape May
Turns out living isn’t the goal–living well is what matters.
I was pretty good at helping people live longer. Now I’m getting good at helping people live well.
I
thought my job mattered before, but had my doubts in the pitiful wail
of a dying toddler, bruised and bleeding as we laid our hands, our
technology, and finally our fists in futile CPR on her tiny body as it
cooled its way back to entropy.
A life worth living is our only compensation against the greedy hand of death.
So I help children carve out a life worth living.
I’m a teacher.
If you teach, teach as though lives depend on it. If you think this is excessive, get out.
Photos by me or Leslie–feel free to use under CC.
