Via Facilis

"Good judgment comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgment."
Murphy's Law

"Mistakes are the only things you can truly call your own."
- Billy Joel

A dual mantra for all who teach and learn.

Mistakes are invaluable sources of learning for their makers.
No matter how embarrassing, or how humiliating, or how annoying.
Provided you heed their lesson.

Mistakes don't just happen. They are made. We make them.
You make them.
Students make them.
I make them.

Mistakes can be of (non-)fact, of (il)logic, of (non-)recognition, of (mis)understanding. Some are born of incomplete thinking, others of thinking too much. Whatever their ilk, mistakes remind us of our humanity. They can open the door to humility, and thence to deeper and broader thinking, learning, understanding.

Particularly potent is the realization that a problem, an idea, a concept was so obvious that you had never really thought about it.

And suddenly it comes into focus. The veil of self-hypnosis falls away.
You truly see for the first time. You recognize the existence of something. Now you can act on that recognition.

Here's a mistake that I made.
Fortunately, it taught me well.

The worst lecture I ever gave resulted in one of the best lessons I ever learned.
The lecture was on supplementary participles in Ancient Greek, a concept that had come to me quickly, completely, intuitively when I had learned the language.

In other words, it was a concept I had never given a second thought.
Or any thought.
Sure, I got it.
A car gets gasoline, too.
But does it understand it?
How like a car I was.

And so I ran into trouble.
Barreled into it headlong.

Not surprisingly, a number of the students had no comprehension of what I was talking about. They could not distinguish between the supplementary participle I was introducing to them and another class of verbal adjectives they had already met called circumstantial participles.

Circumstantial participles act as their own clauses. Supplementary participles at first glance may seem to have a similar function. But they don't. Some verbs in ancient Greek require the participial equivalent of a complementary infinitive to fully complete their sense. That counterpart is called a supplementary participle.

I couldn't explain it to them.
I was trapped in my own universe.
I told them "I don't understand what it is you don't understand."

A good line to use in appropriate situations.
This wasn't one of them.

Eventually, I got beyond my annoyance and chagrin at what I thought was the non-responsiveness of my students.
I realized my mistake. But how to classify it? Classification leads to understanding the source of the mistake.
Projection?
I had thought that the difference between the participles was patent.
It wasn't simply that I had not anticipated that the students would have any difficulty with supplementary participles. In fact, that possibility had not so much as crossed my mind.
So no, it wasn't really projection.
It was...what?

A nothingness.
A black hole.
A blind-spot.

These are the most difficult mistakes to recognize, precisely because they reveal themselves only indirectly. You cannot see a black hole, but you know it's there by the effect is has on the environment around it.

So now what?
Fix the problem.
Understand that your own leap of thought, your own intuition, can be the very thing that blocks you from clearly demonstrating a concept to your students.

They aren't the ones who don't get it.

You are.

As was I.

On the road of life, we meet many different characters of varying ilk.
We do not always recognize the significance of that interaction.
In fact, we usually don't.
We have to wait a few years before it dawns on us.

One teacher I had who said or did things that escaped ready comprehension and significance was Mr. Mitchell.
I just found out that Mr. Mitchell died two weeks ago.
He was my homeroom and Soc. Sci. teacher (he pronounced it Sock Sy) in 5th grade.

Aeons ago.
Another life.
Another time.

Mr. Mitchell was infamous for one particular propensity.
He deplored the desk that was a mess.

But that wasn't what he was infamous for.

It was for the swift retribution he exacted upon those desks and their owners.

The desks we had then had flap-up tops.
Mr. Mitchell would frequently check our desks.

Or, he would wait.

Until time had elapsed.
Until our desks were overflowing with papers and general chaos.

Then, he would strike.
Like the Assyrian, like the Wolf on the Fold (one of the many poems he made us memorize, along with, Act iii, Scene ii, The Forum, Mark Antony's speech to the crowd after the death of Caesar, in the tragedy of that name by Billy Shakespeare).

The unfortunate student targeted would watch the descent of this Zeus-like figure, beard bristling, wrathful eyes blazing.

The desk would be expertly upended, emptied out.

Papers, books, notebooks, drawings, pencils, pens would fall to the ground, scattering themselves in fear.

Its top open like a toothless, gaping maw, the desk would come to rest on its side topping the piled-up havoc.

The hapless student would cry, laugh, or just sit in his chair in shock, stripped both of his desk and his pride, a forlorn creature midst the devastation of his work space.

We would look at our classmate, moved with great pity, knowing that our time would also come - if not today, then tomorrow.

How could this mean man do this to us?

We would help our classmates put themselves and their desks back together.
And we would make sure that our own place was likewise in good order.

It was only recently that I came to understand the lesson.

It wasn't simply, Keep your work space neat, or suffer the consequences, or Decisive Action Works, or even, Be Prepared.

Those were incidental.

The lesson was deeper, more complex. More to the heart of life.

To deal with the enemy in front of you, you must help your compatriots, knowing that you will need their help, just as they rely on yours. Your likes and dislikes of each other had nothing to do with survival.

That was the point.

Our worst enemy was Mr. Mitchell.
Mr. Mitchell taught us how to help ourselves.
He taught us how to help each other.
He taught us how to be compassionate.

Mr. Mitchell in himself showed us how our worst enemy could be our best friend.

With enemies like him, who needs friends?

Funny that it was also in 5th grade when I began to find my voice.
In Mr. Mitchell's class.

It was Mr. Mitchell who had us all memorize the aforementioned Marc Antony's Act III, Scene ii speech, then stand up and recite it in front of the entire class; then, for those good enough, in front of the entire grade.

I found I could give the words life, vigor, a power that my fellow students couldn't match. Yes, they could memorize it. But their recitations were bland repetitions, no emotion, no feeling. Even so, they admired how I said the words, how I could make them come to life.

So, I repeat.

With enemies like Mr. Mitchell, who needs friends?

requiescas in pace, Magister.