The Last Class Before Thanksgiving Break

This afternoon, just before leaving for the holiday with families and finalizing college applications, students in Senior English furrowed their brows and thought through some existential conundrums.

We're reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

It's bleak.
We're less than 100 pages in and generating questions like:

  • What's worth living for? What's worth dying for?
  • What makes a life meaningful? 
  • What's left -- out there, in us -- when the world as we know it is gone?




One student point-blank asked me how I can teach a book like this year after year.
Why I would read it again and if I get anything out of it.



I got to answer honestly:
The thing is, see: I truly love the literature.
And there are no simple answers to complex questions.
And I believe they're worth thinking about, always.
I hope you find value in that, too.



An hour later in the library with our staff,
our boss reminded us of his own gratitude for the work we get to do.



And I feel exactly the same way.
I'm so grateful that I get to share this brainspace
and navigate these ideas with young people.



This poem has been on my mind for weeks:






"I am trying to sell them the world."


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