Notes From Public School - Day 110

I read an essay in A Public Space (which is my favorite magazine) titled, Sail On, My Little Honey Bee, by Amy Leach.

Leach is a wonderful non-fiction writer. 

She received a Rona Jaffe Award, given to writers of exceptional talent, and has a collection of essays titled Things That Are.

In Sail On, I came across an idea that is helping me become a better public school teacher and a better writer.

It’s an idea that helps me see the world more clearly and touch it more sympathetically.

It’s a philosophy of INTERIORISM a way of thinking, being, and doing in the world that teaches that "truth is to be known by introspection." 

I understand it this way. It’s a way of looking inside of things to find their essence.

Oliver Sacks, the neurologist and writer, helped me further understand Interiorism in the preface of his book Awakenings, a story of patients at Mount Carmel Hospital in New York who were afflicted with encephalitis lethargica just after World War I and had been asleep until the spring of 1969 when Dr. Sacks helped them awaken with a remarkable drug called L-DOPA. 

In that preface, Sacks refers to his patients as "worlds" that require "not a static and systematic formulation, but an active exploration of images and views, a continual jumping-about and imaginative movement.”

A philosophy of EXTERIORISM is interested in those static and systematic formulations, in those things that can be observed on the outside. 

Interiorism, however, is interested in seeing people as worlds and in exploring the inside of these worlds with imagination and empathy.

As a public school teacher, I work hard to see the essence of my students. 

I was talking with Geraldine about a book she was reading, Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy by Karen Foxlee. 

“Oh Mr. Barton,” she said with a giggle, “I’m just like Ophelia in the story because she’s a curious kind of kid and I’m a curious kind of kid because I want to know everything about everything.”

Then she became serious. 

“But she’s a nervous kind of kid, too, because she’s had a hard life and I’ve kind of had a hard life, too.” 

I looked into her earthy brown eyes and thought about the ground and soil from which she came, for she came here from the farms and fields of Mexico with her family. 

I looked and listened inside of her world.

I looked and listened for her essence.

For the first time I noticed the faintest of dark circles around her eyes, the slightest of a downward turn at the corners of her mouth, and a hint of tiredness and sadness that should not often be on a 10-year-olds face.

“Geraldine,” I asked, “What’s your life like?” 

She told me her story. 

“I share a room with my Mom, my aunt, my sister, and my two younger cousins,” she began, “And my family works really hard.”

As she talked with me about the book and about her life, a tiny tear appeared in the corner of her eye. 

“Is that tear coming from giggles or sadness?” I wondered.

I caught the tear in my hand as it rolled off her cheek.

That’s something teachers do.

We catch lots of teardrops.

“See how I caught your teardrop?” I asked.  

“I’m here to catch your happiness and your sadness, Geraldine. 

I’m here to help you learn everything about everything so you can be anything you want to be. 

I am here.”

That’s something teachers are.

We are here.

I caught a glimpse of who she really is.

To find a name and a meaning for thoughts and feelings that I have had for as long as I can remember is a wonderful thing. 

My culture has attempted to teach me that "Vederi Quam Esse," that to seem to be is more important than to be. 

But something inside of me rebels against that kind of philosophy and turns it upside down. 

Interiorism helps me raise my fist into the air and shout out, "Esse Quam Videri," to be is more important than to seem to be, and look for the essence of people, places, and things.