surprised by joy

This is actually the title of a C.S. Lewis book that is somewhere on my to-read list (editor's note: see the movie Shadowlands to understand its beauty), and it's also the phrase that comes to mind when I think of getting back to teaching this week. Despite the unexpected turns my life continues to take, nothing can shake or suppress the joy I feel about teaching. It just bubbles up on its own, seemingly out of nowhere, and surprises me. It happened today during our first full faculty meeting when our two amazing librarians announced that our school's 648 students last year checked out a whopping 18,529 books. I think I'll say it again: a whopping 18, 529 books! Isn't this the best, most hopeful news of the year? Whatever pointless proofs I was trying to work out in my head simply vanished; I was at that moment the happiest clam in the room.

We were asked later in this same meeting to think and to write for a minute about why we taught. Fostering a love of reading seems like one answer to that essential question, and although I didn't write about this specifically, it was gratifying to learn that it's actually happening at my school. For me, there is nothing quite like seeing a student, a colleague, a friend - a total stranger even - get all passionate about a particular book or poem or article. Of course, my friends, and yes, probably total strangers, know that I am prone to these outbursts as well. And like Annie Dillard, I'm not making small talk. I mean to change lives. This must be why I teach.

A panel of alums spoke today about their high school experience, and one panelist said she was most grateful for her teachers' contagious love for their subject matter. She described us as "passionately quirky and wonderfully weird." I had to smile because I suppose - whether I like it or not - that this is me in a nutshell, in or out of the classroom. I can't help it, so I might as well make peace with it. I wouldn't want to trade all these unexpected moments of joy for something else.