Love and Work

While standardized tests are typically viewed as stressful, frustrating experiences that are inaccurate measures of actual ability, there can be a redeeming aspect. I am preparing to take the Praxis tests for teacher certification, particularly the Praxis II English Language, Literature and Composition: Pedagogy test. As a result, I have spent this past week reading all sorts of middle and high school books that I somehow missed when I was that age. Rather than reading good literature at my grade level, in middle and high school I skipped directly from fantasy and Sweet Valley High to "adult" classics. Homer's Odyssey stands as even richer and more compelling when read in such immediate proximity to the adventures of a certain red-headed teen detective. 

This week, I have read Hatchet by Gary Paulssen, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor, The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, and The Arm of the Starfish and A Ring of Endless Light by Madeleine L'Engle. I'm currently reading Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton. Except for the L'Engle books, these are all books that might show up on the Praxis that I had not previously read. The assignment is to choose one and explain two literary elements you would draw out it if you were to teach it, two aspects of the book that students might struggle with, and two specific activities to teach those literary elements and/or address the aspects with which students might struggle. You must use specific examples from the book and do this in a half hour. 

It was delicious to have such a legitimate excuse to spend so much time reading. It was also intriguing to note the similarities in these novels. The first four are all stories of coming-of-age despite societal or parental disconnection, misunderstanding or injustice. Hope lies in self and/or literature- storytelling, poetry, etc.  There was diversity in setting, characters, and experiences, but significant homogeneity in worldview. 

In that sense, L'Engle was a breath of fresh air, but too much of her also gets rather thematically didactic. Believe in evolution as a cosmic truth and personal choice. Evil is real and must be fought. Choose a side. Mitochondria and dolphins are smarter and more metaphysically aware than we are. 

She quotes from Robert Frost's poem, "Two Tramps in Mud Time" in The Arm of the Starfish. I appreciate her awareness of beauty and truth and how she uses her own writing to point her readers to more of it. The poem is longer than this, but I'll quote a significant portion of the end. The "they" are two tramps wandering along who saw the speaker chopping wood and want to take his job for pay:

They knew they had but to stay their stay

And all their logic would fill my head:

As that I had no right to play

With what was another man's work for gain.

My right might be love but theirs was need.

And where the two exist in twain

Theirs was the better right--agreed. 

But yield who will to their separation,

My object in living is to unite

My avocation and my vocation

As my two eyes make one in sight.

Only where love and need are one,

And the work is play for mortal stakes,

Is the deed ever really done

For Heaven and the future's sakes. 

When my avocation and vocation are not united, have I the wrong loves or am I addressing the wrong needs? I am comforted that his language suggests process- the object of living being to work towards the unity of love and need.