January 13, 2020

Teaching and Eliot

Today, I taught my class with a more compassionate, mindful attitude. Things that would normally bother me, like glancing at phones, yawning, looking at the clock, I just let wash over me. And you know what: it was great. I’m not certain if it was any better for the students, but it was better for me.

The only mistake I made was saying I was an atheist. I’m not even sure what brought it up. I don’t care that anyone knows, but I’m not sure how that might negatively affect my influence. Still, maybe part of being compassionate is also being honest? Maybe, but certainly not always. Still, it did precipitate a good discussion. I’m not sure it much matters.

I’ve been posting some poetry lately, and I decided to try my hand at an annotated The Waste Land. I had done a version of this on a previous web site, but the MediaWiki software was made for this sort of thing. I also figured out how to do lone numbers! I’m pretty pleased with the outcome. Now I just have to finish it. I could see something like this as a cool project for a modernist poetry class. I’ll have to keep that in mind.