This I Believe

This post is actually a draft of an essay I'm writing for NPR's This I Believe radio series. I am not sure if I am satisfied with it. I am going to try a couple of other ideas. This is my first try. I am asking my students to write This I Believe essays, so I figured I'd better give it a shot!

THIS I BELIEVE

As a middle school English teacher, I try to teach my students that it isn’t enough to tell us the main idea of your writing—you have to make us see the idea. I tell them it is all about the pictures.
For instance, if I ask a class to write about a best friend, I will get a slew of generic essays: my friend is funny, my friend is fun, my friend is nice. Sometimes I read portions of essays like that aloud and the students can’t tell who wrote them—they all sound alike. But when I ask them to list specific, concrete nouns and action verbs, these friends suddenly come to life. Pictures appeared. My friend and I go and try on crazy socks at J.C. Penny. My friend told a joke so funny, I laughed chocolate thick shake out my nose. My friend let me stay on his couch when my parents were fighting.
This is the oldest writing lesson in the world, but I think it is more than that. I tell my students, and try to show them, that this idea of general and specific isn’t just about writing. It’s about life. If we think about the kind of people we want to be, the ideals we aspire to become the main ideas we want to express with our lives. And the only way to live out those main ideas, is to do specific things—to create pictures with our lives. I can’t just say I want to be a good father. I need to make a Rubik’s Cube Halloween costume for my son or play a board game with my daughter. I can’t just say I want to be a good husband; I need to help with the dishes. I can’t just say I want to be a good teacher; I need to stand at the door each class period and call them by name.
I read Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 with my eighth graders this year. Near the end, a character talks about his grandfather and all the things he did with his hands: built things, changed things, helped people. The book’s protagonist, Guy Montag, thinks about his wife Mildred. Her hands never really did anything. She watched TV. She smoked cigarettes.
I ask my students to think about what their hands accomplish. Do they change channels? Instant message? Play video games? Or do they actually do things that matter? What do your specific pictures say about the main idea of your life? Do you even have a main idea?
I draw a comic strip about teaching for my local newspaper, and every day I try to take my general thoughts about education, school, and teaching, and turn them into specific little framed pictures about pencils, gum, books, and middle school students. The general and the specific again. And the comic strip is something I create with my hands—a specific act that also shows what I believe.
I believe that all of life is found in the balance between the general and the specific, the big idea and the little detail, the ideals we aim for and the actions that help us live out our ideals. It’s all about the pictures we create with our lives, and what those pictures say.
This I believe.