Hello, everyone. I’m coming to you today to say goodbye. My term as your student teacher has come to an end. It’s hard to imagine, really. I remember when it began, I thought to myself how daunting it was to suddenly be thrust into the classroom with as many 30 students, hour after hour for the next 15 weeks. Could I actually teach you anything? Would you respect me? Would you get my jokes? Well, not everyone got them, but I’ve noticed some you did enjoy them even if you sometimes tried to hide it. I’ve been looking over your feedback and I can’t say thank you enough for your comments, including the critical ones. Incidentally, I agree; it was a lot of homework. I know because I had to grade it *laughs*

I’m proud of the work that we did together. Proud to see how each of you grew over those last three months. I tried to give as much useful feedback as I could, and I’ve been so happy to see many of you taking it to heart, improving your writing and your analysis with each new submission. On a more personal note, I’m so touched by the generosity of spirit and joy that many of you have shared with me. You’ve helped me to create relationships and memories that I will always cherish. I think you know who are; even if I had to create new seating arrangements to separate a few of you, or if you stuck around after class so long that I missed my lunch, or if we’ve had more than one conversation that was, perhaps, contentious.

Your 2019-2020 school year isn’t ending quite the way any of you had pictured or hoped, I know. Both for my sophomores and perhaps especially for my seniors, the coronavirus has led to the cancellation of many traditional rights of passage including prom, and graduation ceremonies, and tearful goodbyes in the embrace of friends and loved ones with whom you’ve worked and played these past years. Classmates and teammates with whom you’ve collaborated on projects, fought for great victories, and undoubtedly commiserated over unexpected defeats.

The journey is all, my friends, and your journeys are really just beginning. Though this chapter was not entirely what you expected, it is your chapter. Your story to tell those who come after you. These the threads that only begin to make up the tapestry of each your own lives and when you look back, you will see who that you became not because of it, but because of how you chose to make it yours: to endure, to overcome, to take what lessons you can from it to make it a part of you.

I want to leave you with an excerpt from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem Ulysses. In it, the title character whom some of you may know as Odysseus looks about him, having completed his grand journey and won everything he thought he wanted. He realizes, however, that it was the journey itself, his trials and tribulations, his hardships and unexpected losses, and the comrades with whom he’d shared those experiences that made him who he was, not the tokens of victory—not crossing the threshold home.

[reads]

Find your port, all of you. Watch your sails puff in the winds of fate, but know that it is you who choses how you navigate those seas. Life is challenge and in that challenge, is where you will find life.

Stay strong, stay healthy, and stay creative.

This is Mr. Karl, signing off.

Hello, everyone. Mr. Karl, here. I want to start by wishing you all a happy Friday and congratulating you on making it through a second week of quarantine in the time of corona. If you’re just joining us from outside the school system, this may just be your first week, but know that it can be done as all of these hearty, stalwart students are showing us.

I want to go a little more lighthearted today, so I’ve chosen the so-called nonsense poem by C.S. Lewis titled “The Jabberwocky,” originally published in Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Saw There, his 1871 sequel to Alice in Wonderland. I say “so-called” nonsense poem because while many of the words are made-up, they follow the all of the syntactical and morphological conventions of standard English; that is, they behave just like “real” words. Now, Lewis was hardly the first to make up words. William Shakespeare created as many 1700 new words or new uses for existing words depending on how you look at it.

Speaking of looking at it, take a look at this Jabberwocky short film I’ve put together and the word card at the end. In your writer’s notebooks, I’d like you to write down these words and whether you think they’re nouns, adjectives, or verbs, and why you think that.

I’m interested in your thoughts on this; you might share a few of your conjectures with us here.

Until then, stay strong, stay healthy, and stay creative. We’ll see you online.

Jabberwocky

BY LEWIS CARROLL

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand;

Long time the manxome foe he sought—

So rested he by the Tumtum tree

And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

Editorial Note:

"The Jabberwocky" appears in Lewis Carol's 1871 novel

Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There.

At the time of recording,

the word "found," above, was replaced with "saw."

[Transcript]

Hello, everyone. Mr. Karl, here. Last night, Governor Whitmer issued an order for very nearly all Michiganders to stay home and stay safe for the next three weeks. Most of us have been in relative isolation for the last week already, and no doubt this raises some anxiety—separation from friends, loved ones, and the world we knew…but then this is also an opportunity for new perspectives.

Think of this like a pilgrimage in place. You needn’t take the long walk to Santiago de Compostela or the road to Canterbury. Or brave the Burning Man of northwestern Nevada, the icy steppes of Everest or nine days on Kumano Kodo Trail in Japan. Consider what each of these things has in common…a change in perspective, some hardship, and the belief that you can endure, because you can.

Last week, I mentioned that you might look into the writings of American beat poet Jack Kerouac. He once spent 60 days at Desolation Peak in the North Cascade Mountains of Washingtons as a fire lookout. There he lived, alone, for two months in a shack, charged with keeping track of lighting strikes and radioing in the locations of forest fires. I’d like to read a brief excerpt from his travel essay “Alone on a Mountaintop.”

[Reads]

Kerouac never saw the bear, whom he called Avalokiteshvara, a being in Buddhism which postbpones it’s personal destiny in order help others on their own spiritual journeys. but, alone and without hurly burly of his old world to distract and disorient him, Kerouac took note of its signs and was open to the lessons it might have for him. He says he waited for the bear, though it never came. I wonder, did the bear come to him. Was it like the star you cannot see until you look away from it? What is your bear and what do you hope it comes to teach you? Take a moment to reflect in a page or two in your journals. You might even share a line of it with us here. I’m eager to hear your thoughts.

Until then, Stay strong, stay healthy, and stay creative. We’ll see you online.