Seeing the Light Come On

Fox News item had an item this week about a 41-year-old teacher who has left his family to live with a senior girl from his school. Sickening story...

Well, this past week I've been teaching the Romantic poets in senior English. Now this may seem heretical to the English purists among us, but this is my least favorite topic. It just seems like men who have time to sit around looking at fields of daffodils all day need to get a day job, or volunteer with Meals on Wheels or something. And I haven't been able to get too excited about the west wind, or Grecian urns, either. I hope that admission doesn't ruin me with any of my readers... :-)

However, the Fox News story came out last week just as we were finishing up Shelley, and if you know his story you know that he left his wife to live with a young girl and then had the audacity to ask the wife (who later committed suicide) to join them! Completely "romantic" in the sense that they were completely driven by their desires and wants, not by their heads or by any moral compass. I tried to make the point but could tell that it wasn't registering. Until I remembered that news story and put it up on the screen. The man's words were "We knew we were hurting a lot of people but we had to follow our hearts." Bingo. Paydirt. You could see the lights coming on as they saw the parallels.

And that made teaching the Romantic poets rewarding this year!