(image from Vivio World)
The teenage years are confusing and difficult for everyone, but I think mine were compounded by my struggles with a lack of religious identity. I guess I would have characterized myself as agnostic back then (or at least my understanding of the word at the time...that I had serious questions about the existence of God, but I just wasn't sure). I spent most of my teen years thinking I was one of very few people in the world who felt this way...I felt very isolated and alone in the community (even if much of that feeling was caused by my own perceptions).
One of the many things I am grateful to my parents for is that we were raised in an environment where it was okay to ask questions about ANYTHING. Even the existence of God. We had Bibles in our house, alongside books of Zen-inspired poetry and Yoga texts; crosses next to miniature Buddha statues and ankh pendants. We listed to Ravi Shankar records alongside Genesis, Neil Diamond, and The Beatles. We didn't have money for a lot of vacations, but when we DID go places, they were focused on venues like The Museum of Man and Nature in Winnipeg, various zoos, tours of historical sites, planetariums, and the like. My parents made our home environment a very rich one, and great value was placed on learning and asking questions.
It stood in stark contrast to what I felt and learned in school. Remember the Bible school teacher I mentioned before? She taught me there were certain questions that were "not nice" to ask. And I was a good kid--a really good kid. I prided myself on being nice and doing what my teachers and other adults told me to do. I remember feeling completely humiliated and embarrassed because I had, in my innocence, just asked a question that was "not nice."
Something similar happened when I was in High School. I was in a home economics class, and our teacher, Mrs. B, was talking about heaven and the afterlife, etc. I asked an honest question, wondering how we know these things. She grew visibly agitated, and sounded angry as she snapped an answer back at me. I realize now that she was responding from emotion, as she told me about how she refuses to believe that her mother, who died before her kids were born, didn't get a chance to meet her own grandsons. She let me know, both verbally and with nonverbal cues, that I had just asked another one of those questions that was "not nice"; not okay. I remember feeling embarrassed and shocked...I didn't think my innocent question deserved an angry, hurt response and complete shutdown.
Talking to my dad was a huge help for me. Knowing that he felt much the same way as I did, and was willing to talk about it, was really my saving grace (for lack of better terminology)! My home was my intellectual safe haven; the place where it was okay to ask questions and explore. The one other place I felt like that was in Mr. T's classroom (no, not THAT Mr. T!).
Mr. T was my 7th and 10th grade Biology teacher, as well as my 12th grade Physics teacher. I looked forward to his class every day. He encouraged us to explore and learn outside of what the book had to say. EVERY question was okay to ask. His room was filled with jars of dead things and aquariums whose walls were so covered in algae you couldn't see what was inside them. They were just asking to be scraped and viewed under a microscope (which we did often), to explore a tiny universe of protozoans in a jungle of seaweed. There were sunny days in the spring where he'd declare we were having class outside. Some days we'd walk to a nearby slough and just spend the hour exploring. I was filled with wonder, and I felt completely in my element. He was the kind of teacher I'd wish for my kids to have (but the kind of teacher that, sadly, is going extinct thanks to "standards-based education" and "No Child Left Behind"). Mr. T's classes were like a refuge to me in an otherwise boring school day.
Unfortunately, not many kids had the same love for Mr. T's class as I had. They thought his classes were "too hard," and they thought he was "really weird." When a student would ask him a question, he wouldn't just answer...he'd make the student talk it through until she found the answer herself. I found that approach challenging and empowering (he often told us, "See? You know...you just don't KNOW you know!"...something I found myself echoing to my own students when I taught science years later). Other students felt like he was ridiculing them by putting them on the spot instead of just giving them the answer.
Mr. T was also an outspoken religious skeptic...and that made him pretty unpopular, too. I remember the kids talking about it. And I remember making a mental note to keep my mouth shut about my own beliefs. At the same time, I was silently his biggest fan (I told him so years later, just a year before he tragically died of a heart attack and complications from bypass surgery at age 56). I still miss him and think of him with admiration as my first scientific mentor.
I graduated Valedictorian of my senior class, gave a speech that a "nice girl" would give, and bit my tongue as we sat through the sermon during Baccalaureate/Commencement (I attended a public school, but it was standard to hold a church service during high school graduation). I couldn't wait to move on to the next phase of my life...I felt like I was escaping! I couldn't wait to explore the world, and I had a great springboard for it. I had been accepted to a 4-week summer program called National Youth Science Camp in West Virginia (more on that later). I was about to board a plane for the first time in my life, and see something other than the plains of North Dakota and Manitoba. I had no idea what to expect, but I was excited and ready!
No comments:
Post a Comment