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Boiling Peanut Butter and Other Life Lessons By Jim Kelly '74G

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TThis all happened a long time ago. Back when empathy, out of the blue, got hot, got fashionable. Remember? Anyway, this all happened back then.

Here's how the interview started. The very questions. Made me wonder if I really did want to be a teacher.

Is wilderness wise? Do trees talk? Can bees, moss and rainbows teach us everything we need to know? Should we care about others? Are there lessons, crucial, life saving lessons, if we'd only open our eyes, open our minds, to be had from a closer look at ferns, stumps and blueberries? When was the last time you lifted a finger to help a stranger?

Sidney, the guy asking all the questions, had a theory: empathy done right, done his way, was going to revolutionize teaching.

That's where the interview came in. Apply if you've never taught a day in your life but want to the ad said. Also, must have had a variety of jobs, more the better.

Sidney was hand picking 12 would-be teachers to test his theory, prove himself right.

"Shitty jobs" he said , "tell me about shitty jobs you've had. Shittier the better. Jobs that made you want to puke. Jobs that made your skin crawl and clocks stop. Give me symptoms. Make me feel as trapped in those dead end jobs as you did."

If he picked me I'd get a stipend. Not much, but more than the nothing I had in the bank just then.

Figuring that a puny paycheck was better than no paycheck I gave the man what he wanted, shit job symptoms galore.

The whole time I knew him Sidney was never very far from a ball point pen or a legal pad. The man took notes constantly, furiously. Filled eight pages easy on my interview alone.

For all that writing though he never once let us read any of it, see what he was taking down, leaving out. He liked to keep us in the dark, keep us guessing.

To this day I don't know why he picked me, which shitty job or cluster of gripes put me over the top, gave me that extra little edge. He didn't offer so I'll never know.

Training kicked off with a week to "learn about learning" in the wilds of northern New Hampshire.

We all met at a grocery store parking lot near the college at six in the morning then followed Sidney straight north. Three or four hours later we stopped at a rocky little pull off at the base of a mountain.

After we got all the boxes and bags of provisions and gear out of Sidney's van he told us what was what for the week.

"One thing your acceptance letters didn't say is that sacrifice is an important part of this program. How will you ever know what a struggle it is for some people to learn unless you struggle too? That's what this week is all about. You sacrifice, you struggle, you learn about learning the hard way. My rules are simple. You smoke, you have to quit. Cold turkey, no exceptions. You drink coffee, tea or pop to get yourself going in the morning, you have to quit. Also, no sweets, chips or junk food allowed. You with me? Good, let's get this stuff sup to the cabin."

The cabin was at the top of a steep, rocky trail. The main room had eight or nine beat up picnic tables spread around, a fireplace and, at the far end of the room a kitchen. We had a wood stove for cooking, sulfur ripe well water for drinking and a strip of nailed down tin for food prep.

Up a set of split log stairs was the sleeping room. It was long dark and empty. Inch thick, wood smoke ripe pallets were spread around for our comfort. Two dim bulbs, one at one end of the room, one at the other offered what little light there was to be had.

Beans were a constant in our diet so the one outhouse we all shared was in steady demand.

Bathing was supposed to happen in a snow melt stream out back. None of us bathed.

Sidney started right off by dividing us up into teams. Each team, by turns, took care of meals. Each day, morning and afternoon, teams had to teach a lesson outside using our surroundings to make whatever points we cared to make.

"Debrief" Sidney explained, "debrief is essential. We will debrief each evening until we get consensus on what we have learned about learning, about teaching and about life."

All of us knew this or that about nature. Bits and pieces. Nothing certain, systematic or worth putting out as a lesson. So, we lied. Made things up. Improvised lessons from half remembered nonsense we'd read, heard or thought we'd read or heard.

This was exactly what Sidney was hoping for. Gave him plenty of fodder for the nightly debrief.

"What did it feel like" he'd ask each evening, "trying to teach a subject you didn't know anything about? And students, can you remember anything you were taught today? One single thing?"

"I picked each and every one of you because you've all had shitty jobs. You know in your guts what it feels like to be trapped, to despise what you are being forced to do."

"What if a class you were teaching made a kid feel as trapped and crazy as the shittiest of your shit jobs made you feel? What then?"

"Maybe its Math class if you never quite caught on how to multiply, divide or do decimals. Maybe, if you were born with two left feet, its Gym class. How about Spanish, French or Speech if you stutter, if you're shy?"

"And maybe, just maybe this subject they hate, this subject they can't stand, maybe its your subject. The subject you love. Subject you are up in front of them rattling on and on about. Then you see it. See it in their eyes, see it all over their faces. They'd rather be hung, shot, stabbed or ripped in two by sharks than spend one more second trapped there in your class, in your subject. What then?"

"Do you just keep talking, saying things nobody cares about, things nobody is listening to? Do you just pretend that nothing is wrong? Pretend and keep talking? If you do you'll fit right in because that's what nine out of ten teachers today do all the time."

"But what might happen, what just might happen if you quit talking? If you shut up and tried to feel what they were feeling? What then?"

"What if you tried a little empathy right then, right there? Saw what they were seeing, felt what they were feeling? What a blooming, what a blossoming, in you, in them might break loose, break free?"

By debrief at the end of day three what was blooming and blossoming wasn't empathy. It was a congress of stinks.

Our mouths were mossy and our hair lank. We were itchy and twitching, our clothes dirt stiff, sweat stiff. We smelled of BO and wood smoke, burnt onions, burnt beans, mildew and damp.

Day four brought a surprise. Sidney had arranged for two professional rock climbers to take us out for an "extreme learning experience." In the morning they would rope us in, give us helmets and walk us through how to climb straight up a sheer rock face. Then, in the afternoon, they'd have us all repel down the same rock face with nothing but empty air below us.

Me, I'm terrified of heights. Always have been. And this long standing fear of mine that can make me suddenly shake and shiver, blink and cry, its just fine with me. I have it, I know it and I avoid heights. Simple as that.

So when I froze on the rock face that morning, nine or ten feet up, it wasn't unexpected. I'd told Sidney and I'd told the guides that I was terrified of heights. That I didn't want to climb up or hop down a mountain.

Sidney, when they eventually talked me down, was delighted. Convened a debrief on the spot.

"What did it feel like up there, hanging on for dear life?"

"It scared the shit out of me. I thought I was going to die. Fall and die."

"Team? What's the lesson here? What's the learning?"

Sidney filled page after page while everybody but me put in their two cents worth. Agreement all around that fear and terror put a definite crimp in listening and learning.

When everybody but me had climbed up I hauled the rest of the gear, the bag of granola for lunch and followed one of the rock climbers up a steep walking trail.

After lunch Sidney and the guides convinced me that I needed to "confront my fears, give it another try."

There was a brief bit of rock shelf with a boulder in the center. One guide had a rope around the boulder while the other guy made it fast hundreds of feet below.

Everybody agreed that I shouldn't go first. I should watch one person repel down, get the hang of it, but not wait too long, wait and maybe loose my nerve.

The first person up was a tiny woman with big glasses. They had her in a rope harness around her waist. She didn't want to do it, did not want to walk backwards over a cliff. Didn't want to and said so.

More talking. Talk, talk, talking. Another on the spot debrief.

Still shaky after all the talking she finally agreed. Agreed so long as the guy who'd be playing the rope out assured her that she would not, could not fall. Would not get hurt, had no chance whatsoever of getting hurt. And, her last demand, that he talk her through every move, every single move, start to finish.

Next in line, I was standing as far back as I could get, a helmet on my head, a rope sling knotted around my waist.

One second she had baby stepped, backwards, to the edge of the cliff, stopped on command and asked what to do next. How to begin to repel down the rock face, out over infinity. Then she was gone. Empty space, shrieks of terror, her booted feet hopping in and out of view.

When they hauled her, weeping and moaning, up onto the rock ledge and safety I had long since torn myself free of the helmet and rope sling.

Sidney, ball point and pad at the ready, convened yet another empathy huddle, another on the spot debrief.

Twice a coward, I was the subject. The woman who'd just been saved was left to her despair. She could not, just then, form words.

Now I don't know about you, about when, for you, enough is enough, is too much. Evening debrief after my two rock climbing humiliations did it for me.

Mud streaked and itchy, twitching in our sweat stiff clothes, we sat cross legged on the floor of the cabin awaiting Sidney's lead off question.

"Jim" he asked, looking my way, "what did you learn about learning today?"

"Sidney, I learned that hanging my sorry ass off the side of a mountain scares the shit out of me. That and nothing more."

I stood then and made my pungent, silent way up the split log steps to my stinky pallet. Stinky pallet, silence and sleep.

I slept late the next morning. Slept through breakfast. Lolled on my pallet until everyone had left for the morning lesson in the wild.

Then and only then I rooted out my least stiff socks and pants, my least stinky shirt, dressed and ambled downstairs.

I had, for company, two options.

Sidney, who'd sprained an ankle rock climbing, had his bad foot propped up on a pillow. He was sitting at a picnic table back by the kitchen. He was writing on one of his legal pads.

By the front door was silent Scott, the only local in our hand picked crew. A good rock climber and a guy who'd said next to nothing at all our debrief sessions, he was doing something with a backpack.

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