Thoughts on Reading, Teaching, and The Prophet by Khalil Gibran

I keep finding myself planning my units around my own literary obsessions. With the unique schedule of my school (shout out four day weeks), I do not have the same time with students as teachers in most other schools. I like to stop and think: what do my kids need to read next?

Selfishly, I like to think I am well read, but I struggled finding motivation to read my whole life. I remember sitting down and pretending to read the words to The Hunger Games when I was in the seventh grade. My teacher was a friend of my mom (something that I learned quickly had its own pros and cons), and my mom always knew when I was behind on work or if there was a big project coming up.

With the hindsight of a teaching degree, I recognize the thoughtfully implemented methods of Penny Kittle, Kelley Gallagher, and other authors of seminal works on literacy and English education. What I now admire and aspire to be, was, at the time, what felt like a punishment. I was a kid who hated reading in a class with a teacher who wanted to to instill a love of reading in all students. Woof.

Now, as a licensed English Language Arts teacher, I see it all from a different perspective. It is also strange and embarrassing to admit that I still find it difficult to muster the motivation to read. The job title instantly makes me seem smarter than I am, but that is likely just the imposter syndrome and self doubt.

All of this is to say that when I sit and think about what my kids need to read next, I approach the question as a (likely reluctant) reader myself.

For this quarter, I settled on a favorite work of mine by a poet named Khalil Gibran.

When I was 18-years-old and as unsure of myself as I was self confident, I would wander my local Barnes & Noble. A few months previous, my dad handed me a copy of The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. I carried it around with me as I studied it. I recognize the message being sent (or the message I took from it), but that book changed my life. People would stop and talk to me about it. I found connection in that book. But when I finished it, I was lost. I did not know what to read next. I needed more.

So, what does any kid who refused to read as a kid do to find a book? Google. I went down a rabbit-hole likely started by a Google search along the lines of: books like the alchemist. I remember being overwhelmed by lists but I kept seeing a book titled: The Prophet. Eventually, I found my way to B&N with some friends, and I learned how to find that book.

I grabbed it off a shelf, read the first few lines, and I was totally lost. But my ego was too big to admit to my friends that the book I was searching for was too hard for me to understand. I bought it anyways.

Over the next few months, I read The Prophet a few times, and every time I would pull some new meaning. Maybe it was the era of my life where I was fake deep and really into writing my terrible poems, but it meant a lot to me.

Even now, I find myself going back and re-reading it often. There is something comforting in the words. There is wisdom in the work.

So, what do my kids need to read right now? Something beautiful. Something meaningful. Something timeless.

Over the last few weeks, we have read many poems from the book. We have talked about commerce, charity, family, and friendships. The world seemed heavy lately, and we have spent our time reading about being kind, fair, and understanding.

Here are a few of my favorite excerpts:

• “To know the pain of too much tenderness. / To be wounded by your own understanding of love; / And to bleed willingly and joyfully.” from “On Love”
• “You may give them your love but not your thoughts, / For they have their own thoughts. / You may house their bodies but not their souls, / For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.” from “On Children”
• “And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue; / They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space.” from “On Giving”
• “And I say that life is indeed darkness ‘save when there is urge, / And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge, / And all knowledge is vain save when there is work, / And all work is empty save when there is love; / And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another,” from “On Work”
• “And before you leave the market place, see that no one has gone his way with empty hands. / For the master spirit of the earth shall not sleep peacefully upon the wind till the needs of the least of you are satisfied.” from “On Buying and Selling”
• “Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.” from “On Pain”
• “The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness. / If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.” from “On Teaching”

This perfect work of literature has yet to let me down. You should check it out if you haven’t read it yet.

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