In “Themes for English B,” a teacher ponders the nature of meaningful learning, both in and beyond the classroom. J.D. Scrimgeour contrasts his Ivy League education to the experiences of his students at a small public college in a faded, gritty New England city.
Scrimgeour’s obligations to his students and his hopes for them glance off each other and sometimes collide with the realities of the classroom. Is there too great a student-teacher divide? Can Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, or any other writer Scrimgeour teaches have something to say to a single mother with a full course load, two jobs, a sick kid and a broken car? Yes, it turns out, and it is magic when it happens.
The pupil inside the teacher emerges when Scrimgeour finds unexpected occasions for his own ongoing education. Pickup basketball games at a local park become exercises in improvisation, in finding new strengths to compensate for age and injury. His collaboration on a word-and-movement performance piece with a colleague, a dancer mourning the death of a beloved niece, leads him into unfamiliar creative terrain.
Each memory, each encounter, forces revisions to a life’s lesson plan. Scrimgeour’s essays offer clear-eyed yet compassionate accounts of the trials of learning.
