Words of Love and Beauty Amid Lessons in Life’s Tough Realities

I had just finished reading Lord Byron’s “She Walks in Beauty” to my students when I saw the Ventura County Sheriff’s bomb squad appear outside my classroom window. We were starting a unit on love poetry and my students had come to class that day prepared to read the love poems they had written.

Instead, they peered out the window and read the words, “EXPLOSIVES--STAY CLEAR 100 FEET,” written in red across a vehicle parked just a few yards from our room. Looks of alarm registered on every face; exclamations of “Oh, my God!” echoed throughout.

“Are we more than 100 feet away?” asked a shaky voice.

“Yes, we’re fine,” I said in my most convincing tone. “I’m sure administration has everything under control.”

Then our principal’s soothing voice came over the public address system, reassuring us that “the rumors circulating around campus are being addressed” and that we should “stay in our classrooms until further notice.”

This was not a drill. Those guys out there really were from the bomb squad.

As I surveyed the room full of children trying hard to be brave, disguising their fear under the cover of nervous laughter, I felt ill-equipped to handle what could turn into a very dangerous situation.

“I’m an English teacher for cryin’ out loud!” I thought to myself. “I’m a whiz at redlining dangling modifiers and explicating poems--but bombs? No way!”

But there I was with 35 students trapped inside a classroom, watching officers in protective gear go into action outside our window. One girl in the back row fell into quiet tears as the scene unfolded. Those students seated nearest gently helped her regain composure. To their credit, my students behaved beautifully. Despite their fears and mine, we pressed on with our lesson.

*

One by one my students came up to the lectern and read their love poems to the class. Inside the flimsy confines of our classroom, their voices sang out their gentle, innocent notions of love:

“I want to hear your voice, the sweetest sound. I want to see your face, the loveliest sight. I want to feel your touch, so safe. I want our eternal souls to embrace.”

Outside, an officer, unrecognizable beneath his protective suit, used a long pole to carefully lower a bag into a blast-containment drum. Once the suspicious item was safely stowed, the bomb unit gingerly drove off and we were given the all-clear bell.

Fortunately, the bomb turned out to be a hoax. But the fear, I assure you, was real. My students left my classroom safe but I’m not sure how sound. After all, I only had a pair of wobbly knees and a book of poetry to shield them from the danger.

“How pathetic,” I chided myself. “In a real crisis, you’d be worse than useless!”

As I continued to berate myself, I suddenly envisioned that foolish old romantic Don Quixote, and I took courage.

*

Tomorrow is another day and I have truth and beauty yet to teach. But don’t worry, I’m well armed with Shakespeare, Blake and the sisters Bronte:

“No coward soul is mine, No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere: I see Heaven’s glories shine, And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.”