Celeste Conway

One of my ancestors of wisdom and heart is a student whom I’ll call N.K. He was in my Introduction to Literature class in 2015, and I still smile when I think of him. He thought everything was funny, even Oedipus the King. In a class in which nobody had much to say, he had to bottle up half his hilarious observations because, in addition to being smarter than everyone else, he was also socially aware and too kind to monopolize every discussion. He had both wisdom and heart and an inspiring sense of the absurd, also needed in teaching.
Another ancestor of heart, if not wisdom, was another student from another year. A. became emotionally lost in every story and poem to the point where she would often burst into tears. During a segment on poetry, she agreed to bring in some of her own poetry. She had set the poems to music, which she played on the world’s tiniest ukelele. I smile when I think of her too. The chorus of one song, which she sang in an angelic voice—and which everyone soon joined in with— was “Ooooh, you are so f_ed up. Why are you so f__ed up?”
And there is also the ancestor, a student from a non-Western culture, who inadvertently offended some of the women in class during a discussion. On the advice of his father and uncle, with whom he lived, he showed up to the next class with an apology and a red rose for every woman in the class. He inspired me with his heart and his openness to the wisdom of his elders, even though the high gallantry of his gesture was like a flip side of the perceived insult.
My joy and love of teaching come from the students with whom I cross paths and who teach me all the time through their perceptions, culture, and ways of being.