Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A couple of years ago, I read this quote by that great American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

The heights by great men reached and kept

were not achieved by sudden flight,

but they, while their companions slept,

were toiling upward in the night.

I was struck by the beauty of this stanza and the message in its simplicity. Two years ago, on the first day of school, I threw it up on the board in front of my students, one line at a time, for discussion. It seemed to me to not only have a great application for personal use, but to also have a great significance in the classroom. We live today in a world of immediacy, where instant access to people or information can be gained by a mouse click or text message. We want things now, and we expect them now. We deserve them, no? I know I fall prey to this too. Silly, I know, but if I get irritated when my laptop takes a minute or two longer to load than it should, how much worse is it for my students, who do not know a world without such technology?

Longfellow, though, seems to have been on point, with a continual lesson for me and my students. These "heights" or personal successes of these great men were not instantaneous. They never will be. For me to succeed as a teacher, as an individual, and for my students to succeed in their learning, it's going to take a lot of work on both our ends, and a lot of toiling upward in the night.