As teachers, if we are honest with ourselves, we would admit that we hardly break the ice before we launch into our lessons. What is uppermost in our minds is syllabus coverage, contact time and if conscientious enough, clarifying grey areas the previous lesson failed to illuminate in the minds of our students. By that token of reasoning, once the bell rings us into class, we focus on the core business of teaching.

What we fail to remember is that students may have been through brain-racking sessions.If it’s in the middle of the school day - or if they are day students, they may have come through the city’s heavytraffic and as such may not be as alert as we would have them by the time we state our learning intentions. How about us teachers? As so called custodians of knowledge and masters in our subject areas, we often assume that grand posture in front of the class and teach without having created the platform for our students to feel at ease; and give of their best which would in turn, facilitate our roles.

Sometime this term, I had to teach a twentieth century poem entitled “Cambodia” by James Fenton. For those who know it, the piece is as difficult as it is elusive but when put in context, and the class pumped up; there is such a latitude of meaning with various interpretations and viewpoints that can be harvested.

“Hey Zuriel!” I began, perhaps with the thought of the Boeing 727Allied Air once sprawled by the El-Wak stadium lingering in my mind:

“If a plane crashed on the Iran-Iraqi border where do you think the survivors would be buried?”

 Of course his face lit up since he knew I wasn’t on the war path of poetry and in the same breadth he pursed his brow to solve this. I had got him put on his thinking cap, but he needed to wear it properly.

“And imagine if they were Muslims sothey would need to be buried ASAP!”.

 “I think they should be buried right in the middle!”

 “No”, rejoined another.

 “Maybe a couple should be buried in Iran and the rest in Iraq.”

“Good guys – but survivors don’t get buried they get treated!”

“Oh! Yes! Oh my God! It’s true, that was a good one.”

“What would you do, Hilary, if after a long flight from Jo’burg to Sydney you went into a bistro and found the captain of the flight in a dress sipping a cocktail?”

“O sir! But men do not wear dresses?”

“Of course they don’t.” I confirmed.

 “Maybe he had some gay tendency and was only expressing it by wearing a dress.”“Any more thoughts on this?”

“Yes Sir, I would offer her another drink. The Captain is a woman and flying is not the preserve of men.”

“Excellent!” I boomed. This response was not clouded by women being the weaker sex, nor had any qualms about the male chauvinist lording it over the women folk in a patriarchal society. Her thinking had obviously overleapt gender and place. Perhaps she had read about female pilots in the Israeli army who flew sophisticatedfighter jets.

In the first riddle, suffice it that the answer was wrong, I give him credit for the thought processes. Yes bury some in Iran and others in Iraq, shows a certain objectivity which seeks to reconcile variables in a conflicting situation and tighten an argument. The one who advocated for the middle was equally smart. The response was non-committal and valid.

Coming back to my poem, like the two riddles which broke the ice, they may have sounded difficult but really they were not. The class just needed to be attentive. In the case of the plane crash, focusing on the word ‘survivors’ was all they needed to do. In the second one, “captain” and “pilot” may be uncommon for a woman but in Literature, like the student demonstrated, you cannot afford to pigeon-hole your thinking. In a nutshell, “Cambodia” with its end stopped rhyming couplet stanzas has one like:

“One man shall live to regret /Four men shall pay the debt” was tackled boldly in ways that I had not anticipated. We lost contact time that day, but the motions we went through prepared the ground for a rewarding exchange of views.

Richard Laryea: Director, Resource Link Centre – An Academic Support Facility resourcelinkcentre@gmail.com