Book Review: THE WATER IS WIDE by Pat Conroy

The Water Is Wide by Pat Conroy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I stumbled across Pat Conroy's THE WATER IS WIDE on sale at Fully Booked a few years ago (a well-spent P50!), but then misplaced it until a teacher recommended it. (Thank you Sir Jaime!) Dug it up from the (literal) TBR pile and tada!

Pat Conroy wrote this tender book about the year he taught underprivileged African-American students in an island cut off from the rest of civilization, where students could not recite the alphabet and did not know what a highway was. And this was in the '70's! And it was a WILD year, filled with such struggle, but such truth and joy. His anger for the broken educational system was very evident, as was  his love for his pupils which shone brightly through the text.

It is, I think, a fitting book to read on the eve of the official start of this (still) young teacher's 13th year in education. And what a historic year we face!!

There's something very special about reading books by and about fellow teachers. It puts us in direct contact with like minds and hearts, fellow do-gooders whose struggles and triumphs so closely mimic our own. 

I smile to recall how I started out, twelve years ago. To quote Pat Conroy, "we wanted to do so much, wanted to be small catalysts in the transformation of the disfigured sacramental body..."

This year will be a historic one. A generation from now, books will be written about the year that teachers the world over had to go digital. I suppose we Filipino teachers should count ourselves lucky compared to our counterparts abroad, because we had a few months to train ourselves for the big adjustment.   

Pat Conroy wrote that "Like other teachers, I failed. Teaching is a record of failures. But the glory of teaching is in the attempt." With all due respect to Mr. Conroy, this is where I disagree.

We CANNOT fail. Failure is not an option because there is simply too much at stake now. Like Mr. Conroy, we teachers believe that whatever hope for the country that is yet to come, will come from the children. The next generation whose minds we now mould, whose hearts we heal (whether asynchronously or synchronously).

It is an imperfect system. There will be challenges, that is a given. But I'm confident that we in the field are more than prepared to meet them head on. We know how to learn, and therefore, we can learn to adapt to almost anything life throws our way. We've faced life-threatening disasters in our classrooms and dealt with each one calmly and efficiently, we can do the same now. We've worked in less than ideal conditions, with constraints ranging from physical afflictions to financial limitations, and we've transcended all of them. Because we teachers don't let anything stop us from fulfilling our mission.

Pat Conroy summed it up well. He hoped to pass on his philosophy to his pupils at Yamacraw Island, South Carolina: "Life was good, but it was hard; we would prepare to meet it head on, but we would enjoy the preparation."

The past two weeks of dry runs and orientations were not easy, but we enjoyed the preparation. And tomorrow, the official start of SY 2020 begins!

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