As I was listening and viewing Swoon’s incredible work on the streets, in the ocean, and in Haiti, I kept thinking….She exemplifies what we teach our students on our best days: imaginative tinkering, inventive citizenship, synthesizing worlds, joyful collaboration, agency, chutzpah, and compassion.
And I kept thinking about what she said in the beginning…When I was 10 years old my mom signed me up for an art class and suddenly I knew that that was the space where I knew I could be safe and be myself. Swoon’s teacher in that class isn’t famous, but her work was absolutely part of “the growing good of the world” and her effect on Swoon was “incalculable.” I don’t expect us to have hidden lives or rest in unvisited tombs, but this quote by George Eliot keeps me cognizant of the significance of our choice of the profession of teaching.
“And Dorothea..she had no dreams of being praised above other women. Feeling that there was always something better which she might have done if she had only been better and known better, her full nature spent itself in deeds which left no great name on the earth, but the effect of her being on those around her was incalculable.
For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts and on all those Dorotheas who live faithfully their hidden lives and rest in unvisited tombs. (George Eliot, Middlemarch)