Circe

I just got back from a vacation during which I read Circe, by Madeline Miller.

It’s a great book. I highly recommend it.

How is it

relevant to teachers,

though?

In this way: The story traces Circe’s growth and development: from her childhood, when she was neglected by her narcissistic father and ruthlessly bullied by her mother and siblings, to her final escape from exile on the island where Odysseus and his men encountered her in The Iliad. The story is psychologically convincing, which is so pleasurable given the fact that Circe is mythical.

Meaning that she is, as all mythological figures are,

archetypal.

She shows us ourselves. And our students.

To me, Circe’s development reveals what it’s like to be traumatized and undernourished as a child. What such a person does as a child and what such a person does as an adult. How isolating trauma can be and how natural it is for people to respond to their isolation in sometimes self-undermining and destructive ways.

How essential it is for such a person to find models, to be loved, seen, and listened to by others so such a person can correct the contortions neglect, bullying, and other trauma made necessary. So such a person can become the best person they can be.

Teachers, in my mind, are those others. Those models who can help students correct their maladaptive contortions.

And, to me, teachers are those people who need to be loved, seen, and listened to so they, too, can self-correct and be the best people they can be.

It is not easy to work on oneself. It is not easy to find models who will care for you. But, in a world — a real world, not a mythical one — where neglect, bullying, and endless sources of trauma are running rampant, this work is

mandatory.

Circe had to wait on her island to see who landed on her shores. We don’t have to wait. We can get to work on ourselves now.