My favorite character is Odysseus of Ithaca. Thirty years ago, as a wide-eyed student in Jesse Mann's Moral Development course, surrounded by National Champion Hoyas basketball players, in the company of students with summer homes in the Hamptons, from the back of the room, a virtual nobody, I made a bold proclamation: There are no heroes, only heroism. Odysseus embodies the same no hero concept that I have wrestled with since navigating past the Scylla and Charybdis that was Williamsburg Junior High School in Arlington, Virginia. After 30 years of love and strife and character development, in response to Jesse Mann's prompt, "That's really interesting, please explain?" I am finally ready to brew a narrative that can be poured into a cup, enjoyed like any good cup of Joe, and reflected upon. That I have only just begun to put pen to paper is of little consequence, since to the tune of "For Those About to Rock" by AC/DC, I can hear my muse calling out to me in perfect harmony, "are you ready?"
For far too many children, to step into a post No Child Left Behind Classroom is to understand the meaning of Dante's most famous line: "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." Dante, one of Homer's most prolific poetic descendants, deconstructed the false notion of no hope, giving flesh to the concept, consider the source, holding up for ridicule and scorn a parade of dramatic foils who pridefully made bold proclamations from various circles of Hell. After a 10 years odyssey in education, having heard loud and clear the message that I had been banished to the hinterlands because of overweening pride, having boasted ostentatiously about poking the Cyclops in the eye, I get a feeling that the winds have changed, that I have been forgiven of my trespasses, and I will soon be allowed a safe passage, and a home in education in a local middle school.
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