Teaching Learning; Learning Teaching

Why This Horror?

2010-02-15T16:13:00.000-08:00

It’s a Lovecraftian question: why this un-penetrable (impenetrable) horror and from where did it arise? What does it do to the people who have knowledge of it, and what depths in their psyche spawned such terror? Students ask this question all the time, except they rephrase it: How come you have an interesting course that I can use for my liberal arts requirements? [What? Our other courses are boring? We don’t employ that riposte, but we have thought it.]

Avoiding the interesting-dull aspect which is not about literature at all, and more about the willingness to learn and grow, we put the blame on King and communication. “King!” say half the questioners. “He’s my favorite.” “King,” mutter the other half of the questioners, “he’s ruined good horror. One-plot-King.” Good teachers that we try to be, we follow-up on each line of thinking, asking for supporting details and noting that while King may or may not be everyone’s favorite writer, he’s certainly made the subset of horror more visible. He was also the impetus for creating the course.

The reader for our English 1 course has been for time immemorial (doesn’t this sound Lovecraftian?) Models for Writers. Faithfully, they create a new edition; faithfully we grumble about changing texts and the student grumble about not being able to resell their books. Consistently, they also grumble about many of the readings, with the general exception of King’s essay “Why We Crave Horror Literature.” We want catharsis, King argues, and we also need the counterbalance of horror to keep us civilized. Our students anticipate that essay (What? A good read?) and were mostly disappointed that it was literary analysis rather than a rollicking bloodbath. “This is what we do in English 2,” we said, “we read good stories and then analyze them.” They sniffed. Their discussions though were eager commentaries on their favorite gore and horror, as they dodged the critique and analyze aspect of King’s essay in favor of the specific examples (body count, blood baths and rephrasing of villains).

That student enthusiasm was a major theme in our teacher-walk-and-talk discussions when Tom and I would argue our favorite readings and our current semester students. “We should have a course just in horror literature; the students would love it,” I said. But it was easier proposed than accomplished.

Department Approval

2010-02-07T08:06:00.000-08:00

Offering a new course means meeting the many requirements the department, the school, the state have in place to safeguard quality of education and their own interests in education. We needed to balance our desire to offer a student-enticing course with the department’s desire to have courses fill, with our colleagues desire not to have our course fill at the expense of theirs, with the state regulating office’s edict to maintain standards and level of instruction.
Getting all these departments, divisions, and individuals to agree is not easy.
Our first task was to get discussion for the course onto the department meeting agenda. We were already full-up with talk of computer carts, classroom keys, enrollment, artifact assessment, how to committee the department, the Sunshine Fund, and training classes. The department spent forty-five minutes deploring the state of the hallways and restrooms, and trying to find a solution (physical plant denied any knowledge of dirt, or claimed they were understaffed). It took two months to get us on the agenda. Why did we need to be on the agenda? We needed to convince the department members to give us permission to develop the outline for a course. Once we had the outline, we were to come back to them for review and (we hoped) approval.
And we understood their points. Last semester, my teaching schedule was changed 7 times during the first week of classes. No instructor likes coming to the first class unprepared. No student enjoys having instructors switched out on him. The last week before the semester begins as well as the first week of the semester is a collection of cancelled classes, split classes (42 people sign up for a class; the size limit is 24), and room changes. We had all arrived at our classroom to find a note taped to the door telling us to re-locate to a room in another building. Adding a class to the offerings complicated an already stressed class master list.

How Can You Justify a Course Like That?

2010-01-31T07:26:00.000-08:00

Like what? We learned not to call it HoLit, because then people had an even different impression. The argument came down to two prongs (similar to a pitchfork). Horror is scary and fun, but definitely not literature. There are enough courses, so why offer one concentrating on horror: the things that sane people want to forget and don’t acknowledge they have.
How could we justify it? The giants of macabery had a spot (if a denigrated one) in the regular texts. Most readers have heard of Poe, and Jackson, and even Lee (Tanith, not Robert). King’s doorstop books are made into movies. We’ve seen twenty sequels to the pop horror. Ergo: if it’s popular, then it’s not necessarily a school subject. Cotton candy has no place in the cafeteria vending machines.
Some of those were laid into our arguments for offering Literature of Horror. Our main argument though, hinged on the quality of writing. Many of the masters played with ghost stories and things a bit harsher, on the side. Name a literary great, and we could offer some seamier, seedier, and more troubling examples of his writing. Not war stories, not science fiction (the Sci Fi people were worried we would trespass and made us promise never never never to use Frankenstein). In her childhood and young adulthood, Edith Wharton was terrified by ghost stories; then she began writing them. Who hasn’t heard of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”; but then Jackson made split-career-writing into her personal labyrinth of mirrors and mobs. Lots of actors move between the horror and mainstream films, though some of them are typecast in their spookier personas.

Where are the Students? Who are the Students?

2010-01-17T07:42:00.000-08:00

If we thought that the course would attract students who already lived horrific lives (abuse, divorce, no money, no time) we were mistaken. Our students were Midwestern scrubbed clean, fresh as the coffee-on-the-way-to-class could make them, and on the outside – ordinary. On the inside, once they began talking – and often they began talking before the clock hands moved to our designated start time – they were unique.
They reveled in blood and ingenuous ways to commit murder. Not the Vincent Price pendulum for them, though they analyzed its mechanics. Not the straightforward throttling or bullet to the brain: they’d seen enough of that in their early (crib? Toddler?) fascination of horror. They critiqued special effects and tossed comparisons on plot with the skill of professional reviewers. Why? They were immersed in the format, familiar with the canon of movies, and apparently buttressed from continual exposure. They analyzed plots and dissected characters with more sophistication than a college lecturer, before they rolled back to their own lives, “And then I barfed up supper. Not because I was scared, mind you, but because I was so tired and didn’t have the brains to go to bed instead of watching another flick.” They also took on some of the characteristics of the format, infrequently in appearance and often in its inflexible values.
“I wouldn’t let my child watch…” was one of their staples. “My child will not watch – until he’s – old, although when I saw it younger, courtesy my brother/sister/parents, I did just fine. But then again I had nightmares for a few years.” The caveat of, “When my child watches – for the first time, I’m going to be right there with him, keeping him feeling safe. But the lights will be out.”
King argues that one of the characteristics of horror is its old-fashioned morality. Good is good and shall be rewarded (or killed off nicely). Bad is bad and shall be condemned, to possibly rise again in a sequel. There are no characters who are humanistic mixtures of good and bad motives. Our students agreed, citing references (the pedagogues in us cheered), and added their own experiences. Stupid means early death. Blonde means hysterical, female, foolish, and early death.
Midwestern ordinary, yes – but with minds aglitter. Nick was on track to become a lawyer; Kerri wanted to work for a school in England – any school. Maybe she wanted ghosts and thought they were more plentiful there. Heidi was fascinated with the puzzles woven into horror stories. Julio compared the villains with contemporary dictators. They fought among themselves: best movie, best director, best presentation of the classic: vampire, Dracula, zombie. They argued their favorites, copied down the suggestions of others, and came to class two weeks later clutching books or touting movies.
There were a few exceptions to the normality of appearance. Dan Berkowitz had the most wonderful leather jacket, with chrome points on the epaulets. He was the one with the flame colored spray painted hair: strawberry gold at the forehead, red misted in the middle and black at the nape of the neck. Dennis wore shirts advertising the wrestling matches he had won, matches which accounted for his trouble hearing and his tendency to forget, he said. Livia had black-of-night hair and self-inked tattoos as well as earrings as elaborate as a chemistry equation. For most of them, the only sign of their fascination was a fanatical gleam in the eyes and a determined set to their mouth. No one was going to convince them that their favorites weren’t top quality horror.

Why Online?

2010-01-08T12:56:00.000-08:00

Why online is a question that’s asked much less now, than it was two or five years ago. The short answer is, Our students want online courses. The longer answer is: space, students, taxes, freedom, flexibility, and our society’s continuing fascination with the (often) ease of communication that the internet offers.
Today for example, I communicated with someone in IL, MN, and CA, as well as several more-or-less snowbound friends in other parts of my own state. Students hunting for credits are not limited to their drive or walk time: the world is open to them. By offering a course online, the school is able to enroll students from across the world, and those students are able to complete their lessons in their own time frame: while some of us are working, sleeping,or having dinner, others of us are offering ideas to the class discussion boards; and we can reply to them once we’ve done up the dishes.
Online material means that no student ever again needs to worry about losing the syllabus: it’s right there, posted into its niche in the course. It also means that the school can free up a classroom for another group: we’re reducing the average classroom energy consumption. And it means that through a link to a movie clip, website, or other piece of information, the complete Internet can be made searched for enrichment material.

There are disadvantages to online courses, some people argue. We do not have that immediate community sense: we are not all in one room, catching the idea together, sharing a joke. The instructor cannot respond in real time to a question, unless that instructor happens to be online when the question is asked. And we lose the people-to-people focus.
Online courses mean that I need to write an explanation of what I would talk through in a face to face course. How much are students willing to read? How succinctly can I explain the points? How many examples should I use? Should I refer them to the text pages, or provide examples from classroom experience? I can’t gauge their understanding of the material by watching my students’ faces, and I can’t immediately offer another example if they look puzzled – at least not until we have video screens working on our computers – and then we’d need to make sure we had combed our hair before we sat down to work.

The proponents will say that while this may be true, we have greater resources, and – as I have experienced – students are likely to become as much or even more personally involved in online courses: they share anecdotes and experiences from their lives. They recount relevant material; they even share recipes they think we would enjoy.

Why this Horror?

2010-01-03T17:01:00.000-08:00

It’s a Lovecraftian question: why this unpenetrable horror and from where did it arise? What does it do to the people who have knowledge of it, and what depths in their psyche spawned such terror? Students ask this question all the time, except they rephrase it: How come you have an interesting course that I can use for my liberal arts requirements? [What? Our other courses are boring? We don’t respond with that comment, but we have thought it.]

Avoiding the interesting-dull aspect which is not about literature at all, and more about the willingness to learn and grow, we put the blame on King and communication. “King!” say half the questioners. “He’s my favorite.” “King,” mutter the other half of the questioners, “he’s ruined good horror. One-plot-King.” Good teachers that we try to be, we follow-up on each line of thinking, asking for supporting details and noting that while King may or may not be everyone’s favorite writer, he’s certainly made the subset of horror more visible. He was also the impetus for creating the course.

The reader for our English 1 course has been for time immemorial (doesn’t this sound Lovecraftian?) Models for Writers. Faithfully, they create a new edition; faithfully we grumble about changing texts and the student grumble about not being able to resell their books. Consistently, they also grumble about many of the readings, with the general exception of King’s essay “Why We Crave Horror Literature.” We want catharsis, King argues, and we also need the counterbalance of horror to keep us civilized. Our students anticipate that essay (What? A good read?) and were mostly disappointed that it was literary analysis rather than a rollicking bloodbath. “This is what we do in English 2,” we said, “we read good stories and then analyze them.” They sniffed. Their discussions though were eager commentaries on their favorite gore and horror, as they dodged the critique and analyze aspect of King’s essay in favor of the specific examples (body count, blood baths and rephrasing of villains).

That student enthusiasm was a major theme in our teacher-walk-and-talk discussions when Tom and I would argue our favorite readings and our current semester students. “We should have a course just in horror literature; the students would love it,” I said. But it was easier proposed than accomplished.

New Year, New Project

2009-12-27T06:46:00.000-08:00

Retrospective on Education and Literature is all very well, and what we need. With this new double-digit year (2010) though, I am using the education aspect of the website to write about a project: moving a course from classroom to online. The process is not interesting to the tekkies, probably – since they have been living and talking computer talk for years, but as more and more of us classroom people are asked (expected, required) to present material not only in the classroom but also online to the classroom students, to the students whose life emergencies have kept them from attending class, and to the world, online has become a significant factor in our lives.

If I could, I would draft Julie, the über-IT, to sit by my side, or at least to be on call. Julie, with good old MN independence, would point out that I learn much more when I do it myself. Maybe I don’t want to learn more, I think rebelliously, and my self responds just as rebelliously, ‘Then whyever did you enter education.’ I am checkmated, to use a mishmash of metaphors.

Each system is different and each class requires different information: we know that already. Now, though, I need to talk with a computer to stash (shovel, throw, catapult) what was in the classroom into its logical-to-the-tekkie format. Classrooms don’t run on logic. Computers do.

With a Little Help from Our Friends

2009-12-15T04:27:00.000-08:00

B-r-r-r-r-r: the sound of the Sawzall cuts through not only concrete block wall, but also our concentration. Ta-ta-tap: someone’s hammer tattoos the wall. This morning, when I left the faculty office, the door banged into lengths of aluminum and caught on a vacuum hose. “Just a minute,” said the friendly worker, as he moved things out of the way so we could go off to our classes. A metal toolchest the size of a pickup truck bed sits next to the door; a stack of fiberglass panels lies at the hallway juncture; a rack of brightly colored insulated wire waits to dispense its wares. The restroom is temporarily closed.

It’s lucky we weren’t barricaded into the offices because this is final exam week: students come to class frowning as they balance notes in their hands and thoughts in their heads. We come into the classrooms with crisp papers clipped into a pack, and leave with sheaves of hand-written answers. Calculators ponder averages and students hope for good results (or in some cases, the miraculous).

In the midst of this end-of-semester, one anatomy lab is being reconfigured to provide not only body part study, but chemistry and physics lab work. What took three months to complete in Room 228, should be happening over winter break in Room 220.

In theory, the liberal arts classrooms escape the technological updating and remodeling. In theory works for three hours. “Do you have a cable junction box here?” the man in the stocking cap and overcoat asks. I look up from grading exams and the students still writing theirs concentrate more fiercely on the thoughts they are putting on paper. “I don’t know,” I answer, hoping he will go away. Is any exam safe from disruption? “I’m a contractor,” he adds, looking around the room. He closes the door, but he’s back five minutes later, looking under machines and desks, moving around the students; he’s back again five minutes after that, with our IT person, discussing the frayed wires under a strip of plastic, studying the system. The students persevere.

When I come back to the offices after the first exam, the fiberglass panels have been set into place as a temporary vestibule; the tool chest and a companion occupy the hallway. I think how lucky we are. When some people can’t afford to have problems fixed, ours are being addressed. We see not only the standard wastebasket emptying and floor cleaning. Upgrades happen. Wires are mended. Labs are renewed.

The physical plant is being cared for, and the learning continues. We’re not only learning that people care about our well-being and classroom standards; we’re practicing our concentration and also learning flexibility.

Extra Credit

2009-12-06T11:27:00.000-08:00

Dear Teacher,
It’s near the end of the semester, and I’m worried about my grade. I missed a few assignments and there were some weeks I couldn’t do my assignments because I had family problems. I need to pass this class. Can you give me some extra credit to bring up my grade?

Dear Student,
You are right: we are nearing the end of the semester. In two weeks we will be writing final exams. I’m glad that you are working on your current assignments and also that you care about your course grade, because one of the best ways to earn a good grade in a course is to care about that grade.

I do not use extra credit in the course, for several reasons.
Extra credit means work beyond the required work in the course. We complete assignments each week, to practice the skills and ideas in the textbook readings and class assignments. Based on this work, a student should have accumulated over 100 individual grades – enough to create an average and result in a course grade.

In the past, some students have believed that they could ignore the required work and find extra credit work that would be fun. There are choices in each assignment; hopefully students will find some fun aspect in each assigned work.

As part of my work as teacher, I write assignments, teach about their ideas, and then grade the assignments students submit. I enjoy teaching; I spent a lot of hours each week on this job. Extra credit would mean even more hours for me: writing up assignments, explaining assignments, and grading additional papers. I would rather spend my preparation time, trying to make assignments for the complete class even better.

Keep doing your best on the assignments we are completing each week. Read the instructions carefully, ask me if you have questions about the work. Submit the work on time. In a few weeks I will begin averaging semester grades; I hope that yours average out to be what you wish.

Late Work

2009-11-29T08:29:00.000-08:00

Dear Techer,
I didn’t turn in 3 of my but it wasnt my fault. I had a family emergency. Then we had to go out of town to see my grandma. Then my friend’s computer would not print and I need to get my printer fixed but I’m working a lot of hours and can’t get my new printer until I get my work paycheck witch isn’t for another four weeks. But I want to turn in my work from last month. Because it’s not fair if I have no grade.

Dear Student,
You asked about submitting assignments 8 weeks after their deadline:
The syllabus states that all work must be submitted by deadlines. The course is built on acquiring and using skills: the ideas we practiced in week 2 are the ones we applied in the assignments for Weeks 3, and 4.

To help students understand that they needed to submit the assignments in order, so we can use the skills we learn, the syllabus states that all assignments that earn credit must be submitted on time. If I allowed you to submit work late for grade credit, I would be breaking the rules in the syllabus.

If you would like to write those assignments to practice the skills, I am willing to look at what you have done. By practicing the things we worked on in the second week in the semester, you will see improvement in your work. However, it would be unfair to the students who made time in their schedules to turn those assignments in on time, for you to earn that same credit for turning in work 8 weeks after it is due.

Those that can, do; those that can’t, teach

2009-11-08T11:05:00.000-08:00

Someone told me that comment (with a large smile) when I finished college and began teaching. It hurt then – the assumption that teachers are more fitted for talking about the greats in their field than producing in their field – and it still leaves me pondering.
I think what the critics forget is that teachers are often so busy finding great examples, inspiring people, and solid ways to teach the range of students in our classes, that when the end of our day comes, there is much less time for our own creativity. We’ve given that time and a lot of that energy to our students. We’re researched, we’ve met with parents and colleagues to devise individual lesson plans. We’re made batches of clay for tomorrow’s art project or cut out blanks of colored paper for the placards in the gym. We’ve shopped for tissue because the school supply is depleted. Instead of composing music or writing novels or creating art, we do the dishes, mop the floor, and head off to bed – tomorrow we’ll be back in the classroom, encouraging, mentoring, reading student papers, and monitoring the lunch room.
Maybe we need to re-define “do” and “teach.” We are doing: we are demonstrating commitment and artistry. Maybe we’re not applying paint to canvas or crafting a new novel each year. Yet, I would prefer to argue that those who want to spend their time for the betterment of others, are doing. We may be crafting, writing, drawing, and photographing in our spare time. We may be living novels and writing them. But we’re also sharing knowledge and our time with our students.

for Phil

2009-10-31T07:17:00.000-07:00

I can remember the ragman, walking down the alley with his refrain of “r-r-r-r-aaags, R-r-r-r-ags!” He came through the steep and pitted alley between the garages in my grandmother’s neighborhood, and collected clothing too worn to be given to charity or donated to family members. He had a cart, that I remember, and his pronunciation of the letter “R” was rich, almost foreign. The fabric lay stuffed in bags in his cart. Where did those rags go? When I asked my grandma, she said, “Good paper. Good paper is made from rags.” I learned not only where the rags went, but that there was an indisputable caste system in the world of paper.
This is perfectly appropriate, because now we have the bookmen. They come to campus about every six weeks – similar to the ragman’s scheduled wanderings down the alley – and they take our unused examination copies of texts. What do they do with them? Resell, to schools or other teachers.
They have a lancet window of time: a textbook company issues a new edition of a book every three years, making the previous edition obsolete. They used to do it more infrequently, explained the textbook rep – but the competitive market from used book purveyors is so intense, that to survive they need to reissue every three, or even every two years.
We part with our examination copies unwillingly or gladly: wary of letting go the example we could use for an exam, the favorite stories appearing in yet another edition; gladly: happy for an extra 10 inches by 7 inch space on our desks where the stack of books to be sold had sat. And we wait, sometimes months, for our favorite bookbuyers to show up. Many of us waited for Phil.
Phil was huge: wide face and wide grin, large stomach, and acres of appetite for knowledge. He talked of stories with the English teachers, formulas and applications with the chemistry teachers, historical parallels with present events with the history teachers. Each group swore he must have professional knowledge of its subject, arcane and broad levels. He did not simply buy books; he read them. The first time I talked with him, we discussed Kafka’s Metamorphosis, and I shared a comic book version that some of my students prefer. But Phil already knew Kafka’s themes and sorrows. He spoke with us as learner to learner, and when he did not come to buy books, we grieved.
Phil’s body had cancer. Phil’s spirit was finally set to wander even broader halls of books. Some of us refused to sell books to Phil’s wife and son for six months, waiting for him to return. His spirit walks our hallways, visiting schools in many cities, drawing us learning, reminding us of our community. “Phil was a builder of relationships,” says Phil’s widow. “That’s what he did best.” They link us: the delivery people, the ragman, the book buyers. Phil and his like made the circle complete.

?

2009-10-11T11:11:00.000-07:00

“From what I have read about marriage and adultery, I have discovered that although I think it’s a terrible thing, it could be justified.” ~ a student
? I ponder how large I could make the question mark indicating my astonishment and my confusion. What? What’s terrible? Marriage with adultery? Adultery? Marriage? Whichever we find most convenient or incomprehensible?
My writing students explain their ideas; I am left to ponder their meaning, how their meaning differs from mine, and another essential aspect of life: punctuation. As I argue to students when we are discussion punctuation: it’s important. Those little marks not only sort out our meaning, but convey our message. Punctuation allows us to know if the problem relates to the brother’s or brothers’ situation, among other choices.
I’ve written odes to semi colons, and have pondered the construction of a rubber stamp to explain the relationship of quote marks with closing punctuation. I have written illustrations on the chalkboard and their essays. Do they remember for next time? Not usually. Perhaps they believe punctuation is irrelevant (because they are busy text messaging?). Because “everyone talks now and nobody writes.” Because a starlet featured on the cover of the Sunday newspaper magazine brags how she dropped out of high school and has since won two awards (not for writing). Because punctuation too closely resembles the smudges left from papers residing too long in the bottom of a book bag?
Or maybe because life is more exciting when we can’t decipher whether it’s marriage or adultery or the combination that is terrible, and some of us just want to find out.

The best class I ever taught

2009-09-14T03:55:00.000-07:00

Every class is the best class I’ve ever had, and every class is different. Some are larger, some more talkative. Some show us their inspirations and enlightenments right there – as they happen. Some ponder quietly and it’s only later – sometimes semesters later – that people come back to tell me what happened. “Yours was the first class on my way to a law degree.” “I still remember that story we read.”

In December or spring, we leave our students – or they leave us. They’ve finished the semester. Sometimes we’re relieved, but more often we’re melancholy. By now, the classes are so much more than a roster of names.

One of the best classes was the semester I taught Women’s Lit to a group of extroverts. Nobody was afraid to share any topic, no matter how sensitive; and everyone had an opinion, no matter what the topic. They enlightened each other – usually at the tops of their voices. They used the text readings as lawyers search for support from court decisions. They began the semester despising someone else in the class, and ended it being friends – or the opposite.

We heard stories: how Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, and life collided; the influence of art and nationality on learning; how thick-headed Slavic men could be; how irrelevant gender was to attitude: the hundred opinions and experiences that made these people who they were. As they came to know and trust their classmates, they shared revelations and past pain, incredulity, and ignorance – which their classmates were happy to resolve. Should this one leave the husband she married so quickly and so much in love? What would Nick and Andre battle this week, in their science-religion war? We argued. We created a class identity, and we also created our own vocabulary.

Charlotte, with two young sons, described how a mom can become immersed in being a mom. “You lose yourself. You don’t want to, “ looking at her classmates who were not above pouncing on opinions before they were finished, “but you just get so involved in what your children need. You – you go to the left.” She wasn’t talking about political leanings; she was talking about motherhood, and for the rest of the semester, every time we talked about a mother who over-mothered, we would say in chorus, “She went too far to the left,” and guffaw in unison. Nick told us about his favorite scientist, explaining and supporting before he revealed the name. “Why did you look at me that way?” he demanded when he had finished. “Because Feynman’s also mine,” I answered. “I’ll bring in my Feynman books next week.”

We began the semester with loud arguments, in pursuit of 3 credits and a minority studies requirement. We finished the semester and went on our paths: law school, hospital operating rooms, nursing studies, the MA in business, life. When we reached summer, more than a few of us thought, ‘This was one of the best classes I have ever had.’ I was one of them.

Thought for the new school year

2009-09-07T10:24:00.000-07:00

“Final Deadline” carries the same urgency to some of our students as “This is your final notice to renew your subscription” alerts magazine subscribers. Both believe there will always be another extension, and some in each category are surprised when the last day of the semester and the last issue of the magazine arrive – without warning.

Return to School

2009-08-29T06:08:00.000-07:00

One of the abundance of gifts we receive in late August-early September, is coming back. Like Lazarus, we arise from summer somnolence or frenzy depending on our personal proclivities and our family situation, and return to our first calling: the classroom.

Every student is a potential A. Any learning experience can happen. The pencils are freshly sharpened, the chalk comes out of its box in long undented cylinders, the room smells of wax, summer afternoons, and that ever-receding horizon as we explore the subject matter we have chosen.

We’re poised on the edge of a continent – a universe. Together with our students of this semester, we turn our faces away from the placid ocean of summer lapping the soil behind us, and make our way toward that treeline on the far horizon. Learning continues.

The Books we Leave Behind

2009-08-08T12:45:00.000-07:00

Ed Weninger died, and left his books to the library. There were 107 books about vitamins, food additives, cooking without additives, cooking with stevia. There were 410 books about investing (Investing for a profit, How to profit in the coming bad times, how to get rich in real estate, how to beat the stcck market averages, unimproved land speculation). There were 300 books on prolonging life (The Time-Life Series of Life, Living Forever, How to Avoid Hypertension, Your Blood Pressure). And there were 100 or so books on abstract issues (Christianity as a Worldwide Religion, the Encyclopedia of the Occult: a 20 volume set, including witchcraft, UFOs, and Egyptian alchemy). We sorted through them, shelved them for the sale, and thought about Ed (whom we never met, but who reportedly was a nice guy).

Then we came across three books on winning community elections and one on staying elected, plus duplicate copies of The Blood of Turin and The Power of Positive Thinking.

Ed may or may not have died rich, but eventually he went to the library in the sky, leaving his purchases for other minds to ponder. Better than if all he left behind was a stack of dusty textbooks, unopened since high school.

Teenage Pregnancy

2009-07-05T09:50:00.000-07:00

It’s an epidemic, we know: more and more girls become pregnant while still in their teens, from boy-men who have little intention of marrying and settling down. It’s a breakdown of society and morals, we’re told. It’s the end of what we know, some alarmists warn.

The adult students in my class are 8 months to 18 years past that pregnancy. Some of them enroll in class just for the money; most of them enroll for the life results: credits, job and earning potential. Many of them say that while they wouldn’t necessarily make that same choice to become pregnant, they’re not sorry it happened. Early motherhood didn’t harden most of them: it solidified their values. They made choices about what was important.

“There have been days when I haven’t eaten, but I’ve always had the money to feed my children,” Susan tells us. “I’m never going to depend on a man to support us, because I’ve learned that I can’t depend on a man. There have been times I’ve worked three jobs – but I’ve always taken care of my children.” Jane comments, “Like a lot of girls I was rebellious, and became pregnant in high school. When I married the father of my child; she and I changed our last names to his, because he would not hyphenate my last name with his own. But when she graduated high school, my daughter demanded a graduation certificate with each of her last names, because she said she’s proud of her mom, and what I’ve accomplished.” Jane’s no longer with that man: she now is committed to someone who listens to her voice, and values her independence, her desire to learn, her life goals.

These mothers have learned that the fairy tale stories of their childhood: true love and a prince will come riding to rescue each maiden, can be dangerous. They know that the prince may come as a career or a dream, not as a person. Happily ever after grows from how we respond to the decisions and events in our lives. If we sit back and wait to be rescued, we might be crouching in the chimney corner for a long time. Even Cinderella put on her dancing shoes and went out to the ball.

I’m not advocating teen pregnancy; it brings heartache, deprivation, judgment, fear, and too often abuse in less than ideal relationships. I am celebrating what many of my students have made of their choices. They are in school to learn. Side by side with their children, they sit at the dining room table, doing homework. These are the ones who have kept faith: with their children, with the values they learned through life, with themselves.

Broken Hearts and Empty Seats

2009-06-14T09:04:00.000-07:00

The following is excerpted from a forthcoming book about teaching.

Or maybe it’s the opposite: Empty Seats and Broken Hearts.
Whatever the order of the phrases, they seem to accompany each other. We believe that we can’t teach unless our students are in the classroom, and for a variety of reasons, sometimes our students are physically absent.

In the words of one student, “After this semester I will no longer be welcome in any public college in this state for two years.” It may be the students’ problems (when we teach at the college level); it may be their parents’ problems (when we teach at the elementary and high school level), but wherever and whenever we teach: brick buildings, day care centers, online or weekend college, the stories and the absences from class continue to break our hearts and theirs.

Why? Wandering into every third class (late), not coming to class, forgetting to submit papers until 8 weeks past their due date, chronic illness, chronic absenteeism, chronic discipline. They’re going to do better in school after they: stop smoking, kick the drug habit, get successful on their diet, put in enough hours at work to pay the month’s rent, care for their ill children, attend the funerals of their grandmother. They have been evicted from their apartments, thrown out of their parents’ homes after weeks of friction, broken up with their fiancé, lost their job and their identities.

Like the dieter (“Just one donut”) or the inveterate channel changer (“One more round, before I turn off the set”), these students acknowledge the effects of their behavior – but they don’t change it. “I know I’m not doing well in this course,” they shrug, “But I gotta ---.” Their arguments are valid: everyone needs to eat, to have a place to live, to be satisfied in love. But their belief systems aren’t conducive to their educational goals – or maybe that’s simply our perception.

We can argue with them, take the hard line, refuse to compromise our philosophical principles. We can bend the course requirements. We can meet with them before and after school, provide boxes of Kleenex and pens to write their in-class work. But we can’t change their universe.

What you want to create, is what you will create. That’s a very hard-line stance, on one hand, because it seems to say that we are refusing to meet our students halfway. But we are not, and that’s not what it means. It means that until our students want to create that essay, that class, that diploma, we cannot force them. We can make learning as interesting, enticing, and fervent as we are able. We can listen and make accommodations as far as our beliefs will allow. We can give the students with difficulties extra time, allow them to forego a required paper with no penalty, allow them to miss more than the maximum number of class sessions. But we cannot force them to succeed in our class. We cannot force their parents to keep the students in school, when those parents are consumed with other worries.

We cannot find identities for these students, but we can assist them as they find their identities on their own. Maybe our class is not the turning point, maybe it’s another in a series that will lead to the turning point. Every one of us has been in that euphoric moment when a student has understood that puzzling concept. Every one of us hopes to be the memorable teacher for many of our students. But there are only one or two memorable teachers in a person’s life, and there are a lot of adequate or forgotten ones.

We send our concern and caring to all our students. We silently commit them to the beneficent care of our belief system, by prayer or thought or devotion. We keep the recriminations out of our mouths and the understanding look on our faces. We listen. Instead of telling them the right way to live their lives, we listen to where they are, who they are. We give them the perfect gift of acknowledging them as worthwhile people. In the end, maybe listening to them is the best gift we offer them. We believe in them as people, and as learners. That’s not such a bad thing to do.

Eat Locally

2009-05-31T13:44:00.000-07:00

I will be an even stronger supporter of Eat Locally, when the botanists develop a cacao tree that thrives in the Upper Midwest.

End of semester and MamaRobin

2009-05-16T12:53:00.000-07:00

A robin has built her next on top of the patio light fixture. For weeks we were showered by detritus: dried grass, bits of stick, thin wrappings of plastic, string. Maybe she will give up, dumb bird, we thought: the fixture top slopes sideways, to drain water. Maybe she will realize that plastic plus gravity plus unruly barking dogs don’t make a peaceful nursery. PotentialMamaBird did not. I swept away the piles of excelsior; she brought more. The nest sagged into deconstruction; she rewove it. Finally, it sat, a coil of grass and sticks with a wing bobbing length of plastic like the tail on a dumpy kite. MamaBird sat also, bright eyed and unblinking, except for the times she took fright and flight. I felt responsible for our lack of hospitality. “Don’t let the dogs bother the bird,” I would caution. “Don’t hold the door open too long; it bothers the bird.” The dogs barked with abandon. The Bird sat on her precariously shored up nest, staring at us.

After a while we saw other movement in the nest: round heads made of blob of brownish head and wide open mouth. Their mouths were larger than their heads, and bobbed up, almost creatures of their own, each time MamaBird left the nest or returned to it. How could one MamaBird keep up with such expectations? We tried to do our part: when she was tugging worms out of the grass, or snapping them into bits, we sat in the car, waiting for her to finish. We shuffled the dogs out and in with a minimum of dog noise. We stayed back from the windows, though we did peer into her incubator from a distance. The chicks sat in the nest, mouths unhinged to open to their full width, tipped toward the sky. Their mouths seemed wider than their heads, than MamaBird’s head. I would look at them, waiting, greedy, expecting and imploring, and think about the expectations of teaching. Such blind demand is terrifying. How could a mother – or a teacher – ever hope to full those wide open mouths. When will it stop?
How can we read all the texts and reference materials, read the ed journals, read and assess the student papers, maintain discipline and respect, geniality and joy? How can we meet everyone’s expectations: the students, the parents, the support staff, the administration, the public, the country, the future, our family and our own?

The answers are partly and never, or at the end of the semester/school year.

MamaRobin pushes and guides her babies out of the nest. She teaches them to fly, so that next spring while we are snuggling in our fleece jackets and watching baseball televised from the desert lots and orange groves, they can be building their own nests, and looking after their own demanding chicks. Our cycle is years longer; we worry that some of our students will never learn to fly, or nurture others (much less compose an essay free of misspellings and sentence fragments).

What keeps both of us – MamaBird and us – going is not belief that the feeding will end, but determination and faith that we will fulfill our part in the cycle. That’s all we can do. We need to trust to a larger faith: (Mother) Nature, the world, the universe, God, a Supreme Being. We need to believe in Something and Someone beyond our own nest. Then we can bring bits of knowledge and our own energy to the task, believing that what we do in our best efforts will suffice.

End of semester

2009-05-10T11:25:00.000-07:00

This week’s non-entry is dedicated to all the other teachers out there who are grading last minute submitted papers, averaging grades, writing finals, grading finals, averaging semester grades, and listening patiently to the 100th student’s repetition of “sick grandmother” as a viable reason for not producing (work, not grandmother).

It’s an educational belief that grease, salt, and chocolate make grading a stack of papers more palatable. Bring on the chocolate and potato chips.

What do you mean?

2009-05-03T15:16:00.000-07:00

What do you mean?

2009-04-26T11:18:00.000-07:00

In a world where we often seem divided (political viewpoints, money, time, free time, computers which are supposed to simplify our lives, and spring weeds which will turn into summer pestilence), I’ve found that asking my students to define words in their experience by their personal opiions, can lead to clarity. Definitions don’t always lead to tolerance or improved communication, but they do frequently lead to clarity. Buckmaster Fuller pondered how he defined words, and commented that creating his personal (connotative) dictionary [in contrast to our shared Webster’s denotative dictionary] was a turning point in his communication with others and himself.

I explain this idea of personal knowledge through understanding how we use words, to the students, and ask them to create a dictionary of their meanings, using words of their own choice. Following are some of the students’ definitions.

Engagement ring: An engagement ring shows my love for another person and symbolizes that I want to spend the rest of my life with them. Hopefully it isn’t cheap because giving up my money also shows I love them.
Engagement ring: beginning of a life-altering mistake.
Engagement ring: One step before Neurological failure. Or, getting a challenging new job, with excellent perks.
Engagement ring: one of a kind. A delicate symbol of commitment and hope for the future. Eternity set in a fragile housing. “The Rock.”
Engagement ring: death…the end of the road. Unfulfilling road of life stops and repeats itself forever and ever…but many go through it many times.
Engagement ring: It will be one of the happiest days of my life when I receive one. It shows love for one another and lets me know that this person wants to share a future with me. It will hopefully be around two carats and white gold or platinum.
Engagement ring: A round ring with a diamond on top, usually given to female from male when he realizes he’s somewhat mature and sleeping around isn’t appealing to him. In some cases used to resemble love. Expensive piece of jewelry that is easy to pawn.
Ex-husband: the man who lived off me for 17 years. He is the cause of my bad nightmares and flashbacks. He is also the man whom I paid a lot of money to get out of my life.
Ex-husband: The man I should have realized was a complete idiot. I spent too many years of my life on him. Unfortunately, I must still deal with him until my son and daughter are 18 years old.
Father: An exceptionally amazing person who can fix anything with just a few tools and a lot of bad words. A man who acts like he is the toughest and meanest hombre in town but when no one is looking will pet the cat.
Feng Shui: An ancient Japanese way of putting furniture in a room that makes no sense because it affects nothing.
First Anniversary: The point in a relationship when people realize living alone isn’t so bad.

You're Setting my Teeth on Edge: Cliches

2009-04-18T16:59:00.000-07:00

Alot
[thankfully Spell Check will now automatically separate this into its two correct words. Now if only we can enlist the software programmers to distinguish there/their/they’re]

If you love someone, set them free
[and if you dislike them, keep them close? What’s that about holding friends close and enemies closer? Do I want to?]

whatever
[Oh please: go somewhere else to be bored.]

On apples

2009-04-12T09:02:00.000-07:00

Sometimes we get a Golden Delicious and sometimes we get a mouth-puckering Granny Smith. Sometimes the universe thinks we need a little more protein, and we end up with a worm.

Observations on life and literature from students

2009-04-04T06:39:00.001-07:00

I do not except this either.

His wife made a slow descent into madness, which was prescribed by her husband, with little known facts about the effects.

A rabbi is a professional someone without alterer motives.

Adultery is one of the worst things that a person can do, it has been written in the Bible as one of the then commendams not to break and yet people are still braking.

Observations on life and literature from students

2009-03-22T11:54:00.000-07:00

Another aspect of love is being faithful to the person you exploit this phrase to.

What do young men do, they chase down woman.

As a double partner [in adultery] that person has to know how to cover up his or her tracts.

A person can have multiple personalities if they have been at it for a while.

His parents never taught him how to great a girl respectively.

Why did you go along with marring your wife if you were not sure you loved her?

Every man’s personality changes weather they are with the guys or just hanging out with a group of girls from work or something.

True love has the same characteristics as one true love, but unlike one true love, regular love is not forever.

True love is when you find someone that can finish your sentences.

Vermin

2009-03-14T07:20:00.000-07:00

“This is not a story about a bug.” I look at my class. We have just finished discussing The Metamorphosis. We have argued, questioned, though, been saddened, vindicated, revolted. We have shared death and dying stories, and remembered people we love who are on the other side of time and memory.
We began this class discussion with accusations and judgments. “This is a stupid story.” “I can’t believe you made us read this.” “Nobody could turn into a bug.” The students were dismayed and disbelieving. They were puzzled. Why would I have forced them to read this awful thing? Instead of defending the assignment, I listened to all they have to say, and nodded my head in acknowledgment of their opinions.

Empty of annoyance and rebuttal toward the assignment, they begin questioning the story events. Maybe it was a dream? “Look at the first part of the story,” I tell them, “See where Kafka writes, ‘It was no dream.’” That finishes our happy solution of waking-up-from-a-dream. It was no dream.
“I hated how his family turned against him,” one student says. “Me, too,” answers another. “My family did that to me,” offers a third. “My family did that when my grandma was sick.” We move from angry and annoyed to thoughtful. We ponder fear and love, racial profiling and sacrifice. We look at how we feel about money and family. We hurt for Gregor Samsa and we pity his sister Greta. We wonder how Gregor’s society came to the point it did. We look at our own. The comments are longer and the silences more thoughtful than when we began talking about the story.
We read and write from our hearts, because the story is true.

Grading Art

2009-03-08T18:05:00.000-07:00

This is an excerpt from a forthcoming book on teaching.

Once upon a time, when I taught grade school level students, I also taught art. As anyone who knows me is aware, this was a stretch. However, what I learned is that art if art. Anyone can be artistic, if we only believe in ourselves.
This was not easy to teach students then, and it is not easy to teach students now. We are much too quick to take the commercial, Photo Shop, tinkered with version, and believe it is someone’s art work. We’re too quick to compare our attempts with those of someone who’s been schooled in art from childhood. We’re too quick to slap a negative value on what we’ve produced.
It would be nice if creativity existed for its own end, and if we could appreciate everyone’s creativity. Sometimes we can. Sometimes we need to grade art projects, and use these grades toward a report card “Art” entry. However, there was a report card slot for “art,” and so part of the grade school experience, I needed to grade art (hopefully while still valuing the students).
Grading tactics
Spread out all the corn pictures, and look at them. Some will immediately have you saying, “Yes. Exactly.” Some look good. Some look as appealing as cold oatmeal.
Who learned? Who became artistic? Who had fun – good fun? Who created the spirit of the project, even if the art of the project was not perfect?

No matter what the grade, all art deserves a positive comment. If they have done any art at all, the students have created something with a piece of themselves in it. It’s cruel to write “C” without some mitigating and positive comment. Keep grades on the back of the art, especially if you are hanging this project in the hallway or classroom. No student wants to be ridiculed for “not as good work.” The students who feel they have failed art, will be reluctant to ever again attempt art. When we “do art” we offer the world a part of who we are.

Teaching Thoughts

2009-03-01T10:27:00.000-08:00

The student who expects an immediate reply to his email is often the one explaining why his work will not be submitted on time.

Popup window: The operating system has blocked this file for your safety.
Teacher comment: Since I’m reading essays submitted by online students, through the school system, for a required course, it’s nice to think the system is saving me from yet another poorly written, boring student essay.

Just as there’s a difference between mental illness and insanity – one being a medical diagnosis and the other a legal defense – there’s a gulf between female and male, or student and teacher perspectives – though we do not label any one of them “sick.”

A teacher comments about a student essay.
“It was just like a Western. The boyfriend was in an argument, the argument turned into a fight, he got stabbed and died, bleeding all over his girlfriend. And while I read this, I kept writing on the essay, ‘Run on, run on, run on.’”

Risks

2009-02-21T15:44:00.000-08:00

“I’m taking a risk on school.” We were talking about “A Family Supper” and the risks involved in eating fugu, the exciting and sometimes fatal fish that used to be popular amateur cooking in Japan and now is the province of chefs licensed in fugu preparation. Our discussion had moved from the story into story-as-it-relates-to-our-lives: family, cultural influences, honor, risk.

The student developed his theme. He is studying for a profession with strong career possibilities, but there is no guarantee he will be able to find a job after graduation, three months away. Other decisions in his life have decreased or increased his attractiveness to the companies where he might want to work. He is older than the typical college graduate. He has a family.

School is a risk. Students wager time, money, energy, and brain power for learning, and eventually a certificate or a degree. Learning is a risk. We take our bodies and our brains, our emotions and our pasts into a situation where all of them will be challenged. We open our boundaries. We don’t always come into the classroom wanting to be changed, but we sometimes leave the classroom having been – perhaps against our better judgment.

Our better judgment sits on the sidelines, wishing it could go back to bed, back to childhood, back to the assembly line where we were told what to do and timed on how we did it, back to wherever there were no risks, just guarantees. Our better judgment doesn’t exist. The only way we can avoid risks is by refusing to take action: but refusing to act is also a risk. We’ve made a non-decision of paralysis. Is it a wave or is it a particle or is it both, depending, is one example of our fallacy when we think we can preserve what was. We arrange events to suit beliefs that don’t exist.

We can fight the current and decide we are going to stay the same, in a constantly changing universe, but eventually we’re going to get swept along with the current. Instead of risk, we could call education growth. Leo the Late Bloomer in Robert Krause’s wonderful story of the same name, finally blooms. Leo’s dad is relieved. What Dad didn’t think about is that in our own way, whether we are noticed or not, we all take risks; watched or not watched, eventually we all bloom.

Observations on life and literature from students

2009-02-14T12:28:00.000-08:00

Be mindful of what you read – what goes in will come out, and you cannot avoid your exposure to it.

Do you believe in the right to bare arms?

There is always a two sided sword for many rolls.

Her child is surly going to follow.

I even tried to keep up with the resent trends so people would like me.

Children have curios minds with ten million questions to ask.

The personal living habits questions are designed to find small quarks.

What stays the same

2009-02-07T05:56:00.000-08:00

The fashions and length of skirts, pants, hats, coats with which we clothe our bodies change: decollates are in; decollates are sinful. Bustles are in (to be sat almost upon); bustles are ridiculous. Behavior remains. Elizabeth Barrett took to her sick bed to avoid Papa Barrett’s oppression, as did Florence Nightingale when faced with the endless calling and calling cards that made up a proper Victorian woman’s social life. From their sick couches, they birthed health reform, poetry, and eventually Penini Browning. Sickness can be fruitful.

This is a lesson that our students learn by osmosis, since they haven’t cracked open the textbooks. Gregor has “flu like symptoms,” which is why he was not able to attend class, though he has not yet morphed into a dung beetle. Sally’s grandfather died last week, which was why she couldn’t read the 4-page story (a cliff hanger which evoked intense class discussion) that we are covering today.

Sickness can have positive benefits and it is part of being human. We harbor our sick days, and exult in mental health holidays. We pay health premiums so we can be sick without becoming bankrupt. Through those illnesses, though, we need to work at learning, to work at our chosen work. We need to bring forth something besides excuses: perhaps assistance to those Crimean sufferers, perhaps exquisite joy in Italy that gave Mr. B and us the Sonnets. Between the feigned or real sickness and their results, we need something or someone to evoke what we could be. Perhaps the joy of health and learning isn’t enough; perhaps, if he does not come to the sick bed, we need to go in search of being well and Robert Browning.

Sending a get well card

2009-02-01T07:10:00.000-08:00

Some semesters it’s startling how many grandmothers endure illness and even death, so their student relatives have an excuse for missed classes and late homework. Seldom grandfathers, almost always grandmothers. There are days I wonder why.

Heroes

2009-01-24T11:40:00.000-08:00

Why does the story teller need to take the hero into dark ways alone? When we get to the final gunfight, how come it’s the hero standing there: in outer space, in a dusty Western street, at one end of a shotgun, or one end of a classroom, a board room, a computer terminal, while the flickering numbers count down toward an explosion? Why are the townspeople watching from inside the saloon, the crew waiting back at the spaceship? Why did everyone else go home?
When his one-on-one encounter arrives, whether it’s with the villain, technology, Nature, or himself, the hero’s complete character, his history, his ethics, and his future are all being called into account. If there were others involved in this ultimate confrontation, we would not see the hero’s character revealed (not meant to be a pun). The fame or blame would be diluted. So would the weight and consequences of his choices.
When our character stands alone, he becomes universal, and archetypal. He drops societal labels to step outside time. A man who follows his truth is as valid in ancient Greece as he is in 1938 Poland or 2008 America. His neighbors may have judged him: simple, rigid, nerd, but in those accountable moments, he is beyond judgment. It’s his ethics and morals that drive his actions, not what his neighbors thought of his clothing style. Once he has completed his journey, faced the test, then the townspeople crowd around to congratulate (and temporarily suspend fashion judgment). During the test, they are absent.
Why does the hero in just about every story need to face an ultimate danger alone? So we can recognize the hero qualities. So we have a proven hero. What makes a hero? In a perfectly circular reasoning: Someone willing to go out alone. Whatever other characteristics the writer has needed for this particular story and this particular hero - honestly, bravery, strength, intelligence – we need the hero to be distinguished even from the rest of the characters who work alongside him, on his team. Heroes are ultimately solitary.
That solitary aspect includes more than facing the climactic test alone. In order to reach that point in his life and the story we are reading or watching, the hero must have found himself, and the way we find ourselves is to move out of the crowd, at whatever the cost and consequences. The hero needs to be burned by his solitary time. During it, he has no guarantees that he will emerge a hero. What he does have is the testing time, where he will find himself and re-find characteristics that will serve him, should he choose to accept the hero’s calling. But he must spend his preparation alone: in the desert, lost at sea, shunned by the playground clique, or sitting in his room. Those who stay within the comfort of the crowd are comfortable. They are forgettable. If our character were standing amid a crowd, we would not know him for the hero.
The effect holds true for every one, to a larger or lesser extent. In order to find ourselves and to be a hero to the extent we wish to, in our lives: we need to have passed through that self-examination time, whether physically or intellectually or emotionally, before we can come back to help others. Before we can help others, we need to have passed through our own time alone. There are many more heroes than appear on tv and movies screens, the final pages of stories, or standing in the dust of a Western town.

You're Setting my Teeth on Edge: Cliches

2009-01-17T12:19:00.000-08:00

While we smile politely in response to clichéd communication, what’s in our mind?

You rock.
[Throw rocks? Sit in a rocker? Dance to 60s music?]

Thinking outside the box
[If you were in the box, would you be in the cemetery?]

Nowadays
“Now” is quite sufficient, thank you. On your way to your next class, please check Strunk and White’s classic out of the library and see what Mr. White has to say about superfluous words.

My bad
[In addition to making fun of a mistake which may have hurt or inconvenienced others, you are proud of not being able to use grammar correctly?]

Television commercial: “If you or a loved one has died from taking product XYZ,
contact our law office so we can represent you in our suit. You can receive money.”
[Long distance from the grave…]

Conformity

2009-01-10T13:33:00.000-08:00

We recently watched the movie School of Rock, in which a self-absorbed guitarist is ejected from his band, impersonates his nerdy roommate as a substitute teacher; and teaches fourth graders about individuality, rock music, and life skills such as lying to parents, clandestine surveillance, soundproofing ones room, and stereotyping. As the mother of sons who used to be fourth graders, and as a former elementary teacher, I could choose to deplore the introduction of adolescent values into the lower elementary classroom. Like the rest of us, though, I realize those values have already percolated to kindergarten: one movie makes no difference.

What I ponder is conformity. Denny teaches his temporary charges about rebelling from “the man” (anyone in authority), and forming their own culture. Do they? They mime traditional rocker hairstyles and clothing. They mimic the postures and stage routines of the greats of rock…who became notable because they were unique. Individual. Original.

Of course the movie features the obligatory revelations, enlightenments, and acceptance of the artist persona (within the bounds of upper class conventional behavior). Everyone learns something, most characters release their inhibitions, there’s parity and ultimately transcendence of racial, professional, and generational boundaries.

But in his own adolescent-type rebellion, Denny demonstrates the most stringent kind of conformity. This is how a music star stands. This is my conception of your role, from lead guitarist to backup singers, to security. Yes, Denny adapts their jobs to their talents (for the classroom stars; the 10 leftover students, are given remainder positions). In his single-minded determination for force his own goals, Denny becomes the basest kind of stereotyped rocker and rebel. He’s a conforming user.

School is not kind to the nonconformists. Exceptionally smart or not ready to learn, they are ridiculed, isolated, patronized, or ignored. None of us want this path for our children or our students. Even when we hold up to them the example of the greats like Einstein who did not fit into their childhood classrooms, we send a double message: be smart and successful; be accepted by your peers and lead the clique. By molding students to fit established roles, we and Denny do those students a disservice. We lessen their potential and our selves. There’s a place for nonconformists. We need their insight and their vision. They set fire to our discussion groups and amaze us with themselves.

We need to appreciate them for who they are. By telling them how to not-conform, we do just the opposite.

I used to; but now

2009-01-03T13:38:00.000-08:00

One of the exercises that we’ve used in writing classes as a comparison-contrast is “I used to; but now.”
Our directions are: Consider where you used to be, what life used to be like, then look at life now. What images and ideas will help your readers to visualize and understand your points?
Sometimes the assignment is an essay; usually it is a poem so the writer focuses most on the comparison-contrast images.
It’s also a good writing exercise to begin a new year or a new semester.
This is a sample I wrote, to demonstrate the format for my writing classes.

I refused to look at the frog in biology;
But now I study Netter’s Atlas of Human Anatomy because people I love are in Gross Anatomy and because I need accurate anatomical detail when I kill people in the stories I am writing.

My fingers used to shy from the roots, from tulip bulbs with their snout poking toward the sky and their furze of root ends;
But now I shift bulbs from my warm palm to the cool October soil, sending them into darkness with a call to come back to light, bringing their color.

I used to say, “Ick,” to moldy leftovers, refuse to search inside the garbage disposal for that dropped fork, the ring, the dishcloth;
But now I think on it and do it anyway, because someone needs to.

I used to cringe at the thought of dirty diapers;
But now I routinely clean the anus of dogs and babies alike:
A natural exit hole, how much cleaner than the shreds of a bullet’s passing or the residue of someone’s hate.

I used to look at brown and see dirty: wash your hands, scrub the floor: clean your room;
Now I see the world: brown rice, sepia shadows, mocha skin tones, latte coffee, chocolate in twenty shades of glory.

I used to shudder at potatoes’ spindly sprouts, pushing into the air;
Now I muse that there’s something left to grow on:
Iris tubers, bleeding heart divisions, peony eyes, Idaho’s best in utero:
Rudely growing, aggressively colonizing where they will not, should not, must not.
They will not yield.

Maybe my eyes are less lid and more eyeball to see the unity of us all
Maybe, but I do not think so.

Each experience leaves its mark:
Discarded gum freckles the sidewalks; Scars slide across skin; Memories color the mind;
Emotions imprint our cells.

I think Life happens and Grace arrives.

Listen to me

2008-12-27T09:27:00.000-08:00

One of the most satisfying as well as enlightening assignments I give my communication skills students, is to listen to someone. In class, we talk about the distinction we’re all aware of: the mechanical hearing compared to the perceptive listening. Then I tell them that for an hour or two, they need to listen.

“This isn’t something that you want to do with a person you don’t care about,” I say. “This might be short, but it’s probably going to take more time than you thought it would.” Their assignment: find someone they consider worth the listening time (a commentary on how busy we consider ourselves, and how we insulate our emotions), and to listen. “You do not need to ask any questions. You do not need to find a specific answer. All I need you to do is listen.” Their faces tell me that they are humoring the instructor. Just listen? “Afterward,” I continue, “I want you to write a short essay about what happened. You’re not telling me how to listen; you’re telling me what happened in the listening assignment.”
“What if they don’t want to talk with us?” someone asks.
I smile. “That will be the least of your problems.”

The next week when we meet for class I do not need to remind them of the assignment. They compare results with each other. “I thought he’d never shut up.” “I learned things I never knew about my parents.” “It was crazy.” “It went on for hours.” Their universal response is a mixture of disbelief and awe. How could something as simple as listening create such a powerful response? Who would have thought that listening, simply listening to someone, was so important?

Remember what we learned, I tell them. We don’t feel listened to. If we are bosses, someone will follow our directions. When we tell the deli clerk to give us a pound of this and a half pound of that, we get what we’ve asked for. Our family members give us a mumble when we pointedly wonder, “How was your day?” But we do not feel that someone gives us that incredible gift of concentrated listening. Eye contact, quiet, and an open soul, tell us that we are worth listening to. Such listening changes more lives than only the one who is doing the talking.

Observations on life and literature from students

2008-12-20T07:26:00.000-08:00

In “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the family was killed. This was not a good outlook on it.

They were murdered, not on purpose but on accident.

A basketball game ends with the buzzard.

You underestimate onions.

Rude people eaves drop.

Synthetic motor oil works better. Don’t ask me why. It just does.

In the older cinematic versions, there was a hero whose job was to go and save the young girl from the vampire’s layer.

Near the end of the play [Othello] Desdemona excepted her fate.

Gregor [The Metamorphosis] has a tough time in his relationship with his family. Being a bug doesn’t help either.

You're a Failure: Fate and Grades

2008-12-13T07:28:00.000-08:00

We are discussing “The Judge’s Wife” and it’s prophecy that Nicholas Vidal is destined to lose his head over a woman. He does: he falls in love or in lust (take your analytic choice) with the widow of his nemesis, and refuses to flee from his fate of capture and execution. Such is the power of love. Or of the cages of custom and society (as Heiko points out) that populate the story. Or of belief in self-fulfilling prophecy.

One of my relatives was greeted by the teacher the first day of class with, “Sit down. I can see you’re going to be trouble.” Now, this was not in a small school where everyone knew everyone. This was not a person notorious by second grade. No, it was a bright, articulate person, who was apparently typed by his teacher the first day. By what he wore? How he walked? His name?

Certainly, teachers do talk with other instructors for survival, basic information, helpful interactions, to be alerted about students’ particular issues. Also certainly, with our students, our friends, our loved ones, we don’t want to touch the points that hurt.

Vidal's prophecy and its fulfillment reminds me uncomfortably of some religions that state the believer’s fate is predestined. If we are bound to fail, then why try. But in a universe that encourages choice, if we don't try, we do fail. What kind of universe do we, or Vidal, believe in? Fate? Calvin had one monopoly on it, or believed he did. Hitler and his followers had another. Did Dick and Jane have a third? Or nth?

Last week I shared another of those Let’s look at where your grade is for the semester talks with a student. He initiated it. His analysis was, “I’m twenty-one. I screwed up once. I don’t want to miss this chance. How can I do better?” My answer was, “Follow directions. Get your assignments in on time. Participate in class. Let us see the thought you seem to have put into your essays when you take part in the class discussions and in-class writing.” Is he capable? I think so. Will he produce the above average work he says he wants to display in the class? I hope so.

Who succeeds? Getting where we want is not only turning it stellar work; it’s staying the course. Literally the course: 17 weeks at 3 hours of seat time per week, 2 potential hours of homework time per week; it’s showing up on time to hear those announcements that happen in the first five minutes of class.
Figuratively the course: this course, and the next, meeting the deadlines for registration, returning those library books, showing up for labs and exams.

Long ago someone said, “When the alarm goes off in the morning, nobody has a career. Everybody has a job.” It’s only when we’ve gotten ourselves out of bed and bleared at the mirror, that we remember we do have a career, life goals, and inspiration. There are mornings I heartily disagree with the career and job assessment; there are mornings when I’ve been up with children several times during the night, that I need to agree. I don’t want to go to work; I want to go back to bed. Instead, I go to work.

There are no fated failures. There’s only potential. Some exceed it. Some use it. Some put it under the alarm and choose not to set the clock.

Response

2008-12-06T09:51:00.000-08:00

I like to hand back essays to students in class, before I post those grades online. This way, the people who are going to go to pieces over their grades can do so in context. It’s difficult to provide explanation though, when students skip class and then attempt to assess their progress by looking at the online postings.

“Call me,” Janice said on the recorded message. “I checked my essay grade and I can’t figure out why I got a 60.”
Janice had left class early (for the fifth time). She missed the discussions we had at the end of class; from students on how the essays could be developed; from me on how the essays were graded. She asked me to call her back, but left no callback telephone number. When I finally reached her, and identified myself, she said, “I can’t talk now, I’m just walking out the door.”

My notes on her work state that she wrote a “C” level essay. However she did not submit the required outline (-10 points) or provide the works cited page (-10 points). The online system allows me one slot to enter numbers. Explanations I write out, in complete sentences, on the essays, which I hand back at the end of the class. If Janice had been in class to listen to instructions, to ask questions during the writing of her work, or even pick up her essay, I could have explained the grade to her.

Post Thanksgiving

2008-11-29T08:23:00.000-08:00

Here we go. The time between Thanksgiving and whatever we call the break coming up (Christmas, Winter Break) is one that tests our dedication.

Yes, we care about our students’ progress, probably more than we did in August or September. But we’re tired of repeated excuses, we have presents to buy and fruitcake to bake. The days are shorter, the nights longer. Our students are not the only ones feeling that there’s too little time and not enough patience. When someone’s grandma dies for the fifth time this semester, we want to call him on it, and then go off to the kitchen to eat cookie dough – or take our own children sledding.

We’re going to feel like this again in May, when the sunshine and early summer winds call us as we sit grading papers and trying to figure out how to keep our students involved in the classroom. We’re going to caution them against the senior swan dive, against giving up or slacking off just weeks from the end.

We’re going to give some of them the break of their lives, or remind ourselves that for some of them, the best thing we can do is stay true to our principles on late papers and lack of attendance.

And we will survive to teach again – in two weeks, in two months. We’re in one of the fortunate professions, where next year, next semester we have the opportunity to begin fresh. Fresh books, fresh attitudes, fresh students. All we need to do is stay true to our field of study, our beliefs, our students. Ourselves.

Teaching Thoughts

2008-11-22T06:53:00.000-08:00

Punctuation keeps us monogamously in love and in our boyfriend’s [instead of boyfriends’] heart.

In an effort to make them produce, you’ve put the two most non-responsive students in a group by themselves. They report back, in whispers, telling you they have nothing to say.

Direction to the class: I want you to put yourselves in groups. Form a group with people you have something in common with.
[Results to date: tattoos, love of a musical group, work places, future professions]
So far, luckily, no group has formed, “because we were sitting next to each other.”

Onion Talk

2008-11-15T06:28:00.000-08:00

“An onion is just an onion. You could put any vegetable in there.”
We are discussing “Monologue for an Onion,” a poem that I think is wonderful – and the one Maritza rushes to suggest when we’ve run short of time and need to choose only a few from the homework readings. “Oh, I just love this one.”
Woo hoo, I think to myself: someone else was drawn into the evocation of sounds (onion/union) and thoughts (Can we ever get to someone’s core? Is there a core? Do people have a central core or simply another layer of mystery? By probing too quickly into a relationship and demanding intimacy, do we destroy it? Can we know the depths of a person we love?).
“Think of the onion,” I begin, as soon as I have finished reading aloud and we are ready to talk about the poem; but I’m shouted down in the exuberant display of opinion.
“It could be any vegetable,” Josh repeats. “What do you want to be?”
I look from one class member to another, wondering how they would type themselves. Who’s a kiwi fruit? Who’s a banana? Are we talking about personality, or relationships, or performance in English class? Can we relate this back to Ginsberg’s tomatoes and avocados in “Supermarket in California” or Millay’s apples in the sonnets from Fatal Interview? Love is love, whether I’m using a rose or cowslips carried in my skirt or an onion to describe it. What kind of love?
“What about the symbolism?” I ask. “In ‘A Rose for Emily’ we had a rose; think about how the symbolism of an onion is different.” We return to the rings of meaning in the poem.
“An onion is an onion,” Josh repeats his major point.
“Poetry is not always easy to understand,” Whitney temporizes.
“There’s symbolism we do not have in another object. What about the apple?” I offer. “Think about how apples have parts – skin, the apple flesh, that central core – and if you turn an apple and cut it sideways…”
“You get a star!” Arreall and Kadie in unison are busily comparing notes on the beautiful five-pointed star in a hacked-apart apple.
Sarah leans into the discussion with rationality, looking at onions and life and love. Maritza interrupts Sarah and outshouts Josh. “You underestimate onions!”
There’s one of our thoughts in today’s discussion: never underestimate onions. Or classes when their thoughts catch fire and the stories and poems become part of their life experiences, much larger than one poem in the textbook.

Not my Fault

2008-11-08T07:53:00.000-08:00

“I am very sorry but I have not been in your class. I was one victim of mugging and of attempt of murder. I was hospitalized but and home recovering. I will do anything it takes to catch up. George.”
~
“Dear George. I’m sorry to hear of the attempt on your life. My records show that you have missed 10 of the first 17 class sessions, beginning with the second week of class. You took no quizzes when you did attend and have not turned in any of the writing assignments. I would suggest starting a new section of this course next semester. Instructor.”

“I am Terry Smith’s mother and I want to ask about his grade. It was not his fault that he did not complete his first several assignments because amazon.com backordered his textbook. And he could not read it. Can he do the assignments late? Also, Terry has always done well in this subject with the other teachers. Why are his grades lower in your class. Let me know if there is extra work he can do to get at least a C. If he gets a D or belower he will not be allowed to take sports. Concerned Parent.”

My students are chronologically over 18: adults. Legally, I am in the same position as a health care provider: bound to observe patient confidentiality. Morally, I am in the position of wanting the students to grow. Emotionally, I wish they (and sometimes their parents) would. We’ve been working in this lesson for a long time.

The pre-K teachers listened to frazzled moms explaining, “Susie stuck the dog’s tail in the toaster, and Billy threw socks in the toilet: that’s why we’re late.” Those teachers had come from the chaos of getting children off to school themselves; they nodded understandingly. They reassured mom that things got better. Elementary level teachers listened to Bert tell them why he wasn’t the one who flushed the end of a roll of paper towels down the toilet even as they plucked the last section from his hand, and warned him that middle school teachers expected much more responsibility in actions and fewer excuses. Middle school teachers warned their classes that high school meant excuses wouldn’t work anymore; high school teachers told their classes that bosses and college instructors were not going to accept excuses.

My syllabus states “Work submitted on time will earn full credit,” and “You must meet deadlines. There are no exceptions, so please do not ask for them.” My irresponsible students say, “But I didn’t know that, because I didn’t read the syllabus.” Neither did their parents.

Their parents had no obligation to read the syllabus. We’re at adulthood. Being grown up isn’t always fun. I can spend this week’s grocery money on bakery, but then I need to tell the dog why his dish is empty. The dog’s glad his tail is not glowing, shoved in the mesh of the toaster, but he’d like supper too.

We don’t reach a time in our lives when we are happy about requirements and deadlines. Sometimes we shrug mistakes off with a laugh or a cliché (“my bad”). Sometimes we bring in updated excuses (“The guy in the car next to me was the victim of a drive-by shooting”). If we hate deadlines being imposed on us enough, we start our own company – and impose them on our employees. We sleep in on weekends. We rebel. Or we face up to the deadlines, knowing that whatever we do, there are things due ourselves and others, as well as obligations, responsibilities, consequences.

Late work

2008-11-01T07:05:00.000-07:00

Some people operate on the principal that if they are not physically in class the day an assignment should be turned in, the assignment is not due.

We may choose to delete points from the grade, we may choose to assign bonus points to the papers arriving on time, asking ourselves, Isn't that a bit like giving overtime pay to someone working a regular shift?

Consistency is important. Consideration of circumstances is important. Fairness is essential. If we assess a grade penalty for late work we need to subtract those points no matter whose work is late; even our most exceptional students need to understand that brilliancy cannot always make them the exception.
On the other hand, we need to have a flexible enough mentality that actual surgery is a valid excuse and a strong enough sense of fairness to the students who do manage to submit their work on time no matter what, to require official documentation for the students citing medical emergencies as a reason for late submission.

Flowage

2008-10-25T07:05:00.000-07:00

Today the faucet in the rest room went insane. Recently we were given a new faucet with an electronic eye, so all we need to do is hold our hands under the spout, and water rushes forth over them. We’ve still been allowed temperature adjustment, but we no longer need to turn on the faucet. Unfortunately, sometimes the faucet’s eye refuses to acknowledge our existence, and we wait with our hands under the spout, soaped but dry. And sometimes the faucet responds to information of its own processing, turning on and off in rapid succession while we are across the room, in the toilet stall, coaxing paper towels from the grumpy holder.

In the scheme of the universe, one faucet is not significant. Maslow said that our base needs must be fulfilled before we can concentrate on self-actualization. Though most of us are caught in our base needs before we can progress to things like artistic creativity, some of us have the genius to transcend levels in his hierarchy. I remember the video of the Olympic runner, running up lengths of stairways that ended in rubble, turning through the maze of buildings, training the streets of his war-wrecked city, as bombs exploded nearby.

After a semi-successful encounter with the paper towel dispenser, I closed the door on the insane faucet and went back to my office, to snitch to Operations about it.
“We’re getting a multi-video system in 202,” my office mate said hopefully, as I put down the phone.
“I’d rather have working restrooms,” I countered.

Mole Day

2008-10-25T07:03:00.000-07:00

October 23
John was printing out Mole Day jokes on the printer when I stood there, waiting for the much more prosaic printout of Tony's grades for Tony's coach. When he saw me noticing the cute mole on one of his pages, John said, "Don't you know what Mole Day is?"In my English ignorance, I admitted I did not. John smiled. “6.02 times 10 to the 23rd power is the basic unit of weight in chemistry: a mole. All over the world, chemists celebrate Mole Day.”He warmed the instructor office with his smile. “This morning at 6:02, I went to the top of the Washington bridge, stopped my car, got out, drank a Moulson beer, facing east, got back in the car, and got out of there before the cops arrived. I keep inviting my students, but so far nobody’s joined me.”

“You’re probably better off not telling your students who are in the police science program,” I advised.

He turned, to head off class with his sheaf of Mole Day jokes.
Taking potential opportunity, I asked, "Can you explain particle physics to me?"He looked puzzled."Particles. Waves and particles," I said, making wave motions with the hand that was not holding Tony’s grade information. "I need it for a character in a story I am writing."
"I would take a lot more than one beer for me to explain that," he answered.
I think he realizes that explaining deep physics to English teachers is not the stuff of which successful science conversations are made. But it was very interesting, learning about Mole Day.

Note: Any identifying information has been changed in ensure John’s continued successful celebration of Mole Day.

You're setting my teeth on edge: Cliches

2008-10-18T11:10:00.000-07:00

While we smile politely in response to clichéd communication, what’s in our mind?

Several phrases that take the place of “He Died” – he passed away, he has passed, he met his Almighty – the ones that gloss over what really happens when someone dies. I do happen to like, “He’s not coming down for breakfast today….” ~ courtesy Julie

For crying out loud
[Please cry softly so we can continue today’s grammar lesson.]

Mistakes

2008-10-18T11:05:00.000-07:00

Mistakes remind us how we have grown.
I used to make mistakes when I added up a column of numbers. Now, I can do addition just fine because the calculator does it for me. Now, there’s an accountant who is willing to wrestle with the 1040. The answer we give indicates where we are and how far we have moved past our struggles with 583 + 67 + 320 + 4299.

Mistakes act as literary semaphores.
When the characters in “McIntosh Willie” mistake “Eye, eye” for “Aye, aye” we’re reminded of the boys’ guilt and the bottlecaps that were placed over the corpse of vagrant Willie’s eyes.
Othello is a catalog of hasty and mistaken conclusions engineered by malefic intent, leading to a tragic conclusion.
When the writer incorporates a mistake into the plot or dialog, we need to realize it’s a mistake and ask what that deliberate mistake does for the story. But we can’t recognize a mistake if we haven’t been paying attention to the plotline or our grammar.

Mistakes confuse communication.
"I need to go down this isle." reads the line in the essay.
The one in the Caribbean or the one in the South Pacific? Since the thermometer is hugging zero and there’s snow predicted, let me grab my bathing suit and join you. If English teachers had $5 for every aisle/isle/I’ll mistake, they’d be wintering in the tropics. If they had that $5 for every misuse of their/there/they’re, they would have no need to buy lottery tickets.

I know what you know what I know, what I have concluded.
Do I? Even if we’ve been friends for years, will my life experiences really reveal to me the processes of your mind based on your life experiences?
This detour is more damaging than changing the supermarket for palm fronds. If I know what you are thinking before you have even told me, I may tangle us up in a moral, political, or chemical debate because I know what’s in your mind. Scary.

Mistakes alert us.
It’s too easy to pass judgment on others, but when we see others refusing to learn by their mistakes, we might want to – not judge – but step aside. Consider our own involvement. Be alerted.

Instead of an automatic $5 for the there/their/they’re mistake, I could copyright a stamp clarifying the homophones, market it at conventions, and still have a winter Florida home. From whenever we first made the distinction, our students have had multiple opportunities to learn which “there” fits the situation. If they’re confused, that’s one thing. If they refuse to devote the brainpower to doing so, they’re telling us where their interests and values lie.

“My bad” is a contemporary cliché, a deliberate grammatical mistake, and possibly an indication that someone doesn’t want to take responsibility. Better to laugh it off instead.
Sure, we all hate being called on our gaffes and foibles, but regularly turning the mistake into a joke might be a warning sign: Is this person attempting to build a belief in her own invincibility; use the “poor me” technique; looking for a scapegoat?
What’s wrong with saying, “I’m sorry. I’ll do better next time.” Nobody’s perfect. Maybe we need to worry about the people who can always find someone or something else to blame.

Mistakes are a “slow down” sign.
When the practice exercises and follow-up writings demonstrate that my class still can’t tell time or identify irony, I need to remember that they might not be developmentally ready to learn how to tell time, can’t distinguish gentler irony from the sledge hammer of sarcasm. Maybe I didn’t plan and teach the skill carefully enough. Maybe the students were more interested in the snow falling outside the classroom windows, anticipating recess when they could throw forbidden snowballs. Check feedback. Check Piaget and Gardner and Maslow. Reality check.

Mistakes keep us humble and remind us of our interconnectedness and human condition.
Most of us have winced when we looked in the mirror that hangs in our bathroom or is represented in our best friends’ eyes. We wince at what we’ve done, said, or thought. We messed up. Welcome to being human.
Sometimes we need to wince a few times before we internalize the lesson. But eventually one “next time” we’re tested, we remember what we saw in the mirror. Why? We decide we don’t want to hurt our friend’s feelings or betray our own principles. We change, not for our ego, but for our connectedness.

“We built it,” I say, “but there’s a lot of mistakes.” I’m showing her a project, yet telling my companion that I’m not bragging.
“We believe that there is nothing perfect,” she answers. “If I am beading a design, and it’s done exactly right, I will set one bead just a tiny bit out of where it is supposed to be. Nothing is perfect except the Creator.” I like her answer better than mine. We all need to accept that learning involves mistakes. The skills we have today, have grown from the mistakes and clumsy attempts we made in our learning.

Mistakes belong in our world. It’s what we do with them that tells our students, our friends, and ourselves who we are. If we could do everything perfectly the first time, we wouldn’t call it learning.

Teaching Thoughts

2008-10-11T11:31:00.000-07:00

Fighting plagiarism is guerilla warfare: no matter how developed your policies and your radar, there’s always a freeessaysonline counteroffensive lurking in the shrubbery.

Credo

2008-10-11T11:28:00.000-07:00

After semesters of trying to explain why “plagiarism is wrong” to my students, I pondered the subject and wrote the following explanation to share with them:
----
About plagiarism…

We live in a point-and-click world. With a few clicks of the mouse, it’s possible to find almost any information and to move it easily into our own “My Documents.” While access to information keeps us up to date on current events and allows us ease in research, keep in mind that one of the primary goals of education is encouraging people to think for themselves.

Some of our goals can be stated as:
The reasons plagiarism is unacceptable can be argued as:

The student should be encountering skilled writers.
A student who reads online study guides and summaries reads the words of another student, not the literature.

The students should be working through the text of high level (literary) writers.
The student who searches for answers written by others is reading mid to low level writing, not literature.

The student should be exchanging his own ideas and practicing discussion.
The student who posts something captured online has learned to search by topic, capture the first or second essay he finds. He is not practicing debate or discussion.

The student should be writing his own ideas and conclusions.
Cutting and pasting text may develop skills in searching by topic or mouse dexterity, but not in thinking.

Plagiarism is when you use of any of these (or variations of) that have been produced by someone else and submit as your own words:
Sentence or phrase, paragraph, or complete paper
Idea
Conclusion
Drawing
Thesis statement

Before you submit material:
Spend your time reading and thinking about what you have read.

Use Safe Submit (or other plagiarism checks available through other sources). If your response is rated above 40% correlation, it is likely to be considered plagiarism.

Papers, and discussion responses are checked for plagiarism. If your work results in an online/in book match or a very close similarity, you will receive a 0 for that assignment.
----
Some of them read the advice. Most of them follow it. Some of them ignore it and continue to submit copied material. Maybe I should set out the rules about plagiarism through an iPod format using music lyrics (aka poetry).

How old is this character?

2008-10-04T13:04:00.000-07:00

We’re discussing Elizabeth Tallent’s story “No One’s a Mystery”: love/lust/marriage/adultery are the topic of the week, and the readings reflect how various writers and poets (Barrett Browning, Shakespeare, Marvel, Singer, Chopin, Chekov) chose to focus on our basic topic of Love. “How old is Jack,” I ask, “the one who’s been dating the 18 year old girl for 2 years?”
“Too old.” “Eeeeuw.” “That’s creepy.”
“What’s creepy?”
“Well, an old guy and a young…a teenager…” the student shudders. “And they weren’t just dating.”
“Are your mom and dad the same age?”
“They were, but my stepdad’s six years younger than my mom.”
There’s a chorus of reaction to her comment.
According to the class, it’s okay to date someone within a 2-year age span, but anything more is too much. “It’s okay when you get old,” one of them offers. “You know: past say…35 or so.” She considers. “Forty. That’s old enough. Then you can date someone who’s even 15 years older.”
“I’m 20,” another answers. “My boyfriend’s 32. Guys my own age are just too immature.”
“That’s twelve years,” I comment, not mentioning Charles and Diana as a comparison. “So maybe it works? Sometimes? How do we determine when it might and when it won’t – and – taking this discussion back to the story, why do you think it does not work in ‘No One’s a Mystery’?”
Because there is deceit involved, they answer. Because there’s a lack of respect. Because Jack’s closing comment to the narrator, “If you want to know the truth,” intimates as much her reluctance to confront the facts and their expectations spiraling in two directions, as Jack’s past in which he unwillingly learned the truth.
This discussion happens in the classroom, but it’s similar to the consideration that’s part of every story, poem, play. I'm writing a story, and the character in my story is going to be kidnapped. I’ve given the character black hair and blue eyes, an unusual enough combination that other people in the story might notice the character as she crosses the street with her kidnapper. I’ve avoided unusual hair color (red, striped, a coronet of braids) that might pique a lot of interest. I don’t want the kidnapper caught too early in the story, and I want my readers to empathize with an everyday appearance in the kidnapped character. How old is the character? The story is going to develop differently and impact my readers differently if the kidnapped person is 6 or 26, male or female.
How do we explore the gaps of age, background, friendship, and understanding in the relationships we form? Life. Literature. Jack and that narrator confront us with more than a diary, and their fictional future is determined only to a degree by their ages. We’re analyzing fiction and considering perspectives about our own lives and futures. We’re finding our own truth.

You're setting my teeth on edge: Cliches

2008-10-04T13:02:00.000-07:00

While we smile politely in response to clichéd communication, what’s in our mind?

Let me give you my honest opinion.
[And before this you were lying to me?]

Quite frankly
[Half frankly? Give me half a frank and half a burger – to go.]

Literally
He literally ate the entire pizza.
No kidding... so it's not an allusion to the Crimean War? It's actually about pizza? ~ courtesy Greg

Drop dead date
[Students who wish to submit late papers need to do so from their graves.]

Does it bite? (referring to a dog)
[Only people like you.
All dogs bite, given enough provocation.
Do you really think I’d bring a known biter to a public venue?]

Teaching Thoughts

2008-09-28T08:09:00.000-07:00

Sometimes we realize much more about a student, a colleague, or a friend by how our lives are when he or she is gone.

‘Too late’ is just as helpful applied to homework assignments and curfew as ‘fair wage’ is applied to labor negotiations.

Teaching Thoughts

2008-09-21T11:19:00.000-07:00

You don’t always need to know what you’re talking about, but it helps when you’re writing a lab report, an essay, or a final exam.

Our perception determines our reaction.
School nurse talking to 5th graders: It’s important to be aware of the health risks in the foods you eat. For example, raw eggs.
Student: Ugh. Never.
School nurse: What about when your mom is baking and she offers you a beater with some cookie dough?

You can teach an old or young dog new tricks, if you understand its motivation.

2008-09-21T11:17:00.000-07:00

Age is important if we think it is important. Motivation is a much larger factor. I’m not arguing we should teach calculus in first grade, or expect college students to display the same reckless enthusiasm in phy ed class that we see with fifth graders. I mean that we need to avoid using chronological age as a yardstick and emotional age as an excuse.

“I could learn easier when I was younger and in practice.” That may be true: your brain cells may be atrophying, leaping ship to your bloodstream, or creaking at their dendrites. On the other hand, you have many more tactics and experiences that assist your learning. You have enthusiasm. You’re probably paying for your own schooling, if you are a returning-to-the-classroom student. You know that you don’t have a lot more time to go back to school later in life, because you’re already later in life by your standards. [You didn’t notice the white-haired 60 plus person in the row behind you, taking the class on senior discount.]

You have more than a better job riding on the outcome of the class. You’re setting an example for the school age children in your home, sitting down to the books with them, each doing homework. If you look over their report cards, they are likely to be interested in your transcript. You motivate each other.

Nobody’s life is free from emotional incidents. If the elementary student is struggling through best-friend situations and the high school student is surviving Romeo and Juliet relationships, the older student is out of a divorce, trying to keep his own child motivated, caring for aging parents, going to school on a moonlighting schedule. Life for the older student may have more factors; every student deals with stress.

On the other hand, young and old students who succeed tend to not use emotional and stress issues as an excuse. The semester Jan earned an A in the communications class, she also planned her wedding, worked full time for the utility company, ran a very successful community fund raising campaign, and had time for her friends. I doubt she slept. I was honored to be interviewed as a reference when she applied for her first position as a trust fund lawyer. That was shortly after the graduation party celebrating her joint graduate degrees: JD and MBA. Her husband stood next to her, wearing a T shirt with the law school logo. “I thought it would be easier to get a job if I had a law degree and a Master’s in business,” she said, smiling. I still doubted she was sleeping, especially since she edited the law journal her last year there.

What leads some of our students to this semester’s academic success and others to getting an extra hour’s sleep instead of attending class? If we could answer that question with surety, we could point to an infallible success rate in life and in the classroom. Maybe we are not meant to.

As teachers we are part of the equation. Success comes in many ways, in many parts of our lives, and generally in its own time. Motivation – ours and theirs – is an enormous aspect of the whole.

Teaching Thoughts

2008-09-18T14:17:00.003-07:00

If they’ve been told for years that they cannot succeed, and they’re going to argue with whatever you say, phrase your compliment in specifics not opinions: “You have 9 out of 10 correct on the spelling test,” rather than, “You’re doing a good job in spelling.”

Teaching Thoughts

2008-09-18T14:17:00.002-07:00

Duck tape and library paste may not be able to glue everything back together, but writing about the breakage goes a long way toward doing so.

Revision

2008-09-18T14:17:00.001-07:00

When I say, “Revision,” they ask, “Is it contagious?”

End of semester tech support perspective:

2008-09-18T14:17:00.000-07:00

English teachers are commenting to me that whether they are reading through six vertical inches of paper or six vertical inches of file names that need to be graded, they are still doing more work (and using more words) than the other disciplines;

Social studies teachers are debating the finer points of the Middle Ages while they doth slapth Downe their LapeTOpe and tell me to Make it Work like Things did during World War II;

Math Teachers are proving to me that their laptops don't work.

Cross specialization IT denominator: “Make it work.”

The semicolon

2008-09-13T12:25:00.000-07:00

I like semicolons, because they do so much in a sentence. When I tell them this, the students look at me, wondering if this is going to be a grammar lesson and they can go to a safe place behind their eyes while I talk.

Semicolons are like the iron filigree dripping off a balcony or adorning a gate; you never know how strong they are until you begin looking at the structure.

Semicolons point up the unexpected: He asked her to marry him; she fell out of bed laughing.

Semicolons note that there are more aspects to the subject than we might prefer: I can agree with your points; however there are six areas we need to discuss.

Semicolons offer several perspectives: Group work; or, stacking the group stacks the results (a chapter title from a book I wrote titled Teaching from a Positive Perspective)

The period is a full stop, the comma is a partial slide, the question mark wants the audience to participate, the colon says that we better pay attention to the enumerated list that’s going to follow; the semicolon insists that to know what’s going on we need to analyze the parts and then synthesize their relationship.

Teaching Learning; Learning Teaching: Looking for a title

2008-09-13T12:21:00.000-07:00

We can’t really teach learning, though we can teach tactics that may make learning easier, or less time consuming. We can share our enjoyment in what we are teaching, and ignite the desire to learn in others.

We can learn teaching, though sometimes what we learn is that the more we share the process with our students, the better we all learn.

Teaching and learning are interrelated, and though we may be “on vacation” or “doing something else,” we never leave teaching As Julie says, “Our jobs begin with a bunch of kids and a teacher in a classroom. Everything else comes after.”