Oh these little distractions...

Picture this: I’m in the middle of introducing Romeo & Juliet to a ninth-grade English class. We are reading Act I, Scene I where two Capulet servants are venting their hatred for the house of Montague with bawdy banter. I’m explaining their punning remarks about physically conquering Montague men and sexually conquering Montague women. I ask the class what dual meaning the following lines might have:

“When I have fought with the men, I will be civil with the maids; I will cut off their heads.”
“The heads of the maids?”
“Ay, the heads of the maids, or their maiden-heads. Take it in what sense thou wilt.”

What are these two joking about? I ask.

Some students flip through the play, still trying to find the passage. Others bite their lower lips, thinking. Most stare blankly at their book without daring to look up, for fear I might call on them. Just when I’m about to ask the same question in a different way, a student sits up straight in his chair and raises his hand high. My heart fills with hope: this is it, I think, this is the student to motivate all others with contagious eagerness to enjoy Shakespeare’s language! I call on him with a smile, “Ethan?”
Out of breath, he asks:
“Can I go to the bathroom?”

These are the moments I can’t help but feel deflated. With so much knowledge to share and so few students who seemingly care, it’s a wonder teachers last as long as they do in public schools.

It’s difficult not to compare my college teaching experience to the differences I feel in H.S. The biggest differences by far are in the distractions H.S. teachers must learn to negotiate at every turn: counselors coming in for students, telephones ringing, PA systems asking us to “pardon the interruption,” students requesting passes, students needing handouts they “lost” or “forgot”, and all while a select few might be on the verge of brilliancy—some remote morsel of awareness and insight, complete preparedness and true desire to learn and share their learning. It all feels so incredibly futile. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t come to a program in secondary education from a career in college teaching. How much easier these inconveniences might seem to me if I’d been brand new to the field.

I’m trying to find ways to quiet the excessive noise of the profession, to de-clutter the clutter of distractions that seasoned secondary teachers seem entirely immune to. How do they do it? I imagine after a while one can become desensitized to just about anything. I think about Camus’ The Stranger, when Meursault is lying in a prison cell staring at four blank walls and suddenly has the most freeing revelation a human being can possibly have: “I often thought that if I had had to live in the trunk of a dead tree, with nothing to do but look up at the sky flowing overhead, little by little I would have gotten used to it.” He realizes he can live the rest of his life based on the memories of a single day to get him by.

But I don’t want to live off my memories of better times in the classroom. I want to feel things happening now. I’ll keep forcing my patience. I’ll keep waiting for eager hands to fly up in a unanimous crescendo, contributing something, anything more substantial than a pesky, disruptive request to the restroom.

Getting Through

My ninth grade students just wrapped up a unit on Warriors Don’t Cry, written by Melba Patillo Beals, one of the “Little Rock Nine” students who paved the way for integrated schools in the US. Her powerful autobiography conveys the sting of physical and emotional abuse that she suffered along with her peers and family members as they lived the history of the Brown v Board of Education decision. Melba described many horrible things that were done to her at school, like acid thrown in her face and daily physical abuse. Yet despite all the violence she endured, she says that her hero was Gandhi, and she often thought of him whenever she needed strength to continue. She never retaliated with violence toward anyone, unlike a classmate of hers who reached her breaking point and decided to toss a bowl of hot chili over a student’s head who kept tormenting her.

During the group presentations in our class, students asked their peers if they would have done the same thing. Some answered saying no way because it’s a waste of “food,” others said absolutely! In fact, they would have liked to see more harm done to the perpetrators like maybe poisoning their food by the black staff workers in the lunchroom to really teach them a lesson. And then there were a handful that said they don’t think so because one must always consider the consequences of their actions. Since the girl who tossed the chili was expelled from the school, it ultimately defeated her purpose. She was no longer able to contribute to a long-term goal of integration and instead opted for short-term gratification. I was very pleased to see students critically assessing the incident from many points of view. Listening to them discuss violence vs non-violence reminded me of a favorite poem of mine by Lao Tzu from Tao Te Ching:

Nothing in the world
is as soft and yielding as water.
Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible,
nothing can surpass it.

The soft overcomes the hard;
the gentle overcomes the rigid.
Everyone knows this is true,
but few can put it into practice.

Lao Tzu reminds us that even water can cut through mountains over time with corrosion. I also thought of my mother’s wise advice whenever she senses I want to retaliate in a situation that upsets me: “Kill’em with kindness” she reminds me. It takes a great deal of will power and strength of character to step back from a situation, size it up, and think of all the consequences before acting. A select few historical figures have been able to do this with strength and determination, bringing about significant change for many people through non-violent protest.

Nelson Mandela suffered 27 years in prison for protesting apartheid in South Africa, yet in an interview with Bill Moyers he once said he never held any bitterness in his heart for his prison guards or the people who put him there. He understood they were victims of the system he was attempting to change. Similarly, Martin Luther King used his voice and intellect to inspire people not only during the Civil Rights era but well into our present time, long after his death, when we are still in so much need of non-violent messages to heal the pain and suffering around us. It’s no wonder that Melba’s hero was Gandhi.

I felt inspired to quickly draft a lesson on non-violence and present it to the ninth graders the very next day when their discussions were still fresh in their minds. Some seemed to understand and appreciate what I shared while others behaved in an adolescent “I don’t care” sarcastic demeanor. I miss the adult conversations I used to have with my college students when I taught lessons I felt so passionate about, such as this one, but I know there’s a way to reach even the most reluctant younger learners and I’m enjoying the bumpy ride as I find it.

Fun with Webinars

Today I conducted a webinar with Sara Staten about "Storybird" (storybird.com)-- this is a terrific web 2.0 tool that helps students express their creativity through art and writing. The site has a number of thematically organized original art to choose from to inspire ideas for writing and sharing in a "round robin" fashion. Students can begin a story and email it to another to add to it until the story is complete. They can then publish their final book where it will remain saved in the website, and it's completely free, student-safe, and super fun and easy to use.

I was mostly impressed with the art available to select from on the website. It ranges from very cute and simple to more complex and thought-provoking. I enjoyed working with Sara on this presentation. I'm glad some folks signed up to participate today (thank you Jeff, Melanie, and Alison!!). The participants made some excellent comments and offered great feedback. I think the tool is most useful in an English classroom, but Melanie also pointed out its usefulness in a World Languages class as well.

I'm glad the technology didn't fail us during our presentation and am so grateful for having paired with an excellent partner like Sara!! She had great ideas for a lesson plan to match the tool and was instrumental in getting it all together in time. What a great experience this was. I'm excited to see if anyone's Web 2.0 article will be published next semester. Thanks to Jeff and Liz for creating this assignment. I think we all feared it a bit, especially at the tail end of the semester when we have so many other assignments due, but once we tried it we realized how fun it actually was. I'll be using this tool when I teach next semester!

4th Period AP Acting Session- Hamlet

Star Gazing

“It is literature and not literary criticism, which is the subject.” (Bridging English p 152)

I appreciate this quote because to me, it indicates that we should remember to keep the focus on the literature itself without getting too far wrapped up in the literary theory about it. We should allow students to evaluate it for themselves first before flooding their minds with the deconstructionist views they will never be able to erase after learning and possibly, sadly, never be able to appreciate literature on their own terms again. I’m reminded of that beautiful Whitman poem, When I Heard the Learned Astronomer:

When I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the
lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

Of course we can guide them by giving them basic information about the different lenses they can look through to evaluate literature, such as psychological, feminist, biographical, Marxist, mythological, formalist, post modernist, etc, but I would hate for theory to get in the way of students experiencing the beauty of literature for themselves first.

Reader-response criticism is the one I lean most towards because I think it’s the one that makes most sense – what experiences do readers bring to the text initially that lead them to understand the material in their unique ways? Maybe I feel strongest about this type of literary criticism because my background is in personal essay writing/creative nonfiction and almost everything for me takes on meaning by how well I can relate to it.

What concerns me about literary theory is that despite all my years of education and being an educator myself, I never felt adequate enough to participate in that type of dialogue. I consider it to be too stuffy and high-brow for me. I’m like the Charles Bukowski of literary theory – I prefer the dirty every-day man lingo to the “look at me I have a top notch university education” speech that nauseates me whenever I hear it. Sure there is pleasure in speaking intelligently but I prefer speaking as I understand things and maybe it’s because it takes me a lot longer to process complex ideas that I prefer simplicity and clarity. Perhaps this has something to do with my background as an immigrant child and ESL student, never feeling fully adequate to participate in such conversations. I can certainly do it but I just prefer not to. I’d like to be able to teach the basics of theory/criticism and let students do what they will with it because on my radar it isn’t as important as the literature itself.

Traditional vs. Progressive Education

I remember receiving a very traditional education from elementary through high school, meaning teachers would primarily lecture and I would try to do a lot of memorization work. Most of the stuff I had to memorize for exams like dates in history or factual information for math or science went in one ear and out the other and I have pretty much forgotten most of it unless it’s been used and reinforced to date.

I remember one fantastic ancient civilization teacher I had in high school who assigned very creative assignments in which were to use artistic abilities to do assignments and activities and we even had a trip to the museum to reinforce things we were learning. This material stayed with me because I found it so interesting and was able to experience it visually. She had us do a timeline of most influential events of the 20th century because Time magazine had just done an article on that, and we were to illustrate each event with a brief summary. I remember she held mine up to show the class as an example and it made me feel very good to know I had worked so hard on something and been recognized. She even brought in a ball and chain to show us what Gladiators would fight with. It was a very hands-on interesting class.

Having received a traditional education for the most part in elementary and high school, it was extremely difficult for me to adjust to college where we were expected to participate actively in classes. I was very shy and timid and it took me a long time to get over that. It wasn’t until senior year that I finally gained more comfort expressing myself and looking back, I wish I were expected to have a more active role in my earlier education to better prepare me for college and life in general. So I would strive to be a progressive teacher rather than a traditional one. In my mind I see traditional as being more about outcome and lecture-driven and progressive more about the learning process and engaging students in a creative way to retain and apply the knowledge they receive.

The Power of Words

Quote: “To speak of mere words is much like speaking of mere dynamite” – what does this quote have to do with teaching English?

This quote has a lot to do with teaching English because words hold power just as “dynamite” holds power. In all the English classes I taught in the past I tried to drill this idea into my students, telling them what they say and how they say it matters greatly. I like to emphasize quality writing over quantity, telling them I’d prefer a few pages of powerful, meaningful writing over twenty pages of space-filler-fluff. The literature I selected to teach in the college courses was always carefully chosen to inspire students to think critically about the world and their place within it. We often talked about how powerful words are and how we should never take them for granted since we use them in every day life, not just the English classroom. Words matter on every level and ever relationship, between students and professors, employees and employers, friends, family, significant others, even pets and plants! We interact with living thing around us through words, using a particular tone with specific intentions and always toward an ultimate purpose, etc, so learning English well is not just learning how to write essays but how to communicate and express yourself clearly in any given situation.