Category Archives: beauty

Defining Wisdom

12 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by in beauty, education

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Last spring I wrote about a period of malaise I was going through, which, as it turns out, had a lot to do with the fact that I was getting burned out at work.  And a little bored.  While there was some variety in my early years of teaching, things settled pretty quickly into my having the same two preps (AP Lit and sophomore English) for the next 17 years.  And I was teaching sophomores for three periods a day, which meant summoning the energy to act like the passage that was brand new to my students wasn’t something I’d already read and discussed so many times that the thought of doing it yet again made me want to weep.  That’s a lot of acting.  All this to say that I realized it was time to make a change, which led to my requesting two sections of Beginning ELD (also known as ESL) this year, keeping my two sections of AP Lit, and going down to just one section of sophomore English.

Most of the people I encountered thought this was a slightly insane decision.  More than one person said, “I’m sorry” when I told them about taking on that class, and when I’d clarify that I had requested it, their eyebrows would go up and they’d say, “Really?”  Because the sad truth is that ELD has sometimes been a dumping ground at some schools—the class assigned to some of the most underperforming teachers because their negative impact will be less visible.  It isn’t the type of class teachers tend to request.  When my principal announced at a meeting last spring that someone needed to take on these classes, I could see the other teachers in my department slanting looks at each other that clearly said, “Not me!”

I had what I thought were some pretty good reasons to say “Me!” For one thing, the paper load and essay grading from my other preps was killing me (especially after a day of Broadway performances).  With ELD, I would have a smaller number of students and much shorter papers to grade.  The last several years, I’ve had over 190 students in the course of my day.  This year I have 147.  I also thought it would be good for me to try something new, to challenge myself and get out of my rut.  And while it’s been incredibly stressful preparing and teaching an entirely new curriculum and feeling like I don’t know what I’m doing at all after years of knowing exactly what I’m doing, it’s already helped me grow in some areas I needed to be stretched.  I also liked the idea of helping students learn English because my father had to learn English, as did many of my aunts, uncles, and cousins, and it feels right to invest in helping other immigrants get a leg up as well.

Still, I had some doubts, one of the biggest ones being whether it would be hard for me to teach such simple and basic things for two hours every day.  I have the second year students, so they know some English, but their comprehension and skills are still at a very basic level.  Would I just be exchanging one form of boredom for another?  So far, that has not been the case.  Each day presents some type of challenge, mostly behavioral as I am dealing with students who are extremely familiar with each other and who were accustomed to acting pretty much however they wanted to last year.  A lot of my time and energy goes into trying to teach them that yes, they need to listen when I’m giving instructions, and no, they shouldn’t be yelling across the room or throwing baby carrots at each other.  But most days also present some type of unexpected delight.

One of the routines I’ve established with my students is that we all read silently for about 10 minutes each day.  I have a classroom library of simpler texts for them, but a lot of the students struggle with this activity.  At the end of the ten minutes, I have them write one or two words on the board that they came across in their reading and didn’t understand.  They love this.  Part of it is just that they love to get out of their seats and write on the white board with my many colored markers.  But they also seem to genuinely love learning these new words.  And I love it too.  I love these lists of words on the board, words like shimmer, tugged, deny, encourage, portion, hopped, scary, and wisdom.  I say the words aloud and they all chorus them back to me.  Then I do my best to explain the meaning of each word.  Sometimes this involves me physically acting things out (and can I say that few things are more humbling than demonstrating a bunny hop across the room in front of your laughing students?).  But often this involves telling a kind of story or scenario.  “You know when you’re at a lake or the ocean and the sun is shining on the water and it makes a kind of wave of light [with accompanying hand motion] on the water? That’s ‘shimmer.’  Or when a girl’s hair is very smooth and shiny and the light hits it–you could say ‘her hair shimmers.’ And ‘wisdom’ is like intelligence, but it goes deeper.  It’s knowing how to live a good life and understand the world.  It often takes a long time to get this.”  You can see in their faces when they understand.  Their eyes widen slightly and their mouths relax into an O.  Often one of them will shout out the Spanish equivalent when he or she gets it before the others.  I usually ask them to tell me the word again and repeat it after them, and every time the students clap, delighted that I have learned one of their words and pronounced it properly.

And here we are as a class enjoying language, celebrating words.  It struck me the other day that the last time I engaged in this kind of collective word-savoring was at breakfast with a table of poets, some of us aspiring, some long-established.  It was during a week-long conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and somehow we got on the topic of what our favorite words were.  Some of us shared words we loved because of their meaning, but a lot of us shared words we loved just for the sound of them and the way they felt on our tongues, like two of my favorites: kumquat and sasquatch.  In other words, it was a language-nerd love-fest, and I was in heaven.

I never expected to get glimpses of that in my ELD class, and yet now that I think about it, I don’t know why I wouldn’t have expected it.  This class is about language and the sounds of words and the meanings of words and the logic (or lack thereof) behind those sounds and meanings.  In other words, the perfect class for a poet/writer to teach.  The kind of class where a boy will ask you why a flashlight isn’t called a “handlight.”

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In Defense of Poetry (a manifesto of sorts)

10 Monday Feb 2014

Posted by in beauty, education, musings

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Recently, Apple came out with this commercial for their iPad Air product, which features an audio clip from the movie Dead Poet’s Society along with clips of people using their ipads in various creative endeavors:

 

I realized as I watched this commercial that Apple understands something very important that the policy-makers in public education are missing–that most people tend to find beauty, purpose, and meaning far more compelling than information and facts.  Apple is using this understanding to sell a product, and so far this commercial has had over 1.2 million views on YouTube.  While I don’t know whether or not it’s actually improved sales, it certainly has captured the public’s attention.

There is a lot about the Common Core Standards (CCSS) on the internet, and my purpose in this post isn’t to give a definitive explanation of them or to make an argument for or against them.  There are some elements of the CCSS that I think could bring about some positive changes (“could” being the operative word since the implementation of these standards is one giant, national experiment) in terms of increasing the rigor of public education and encouraging teachers to regularly reflect on their teaching practices and to measure/monitor whether or not their students are actually learning and mastering skills.  But there is a great deal about these standards, their adoption, and the way they’re being implemented that concerns me deeply, the main aspect being that the CCSS seem to view students primarily as future workers and consumers who need, above all else, to be able to make arguments, support their ideas with logic and evidence, and be highly skilled and conversant in reading and writing informational text.  Some might point out that there are still a number of literature-based standards.  The Common Core website even states that literature should amount to 30% of the content a high school student reads in the course of his/her day.  The other 70% is expected to be informational text, which makes sense since English is typically only one class in five or six, and informational texts are a natural fit in subjects like history, science, and art.

However, many districts are misinterpreting this and emphasizing informational texts and writing over literature in English classes as well.  Roughly half of the English CC standards are, in fact, based on informational text (which seems to contradict that whole 30% thing), but part of this overall imbalance may also be due to the fact that the overwhelming majority of sample Common Core ELA assessments available to the public primarily use informational texts.  My own school districts’ two CC benchmarks for 10th grade English involve writing an argument based on 14 pages of informational text and an informational writing task.  None of the literature standards are addressed, and no literature appears on any of the district assessments.  Implicit though it may be, this sends a very clear message:  literature should take a back seat.  Creativity is at best a luxury, at worst irrelevant.

I realize we are living in an information age, and I am not naïve enough to think that teaching students how to analyze and write informational text isn’t important.  I also have no problem with teaching students how to make evidence-based, logical arguments (many of us could benefit from a little more logic).  But if we truly want students to be lifelong learners, if we truly want students to be people who can contribute something significant to the world, we need to recognize that they are not just future workers and information processors; they are human beings.  They are complex beings living in a complex world that involves far more than simply information and facts and argument.  Imagine if Shakespeare had been fed a steady diet of informational text and made to focus on informational writing instead of studying and imitating the tragedies, comedies, and poetry of the ancient Greeks.  Shakespeare was able to write what he wrote because he was incredibly gifted, but he also wrote what he wrote because he was inspired.  And while you might be able to measure a certain amount of skills and knowledge with standardized assessments and by analyzing data, there is no systematized way to measure the most important element to motivating deep and lifelong learning:  delight.

Ask anyone who their favorite teacher is, or what their favorite subject is, and I’d be willing to bet some serious cash that there is a high level of enjoyment and delight involved.  The same thing is true for any adult who still loves learning, who still is curious about the world–they do so and they are so because learning delights them.  Because it is deeply satisfying, enriching, and inspiring.  Informational text can certainly be interesting.  There have been a number of articles I’ve read with my students that have sparked their thinking and that they’ve enjoyed reading and writing about.  But none of them are impacted by the articles anywhere as deeply as they are by the literature we read.  When they come back to visit me in later years, they don’t talk about the articles–they talk about the literature.  They talk about their favorite characters, their favorite authors, their favorite works.  There is no test that can measure the deep pride and satisfaction of students who announce to me that To Kill a Mockingbird is the first novel they’ve read all the way through, or the ignited desire evidenced when they ask me if I know any other “books like that” they can read.

Data doesn’t reveal the epiphanies they have or the empathy they develop when they experience life through someone else’s eyes, when they are outraged by the injustices those characters suffer or are moved by the courage or love they see modeled.  It doesn’t measure the growth that occurs when they persevere through a text that slowly builds to revelation.  I believe our students need revelation.  I believe they need beauty.  I believe we educators have a responsibility to cultivate their humanity and their souls as well as their skills.  We have a responsibility to equip them to live good lives, which means preparing them not only for the workplace, but also cultivating their curiosity, their empathy, their self-awareness, their creativity, and their passion for life.  Idealistic?  Perhaps.  Grandiose?  Probably.  But I think we should be aiming for ideals and grandiosity when it comes to educating young people, not just “proficient” test scores.

In true Common Core fashion, I ought to provide some evidence for this argument.  As a believer in stories, however, I subscribe to the notion that anecdotal evidence is good evidence.  So is poetry.  I start every week in my sophomore English classes by reading them a poem.  Most of the time, I just read it and they listen and then we move on to the next activity without discussing or analyzing the poem.  I do this because I want them to learn that sometimes you can just receive something and appreciate it even if you don’t fully understand it.  I am cultivating their open-mindedness and attentiveness.  I also do it because I want them to encounter something beautiful at school at least once a week.  I’m sure there are students who grit their teeth and simply endure it, but many of them love listening to the poems.  Even my hyper sophomore boys, who think it’s hilarious to hide each other’s backpacks or try to twist each other’s nipples, will quiet and listen intently while I read.  They spontaneously clap or snap their fingers when I finish.  And on the rare occasions I forget, they raise their hands and ask, “Aren’t you going to read us a poem?”

We also, from time to time, do dictation with the poems, where they’ll write down stanzas or chunks I read aloud, and then we analyze them together.  Why do you think the poet uses that word?  Why do you think she put a comma there?  What’s the effect of that repetition?  What I’ve noticed in the years since I started doing this is that students who don’t participate in any other activities will raise their hand and participate in our poetry discussions.  Their heads come up.  They engage.  Recently, as a way to teach figurative language and other poetic devices, I had my students write an imitation of Seamus Heaney’s poem “Postscript.”  Typically, about 50-60% of students will complete and turn in homework assignments (this is actually typical for most of the school).  But about 90% of my students completed this poem.  A number of my students are inclusion students–those with a “special education” designation, who often perform quite poorly on tests.  Here is what three of those students, all of whom are labeled as either “below basic” or “far below basic” on standardized tests, wrote.  These are my argument that literature and beauty and poetry matter:

#

And some time make the time to skate

In the park

In your free time.

Feel the cool breeze while you are zooming through the air

And your feet vibrating from the wheels.

Looking at the green grass

Hear the sound of the wheels rolling on the ground.

Useless to think you’ll be perfect at it.

You are neither here nor there,

A cloud full of worries that stops you from doing what you love.

#

And some time make the time

To go out for a run

Cruising through the countryside

When the light is mostly bright

Feeling the cool breeze rub against your skin

Hearing your heart beat through

The sound of silence

Seeing nothing but true green trees

Smelling the hint of spring.

Useless to think you’ll stop

And breathe it all in.

You are neither here nor there,

A flash within the blink of an eye.

#

And some time make the time to walk

At the beach on the sand during summertime.

Feel the breeze on your face

Breathe in the ocean’s fresh air

Hear the roar of the ocean and feel the warmth

Of the beautiful sunset on your face.

Useless to think you won’t fall in love with this sight.

You are neither here nor there,

You are a hummingbird flying everywhere

But not knowing where to land.

Notes from the Festival (Part 3)

20 Sunday May 2012

Posted by in beauty, writing

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Sadly, the festival is starting to feel like some hazy dream I once had a long time ago, but I am doing my best to keep hold of some of what I experienced and get a few more chunks of my notes up here before it slips away entirely.

The following are excerpts of Marilynne Robinson’s talk at the Festival, in which she primarily addressed the fear that has become such a large part of our culture, adapted to some degree from her essays in her latest book When I Was a Child I Read Books.

1.  The only people we should fear are those who could make us not love;  that you have one set of beliefs does not mean you are accusing others of not having them; people are willing to be gracious to religious expression that is gracious to them

2.  fear is a stimulant that makes you focus on things that aren’t there; it’s addictive and becomes normalized

3.  we think ourselves weak and threatened, which makes us deal unwisely and insensitively with others; we act as though people are justified in their fear and that it’s okay to act pre-emptively; in the old Westerns, the heroes were the ones who were reluctant to shoot–the cowards were the ones who shot first and didn’t want to take off their guns.

4.  we think we can’t write about what is most important to us, which creates tremendous anxiety; people get alienated from themselves because it’s so easy to stigmatize words and identities–this makes people vulnerable to having their identities stripped away.

5.  Whatever is essential to you is the basis of your human dignity.  There is a great dignity in refusing to fear.

6.  We need to talk people out of their crouch; if you’re frightened, you’ve let yourself be deprived of an important part of your dignity; if you’re frightened, you don’t trust God.  Trust God and abandon fear.

7.  In regards to writing Gilead and how popular it became:  “I was writing about something important and interesting to me, and that’s what people want for themselves.”

From a later interview:

1.  She loves Wallace Stevens–“he saturates experience with attention” and there is no greater writer in the American language; she admires his “devotion to the idea of the ordinary perceiver” and the transformation from the ordinary to the beautiful/transcendent.

2.  When asked about her popularity in fairly diverse settings (both liberal and conservative) and how that’s possible, she responded “I don’t recognize any obligation other than to speak what’s true.”

The Christian Science Monitor also did an article about her talks, which you can read here:  http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2012/0424/Marilynne-Robinson-Why-are-we-so-afraid