Laughter is the Best Professional Development

Posted on October 31, 2011 by admin

This summer I was asked to write two columns for my local teachers’ association’s newsletter–one for the fall and one for spring.  This will appear in this month’s Jefferson County Education Association’s Insight:

“Laughter is the Best Professional Development”

Teaching has never been a career for sissies, and if ever there were those apocryphal educators who only went into teaching for the summers off, I doubt they lasted long.  Even when I was a student, I was fully aware that my best teachers were educators, counselors, mentors, and life coaches (even though “life coach” wasn’t an official job when I was in school) all at the same time.  They inspired me, opened the world to me, pushed me beyond the limits of my own small experience.

I knew what I was getting into when I chose my career.  I wanted to be all of those things to young people. I wanted to give back all I’d gotten from the most beloved of my own teachers, so even as “education reform” has pressed to render teachers merely “proficient,” I—like so many of my fellow educators—still strive to inspire and truly challenge my students.

It’s been a job at once rewarding and exhausting.  Any of us can affirm that those “summers off” are really only times when the workload slows down.  During those fleeting weeks, we reflect, plan, study, take some time to replenish the well, and return ready to take on a new year.

But this year, it’s the first week in October, and it seems like my colleagues and I have already tapped those recently replenished wells dry.  We are implementing vast changes in curricula that were not completed in time for us to take advantage of summer months for planning.  We have been told to implement all these new lessons without the requisite materials.  We fly by the seat of our pants every day, spinning straw into…well, if not gold, copper at least, and with nary a Rumpelstiltskin in sight.

One of the other things that has struck me recently is the impact our economy is having, even in our more affluent schools.  This year at Columbine, I have more students than ever before who cannot afford such basic school supplies as binders and dividers.  I have one student who has moved three times since the start of school.  He works from 4:00 p.m.-9:00 p.m. every day to help three families crowded into one house make ends meet, but he cares deeply about school, so we work together to figure out how he can go to his job and then come home to a house where there is no computer or quiet study space and accomplish his homework.

Often the morning conversation in the English office entails such topics as the upcoming school board election, the implications of being held accountable for results of curricula in which we had no voice, shocking discipline issues (like the student who threw her cell phone at a colleague), and the general sense of despair to which we teachers can easily fall victim these days.

Then lunchtime rolls around.  Somehow, there just isn’t any more room for the burdens and worries.  In my department we gather around a giant table—one that can seat all 14 of us—and laugh.  We laugh at students’ antics and colleagues’ inadvertently naughty gaffs in the classroom.  We howl at Anguished English style mistakes students make in their papers.  And the laughter doesn’t stop at lunchtime.  We find newspaper articles that are of genuine professional interest—the latest studies done in education or various literature-related articles—and post them on a giant white board in the English office.  By the end of the day, it is surrounded by our colleagues’ responses: jokes, puns, double-entendres, obscure references to bad pop music and cult movies.  Teachers from other departments have been known to stop by just to read our white board and chuckle.

My mother always told me that crying never solved anything, and I guess laughter doesn’t either, but it sure does lighten the load.

No, teaching has never been easy, and it seems just to be getting harder, but we have one indomitable advantage that cannot be legislated away nor mangled in the machinery of policy and education “reform”—we have each other.  Whether we are collaborating together, joining voices to speak truth to power, or just gathering over an eclectic bounty of sack lunches, we can meet today’s challenges and do right by our students if we know that we can lean on the person next to us and laugh.

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DLEA Ate My Blogging Time (and so much more…)

Posted on October 7, 2011 by admin

My son’s blog has shamed me into writing my own darned blog entry.  I wasn’t kidding when I said I have been working twice as hard to be half the teacher, thanks to Jefferson County Public Schools DLEA (Department of Learning and Educational Achievement, or Department for Lowering Educational Achievement, depending upon whom you ask).

Any other year, my sophomores would begin with reading early American literature and work from the basic essay format they were taught in ninth grade to present more complex ideas with deeper analysis within that format.  Because of DLEA’s new curriculum, they read and wrote short stories.  After all, students write so very many short stories in college and in life.  Next they are supposed to read poems, non-fiction, and short fiction to “look for patterns” that they would then use to help them write a “pattern essay” (compare/contrast, cause/effect, classification/division, etc.).  I’m not supposed to assign a pattern or teach them a pattern—or any sort of essay format, for that matter.  They’re just supposed to pick a pattern and write an essay on their own based upon all the good stuff they learned about patterns from poetry, short fiction, and non-fiction.  Now, the essay isn’t supposed to be about any of the stuff they read.  This isn’t literary analysis.  They write about something else.  If you’re wondering how anyone figures out how to write a random cause/effect essay by studying patterns in poetry, you’re not alone.  I got nothin’.  I’m being all “mavericky,” and instead of that, we’re reading Catcher in the Rye (we’re not supposed to read a novel as a class; all books are supposed to be student choice) and using a basic essay structure to show them how to morph it into a variety of formats, such as classification/division or problem/solution, and they’re writing a literary analysis.  If someone wants to fire me for that, fine.  We’ll do poetry as another unit.  Next semester, they are supposed to write an investigative report in which they find out about and expose something someone is trying to cover up (that’s not a potentially disastrous assignment in the hands of 15-year-olds, is it?) and a debate case.

We’d sort of perfected the opening of the school year in ACE, my class for at-risk juniors.  We used to dive right into The Power of One to start immediately pulling up their reading skills.  You have to remember that many of the kids in that class brag about the fact that they haven’t read a book cover to cover since elementary school (although some most definitely do read on their own), so there’s a lot of work to do to get their skills caught up.  The kids usually love this book because it combines a coming-of-age story with boxing and rebelling and all the stuff they love. We also did a career research project that culminated in a PowerPoint presentation.  It took a group of kids where the majority hadn’t written an essay in years—after all, I have them because they’ve been failing English for at least the first two years of high school—and got them doing research and organizing ideas in a streamlined fashion.  We have always built slowly to the essay, first just getting the basics of writing down, then adding layers.

Well, the new curriculum created by DLEA mandated a different start.  As much as we talk about differentiation—different approaches for different kids with different abilities—DLEA mandates the same thing for everyone.  This year we began by reading “multimodal essays,” which is a term that basically describes any essay, since most essays combine such types of writing as descriptive, expository, etc., and that is what DLEA considers multimodal.  Boy, nothing entices non-readers with very low reading skills to read like a bunch of essays written by other people!  (Please read that last line with heavy sarcasm.)  Then they have to write an essay like the ones they read.  Let me tell you, jumping right into an essay without carefully building their ability to process and organize information (as our PowerPoint did) was a disaster.  The kids were immediately frustrated, thrown in way over their heads.  We’re not supposed to be reading a book together, but I’m doing it anyway.  Next, they’re supposed to write a civic position paper.  Why?  Because it’s next on the list.  Need there be any other reason?  Logical flow of ideas and skills?  Relationship to anything else we’ve done?  I’m figuring out how to tie it to The Power of One. (Renegade lit teacher, that’s me!)  At least the second semester papers are a lot more conducive to my students’ abilities, so I really don’t mind the changes, but the junior teachers in the college-prep track are flabbergasted.  We all do a critical review (play, movie, etc.) and a memoir as the next “important” assignments, whether the kids’ are in ACE or regular junior English.  (By the way, DLEA has kids writing memoirs in 6th grade and 9th grade, as well.)

My seniors are generally the same kids I taught in ACE or ones much like them.  Many of their credits in all kinds of classes come from summer school, night school, and online courses that are hugely watered down.  First, we wrote college application essays.  That’s fine.  These guys aren’t going to colleges that require them, but it’s not a bad idea to do a little self-reflection in one’s senior year (even if one has written memoirs three times before this).  Next, they do a critical lens essay.  That’s right, kids with no real background in anything are supposed to pick a book, read it on their own, and analyze it using a Marxist, feminist, psychoanalytical, or another very sophisticated critical literary lens.  ‘Cause, you know, they study Marxism in summer school.  Not.  Screw that.  We’re all reading the same book (World War Z) and studying it through the same critical lens: historical/cultural.  They choose their own aspect of that lens, but without a ton of guidance, they’d all fail it, so I’m not doing what DLEA wants.  Next semester, they write a qualitative research paper where they do their own original research and a “reflective presentation.”  Wish me luck on the qualitative research paper.  I’m gonna need it.

Bear in mind, that list of assignments is for all seniors, not just mine.  (Remember, we’re not differentiating anymore.) Does that look like half of DLEA’s writing curriculum for seniors is self-reflection?  That’s because it is.  Over the course of four years, do we seem to be missing a basic research paper of the kind most commonly done in college?  That’s because we are.  It’s not like they write one in 9th grade.  Freshmen write a “This I Believe” paper, an editorial, a memoir, and a definition essay.  There is not supposed to be any class study of any single book—all short works or student choice.  I haven’t talked about what I’m doing with that, but there will be some student choice reading.

And when I talked to my union about this?  Well…DLEA is made up of teachers who bailed on the classroom to write this stuff.  They haven’t been in real classrooms with real kids in five years or more, but they are still considered teachers, and some are in the union, so…you know…we can’t really back one group of teachers against another…it wouldn’t politic (or politically palatable?).

Once upon a time, the teachers in my department built upon the five-paragraph essay format (paragraphs using a point, evidence, analysis structure), and we eventually worked into longer, more in-depth essays analyzing challenging novels or employing extensive research.  It takes a lot to rework what we have traditionally done into a series of “This I Believe” statements, memoirs, self-reflections, and other reinforcements of our already narcissistic culture.  It is a royal pain to figure out how to squeeze whole novels in between the “student choice” reading requirements, but at Columbine we’re doing it because we have this antiquated notion that classroom discourse around literature with a teacher’s expert guidance is still valuable, not least because it gets kids out of their narcissism and into someone else’s head, someone else’s culture for a little while.

In the meantime, I’ve talked to a lot of college kids: my son’s friends, student teachers, college observers in education programs.  What do they say they’re writing in school?  Essays—longer and more in-depth than the basic five-paragraph but structurally mostly the same—and research papers.  What aren’t they writing?  Self-reflection, memoirs, editorials, etc.  Critical lens is taught in upper division English classes and nowhere else.  I know a number of graduate students and sociology majors who’ve done qualitative research papers, but no one else.

Working twice as hard to be half the teacher.

Posted in Life, the Universe, and Everything | Leave a comment

My Son’s Blogging…

Posted on October 5, 2011 by admin

I, as you can see, have been a total slacker in the blogging department.  One of these days I’ll update, I promise.  It’s just crazy busy.  I’m working twice as hard to be half the teacher, thanks to good old “education reform,” but that is a topic for another day.

In the meantime, I’m going to let my son pick up the slack.  He’s in his second year as a resident advisor at University of Colorado Boulder and blogging about the experience.  He’s a history major and a former Lincoln-Douglas debater, hence the passion for John Locke.  Enjoy!

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Be Careful What You Wish For

Posted on August 2, 2011 by admin

Did I say something about my illiterate summer?  I met with my agent yesterday who handed me five romance novels by four authors.  She swears that I am, at heart, a “smart romance writer” and that these books prove there’s a market for such a thing.  My assignment: read them and share my reactions to each, what I like, what I don’t like, so we can talk about our vision for my career.

We both agreed that Hester was a bit of a fluke, that I’m more of a genre fiction writer than a literary one.  While I know I have family and friends who were glad to see me “graduate” from romance to literary, I never saw it that way.  I just want to like what I write.

At any rate, I am three chapters into Scandal by Carolyn Jewel.  So far, there’s a ton of emphasis on the sexual tension between a man and a woman I neither know nor care anything about.  I really have to care about the characters before I care whether or not they sleep together.  Still, chapter four begins with some discussion of Napoleon, so there’s potential here for the “smart” part.  I’ll keep reading…

Addendum:  In all fairness, I don’t like Regency romance. Scandal is well written, and for folks who love that genre, I’d really recommend it.  Trust me, though, I won’t be writing anything like it.  Sigh.

Posted in Writing and Being a Writer | 5 Comments

Summer Slump

Posted on July 29, 2011 by admin

I think this has been the least literate summer of my life.  I sent my agent my revamped proposal for the last historical novel I worked on, having pledged to myself that I would not work on it any more unless it sold.  In all honesty, I think the revamp has made the novel worse, so I’m not anticipating a good reaction.  That’s a shame since I started out really liking it.  The fact that it’s been nearly two months and I haven’t heard back from my agent doesn’t bode well.

I haven’t even felt much motivation to read.  I was working my way through Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, but lord, that book takes work!  And I haven’t felt up to it.  I’ve been wading through Grimm’s fairy tales, looking for inspiration, but haven’t found any.  I just bought a book whose title I don’t even remember simply because it was a staff recommendation from The Tattered Cover book store and it looked like something I might like to “write something like,” since I am told that whatever I write must be “like” some other book in order for it to sell.  So far, it’s not really grabbing me.

So basically, I feel like I’m wasting a summer.  It’s been about 11 years since I’ve let a summer go by without working on a novel.  As you can see, I’ve hardly blogged.  I honestly don’t think a summer has passed since I learned to read that I haven’t powdered off a stack of books.

I’ve done other things, for sure.  I’ve gone on the first out-of-town vacation in three years (San Francisco).  I’ve been teaching my daughter to drive.  She and I have made lots of day-trips in that pursuit, so we have enjoyed one of the last summers before she heads off for college.  These are fine uses of time off.  I’ve been watching too much TV—reruns of House, Law and Order SVU, stuff like that.  This may well be the cause of the dried-up creative juices.  Just as I defend “trashy” literature, I fully defend pure entertainment on TV—in moderation.  I just haven’t been terribly judicious about the quantity.

I know this sounds like I’m complaining.  Actually, it’s not so much that as it is a description of a slump.  I know I’ll come out of it.  Either inspiration will strike and I’ll write something I love (whether it sells or not) or I’ll realize I want to do something else.  I have invested a sizable amount of time trying to reinstate book reading and essay writing in our county’s English curriculum.  I have a meeting with my union rep, our chief academic officer, and few others in August.  As I said, not an entirely unproductive summer, just not the most literate one.

Posted in Education, Family, Life, the Universe, and Everything, Writing and Being a Writer | 3 Comments

The Sacred and the Humane

Posted on July 18, 2011 by admin

Another article from The Times that I thought was interesting, again about the nature of religion, God, etc.  It’s called “The Sacred and the Humane.” As is often the case, I find myself frustrated by a very narrow definition of religion, and I think this divides us when it needn’t.  In this, the central question is whether the concept of human rights belongs to the religious or the secular, siding with the secular and asserting that this is an important distinction.  Biletzki’s arguments are interesting, logical and well-reasoned, but I don’t buy his assertion that it matters.  I would argue that the wellspring really is the same, and articles like this (as well as any that might claim that the idea of human rights springs from some personified, sentient deity) divide us over the very things that, at their hearts, unite us.

Posted in Life, the Universe, and Everything | Tagged , , | 9 Comments

A Bit More on the Last Post

Posted on July 3, 2011 by admin

I thought this article, “Married with Infidelities,” covered the topic of my last post from every angle pretty well.  I don’t really have anything to add; I just thought it was interesting and thorough.

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Separate AND Equal

Posted on June 24, 2011 by admin

Once again, the inspiration for my blog came from The New York Times: “Marriage Is a Mixed Blessing.” This is really a rehash of things I’ve said before, but I find myself saying them with greater conviction as time passes.

The more I think about it, the more really I believe the answer to relationship equality is civil unions for legal purposes and marriage that has nothing to do with civil law for those who choose it, regardless of the sexes of the people involved.

I know that “traditional marriage” means a lot to many people, but whether everyone likes it or not, marriage is in a state of flux.  In fact, it always has been.  “Traditional marriage” as most people mean it has never existed.  That is to say, marriage of the 1950s (which seems to be some golden-era of marriage for proponents of “traditional marriage”) would be unrecognizable to a couple married in the time of Jesus (another apparent golden age of marriage).  I’d be willing to bet that, while couples of the 1950s knew what the ideal marriage was supposed to look like, few people actually had it.

The fact is that people have always had different ideas of “traditional marriage,” so why insist on regulating it?  Why insist on it at all?

To me, marriage is an equal partnership—not tit-for-tat or day-to-day, but on balance.  It’s not the whole of my life, but it’s the bedrock.  It’s not my husband’s responsibility to fill all my needs, but when the chips are down, or my back is to the wall, or (pick some other cliché), I know he’ll be there, and vice versa.  Others believe that marriage is a sort of hierarchical arrangement, where power is unequally but clearly designated.  Some follow the ideal of monogamy; others treat exclusivity in marriage as more a guideline in discretion—there can be additional sexual partners, but a decent person hides them.  Still others prefer an open relationship that they do not hide from each other, but feel they can’t reveal to anyone else, because there’s this supposed universal concept of marriage.

In all honesty, I can admit that part of the reason I got married almost 27 years ago was because that was my paradigm for a committed relationship, so much so that I never considered anything else.  But it also felt very, very right.  I knew I wanted this relationship to be the bedrock for the rest of my life.  I wanted to grow old with this man.  (So far, it’s going very well!)  I felt such a deep connection to him that a religious/spiritual sanctification of our relationship felt appropriate.  Our marriage very much fits the current idea of traditional marriage, but really, that’s just because it works for us.  If it didn’t, I very much doubt that mere social pressure would make it what it is.

Not everyone wants an exclusive covenant that lasts for life.  They may believe that such a covenant is silly and contrived, and forcing them to enter one doesn’t mean you can force them into changing their belief.  Not everyone’s relationship is like my husband’s and mine, and that does not make those relationships any less legitimate.  The way it currently works, if you don’t want a forever relationship, but you have children together or want to provide for each other, you get married, and then when the time comes, you get divorced, and other people lay all their own paradigms on those actions; it all becomes much more complicated that it needs to be.  Those who choose an exclusive, lifelong covenant, which is what most people who say they value “traditional marriage” mean, understand that it would be difficult and complicated to dissolve it; that’s part of the choice they make.  The key is it’s a covenant they make between themselves and God (or some other term for a greater power or bigger picture), not themselves and the state.  It seems to me the state is too worldly an authority for that kind of commitment.

I know people will say that children need both parents, and “traditional marriage” helps ensure that they have both there, but I wonder if that’s true.  Parents divorce all the time, and sometimes they stay together “for the sake of the children,” all the while modeling some really unhealthy relationships for those children.

The best marriages are those of choice, where people stay together because they believe in the relationship, not because they feel trapped or obligated.  A relationship is truly sanctified only as long as the people in it recognize its sanctity.  The church alone cannot uphold a union’s sacredness, and certainly not the state.

Addendum:  One more option I hadn’t thought of that my mom mentioned:  She used to live in Florida, where there are a lot of retirees for whom a civil marriage has financial implications for their heirs.  They sometimes opt for the church-sanctified marriage and skip the civil part.  It seems to me that works fine, too, and should be as socially legitimate as any other relationship.

Posted in Family, Life, the Universe, and Everything | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Matters of Life and Death

Posted on June 5, 2011 by admin

I thought this was an interesting op-ed by Mark Trautwein about living with AIDS from a time before the disease was identified through the present.  It’s an article about the balance of living with the certain knowledge that time is limited and with the hope that tomorrow isn’t where the limit is set.  He is candid about all that AIDS has taken from him, but also all that it has given him.

I feel that way about the shootings.  That event didn’t affect me to the same degree—I don’t have to arrange my entire day around medications and the conflicting demands of all those pills, but not one single, solitary day has passed in over 12 years that I haven’t thought about it.  Most people think they could die tomorrow from some unexpected thing.  I know it.  I know that I am not safe from death anywhere or at any time.  Tomorrow is a probability, not a guarantee.

A lot of times, if I say that to people, they think it’s very depressing, but it’s not.  It makes you focus your life.  It means that you try really hard never to have unresolved conflicts or things said or unsaid that you wouldn’t want others to live with should something happen to you in the next three minutes.  When you live with the certainty and unpredictability of death, really live with it, you don’t leave the house and get in your car leaving behind angry words with kids or a spouse.  If nothing else, you remember to say, “I’m really angry right now, but I love you.”

It means you plan for the future—save money, dream dreams.  You may have to delay gratification, but you don’t defer happiness.  Happiness and gratification are not the same thing.  Gratification is getting what you want; happiness is being content with what you have.  When you know that you could get up from blogging to make a second cup of tea and a freak accident could make these words your last, you remember to reflect upon the fact that the first cup of tea was pretty good, and that the breeze coming through the window this morning is particularly fine.

Many people fear death, but really it can be our friend.  It is the very finiteness of life that makes it precious.  I know that’s hackneyed and clichéd, but it’s also very true.

Posted in Life, the Universe, and Everything | 6 Comments

Birthday Bash

Posted on May 30, 2011 by admin

We had a big shindig to celebrate DH’s 50th birthday yesterday.  The forecast was for 60 degrees and rain, so I changed the backyard BBQ plan to an indoor taco bar followed by margarita cupcakes.  Of course, what we got was high 70s and sunshine.  So much for weather forecasts!  As DH pointed out, though, the taco bar meant less work for him since he wasn’t stuck at the grill.  We now have tons of food leftover, if anyone wants to come over for tacos and enchiladas any time in the next three weeks.  We also have copious amounts of beer to go with them!

We had a lot of my family there, but it seemed odd not have any of his (beyond me and the kids).  It seemed like we should have had his mom and aunt.  I kept feeling like I’d somehow just forgotten to invite them.  Getting through that first year of holidays and birthdays does a lot to help us let go of those we love, but milestone events can be a little tricky, too.

We also had lots of friends our age, and while one couple has younger children, the rest of us found ourselves talking about empty nests.  One couple’s youngest just graduated from high school, another has a daughter the same age as ours, so they have two more years to go.  I had no idea when we had our first child over 20 years ago that having them leave home is every bit as huge a change as having them come into your life to begin with.

It’s kind of hard to believe, too, that I started dating this man when he was a boy of 16.  It’s funny to look back at the night we met—the pool party, the midnight showing of Star Wars—and think how neither of us could have guessed at the life we’d build together.  All-in-all, it’s been a good one.  I hope he reached the big 5-0 feeling every bit as proud of what he’s done with his life as he should.

Posted in Family, Life, the Universe, and Everything | 4 Comments