Living on the Lip of Insanity

In response to Clay Burell’s thought provoking post on the need to challenge the conventional wisdom and think critically about all things (even the tough stuff like religion – “When Corrupting the Youth is Good” – something that he wrote triggered that ghost of Emerson:

And that’s why so many types of hugely influential beliefs that make no sense persist today. Kids go through twelve years of school without those beliefs ever being touched by a serious question, they graduate, and bam: the beliefs live on for yet another generation: Bush really is communicating with God, while in the same universe, Bin Laden, in another country’s school system, really is obeying the Word and will of Allah. McCain and Obama consent to be interviewed on national TV with Rick Warren, and thus legitimize a man whose ministry supported a “Left Behind” video game in which post-Rapture Christians kill non-Christians on the streets of New York – and they’re the good guys. To question these things is not important?

I wrote a long reply when I should have been writing all-schools. So here, for my blog, is my reply to Clay (who must think I am idea-stalking him as I have lately been compelled to reply to most of his posts):

Hi Clay -
Critical thinking is, as you point out, often subject to the whims of the current sensibility. As you suggest – yes, think critically about math; no, stay away from religion – is a trap that we fall into.

Learning about the hard stuff is hard, and dangerous. It’s work and it means that we each have our own ideas and the ideas of others can not be controlled or predicted.

Emerson spoke about this in his address to the Phi Beta Kappa society of Harvard. I’m going to write about the thinker using the male pronoun, but I don’t want to suggest that Human Thinking is a gender specific task. Emerson suggests that:

…the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men’s thinking.”

He goes on to describe a man thinking, in active contemplation of the world around him, learning for himself.

“The ambitious soul sits down before each refractory fact; one after another, reduces all strange constitutions, all new powers, to their class and their law, and goes on for ever to animate the last fibre of organization, the outskirts of nature, by insight.” He thinks critically, organizes the world to satisfy himself.

So – the Soul and nature become one to that thinking man. And he begins to ponder creation.

And what is that Root? Is not that the soul of his soul? — A thought too bold, — a dream too wild. He shall see, that nature is the opposite of the soul, answering to it part for part. One is seal, and one is print. Its beauty is the beauty of his own mind. Its laws are the laws of his own mind. Nature then becomes to him the measure of his attainments.”

Now, if you are Emerson – what do you do with books? They aren’t YOUR experience of the world – they are someone else’s. That makes them SUSPECT and DANGEROUS to us as native thinkers:

“The theory of books is noble. The scholar of the first age received into him the world around; brooded thereon; gave it the new arrangement of his own mind, and uttered it again. It came into him, life; it went out from him, truth. It came to him, short-lived actions; it went out from him, immortal thoughts. It came to him, business; it went from him, poetry. It was dead fact; now, it is quick thought. It can stand, and it can go. It now endures, it now flies, it now inspires. Precisely in proportion to the depth of mind from which it issued, so high does it soar, so long does it sing.”

Here is the greatest danger- according to Emerson – that we mistake the writer for his work. If we agree with the book, the writer is a hero – if not, a bum.

He calls it:

grave mischief…the act of thought, — is transferred to the record. The poet chanting, was felt to be a divine man: henceforth the chant is divine also. The writer was a just and wise spirit: henceforward it is settled, the book is perfect; as love of the hero corrupts into worship of his statue. Instantly, the book becomes noxious: the guide is a tyrant. The sluggish and perverted mind of the multitude, slow to open to the incursions of Reason, having once so opened, having once received this book, stands upon it, and makes an outcry, if it is disparaged.”

And then we forget the origins of the books:

“Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views, which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books.

Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm.”

This happens with holy books, both “sacred” and “secular.”

The greatest danger to us as “critical thinkers” is that we turn our thinking over to others and to the books that they write. We let the work (and the writer) think for us. He says that a good book will pull us out of our own orbit – make us a satellite and not a SUN!

“Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end, which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book, than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.”

And here he gives us his belief in critical thinking:

The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul. This every man is entitled to; this every man contains within him, although, in almost all men, obstructed, and as yet unborn. The soul active sees absolute truth; and utters truth, or creates.

He says in essence – ‘now don’t get me wrong. I love books and writers, and to read a good book helps me write my own stuff’ (he uses an allusion to two fig trees in each other’s shadows bearing fruit) BUT there is an active engaged way to read.

“The discerning will read, in his Plato or Shakspeare, only that least part, — only the authentic utterances of the oracle; — all the rest he rejects, were it never so many times Plato’s and Shakspeare’s.”

Finally, he gives us his critical thinking manifesto:

“We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds.”

So – what does that say for the mindless recitation of facts and the sycophantic enslavement of the scholar? He demands a new way of thinking for every age.

Is that empowering or terrifying? I think you would agree that the most patriotic and equally subversive thing that we each can do is to read, experience, and think for ourselves.

Off my transcendentalist soapbox.

I love my friends.  They teach me new stuff all the time.  I’ve seen a bunch of old friends in the last week as the summer comes to a close.  One very talented friend of mine (an actress) shared this bit of wisdom from Alfred Molina, her friend Fred.  Mr. Molina was in Chicago for a workshop at Northwestern University and at one of the classes he taught he said (and I paraphrase because I wasn’t there) that the way to approach each role and each production is to assume that everyone around you is a genius until they prove otherwise, and the only question that you should ask the director is, “Are you happy?’

Translation for the first day of school:

All of my colleagues know what they are doing.  They are talented educators and thinkers.  I believe in each of my students.  The question I should ask my students?  Not sure, but how about: Are you interested?

After watching the 2008 Olympics, I have to say that I am happy that my girls are circus performers.

It's all about balance...

In circus, when you slip a bit and recover, style, and smile, people APPLAUD!!! (No one deducts .10 of a point.)

A new way of seeing it all

In circus, they assume that you will drop your juggling clubs, fall off the unicycle, or drop a ball. You plan for it. We mess up. Ain’t that cool?!

Circus has great vocabulary: Lyra. Spanish Web, Trapeze, Silks, Teeterboard, Style, Circus hands.

The top ten things that circus performing can teach you:

10. Be flexible.
9. No matter how short your routine, perform like you really mean it.
8. The world is cool when you are upside down.
7. When you are spinning round and round really fast, held on by your ankle and you are having the time of your life – remember to smile.
6. Trust yourself. Trust your team. Trust (but verify) your equipment.
5. Life really is all about storytelling (and physics).
4. Expect to screw up; be prepared.
3. When you screw up, style! (Big flourish, big smile, yeah, I SO meant to do that!)
2. Juggling. It’s what we all do every day: words, expectations, tasks. If you don’t know how it’s done, you can be easily fooled by a master (just read Haroun and the Sea of Stories).
1. Clowning is serious business.

Any way you get there...

Do we have a word for imagining what something will sound like?

Beethoven, famously deaf, must have been able to imagine what his works sounded like without hearing them. Mozart? Saltzburgian lore suggests that he too heard compositions in his head before he committed them to paper. Jazz musicians must be able to imagine what their improvisation will sound like, how their notes will mesh with the other players’ ideas.

I experience the “preview” phenomenon. When I am creating a costume for my daughters without a pattern, I can see the finished piece in my head when I look at the fabric. I have always been able to imagine what the finished garment will look like, and that allows me a certain fearlessness as I cut into silk, woolens, and velvets. This has allowed me to make three wedding dresses appear from two-dimensional pieces of fabric (and yes, for those I used patterns and altered them to fit the visions of the brides). So we are back to the vision part.

We can envision. Can we enhear?

When we set out to use audio tools, do we know what we would like the product to sound like before we begin? Or do we just experiment? Is this why I can no longer play the cello? Is it because my ears’ expectations are at one place and my fingers’ skills are at another? Is this the same problem that our students have with writing and creating content for class? Do they have an expectation for their own performance and when the writing falls short, when the debate is flat, when the presentation is lacking information, when the group couldn’t gel, or when it’s just not perfect, they can’t hand it in? Knowing it will never be what they want it to be, should they even try?

Flight is not risk free

Focusing on the product instead of the process seems to be what is hanging my thinking up. Maybe we don’t need a word for “to imagine what it will sound like”? Maybe what we need to do is open Garageband, toss in a few samples, swirl it around, and listen to what it sounds like. Maybe there is a tyranny to “what I thought.” Perhaps it is a corollary to the Anti-Creativity Manifesto that Ewan McIntosh posted about last week. Corollary #1 – Only create what you can fully imagine; that way you are closed to the innovative, the accidental, and the collaborative.  Which takes me back to 15 ways of looking at a stapler – my first post.

Collaborative – so then it’s back to the jazz musicians. Maybe they DON’T know what it will sound like. That’s oddly freeing.

But still, if we can preview, why do we not have a word for the same act of pre-hearing? I’m just asking…

What is it? That sinking feeling that I get when I am placed in competition with others, either real or implied.

Hey, batter, hey batter...

I was never very good at athletics. I can ice skate and ride a bike. Neither of these activities requires competition, except when I am riding with my husband and his handmade 20+ year old Basso racing bike (“frictionless riding, Kate”) and I am sucking wind up the hill of the Harms Woods bike path.

I have played softball. I was catcher for a 16″ theatre league co-ed team (rule #1 – you must field four women) when I was younger, and I still remember the fundamentals of the game. I was confident as long as my job was to remind the team where the play was (“Play’s at third – no force!”). When I had to bat, that was a different story. My heart pounded, my palms sweat, my head swam. I had a terrible on base percentage. I used to try a full swing bunt to confuse the pitcher and catcher. It was so demoralizing to watch the outfield either come in or check out.

That’s the same feeling I had today as I applied to the Google Teacher Academy. I did not look at other video submissions as I had three hours to put this together and I could not allow myself to freak out. Silly me, I looked at the others now that I have submitted my application. Now I feel like I’m back at bat and the outfield just stepped in.

I get that same feeling when we are compared to each other as teachers at school. Ms. Fabulous Faculty won a grant, Mr. Wonderful Writer is published. Heck, all I do is teach my classes (no two the same) advise the yearbook, the newspaper, provide tech support for the literary magazine, act as gradehead, and, and… See? This is SO destructive to us as teachers, colleagues, and learners.

So – I will reframe this. I really want to learn the things that I can at the Google Teacher Academy. I’m not already there. That’s why I applied, and that’s why I want to keep swinging that bat metaphor; maybe someone can show me how to improve my stance and swing the bat from my hips finally.

Photo credit AndrewVDill – Jill at Bat

Update – I am not the droid they were looking for.

Well, thinking about poetry and teaching again, I looked at my class rosters and I realize that I have a couple of students who take a lot of my courses.  One girl that I taught in seventh grade and again last year in American Literature is taking both of my senior electives next year and is one of those anxious students who never feels her work is good or her ideas have merit.

Last year she wrote a really amazing essay and I emailed her tutor (a former colleague of mine) because it was so well developed.  I’m ashamed to say I thought she had help with the essay.  But no.  It was hers.  After her tutor explained to me what process they had used to work on the essay, she told me that the young writer remembered a time in seventh grade I had said that she was a good writer, so for me she was.  This is not to say that the essay was flawless, but it showed growth and depth and real connection to the book we were reading.

So as I approach the beginning of the year, I have to remind myself two things:

• The last students that I taught were at the end of their year.  This year’s juniors will be at the beginning of that hard but important year.  This year’s journalists will be new to this.  This year’s yearbook staff has FRESHMEN!  These seniors are worried.
• Dale Carnegie said, “Give a man a good name and he will live up to it.”  We all want others to like our work (even I am not immune), and it is our job as teachers to see the scholar and writer and nascent adult in our students.

So another poem comes back to me.   No, I don’t think of my students as pigs, but each one needs to flower from within as they are, not as I want them to be.  All are beautiful in their own awkwardness; each one will be their own person.  They just need to be reminded.

St Francis and the Sow
by Galway Kinnell

The bud
stands for all things,
even those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as St. Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of
the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking
and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

And this is the truth of it.

I’m writing senior recommendations that serve as a cover letter for a student’s college application. I’ve got seven to write this year and it always feels like both a privilege and an insurmountable challenge. It’s so hard to describe these students in a way that will serve them well. I have found that it easier when I have an enormous affection for them. They are like my own kids; it doesn’t matter how often the mess up, I still like them and can see their good qualities.

Secrets of the good recommendation:

• Honesty – There is usually a good reason for blips on the radar. If it’s all flat line, there is probably a reason for that, too.
• Reality – meaning concrete. When push comes to shove it always helps to show, don’t tell. What do they really do?
• Hope – every diamond needs to be cut and polished. We keep hoping that this is the year they shine.
• Affection – I don’t always have to offer my highest recommendation, but I always offer my heartfelt recommendation.

I’ve got more to do, but as I’m in the thick of it, I wanted to capture this before it slipped away. I’m reminded of a poem by Wyatt Prunty about teaching and letting go:

Learning the Bicycle

for Heather

The older children pedal past
Stable as little gyros, spinning hard
To supper, bath, and bed, until at last
We also quit, silent and tired
Beside the darkening yard where trees
Now shadow up instead of down.
Their predictable lengths can only tease
Her as, head lowered, she walks her bike alone
Somewhere between her wanting to ride
And her certainty she will always fall.

Tomorrow, though I will run behind,
Arms out to catch her, she’ll tilt then balance wide
Of my reach, till distance makes her small,
Smaller, beyond the place I stop and know
That to teach her I had to follow
And when she learned I had to let her go.

Thanks to Clay Burell for asking me to consider finishing this entry.

As part of our Community Connections work this year we published an anthology of student writing. The anthology included the writing of every member (but one) of the junior class, and each student was asked to revise a piece of writing until their teacher/facilitators (or I) thought that was ready to publish. We did not have any standards in place for what was publishable besides these:

• Each narrative was in three parts.
• Each part reflected a different perspective of an experience that they had in their work on a social justice problem or initiative.
• The narrative was to be free of spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors

For background, the Community Connections assignments and reflections are here.

There were some interesting things that this assignment showed me.

Working with colleagues: while the assignment was based on the style of Dos Passos or Steinbeck (we all read Grapes of Wrath), we had different ideas about what exemplifies the intercalary voice. I think that asking students to write in “the style” of Steinbeck is fine, but as to criticize them because they are not “Steinbecky” enough leaves me puzzled. In addition, we are deeply divided about whether or not grades are a motivating factor for student writing. I argue that students want to look good in the eyes of their peers and that publication is a public enough forum to raise the bar on student performance. In addition, the conversations that I had with students (using Google docs) about their writing was intense in many cases. I made the conscious choice not to ask students to “rewrite” but to “look again” at their writing. (Thanks to my colleague George Drury for the linguistic connection of rehearsal – to re-hear something and revision – to re-see it.)

Some of the group leaders were not satisfied with the narratives until the students did exactly what they asked for in a revision. “You still haven’t done what I asked,” or “You didn’t make the changes that I want,” were comments that I saw on more than on occasion. I think that this was less than helpful to student writers trying to find their voice.

As the only member of the team that read all of the submissions, I can say that part of the problem with the “Steinbecky” nature of the assignment is that some students were/are not developmentally ready to see the Big Picture. They can not extrapolate from their experience to understand how it is an example of a larger issue. Some of them could not understand why they had to be outside on a cold day. Others are ready and able to empathize and make larger connections to the city and the world beyond the school borders.

A couple of examples of those that have reached beyond concrete-operational in their development.

Regarding women in the world: “The women’s battle in the 21^st century therefore is not one against the government, rather against a way of thinking. For example, in the case of Democrat Hillary Clinton, a woman that has gotten involved in what has formerly been a male dominated race. Though the fact that a women running for president is a wonderful idea as it shows the remarkable progress America has made, the ridiculous criticisms she receives regarding her actions as a woman are what truly show America’s inability to rise to the occasion of having a woman as president. An ice queen or an emotional wreck, Clinton is continually ridiculed. If Americans could only think of women in a brighter light, as an integral part of our society that adds depth, strength, intelligence and so much more to our American character, then maybe the women’s fight for equality would no longer be a fight but instead a reality.”

Regarding class and the drug war : From his spot on the other side of the glass, the zookeeper watched the lion pace about the cage. Its steps were regal and grave, its golden mane brilliantly catching the light as it surveyed its territory with a haughty air…. Gradually their eyes were drawn together, their gaze made mutually contemptuous by familiarity. Both blamed one another for the glass wall, believing the other to be the causer of its existence while wanting nothing more than to smash it into a thousand shimmering flakes.

The lion averted its honey-flecked eyes and stared at the translucent wall, as did the zookeeper. Both hated the thing. It was an illusion to create a sense of nearness when they knew all it did was divide, its transparency the only difference between it and the fences and chains. The lion hated the wall for its denial freedom. The zookeeper hated the wall for its perceived necessity. Both hated it as a surrender to the belief that they could not live peaceably together.

Hatred is an affair of the heart; contempt that of the mind. And so the lion paced and the zookeeper watched, both hungering for the day when the fury of their hearts could join to shatter the barrier and undo the divisions of their minds.

A couple of writers who are not there yet:

On meeting with the city about homelessness: We walked off the train and were met with gale force winds. While the walk was only five minutes or less, it felt like an eternity. When we finally arrived, a man who seemed like an assistant of some sort welcomed us. It was a sort of surprising atmosphere, not quite what I would expect from a city of Chicago politician. She had some people in her office before us, and we filed into the narrow hallway outside her office. Why was everywhere we went so small? Not long after we arrived, we were told to enter. Her office was similar to the conference room we were in all morning; there was a table with chairs surrounding it. There weren’t enough chairs, so we gave them to those who intended on talking, while the rest of us hugged the walls.

On learning about AIDS and GLBTQ issues: After we had gotten the conventional questions out of the way, he talked on tangents about anything and everything for the two hours or so we were there. This is quite literal, from designated drivers to how it’s possible to catch an STD in your bum. But I digress. Eventually we had to leave and grab some lunch, but on the way out at least he explained the mural even if I can’t remember it now as I write this.
We stopped for Mexican food (which would come up to my dismay later on), but at the moment it was just what everyone needed. In the background of the restaurant there a TV that played incredibly strange programming, Spanish soap operas, and incredibly weird music videos, none of which I had the slightest comprehension of. For the first time in my life I had authentic horchata, and it was possibly one of the most delicious drinks which helped when it took us so long to find the guacamole, and all the chips I ate were topped with hot sauce. Lesson learned from the day however is, don’t be negative if your original plans go astray, and never eat burritos and rice milk if you have to spend the rest of the day with other people.

So we asked a lot of them, and for the most part they gave us their best work. Some students were only able to write about their experiences in the concrete – what I did/ate/saw – and others were able to look at how what they did connects to what we all do. It was impressive to read all of their narratives. We published the anthology as a paperback using the amazing folks at WordPro in Ithaca, NY. I called it Common Air, taken from Song of Myself by Walt Whitman:

17
These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they
are not original with me,
If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to
nothing,
If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are
nothing,
If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.

This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is,
This the common air that bathes the globe.

And you know what? Each student got a copy, and I didn’t find ONE in the trash.

A huge thanks to Dean Shareski for the del.icio.us bookmark to Alfie Kohn’s September 2006 article for the Phi Delta Kappan about research and homework.

I’m an easy teacher; I’m sure that’s what the kids at school say. Mrs. Tabor doesn’t give tests or lots of homework. I do expect students to read about 125 pages of text a week. That’s a lot of words. But, as I give them the reading assignments well in advance, they can read at their own pace, and I don’t have reading quizzes (“What was Huck….?”) I’m the easy teacher. But not really, at least I don’t think so. Students have to be a part of the life and breath of the class to succeed. They need to feed each other’s curiosity and need to understand.

I have colleagues, in the English Department and in the History Department, that believe asking students to respond at length in writing every night after doing the assigned reading (in paragraphs that have strong thesis statements and supporting evidence) makes them “better teachers.” It’s hard not to succumb to the implied competition here. One colleague said in a meeting that having another teacher grade a writing assignment that would end up in the first teacher’s grade book was unacceptable. Other teachers clearly had much lower standards, so their grades threw off the entire grading system. This is the same teacher who believes that not putting a grade on a piece of writing means that students won’t do their best work.

But I see kids in my classroom who got to sleep at 3:00 AM, and they did not spend 7-11PM playing World of Warcraft. They have too much homework. It’s wrong, it’s abusive, and it raises the mom urge in me. Kids need sleep. They need to hang with their friends.

My own daughters have mixed experiences with homework. I have a child entering high school who may have significant homework for the first time in her life. School is easy for her, and she has often completed all work during the day. My two sixth graders have had a different experience. They have had hours of homework in elementary school. Often, the work they do is not extended from work in the classroom but are new concepts or tasks. Often, the worksheets (I HATE worksheets!) are so confusing that I have a hard time figuring them out. What I see is that some public school teachers are so busy working to raise test scores and meet NCLB expectations that they push work home that they are not able to get to. Spelling, essay writing, textbook decoding, math facts – these are left to me to teach them. This is not a criticism of teachers; there are only so many hours in a school day, and teachers are asked to do more and more with less and less.

Today was all about books. Breaking Dawn was released last night at midnight and we bought a copy this morning before noon. Borders had one after our first stop at Barnes & Noble. Emily read as we drove to the Oak Park Library book sale. We were on a mission to help build my niece’s classroom library. As a newly minted LBS1 working with 8th graders, she is looking for high interest books for students who have historically experienced reading difficulty or who have yet to find a book that makes it worth the hard work to decode. So, we book picked for her as she and my sister drove Grandma home (to South Dakota). I think I got the better duty. We found some good ones, and I’ve dropped them off at her house already, but I can remember:

Tangerine by Edward Bloor

Running Loose by Chris Crutcher

The EarthSea trilogy

The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander

Two great Susan Cooper books

Some classics (Secret Garden, Wizard of Oz) tucked in next to Iva Ibbotson and Donna Jo Napoli.

So, if I could start from scratch, if someone would give me unlimited funds, what would I buy?

The Alex Ryder books, Artemis Fowl, the Lightning Thief and sequels, Heir Apparent, books by John Greene, Cory Doctrow’s Little Brother, the Georgia Nicholson series, Gary Paulsen’s My Life in Dog Years and Harris and Me, all the Harry Potter books, McHale’s Bobby Pendragon books, the Twilight saga, The Dark Is Rising sequence. I’ll have to think about this and add more as they come to me

I should have Breaking Dawn in my hands by tomorrow. My daughter’s a fast reader.