Okay, I changed my mind from my last post. I do, in fact, wish to share my most delightful and outrageous moments from 2012. In order to follow people who seem to agree that everything should be organized according to a randomly chosen group of numbers, I'll attempt a top ten, although realistically there are probably much more (or, as I try to compile this list, I'll really have to work hard at coming up with 10!). **UPDATE...yes, there is a top ten, but I got stuck at number three and gave up. Also, these are really in no particular order because I poke fun at stuff that is organized by numbers e.g. Seven Steps to a Better Fate or whatever. :) I'm sure I could never definitely choose an orderly place for each of these memories!
#10. I danced with Goofy at the Mickey's Backyard Barbeque in Disney World. I was trying to film Owen as he danced with a group of children around Goofy when suddenly Goofy pulled my arm. It was actually pretty hilarious because it was country dancing which I know nothing about, so I pretty much just stood there and moved my body somehow. It lasted for a long few minutes and then he kissed my hand and moved on. I'm pretty sure some uptight mothers were getting mad that Goofy was spending too much time with me and not their children. I guess I'm just that good. (And I'm not sure how to spell barbeque, but it keeps popping up in spellcheck!)
#9. My AP Language students decided in March that they wanted to celebrate the 43rd anniversary of the Tinker vs Des Moines Supreme Court case, so I bought black material and made them all black armbands in honor of the verdict of this case. I was immensely proud of my students' desire to apply their learning to the real world and to their lives. Almost all of them wore those armbands for the entire day. And then one student decided to wear a red one and remain silent in an attempt to bring awareness to her anti-abortion beliefs. I admired her application of everything we'd discussed about the power of peaceful protest.
#8. A year ago, a student graduated who I'd taught in AP Language. Actually, I'd only taught him for one semester before I dropped him because he had an F. He just wouldn't turn in any work, but of course he was really smart. His senior year, he would come into my classroom with a large group of AP Language grads during lunch and we all had fun and goofed around. He's way more sarcastic than me and in a really mean way, but it was fun. However, I didn't think I'd really made any sort of impact on his life except to serve as an example of a stereotypical English teacher who was really picky and flunked people. He gave me a present, though, at the end of the year, Stephen Colbert's book I Am American (And So Can You!) which I really appreciated, needless to say. :) And it wasn't until an entire year later that I discovered he had written over the dedication on the dedication page. He crossed a line through the type and wrote, "To Mrs. Gregory who couldn't, but always will, inspire me."
I definitely started crying.
#7. I sort of obsess over the idea that my five year-old should be reading by now. And I beat myself up sometimes that if I weren't so busy with teaching and classes, I would be a better mother and he'd be able to read. One morning before school I was drying my hair and Owen was in my bathroom with me sitting on the floor. He pointed to a box of my hot curlers, and said, "That says 'on.' That says 'off.'"
Don't underestimate your children. And don't beat yourself up by thinking you don't do enough for your children. Setting a good example takes care of itself sometimes.
#6. I completed my internship for my second Master's degree at an intermediate school. Actually, my son's school. One required component was giving booktalks. To do this, I had to read six books, and my internship supervisor (who is the best!) recommended I choose from the South Carolina children's book nominees. I wasn't sure I'd enjoy this at first, but it turned out to be completely wonderful! I loved all of the books I chose to read because it made me feel like a kid again. I remembered the feeling of joy that I used to always feel when I read earlier in my life when it wasn't from a textbook titled Reference Services. :)
#5. Connor likes for me to read him Calvin and Hobbes comics as his bedtime stories. I LOVED them when I was his age as well, so this has been a special time for me. My favorite comic shows Calvin go through a rough day, and at the end he tells Hobbes, "Some days even my lucky rocket ship underpants don't work." And Hobbes replies, "Well, you've done all you can." Just awesome and true to life. This comic strip is so sarcastic and funny, it just works perfectly for both me and Connor. I'm so proud that he gets the sarcasm!
#4. (this is my last one, and it's 1:20am...I think for right now I'm gonna quit and I'll come back to this one later)
#3. My graduation from the USC School of Library and Information Science! I started this program in the fall of 2009, taking one course at at time, so this day was a long time in coming. But I think my personal motto is "Slow and steady wins the race." I had to get used to writing academic papers again and had to learn how to use a massive amount of technology (well, to me anyway). I also had to find time to complete all of the work along with my other responsibilities. I remember starting out thinking I didn't have too much to learn about libraries. I could not have been more wrong. Although at times it was tedious and seemed just stupid, I really enjoyed the program overall and learned much more than I could ever type in this blog. Anyone who really knows me knows that I'm an intellectual at heart and like to read about complex ideas, so I enjoyed reading different theories about democracies, intellectual freedom, and the changing roles of libraries in the 21st century, especially media specialists in schools. I have to be honest and admit that I'm proud of my ability to complete this program with a 4.0 while taking care of my family and teaching AP Language. I couldn't have done it without God and Brian (let me emphasize that they are two different "people"). My message to anyone: don't underestimate yourself, and if you want something, you won't let anything stop you. You won't be too tired for it. And you won't let anyone tell you that you can't do it.
#2. Twenty-four hours before a major paper was due in my last class for my Master's in Library and Information Science, I discovered the Word file had become corrupt and I could not open it. My best friend Kristin's brother who has a major job in computers couldn't even fix it. I worked on that paper for almost a full week and was just about finished with it when this happened. I had just spent the weekend in Hendersonville, NC, with my best friend on a wine tasting tour. It was so relaxing and fun and really put me in the right frame of mind to then hunker down and finish the paper. Let me emphasize that I had already written about 20 pages of it...now gone. I had twenty-four hours to redo it. After crying and screaming and trying to justify in my mind not writing it at all (I even went back to the course syllabus but discovered to my dismay that the professor explicitly typed "All assignments must be turned in in order to pass the course and receive credit"...this must have happened before to merit such specific attention). So of course I had to end up just facing the fact that I went from a fabulous weekend to the worst academic situation of my life in a period of about four hours. But guess what? I did it. I rewrote and finished the entire damn thing with about two hours to spare. And I got a 100. The lesson? Use Google docs. Don't let yourself freak out so much that you fail. It also helps if you're not a perfectionist. I also learned how to write a graduate level research paper without thinking too much because at this point I had zero mental energy left.
#1. All right, here it is! I was chosen by the steering committee to teach a session at the AP national conference this past summer. The conference was held at the Swan and Dolphin resorts at Disney World which, truth be told, is the only reason I applied (heavy hotel discount given). When I realized that going as a family wouldn't really work because I'd be teaching and attending sessions for three days, I decided I needed a special friend to go with me. Which of course meant Kristin, my best friend. I think I asked her, "Hey, you wanna go to Disney by ourselves for four days?" And that was that. We lay by the pool having a few drinks and the best pot roast with potatoes and collard greens that we've ever tasted, and we even ate dinner at the Animal Kingdom Lodge where, yes Kristin, we saw a real giraffe. And then I decided that she might be ready to go to a theme park for the first time. I discovered that the Magic Kingdom would be open until 2am that Friday night, July 20, which would be perfect because we could go later in the day when it wouldn't be quite as hot but still get our money's worth. When we bought our one-day pass, we discovered we got a discount, so it was even more awesome! I even managed to snag us a dinner reservation at the Crystal Palace character buffet. Everything was perfect except how freaking hot it was! We sat in the Crystal Palace for two hours just to avoid having to go outside. But the evening was perfect. I managed to get her on almost everything in the Magic Kingdom, and to my delight, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad was her favorite (it's my older son Connor's favorite too, as well as my husband's). Throughout the night, there were times that I remembered I was going to give a big presentation in the morning to who knew how many AP Language teachers from across the country and I would get momentarily horrified. But then, I was in the Magic Kingdom!! 2am rolled around and we just managed to ride Space Mountain before everything closed. We walked with the crowd to the buses and waited. We didn't arrive back at the Dolphin until around 3am, and then of course had to shower because I had never sweated so much in my life (really). So we're talking 3:30am bedtime. My alarm went off at 6am. Presentation started at 9am, and we had breakfast first and I set up my presentation stuff. All I can say is that I have the best friend because she got up with me, and I would have been even more of a nervous wreck if she hadn't been there with me before and during my presentation! I know there were a few spotty moments at the beginning of my presentation when I really needed more coffee, but other than that, it went very well. I love doing crazy, last-minute things that make me really appreciate life, and this night was definitely one of them. Best bragging rights ever! Magic Kingdom until 2am, and then presenting information to AP Language teachers about teaching a unit on the rhetoric and argument of writings from the American Civil Rights Movement (and related topics).
I can email you my presentation if you're interested.
Monday, December 31, 2012
New Year, Old Me...con't
Dang it, I already missed a post yesterday! That's why I didn't want to make updating my blog daily my New Year's resolution. So I haven't broken it yet!
We are having a couple over tonight, a childhood friend of Brian's and his wife. In anticipation of our evening, and after speaking with my mother today on the phone, and taking a really long walk around our neighborhood, I began to think about what New Year's Eve used to mean to me.
I still have the journal I kept in middle and high school. I used to make a list on New Year's Eve of everything of note that I accomplished the past year, and I made another list detailing all of my hopes and dreams. The past ten years or so, the idea of these lists makes me want to have some wine with that cheese. It's just so...cliched. It's not weird to look forward to a clean slate, but the thing is that a new year is never a clean slate.
In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan engages in a discussion about animal ethics that I found interesting if not slightly out of my intellectual range for Christmas break reading. He presented various arguments about the ethics of eating meat, and I had never really considered the fact that slaughtering animals is ethical because they do not have the capacity to anticipate death and to understand what death really means (not that humans understand much about death either, but at least we know it will happen and that afterward we never have interactions with a person again, at least not on this Earth). Thus, this inability limits the likelihood of suffering, if you take suffering to include the anticipation of pain and loss and the ability to ruminate upon your own sense of mortality, which supposedly animals cannot.
Okay, what does this have to do with New Year's? I had to think for a second to remember why I started this post to begin with...all right, I think it had something to do with suffering. I never used to understand why people wished each other good health and prayed for continued health and peace. I grew up in an idyllic childhood setting which seriously could not have been better. I managed to screw up sometimes anyway, like any good American teenager, but nonetheless, it was seemingly perfect by all accounts. It served as a sort of anesthesia, though, making me numb to how others might suffer in this world.
I think health and peace are what we should primarily wish everyone. Feeling peace in spite of anxieties, and being thankful when our bodies function well. We cannot always control our bodies, and we cannot always control what happens to us in our lives. But being at peace means that we accept what happens one day at a time and realize that we have this Earth, for better or for worse. Being at peace means we accept that we cannot undo the past, but we should remember it to always be moving forward.
If what distinguishes us from other living beings is our level of consciousness and ability to develop meta-cognitive skills, then we can never re-become blank slates. You literally cannot forget something (although this discussion brings to mind Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind--great movie). So if we can't forget, where do we go from here?
I would actually hate to forget the lowest points of my life. I need to remember them in order to avoid repeats of past disasters (well, in theory that would work).
I think this year I might make a list in my journal of everything I did that was unacceptable, stupid, and regretful. It will be hilarious and depressing. It will reveal my humanity, it will spell out failure to a certain degree, it will show how I might be slightly unhinged. But it will also show me how far up I can go as long as I remember how low I sometimes fall.
If suffering means the ability to anticipate a loss or a fall, I accept it. Because it also means that I can get back up again as long as I keep believing in my own potential.
We are having a couple over tonight, a childhood friend of Brian's and his wife. In anticipation of our evening, and after speaking with my mother today on the phone, and taking a really long walk around our neighborhood, I began to think about what New Year's Eve used to mean to me.
I still have the journal I kept in middle and high school. I used to make a list on New Year's Eve of everything of note that I accomplished the past year, and I made another list detailing all of my hopes and dreams. The past ten years or so, the idea of these lists makes me want to have some wine with that cheese. It's just so...cliched. It's not weird to look forward to a clean slate, but the thing is that a new year is never a clean slate.
In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan engages in a discussion about animal ethics that I found interesting if not slightly out of my intellectual range for Christmas break reading. He presented various arguments about the ethics of eating meat, and I had never really considered the fact that slaughtering animals is ethical because they do not have the capacity to anticipate death and to understand what death really means (not that humans understand much about death either, but at least we know it will happen and that afterward we never have interactions with a person again, at least not on this Earth). Thus, this inability limits the likelihood of suffering, if you take suffering to include the anticipation of pain and loss and the ability to ruminate upon your own sense of mortality, which supposedly animals cannot.
Okay, what does this have to do with New Year's? I had to think for a second to remember why I started this post to begin with...all right, I think it had something to do with suffering. I never used to understand why people wished each other good health and prayed for continued health and peace. I grew up in an idyllic childhood setting which seriously could not have been better. I managed to screw up sometimes anyway, like any good American teenager, but nonetheless, it was seemingly perfect by all accounts. It served as a sort of anesthesia, though, making me numb to how others might suffer in this world.
I think health and peace are what we should primarily wish everyone. Feeling peace in spite of anxieties, and being thankful when our bodies function well. We cannot always control our bodies, and we cannot always control what happens to us in our lives. But being at peace means that we accept what happens one day at a time and realize that we have this Earth, for better or for worse. Being at peace means we accept that we cannot undo the past, but we should remember it to always be moving forward.
If what distinguishes us from other living beings is our level of consciousness and ability to develop meta-cognitive skills, then we can never re-become blank slates. You literally cannot forget something (although this discussion brings to mind Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind--great movie). So if we can't forget, where do we go from here?
I would actually hate to forget the lowest points of my life. I need to remember them in order to avoid repeats of past disasters (well, in theory that would work).
I think this year I might make a list in my journal of everything I did that was unacceptable, stupid, and regretful. It will be hilarious and depressing. It will reveal my humanity, it will spell out failure to a certain degree, it will show how I might be slightly unhinged. But it will also show me how far up I can go as long as I remember how low I sometimes fall.
If suffering means the ability to anticipate a loss or a fall, I accept it. Because it also means that I can get back up again as long as I keep believing in my own potential.
Saturday, December 29, 2012
The Way We Were
This movie is terribly relevant. Not just because when I see Robert Redford riding in his car with Barbara Streisand I have to remind myself that I'm not watching The Great Gatsby. (I must digress just a bit--considering writing some sort of research on cheesy Redford films in the 70's--but I have to admit that he's much better in The Way We Were. I'll sit down and watch both movies sometime and let you know. Future blog post already planned!)
We see the characters struggle through World War II and the Red Scare, which is basically parallel to our struggles today in America. In the 2000's, people were quick to call anyone against the war in Iraq unpatriotic, even though questioning war is perhaps one of the most patriotic (and humane) things we can do. We see a pure hatred of anything related to President Obama which I'm not sure has happened to the same degree in America to date. We struggle with balancing our worship of capitalism and our Puritanical roots which have nothing to do with capitalism. We struggle with desiring freedom but also accepting the consequences of freedom (Newtown, CT most recently). When we are confronted with the startling reality of our own humanity, we cling to our ideals. When our ideals fall short, we cling to our humanity. It's more of a symbiotic relationship than a paradox.
I particularly love the scene when Hubble and Katie are arguing after the confrontation scene with the policemen and Hubble says there are no ideals, just people. I think that 10-15 years ago, I would have vehemently disagreed with him and been on Katie's side without a doubt. But age brings experience, and I totally understand Hubble's point.
He says that nothing will ever change, and that standing up for what you believe in, if that requires extreme actions and may cost you much, is a waste. The pendulum will inevitably swing the other way, and in a matter of time that minority which was fought for will become the majority and bring its own flaws. A new majority in name only, same spirit of oppression and physical might. We see history in a series of cycles with no victors, only new pawns.
I think reading that sentence by itself is sort of startling, particularly for me who dedicates an entire 9 weeks of study in AP Language to the writings of Dr. King, Thoreau, and Lincoln. In fact, it would appear as nothing less than unpatriotic not to believe the exact opposite of what Hubble argues.
But he's not wrong. What we decide is worth fighting for could cost us in ways we never imagined. And quite often those things can never be undone.
We see this unfold through the fictional characters in this movie, this push and pull of wanting to rise above ourselves and yet at the same time not being able to give up our human ties that make it all worth it.
And to personalize the abstract settings and context, the two characters struggle between their ideals and humanity. At some point, you just want Katie to shut the hell up and realize what a love she has with Hubble. But then you can understand that she can't just sit by while all of the injustices of the world continue on, people like Hubble complicit in perpetuating them. You want Hubble to finish the damn novel and quit churning out what will turn into the 2000's reality TV shows. But then it's so much easier to just sit around, have a drink and a smoke, and tell witty jokes to your sophisticated friends.
What's an American to do? The movie suggests that you part ways, mourn the loss of the price you pay for marrying yourself to your ideals, and see that protesting against the atomic bomb really will do nothing. But at least you can say you put forth some effort. However, if the protest has no realistic outcome, as Hubble predicted, did Katie owe it to herself to stay with a person she loved and, as it turns out, couldn't replicate? Is doing the right thing, even if nothing comes of it, a better, more moral choice, than siding with your own humanity? Your girl is lovely, Hubble, but I've got to go protest against injustice.
We see the characters struggle through World War II and the Red Scare, which is basically parallel to our struggles today in America. In the 2000's, people were quick to call anyone against the war in Iraq unpatriotic, even though questioning war is perhaps one of the most patriotic (and humane) things we can do. We see a pure hatred of anything related to President Obama which I'm not sure has happened to the same degree in America to date. We struggle with balancing our worship of capitalism and our Puritanical roots which have nothing to do with capitalism. We struggle with desiring freedom but also accepting the consequences of freedom (Newtown, CT most recently). When we are confronted with the startling reality of our own humanity, we cling to our ideals. When our ideals fall short, we cling to our humanity. It's more of a symbiotic relationship than a paradox.
I particularly love the scene when Hubble and Katie are arguing after the confrontation scene with the policemen and Hubble says there are no ideals, just people. I think that 10-15 years ago, I would have vehemently disagreed with him and been on Katie's side without a doubt. But age brings experience, and I totally understand Hubble's point.
He says that nothing will ever change, and that standing up for what you believe in, if that requires extreme actions and may cost you much, is a waste. The pendulum will inevitably swing the other way, and in a matter of time that minority which was fought for will become the majority and bring its own flaws. A new majority in name only, same spirit of oppression and physical might. We see history in a series of cycles with no victors, only new pawns.
I think reading that sentence by itself is sort of startling, particularly for me who dedicates an entire 9 weeks of study in AP Language to the writings of Dr. King, Thoreau, and Lincoln. In fact, it would appear as nothing less than unpatriotic not to believe the exact opposite of what Hubble argues.
But he's not wrong. What we decide is worth fighting for could cost us in ways we never imagined. And quite often those things can never be undone.
We see this unfold through the fictional characters in this movie, this push and pull of wanting to rise above ourselves and yet at the same time not being able to give up our human ties that make it all worth it.
And to personalize the abstract settings and context, the two characters struggle between their ideals and humanity. At some point, you just want Katie to shut the hell up and realize what a love she has with Hubble. But then you can understand that she can't just sit by while all of the injustices of the world continue on, people like Hubble complicit in perpetuating them. You want Hubble to finish the damn novel and quit churning out what will turn into the 2000's reality TV shows. But then it's so much easier to just sit around, have a drink and a smoke, and tell witty jokes to your sophisticated friends.
What's an American to do? The movie suggests that you part ways, mourn the loss of the price you pay for marrying yourself to your ideals, and see that protesting against the atomic bomb really will do nothing. But at least you can say you put forth some effort. However, if the protest has no realistic outcome, as Hubble predicted, did Katie owe it to herself to stay with a person she loved and, as it turns out, couldn't replicate? Is doing the right thing, even if nothing comes of it, a better, more moral choice, than siding with your own humanity? Your girl is lovely, Hubble, but I've got to go protest against injustice.
Friday, December 28, 2012
Shop-worn literature
In my last post, I addressed the idea that in literature, there may be no new ideas, thus my use of the term "shop-worn." I have no idea if I'm actually supposed to hyphenate that word or if it's even real, and to be honest, I'm not going to look it up right now because I'm about to leave to go out to dinner with a friend.
Nevertheless, this idea intrigues me. This past semester I have dreamed of these moments when I have nothing to do but be with my family and write. However, I feel intimidated by the idea that nothing I write will actually be new or novel (yes, I know, barf! How many times have you read that line before?!)
I joined a book club this semester with some fabulous women who made wonderful book choices: Interrupted by Jen Hatmaker and Flunking Sainthood by Jana Riess. I truly love these books because they address being human and yet still trying to be a Christian woman in the 21st century. However, it dawned on me that probably a large reason for my love of these books is the sarcastic female voice telling the story. Is this tone now in vogue? The only relevant female voices are the sarcastic, self-deprecating ones?
On the one hand, if the answer is yes, I should be elated because sarcasm is what I am. 100%. And it's not even that that's a character trait--it's just that this world is dripping with irony and I notice it on a large scale. On the other hand, if the answer is yes, then I am already irrelevant. Do I need to write in this way to even be considered? I don't think I can take myself seriously enough to write in any other way, but if self-deprecation is the sign of the times, we can't all be self-deprecating. That's too boring and easy.
Women who point out their flaws, while making puns and cute jokes, and trying to figure out how to apply the ancient world to today is already wearing thin on me. I guess there's always the horror stories and jokes about teaching to fall back on.
I think that's where I'll go with all of this. Instead of yet another cheesy, stupid, hopelessly unrealistic movie about teachers and students, I'd love to show it for what it really is. And that would take no sarcasm.
Nevertheless, this idea intrigues me. This past semester I have dreamed of these moments when I have nothing to do but be with my family and write. However, I feel intimidated by the idea that nothing I write will actually be new or novel (yes, I know, barf! How many times have you read that line before?!)
I joined a book club this semester with some fabulous women who made wonderful book choices: Interrupted by Jen Hatmaker and Flunking Sainthood by Jana Riess. I truly love these books because they address being human and yet still trying to be a Christian woman in the 21st century. However, it dawned on me that probably a large reason for my love of these books is the sarcastic female voice telling the story. Is this tone now in vogue? The only relevant female voices are the sarcastic, self-deprecating ones?
On the one hand, if the answer is yes, I should be elated because sarcasm is what I am. 100%. And it's not even that that's a character trait--it's just that this world is dripping with irony and I notice it on a large scale. On the other hand, if the answer is yes, then I am already irrelevant. Do I need to write in this way to even be considered? I don't think I can take myself seriously enough to write in any other way, but if self-deprecation is the sign of the times, we can't all be self-deprecating. That's too boring and easy.
Women who point out their flaws, while making puns and cute jokes, and trying to figure out how to apply the ancient world to today is already wearing thin on me. I guess there's always the horror stories and jokes about teaching to fall back on.
I think that's where I'll go with all of this. Instead of yet another cheesy, stupid, hopelessly unrealistic movie about teachers and students, I'd love to show it for what it really is. And that would take no sarcasm.
New Year, Old Me
The new year presents a most opportune moment for me to finally return to my blog. There is much to explore, particularly upon completing my second Master's degree and teaching arguably the worst students I've had to date in my teaching career this past semester. I think I will address that issue while it's still making a black mark on my soul.
I didn't have enough AP students sign up for my class this year to make three classes, and so I had the opportunity to teach two classes of AP Language and one class of English 4. Now, it had been four years since I had taught anything other than AP Language and Journalism when I discovered this news, and so I felt pretty apprehensive. After all, I had spent considerable effort trying to structure my teaching life around courses that I felt mattered more than teaching shop-worn literature and poetry. Yes, I did just use the potentially disrespectful term "shop-worn" to describe literature, some of which is a thousand years old and which people much smarter than me have established as being genius. I do not contradict those findings in the least because it is simply a truth that the staples of English 4, Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, Beowulf, Shakespeare, Jonathan Swift, 1984 and Brave New World are simply fabulous. However, they are fabulous in my own brain and when I am discussing them with other folks who share my dorky obsession with literary criticism. It does not hold this merit when I am trying to be in charge of 25 18 year-old seniors who occasionally go to jail for the night because of getting caught with marijuana or accidentally shoplifting.
But the powers that be, AKA the writers of the South Carolina state standards for English Language Arts, feel that high school seniors should be able to identify major trends in British literature. Perhaps this information will serve to reform these students into culturally aware, model, tax-paying Americans. There are those who argue that there are just some things that everyone should know. Being able to read literature and make predictions, and decipher character motivations help build useful critical thinking skills.
The thing is, though, that these are the lies that people who deeply care about literature have to tell themselves in order to justify that their only skills lie in deconstructing words. In truth, this is whipped cream. And I can say all this because I'm judging myself in all of this.
Watching movies like The Freedom Writers can convince anyone about the power of the journal. But really, we're expected to believe that journaling can lead to the emancipation of the struggles that students living in poverty endure? Or really any students, because all students are now slaves to the mirage of pop culture.
By diving into journalism and AP Language, I was hoping to leave all of this faux soul-searching behind because I would be dealing with the real world instead. I would no longer exert mental energy finding ways to relate Beowulf to single, teenage mothers. But then this year happened.
The gloves were off once I heard the first student drop the F-bomb during class. My only saving grace was that I was out two days a week for three months completing the internship for my last class. That's how I know there is a God. My long-term substitute left notes at the end of each day telling me which students refused to do any work, which talked back to her, etc. It was always the same students, and despite assigning detentions and the occasional ISS, nothing worked. On the days I was there to teach them, students would not bring their materials, they would fall asleep, they would talk to each other in a normal conversational tone, indifferent to my presence, and some would simply refuse to do anything I asked them to do. They would curse each other out, talk about which types of birth control you could take and still get pregnant, how they liked to drink and smoke and party in general. With no shame.
So my goal was simply to survive. All while I was taking my last class, completing my internship and all of the work that entailed, teaching my two AP classes, and taking care of my own family. All while dreaming of the end of the semester. My husband kept telling me that all of it didn't really exist. Once the semester was over, it would be over. Like it never even happened. Just endure and persevere.
But that doesn't make teaching worth it to me. The people who run our educational system often have never been teachers themselves and certainly have no idea what challenges a typical student poses to a teacher. The Common Core State Standards are much better, in my opinion, because they call specifically for more instruction in nonfiction and argumentative writings and for students to publish materials using the Internet, to collaborate online, and to synthesize various sources and mediums of information into their own ideas. In other words, students have to do their own learning. They can't rely on me to present a Power Point of the major facts they need to know about Anglo-Saxon England in order to better understand Beowulf.
And let me add that students doing their own learning is why so many of my AP students resist and battle me. They are typically used to being in Honors English courses where there is more memorization than in a CP course, but it's still teacher-heavy learning and instruction. That's just not interesting to me, though, and it bores me out of my mind.
I started using some of my AP materials in this English 4 class, believe it or not, because if I had had them read one more poem out of our textbooks, I was just gonna go ahead and walk out the door. We read a chapter about the theories behind argument, watched An Inconvenient Truth, and discussed some argument articles. They especially enjoyed one about how supermarket aisles are arranged on purpose according to marketing strategies.
However, no grand transformation took place, I'm sure much to Erin Gruwell's disappointment. After about two good weeks, they were back to their old, obnoxious, barely tolerable ways. But I'm going to insist that real-world learning worked for them, at least for a little while. And instead of trekking through a useless literature research paper with students who couldn't actually remember my name, I had them complete my usual banned books research project. We got to read some offensive books (well, the word offensive is relative, isn't it?) and they argued about the merits of book censorship and intellectual freedom (but I couldn't actually use that last term because it was too confusing).
And so while it is true that I will no longer be a classroom teacher after this school year ends, this brief foray into the darkest side that I've ever experienced showed me that literature might have its place, but it's not in a classroom like the one I found myself in for four months this year. It just isn't. It does the literature an injustice to pretend that it's accessible to everyone. It really does. Education needs to become more than this. English teachers cannot become English teachers simply because they love to read. Because not too many people do, and when the classroom becomes a struggle between the one prolific reader and the 25 book-haters, let's just call it a day.
The classroom needs to become a place of thinking first and foremost. Give the students issues to think about in the English classroom. Create ideas and questions. Then find reading to match it. Critical thinking skills are not special to the classics only, and teachers need to reach out to the wealth of ideas, questions, and readings around them that most certainly are not in the textbook.
And so in this upcoming new year, I'm going to resolve to go back in time to re-become the old me. The one who just couldn't wait to become a teacher. To go into my classroom in January, for the last first day of school that I will ever go through as a classroom teacher, brimming with ideas and excitement. Because the truth is that no matter how truly horrifying that English 4 class was this past semester, I still can't help but to look up ideas on the Internet during my Christmas break and think of how I can use a wiki in that class. My hope is that my students, even though they resent how hard I make them work for their own knowledge, will see that I just love ideas. I love sharing, seeing what their reactions are, and showing them that they are smarter than they think. Considering ideas they have never heard of before. "Guess what we can do this semester?" I will say, my eyes gleaming. And the answer is, anything we want.
I didn't have enough AP students sign up for my class this year to make three classes, and so I had the opportunity to teach two classes of AP Language and one class of English 4. Now, it had been four years since I had taught anything other than AP Language and Journalism when I discovered this news, and so I felt pretty apprehensive. After all, I had spent considerable effort trying to structure my teaching life around courses that I felt mattered more than teaching shop-worn literature and poetry. Yes, I did just use the potentially disrespectful term "shop-worn" to describe literature, some of which is a thousand years old and which people much smarter than me have established as being genius. I do not contradict those findings in the least because it is simply a truth that the staples of English 4, Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, Beowulf, Shakespeare, Jonathan Swift, 1984 and Brave New World are simply fabulous. However, they are fabulous in my own brain and when I am discussing them with other folks who share my dorky obsession with literary criticism. It does not hold this merit when I am trying to be in charge of 25 18 year-old seniors who occasionally go to jail for the night because of getting caught with marijuana or accidentally shoplifting.
But the powers that be, AKA the writers of the South Carolina state standards for English Language Arts, feel that high school seniors should be able to identify major trends in British literature. Perhaps this information will serve to reform these students into culturally aware, model, tax-paying Americans. There are those who argue that there are just some things that everyone should know. Being able to read literature and make predictions, and decipher character motivations help build useful critical thinking skills.
The thing is, though, that these are the lies that people who deeply care about literature have to tell themselves in order to justify that their only skills lie in deconstructing words. In truth, this is whipped cream. And I can say all this because I'm judging myself in all of this.
Watching movies like The Freedom Writers can convince anyone about the power of the journal. But really, we're expected to believe that journaling can lead to the emancipation of the struggles that students living in poverty endure? Or really any students, because all students are now slaves to the mirage of pop culture.
By diving into journalism and AP Language, I was hoping to leave all of this faux soul-searching behind because I would be dealing with the real world instead. I would no longer exert mental energy finding ways to relate Beowulf to single, teenage mothers. But then this year happened.
The gloves were off once I heard the first student drop the F-bomb during class. My only saving grace was that I was out two days a week for three months completing the internship for my last class. That's how I know there is a God. My long-term substitute left notes at the end of each day telling me which students refused to do any work, which talked back to her, etc. It was always the same students, and despite assigning detentions and the occasional ISS, nothing worked. On the days I was there to teach them, students would not bring their materials, they would fall asleep, they would talk to each other in a normal conversational tone, indifferent to my presence, and some would simply refuse to do anything I asked them to do. They would curse each other out, talk about which types of birth control you could take and still get pregnant, how they liked to drink and smoke and party in general. With no shame.
So my goal was simply to survive. All while I was taking my last class, completing my internship and all of the work that entailed, teaching my two AP classes, and taking care of my own family. All while dreaming of the end of the semester. My husband kept telling me that all of it didn't really exist. Once the semester was over, it would be over. Like it never even happened. Just endure and persevere.
But that doesn't make teaching worth it to me. The people who run our educational system often have never been teachers themselves and certainly have no idea what challenges a typical student poses to a teacher. The Common Core State Standards are much better, in my opinion, because they call specifically for more instruction in nonfiction and argumentative writings and for students to publish materials using the Internet, to collaborate online, and to synthesize various sources and mediums of information into their own ideas. In other words, students have to do their own learning. They can't rely on me to present a Power Point of the major facts they need to know about Anglo-Saxon England in order to better understand Beowulf.
And let me add that students doing their own learning is why so many of my AP students resist and battle me. They are typically used to being in Honors English courses where there is more memorization than in a CP course, but it's still teacher-heavy learning and instruction. That's just not interesting to me, though, and it bores me out of my mind.
I started using some of my AP materials in this English 4 class, believe it or not, because if I had had them read one more poem out of our textbooks, I was just gonna go ahead and walk out the door. We read a chapter about the theories behind argument, watched An Inconvenient Truth, and discussed some argument articles. They especially enjoyed one about how supermarket aisles are arranged on purpose according to marketing strategies.
However, no grand transformation took place, I'm sure much to Erin Gruwell's disappointment. After about two good weeks, they were back to their old, obnoxious, barely tolerable ways. But I'm going to insist that real-world learning worked for them, at least for a little while. And instead of trekking through a useless literature research paper with students who couldn't actually remember my name, I had them complete my usual banned books research project. We got to read some offensive books (well, the word offensive is relative, isn't it?) and they argued about the merits of book censorship and intellectual freedom (but I couldn't actually use that last term because it was too confusing).
And so while it is true that I will no longer be a classroom teacher after this school year ends, this brief foray into the darkest side that I've ever experienced showed me that literature might have its place, but it's not in a classroom like the one I found myself in for four months this year. It just isn't. It does the literature an injustice to pretend that it's accessible to everyone. It really does. Education needs to become more than this. English teachers cannot become English teachers simply because they love to read. Because not too many people do, and when the classroom becomes a struggle between the one prolific reader and the 25 book-haters, let's just call it a day.
The classroom needs to become a place of thinking first and foremost. Give the students issues to think about in the English classroom. Create ideas and questions. Then find reading to match it. Critical thinking skills are not special to the classics only, and teachers need to reach out to the wealth of ideas, questions, and readings around them that most certainly are not in the textbook.
And so in this upcoming new year, I'm going to resolve to go back in time to re-become the old me. The one who just couldn't wait to become a teacher. To go into my classroom in January, for the last first day of school that I will ever go through as a classroom teacher, brimming with ideas and excitement. Because the truth is that no matter how truly horrifying that English 4 class was this past semester, I still can't help but to look up ideas on the Internet during my Christmas break and think of how I can use a wiki in that class. My hope is that my students, even though they resent how hard I make them work for their own knowledge, will see that I just love ideas. I love sharing, seeing what their reactions are, and showing them that they are smarter than they think. Considering ideas they have never heard of before. "Guess what we can do this semester?" I will say, my eyes gleaming. And the answer is, anything we want.
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