What’s the Matter, Colonel Sanders?

March 16th, 2010

They just loooove to rub it in.

In my county, it’s illegal to keep poultry on less than an acre.  Loud, destructive, hostile dogs?  Sure!  Virtually-silent, naturally recycling, sedate chickens?  No way!  And we live on a corner, in a neighborhood where we’ve been cited three times after our lush, verdant landscaping overstepped the iron-fisted county code, so I don’t think there’s any way around it.  Truthfully, I’d rather have ducks (after reading this book) than chickens, but I’d rather avoid the fines than have ducks.

However, I am hopeful: at a local happy hour last week, I met one of the candidates who hopes to replace our troubled local representative for the county council.  He agrees that the ordinance is an affront to femivores everywhere, and he’s promised to overturn the anti-compost law to boot.  Today I heard from a friend that one of the other candidates, a woman, actually keeps her own chickens (illegally, I guess?  Or maybe she has that coveted acre.)  Things are looking up for the pro-poultry caucus.

I’m thinking about gardening because the snow has finally, mercifully left us, leaving me itching to dig in the dirt.  I planted my first batch of seeds (tomatoes and peppers) several weeks ago, and after checking them obsessively for several days, I forgot about them for several more.  That unique combination did the trick, as when I happened to look this afternoon, I was shocked to see dozens of inch-long shoots craning their necks to reach a patch of sunlight.  Yesterday I braved the incessant rain to pick up a garbage bag full of trash that had accumulated over the long winter, thanks (again) to our corner lot.  Along the way I pulled some weeks, cleared out dead foliage and delighted in the tiny shoots of green at the bases of almost every one of my plants.  Even the arugula, buried for weeks under 4 feet of snow, is producing bright green leaves in defiance of all logic.

Sharon Astyk recently explained her Independence Days challenge, and though I’ve been too intimidated by her until now to do anything but read with awe, I’m considering taking it on.  I couldn’t possibly do all the things she mentions each week, but maybe each month.  Maybe.  It’s something I care about, and I’m much too prone to talking instead of doing.

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Starting from Zero

March 12th, 2010

I am a Teacher.  I am In Control.  I fear No One.

Except the person who, unlike my students, might know more than me.  Okay, with a doctorate in choral conducting, he knows way more than me.  So much more that I’m majorly intimidated.  Oh, who am I kidding?  I’m freaking out.

Relax, I tell myself.  Breathe.  Sing.  You love to sing.

I do.  I love to sing.  And I know I have a gift for it; I thank God for my voice.  But until last month, I’d been skating by on tips and tricks I’d picked up from hanging out with musicians.  You know, really impressive terms like “glottal stop” and “diaphragm support,” standing with an open rib cage, over-pronouncing consonants.  Stuff I really didn’t understand, but was happy to throw around as if I did.

Until last month.  Suddenly, while sitting through a grad school lecture and wishing my classmates were not quite so verbose, I decided I was tired of being insecure about my singing voice.  I’d never actually had a voice lesson.  In a twisted kind of way, I was proud of that, the way I was proud of never having dyed my hair.  Then one day I just decided, who cares?  I feel like a change.  And I had my stylist put in highlights: 3 different colors, but wonderfully subtle.  I loved them.

So I guess this was similar.  What was the distinction of an untrained voice worth?  Certainly not more than the distinction of a trained one.  I looked up Suzuki voice teachers, found one in the area, and asked if he’d be willing to take on a piano teacher who had never really learned to sing.  He responded enthusiastically.  We set up the first lesson.  Here I was.  Learning, just like my students.

Also, like my students, completely overwhelmed, anxious and neurotic about every little thing.  Stand up straight.  Feet apart.  Hands and arms down.  Shoulders back.  Jaw loose.  Belly full of air.  Pure, clean vowels.  In a foreign language.  And for goodness’ sake, RELAX!

I saw it from the other side: my teacher patiently corrected all my errors, one by one.  Breathe deeply.  Give more support to the lower, richer notes; back off on the higher ones.  Relish the consonants.  Slide from lower to higher register seamlessly.  Let the volume expand; fill the room with sound.  And just as I was getting it, really getting it, I’d forget to breathe again.

“What did you learn today?” he asked after an hour.  (Only an hour?  Not three?)

“Singing is a lot more complicated than I thought!” I said.

He looked disappointed. “Then I’ve been talking too much,” he said.

No, no.  You’ve only forgotten, because I fake it well: I’m starting from zero.

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Ten Pens

March 8th, 2010

Remember that lame thing everyone was doing on Facebook awhile back?  It was called “Twenty Things” or “Forty Things” or “A Whole Bunch of Unrelated Self-Centered Thoughts” or something like that.  Somehow it became undeservingly and wildly popular in a short amount of time.  (Which, normally, never happens on the Internet.)

Well.  I hereby present Ten Pens.  It’s way more fun, and just as free.

Take ten pens from around your house.  They must be free promotional pens.  If you’re short a few, I’ll lend you some: I rounded up 58 just by looking in the study.  They’re all going to school, in case anyone there wants to play (and because, seriously, they seem to multiply exponentially every 13 days or so.  I’m worried about the load-bearing capacity of my desk.)

Now, try to imagine how they might have entered your house.  Word limits are lame, but keep it short or your audience might fall asleep.  (All three of them.) Here are mine:

  1. Mini Cooper: Let’s Motor. This is one of those cool moving pens; when you tilt it, the little red car sliiiiiiides back and forth from the Hollywood sign to the Statue of Liberty.  And it was completely free!  All we had to do was buy a car.
  2. Revlimid capsules. Please see accompanying full prescribing information, including Boxed WARNINGS. I guess these prescription drug giveways must work, or no one would continue doing them.  I just have one question: “Boxed warnings”?  They don’t sound too bad.  Better than the free-roaming warnings that catch you by surprise, anyway.
  3. My school. Awwww. Actually, to be fair about 12 of the 58 were from my school.
  4. My school’s archrival school. What th–?!  I did tutor a couple of students from there, but I think I would have noticed this pen before now.  At the very least, I would think my school’s pens would be ostracizing it, but noooo, they’re playing nice and being friends.
  5. Best Wishes in the year 2003, Enslin & Son, Hattiesburg, Mississippi. My father’s family’s butcher shop.  We last visited there for my grandmother’s funeral.  It was a sad time, but wonderful to see them all, and I loved the tour of the slaughterhouse and my dad’s accompanying anecdotes from the summer he worked there as a teenager.  We also got married in 2003, so I think their best wishes might have helped a little.
  6. Mark & Anna’s Wedding: The Highlight of 2009. Most original wedding favor ever, from a very original couple!
  7. Sauza Tequila. Once again, what th–?!  We don’t own a bottle, and I’ve never even heard of that brand.  Tequila is not my scene.
  8. Microsoft. Steve, this means nothing to us!  We swear!  We don’t know how it got here or where it came from!  We’re burning it right this very instant and burying the ashes in the back yard under the Apple tree!  Isn’t that poetic justice?  Steve?  STEVE!  DON’T YOU WALK AWAY!
  9. Kone Elevators & Escalators. Courtesy of my husband, who goes to trade shows and can’t turn down a freebie to save his life.  Really, if he had to choose between certain death and a duffel bag of stuffed animals with building product manufacturers’ logos imprinted on their bums, I might have to raise Maia by myself.
  10. My high school alma mater. This isn’t technically a pen, it’s a letter opener — but it counts solely because of the number of times I’ve reached for it intending to pick up a pen.  A clever ruse, but I’m wise to it now.  Away, fiend!  Into the bag with the others!

Okay.  Your turn.  Comment here with a link to your Ten Pens post!  If it doesn’t go viral within a week, I’ll be personally offended.

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Posted in Life, Writing | 6 Comments »

Back to Basics

March 7th, 2010

“Building a Better Teacher,” a very long and very useful article from the New York Times Magazine, boils down to two very basic principles:

1. Classroom Management. “Students can’t learn unless the teacher succeeds in capturing their attention and getting them to follow instructions,” says author Elizabeth Green, paraphrasing Doug Lemov, a charter-school principal and one of the main sources for the article. If only saying were doing!  All teachers wish their students would pay better attention.  The good students do; they’re interested in learning.  With the others, you have to convince them that it’s worth their time and effort to invest in what you have to say.

For this, I can recommend no better book than Fred Jones’ Tools for Teaching (as I have before.)  There are some very simple techniques in it, most of which require a teacher who is prepared, calm and focused.  The advice in the Times article is similar: for instance, it advocates giving directions only while standing still and looking at the student(s,) which implies that getting them to pay attention is your highest immediate priority.

2. Fixing Mistakes. “Teaching depends on what other people think, not what you think,” says Deborah Loewenberg Ball, one of the teaching specialists quoted in the article.  In my limited teaching experience, I have noticed that students don’t need any help learning; they do that on their own, inconsistently and inefficiently but in the only way they can.  Your job, as a teacher, is to show them where and how their thinking is flawed, so they can learn more quickly.

For me, this second piece of advice is much more difficult than the first — so much so that I often wonder why I am a teacher at all.  I learn very quickly and easily, and I know what helps me learn; I have to constantly fend off frustration with my students, who lack my natural ability and / or self-awareness.  Working one-on-one, I can be as patient as the day is long, but in a group, when I sense control of the class sliding away from me as one student continues to look lost, it’s tempting to think, “Why can’t you just GET it?!”

So, that’s it.  “Do this and you will be saved.”  The article also discusses methods for training teachers to do these things and retaining the ones who already do them, which is interesting if you’re interested in the politics of education (I am, but am also increasingly disillusioned by it.)  Still, I am sure I will get the book mentioned in the article when it comes out in April, written by Lemov and based on his findings from a five-year study dubbed “Lemov’s Taxonomy.”  I figure it can’t hurt.

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Music for the Mind

March 6th, 2010

Shameless self-promotion commencing in 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .

If you or someone you love might be interested in learning to read music, ever, there is no better place to start than with Music Mind Games.  They’re a series of interactive, cooperative teaching tools that enables anyone to teach or learn the basics of music theory in a completely painless and fun way.

I’m currently writing a series of posts at the Music Mind Games website about how to use the materials in the Puppy Packet, which I require that all of my students purchase as part of the program.  The materials are versatile, well-designed and gorgeous, but there are so many that it can be overwhelming trying to figure out where to begin.  I haven’t been cross-publishing each entry here because they are awfully specialized, but if you know any musicians or music teachers, feel free to pass it on!  And, of course, there are little glimpses into my teaching philosophy along the way:

Yesterday I told one of my students, “You’re a much better reader than I was at your age.”  It was the understatement of the year: at his age, I was hiding my books and wailing about how much I hated reading music.  He’d just played a round of Slap the C’s, D’s and B’s (yes, simultaneously!) and gotten 17 out of 18 right, all the while cracking jokes and carrying on a conversation with his father.

Every teacher should have the gift of a student who reaches higher than she ever could.  It gives you the feeling that somehow, the world really is getting to be a better place.

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