Archive for January, 2009

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What do you think of a person . . .

Saturday, January 31st, 2009

Who only does the bare minimum? (Last 15 seconds or so are PG-13.)

Frederica Mathewes-Green’s recent podcast was interesting to me.  In it, she interviews Deacon Thomas Braun of Huntington Beach, California; he’s known for dispensing sound financial advice, as he did in a daylong retreat at our church last weekend.  We can talk money later, but I wanted to point out something he said which interested me very much.  (Emphasis added.)

D.TB: . . . Back to the specifics, you were bringing up some critical things, especially that we see impacting the youth of today. There does seem to be, I think, an attitude problem, and I would wrap it up in one word, and that is “closure”. When a boss gives you a task, they want to see a completed task. If you give it back to them half baked, “Well I couldn’t get this answer”—you know, use some creativity and stretch yourself a little bit. You’re trying to learn, and what you’re really doing is you’re training yourself to do your boss’s job.

FMG: And what they have instead is an attitude picked up from school, that the teacher wants you to list ten words, and you list those ten words. It’s like, they look at what the boss tells them to do, and they think of the minimum way to accomplish that and get that task off your board. But you’re saying, think creatively. Think like your boss. What would he do? What would really knock his socks off?

D.TB: Well, you know what, Frederica, I think you’re going to love this comment I’m going to make because I know you’re in academia. What’s happened in academia is that our culture has come to be one of learning how to take tests, and studying for the test. Instead of studying to learn, and doing it for the joy of learning, and the passion of that, which is what education going back to the ancient Greeks. People went to school not to get an A, but they wanted to learn. And help their culture grow. We need to adopt that attitude. I think what happens is in schools we adopt that attitude of, well, teacher wants me to do this this and this for the A, but they don’t think creatively about what’s behind that. Why are they asking this question? I love the word proactive. You need to think ahead, what is it your boss wants, why is it they’re asking this question. Here’s a real practical example. Imagine if an investor came to you and he was going to hand you a million dollars to go buy a building or buy a company or something. You say, if it was my money, if it was my million dollars, what would I want to know before I would feel comfortable handing that million dollars over to sign on the bottom line? So that’s what I really want to encourage. Why does your boss want to know this? And your boss will be blown away by that.

Wow.  If only we could raise a generation that thought this way.  If only!  And as teachers, we have more of the burden than anyone.  We see kids six or seven hours a day, more time than they spend with their families or sports teams or even (usually) sleeping.  And we have to try to help them see the world that way — to cultivate intellectual curiosity, not just meet requirements — while simultaneously giving them sets of requirements and grading them on their proper execution of those requirements.  It’s a hard line to walk.

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Tears and self-discovery

Friday, January 30th, 2009

I wish I could say that today was the first time I’d made a student cry, but that would be far from the truth.  The truth is, I teach young kids and teenage girls — and there’s no telling what will set off the emotions of either demographic.  You learn to live with a fair amount of guilt.  Once, I was playing a game in which dynamic words are spoken at their intended volume — “pianissimo” is whispered, while “fortissimo” is shouted loudly.  I got to “forte” and my student, a 4-year-old boy, burst into tears.  I think he’d never heard me raise my voice to that level before!  (His mom and I probably didn’t help the situation by laughing, which we just couldn’t help doing.)

Today, just as unintentionally, I made someone cry.  It started out as a great class: we finished up some letters we were sending out to potential donors (we’re looking to publish the school’s literary magazine in full color this year, and that’s an expensive goal) and then, I told the students, “We’re going to do something fun.”  I explained the Roundtable Influences project to them, and I could see their brains leap into action almost before I had finished explaining the parameters.  I gave them a few minutes to brainstorm, and then they shared their ideas.

When I asked one student which family members she had listed, she said, “None of my family members have really influenced me.”  I could have argued that point (“Really?!”), but I let it go and said instead, “Okay.  Who’s on your list, then?”

She began talking about a friend of hers, a boy, who seemed to be a pretty negative person.  He read her blog from time to time, she said, and he would always criticize her writing.  The other students and I were surprised, as she is really a gifted and articulate writer — she could churn out dactyllic hexameter in her sleep.  “He just tells me what he would have done differently, and he tells me when I write stuff that’s dumb and doesn’t matter.”

Too late, I saw the telltale signs — widening eyes and a shaky voice, and hair allowed to fall in front of her face as a protective shield.  The classmate sitting next to her put a hand on her arm.  “It’s okay.”

She shook her head.  “I’m not upset about this, I’m just tired and this is a really negative day.  I don’t know why I’m crying.”

(more…)

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Cultivating Caring

Thursday, January 29th, 2009

You know what’s hard about my job?  Making teenagers care.

Don’t get me wrong; they care about plenty of things.  Like, American Idol. Oh, and that ONE point on that ONE homework assignment three weeks ago.  That matters a lot.

To be fair, many of them care a great deal about the important things: friends, family, faith and french fries (kidding.  I just needed another noun that started with f.)  But I want more.  It frustrates me, because sometimes I see this whole other side of my students — they want to learn, they want to help, they

Last year I met with the principal of our school about planning an Environmental Action Week.  I was impressed that caring about the environment had attracted the attention of the Vatican, and I thought that might help my cause.

They were all for it, but one by one, my brilliant ideas were value-engineered out: first we discovered that Earth Day (the centerpiece of the week) fell three days after we returned from a long Easter break.  Oh, and at the end of that week there’s this little tiny event called “PROM.”  You know, no big deal.  That, plus all the days off we already have and the rapid approach of AP exams, meant we could only have one school-wide assembly with a speaker.  I suggested a local organic farmer, but that was shot down almost immediately.  (Okay, okay.  I get it.  Farmers aren’t exactly interesting to this demographic.)  Finally we decided on an alumna who now works for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.  We’d like to combine it with a presentation called Our Synthetic Sea (the link is just one portion) that calls attention to the evils of disposable plastic (even if you’re responsible, people, a lot of it ends up in the ocean.)  But fitting a speaker, a screening and a discussion into an hour just doesn’t seem feasible.

There’s so much I want to say to these girls.  And I don’t want to force them to accept it (although I would be tempted to settle for that!)  I want to inspire them — I want them to start caring, too.

The Story of Stuff, for instance, will change the way you look at stuff in under an hour.  Meaning, where does all this stuff (take a look around you for a second) come from?  Where does it go when you’re finished with it?  You probably don’t want to know the answers, but you should know them.  Everyone should.  And there’s so much more where that came from.  How can you change, you know, the world?

One step at a time, I guess.  Maybe we can start with just the Ecology Club.  One caring teenager is still a success.

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Round Table

Thursday, January 29th, 2009

We’re being pelted with blessings right and left — two hours late this morning!  I wish I could save one of these unexpected days off for a really stressful period.

I’m fast discovering that having a blog means you can’t be picky.  If I took the time to obsessively revise all of the “work” that’s published online, I might lose my mind along with my afternoon.  Actually, the way I work best is to create a rough outline and sit on it for awhile — in this case, a week.  Then just write it, and edit once or twice for clarity.  Then, gulp and hit “Print.”  Done.

This is the second assignment for this week’s class.  Similar to the stepping stone one, it requires you to think about influence and identity.  The assignment is to come up with a roundtable of influences.  Who sits there, and why?  It was a tough assignment; I arranged and rearranged several times.  There were many others I wanted to include, but there were only ten spots at the table (yes, I know it’s my imagination, but more than ten people and you can’t really hold a conversation.  Ask King Arthur how his 150-top worked out.)

Read the full list below . . .

(more…)

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Stepping Stones

Wednesday, January 28th, 2009

Okay, I’m not going to complain about ANOTHER day off, but it is frustrating to have nothing to do!  I’m reduced to doing my homework early . . .

The assignments for my Methods of Teaching English class continue to be interesting ones.  Today’s have to do with self-awareness and metacognition, two buzzwords of modern English instruction.  The first one asks you to imagine your life as a series of twelve stepping stones, each one representing an accomplishment or growth.  It’s hard to narrow it down to twelve!  I spent several days coming up with these:

  1. I was born. (This one was non-negotiable — 1980.)
  2. In second grade, my best friend “dumped” me for two other girls. She got them to tell me she didn’t like me anymore.  I was crushed, but I learned that circumstances can change very quickly. (1989)
  3. My friend Bobby told me that I was “a nerd that fits in.” At the time, I was offended; later, I realized he was trying to say that I was well-rounded and adaptable, two things about which I’ve always been proud. (1993)
  4. Desperate for an after-school activity that wasn’t a sport, my best friend Ghillian and I founded The Road to Athens, a literary / philosophical discussion group. There, I felt free to ask challenging, intellectual questions. (1995)
  5. My family converted to the Eastern Orthodox faith. I can hardly imagine my life before this moment.  It has shaped everything about who I am. (1996)
  6. I graduated from high school. Hurling my hat in the air, I felt at once immense joy and immense fear.  “This is really happening,” I thought. (1998)
  7. Later that year, I pinned up for my first critique of many in architecture school.  I was verbally ripped apart. I learned what it was to be virtually unable to succeed at something. (1998)
  8. I got my first paid writing job. It was the beginning of a long line of them, followed by a period of silence, followed by the discovery of a passion.  I had found my voice. (1998 — it was a big year!)
  9. I spent a summer in Athens while on sabbatical from architecture school.  While I was there, I decided not to go back – and I learned independence, loneliness are two sides of the same coin. (2001)
  10. I got married. Rob and I had spent a year falling in love, but the moment we circled the altar for the last time and the priest smiled and said, “Congratulations,” I knew it was really for eternity.  Scary and wonderful! (2003)
  11. We planted our first garden together. Buying a house was one thing, but this really made the house ours – and it helped us discover a shared love for growing things. (2004)
  12. My first day of school, all over again. It was awful: I had underplanned, the students were terrible and we were all miserable from the heat.  But I came back for another day, and eventually I realized this was where I needed to be. (2005)It’s exhausting just reading about it all!  If you have some time today, you should try it.  It’s a fun exercise.

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