The Five-Minute Pitch

It started innocently enough.  My students had just read “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” and were, fittingly, incensed:  

“How can he just say this stuff?”  

“People will never listen!”  

“This would NEVER work.”

So although he did, and they did, and it did, I tried to channel their outrage into a more productive endeavor. Imagine you only had five minutes to change someone’s life by telling them about Christ.  What would you say?

I called it the Five-Minute Homily, but it was really more like the Five-Minute Pitch; the sales metaphor is less distasteful if you really do believe in hell and think you may never have another chance to help someone stay out of it.  Plus, it’s a useful exercise in self-analysis: how well do you really know your own beliefs?  And how can you distill them down without watering them down, intrigue and ignite without glamorizing and smoothing over?

After grading theirs, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and — you guessed it — ended up writing my own.  You can read it if you want, but before you do, I encourage you to try your hand at the same exercise.

Belief is a funny thing.  When someone says, “Believe me … ” you may profess that you do, but a part of you is always waiting — isn’t it? — to see if he really means what he says, because part of that belief can’t happen until later.  You need to see that she’s sincere by watching what comes next.  “Believe me, I hate to be late” can’t be true, really, if he’s always late, and “Believe me, I love kids” sounds a little less plausible when you’ve only ever seen her frown in their direction.

So, although believing that God exists is hard enough without a vision or sign, that’s actually the easiest part of faith.  The difficult part is the lifetime that follows: will your actions, words and innermost thoughts profess that belief, or will it be another “I don’t believe in holding grudges” from one who can’t bring himself to forgive?

If you believe, your life will change.  That is a fact.  It will not be perfect, but your job is to keep trying, while at the same time admitting you can’t do it on your own.  Loving your enemies?  Honoring your parents?  Giving to the poor?  A life that is centered on God will include them all, and yet none of them are easy to practice.

In fact, life itself is far from easy: everyone knows this.  The world is full of beauty and light, but there are also moments of darkness and pain so acute we almost feel we can’t bear them.  Some of us have more of the first kind, and some much, much more of the second, but we all have burdens, many of them secret, all of them heavy.

And here’s what you may find incredible: your whole life, each joy and sorrow, the note from a friend on the day you really needed it and the car accident on the day you really didn’t — each of those moments were created for you by a being more powerful than you can imagine, who somehow saw fit to be involved in the smallest and humblest details of your existence.  You don’t have to do this alone.  He doesn’t want you to.

It’s incredible, really.  So is the world, and yet we open and close our eyes to it every day.

Quoth the Students

“‘The Raven’ sounds like a Dr. Seuss book.  Only … more depressing.”

“What’s ‘surcease of sorrow’?”

“Mrs. Lowe, you read that so well!  You should be, like, an actress!”

“I don’t know what literary devices Poe uses in the fourth stanza, but there’s a piece of paper on your shoe and it’s been driving me crazy.”

“So, he’s basically crazy, right?  ‘Cause birds can’t talk.”

“You look just like my cousin, Mrs. Lowe … she’s 5.”

“That made absolutely no sense.  Who’s Lenore, anyway?”

“Plutonian … Plutonian … OH!  I KNOW!  Pluto, like the dog?”

Life Imitating Lit

But the words were hardly uttered, before the smile was struck out of his face and succeeded by an expression of such abject terror and despair, as froze the very blood of the two gentlemen below.

Don’t believe what the students say: Gothic mystery novels are so relevant to my life.  For instance, I completely sympathized with the expression of Dr. Jekyll in the passage above yesterday morning, when NOT ONE student from my class remembered to do her homework or bring her textbook.

Mr. Utterson at last turned and looked at his companion.  They were both pale; and there was an answering horror in their eyes.

Oh, and did I mention this was the morning of my first observation?  For my Master’s degree program?  

“God forgive us, God forgive us,” said Mr. Utterson.

But Mr. Enfield only nodded his head very seriously, and walked on once more in silence.

I would have liked to follow suit, but what I did was calmly allow the students to get their books en masse; then borrowed an armful of copies from the workroom for the students who didn’t even have their books at school; then gave them a five-minute reading period before the lively discussion commenced.

And, for what it’s worth, my instructor was impressed at my handling of a difficult, though all-too-familiar, situation.  “How long did you say you’d been teaching?”

“Six years,” I said proudly.

“So you know how it is.”

Yes.  Yes, I sure do.  It takes a lot more than that to freeze my blood.

Modern Love

So a couple of nights ago, instead of grading papers or cleaning the kitchen, I went to the movies.  Ever since I read in The Week that the *average* rating of Drive was four stars, I had wanted to see it — even though I enjoy cars less than probably anyone else I know.

It was just as fantastic as everyone says it is: gripping and understated at the same time.  I don’t want to go into a lot of detail (I’m certainly not a qualified film critic) but I think what got under my skin the most, and has stayed with me in the days since, was the depiction of the side-note love story between the two main characters.

(Possible spoilers ahead, depending on your pickiness; continue at your own risk.)

They meet honorably: he holds the elevator door for her and watches with an eager, shy smile as she enters her apartment on the same floor.  Later, he listens in on a sweet, intimate conversation between her and her son, and he helps fix her ailing car in the parking lot.  As their relationship deepens, we watch as they watch each other, laugh together, care for her son.  They spend a lot of time just smiling, bashful in each other’s presence but unable to shake the wide-eyed adoration they feel for one another.  Physical contact is limited to a squeeze of the hand and one glorious, passionate kiss in the elevator just before they are separated forever.

The things they love about each other are apparent.  She is a nurturing mother with a sense of adventure; he is protective, dependable and comfortable in almost every situation.  They are both beautiful (hey, it’s Hollywood.)  But it’s not their physical attractiveness we see; it’s the strength of their character, strength that’s reinforced as they grow closer together and help each other cope with problems and celebrate victories. And, despite their love for each other, they each choose something even higher — she, her marriage; he, her family’s safety — in the end.

Is there anything that’s more beautiful than this?  And, basking in the warmth and purity of it, how can we stand to be confronted by the sheer drivel of Sex in the City and its counterparts in film, the relentless stream of romantic comedies that washes over us every summer?

I realize a movie is just a story.  But I don’t think it’s too much to ask that it use that hour or two to say something meaningful.  A movie like that can just take your breath away.

The Way of the Future

1) Teacher makes up a blank chart in Microsoft Word.

2) Students download the chart and fill it in with quotes, citations and examples of the American Dream as stated by the characters in the novel.

3) Students upload individual assignments to Turnitin.com.

4) Assignments are automatically cross-checked for plagiarism against tens of thousands of books, hundreds of millions of other papers and billions of websites.

5) Teacher viewes individual papers and reads the plagiarism reports.  Teacher adds comments with one click, anywhere in the document, and can even choose from a list of common comments, like “fragment” and “incorrect citation” — which each come with multiple paragraphs of explanation and reference.

6) Students log on, read comments and print a copy if desired.  (It’s usually not.)

Less waste, less headache, less drudgery.  I actually found myself commenting more because it’s so much faster to type in a box than to write on a piece of paper!

It doesn’t approach the cushiness of, say, an architecture professor, who assigns letter grades for entire projects DURING the students’ presentations.  Nevertheless, these advances have certainly made life easier for English teachers everywhere.

My New Favorite Brazilian Revolutionary

Dialogue cannot exist without humility.  The naming of the world, through which people constantly re-create that world, cannot be an act of arrogance.  Dialogue, as the encounter of those addressed to the common task of learning and acting, is broken if the parties (or one of them) lack humility.  How can I dialogue if I always project ignorance onto others and never perceive my own?  How can I dialogue if I regard myself as a case apart from others — mere “its” in whom I cannot recognize other “I”s?  How can I dialogue if I consider myself a member of the in-group of “pure” men, the owners of truth and knowledge, for whom all non-members are “these people” or “the great unwashed”? How can I dialogue if I start from the premise that naming the world is the task of an elite and that the presence of the people in histosy is a sign of deterioration thus to be avoided?  How can I dialogue if I am closed to — and even offended by — the contribution of others? How can I dialogue if I am afraid of being displaced, the mere possibility causing me torment and weakness? Self-sufficiency is incompatible with dialogue.  Men and women who lack humility (or have lost it) cannot come to the people, cannot be their partners in naming the world.  Someone who cannot acknowledge himself to be as mortal as everyone else still has a long way to go before he can reach the point of encounter. At the point of encounter there are neither utter ignoramuses nor perfect sages; there are only people who are attempting, together, to learn more than they now know.

Paolo Friere, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Scenes from the First Day

I awake well rested.  I get ready in a quiet house, make the bed.  Morning prayers: I read the name of each student, wondering what they will look like, what they will say, what they will think of me.

They are huge classes: last year my largest class was 15, and this year my smallest is 17.  Every chair is filled, even the ones by the windows.  Rain blows in and soaks their backs.  They squeal and run for cover, kicking their backpacks in front of them.

They enter to index cards — one on each desk.  The assignment is on the projector: name, interests, English history (grade, most and least favorite part) and the clincher: a 10-word summary of a story they heard recently.  “Anything that caught your attention,” I say.  “It could be funny, gross, sad, or just strange.”  They hem and haw and whine.  “I can’t think of anything!  My life is so boring!” I remind them that they’ve lived through a hurricane and an earthquake in the last week, and a flood is forming in the streets outside as we speak.

It’s uncomfortably warm; I quickly pin up my hair and am glad I wore a black shirt.

We pass out textbooks — as many as ten per student.  Their groaning turns to laughter as I ask, “Raise your hand if you have TOO MANY books on your desk!”  They ask if they have to bring every book to every class. “Yes,” I say solemnly, “And you have to carry them on your head, too.”  I don’t care what Todd Whitaker says about sarcasm; it works if you know how to use it properly.

The opening exercise is a huge hit.  They highlight dutifully and enjoy reading their selected phrases along with me (this is one of the most powerful ways to begin analysis of any piece of writing, and yes, I stole it from another teacher.)  They have lots of questions, lots of ideas.  They talk about parents and friends who have lost jobs and houses.  They demonstrate how much they learned and overheard during the last presidential campaign, and during the last year of school — referencing simile, climax and conflict as elements of the “story” the author is telling.

“Mrs. Lowe,” one student pipes up, smiling.  “Can I be your favorite student?”  I ask about her cooking skills. “That’s a high priority if you’re considering the position.”  Now they all want to tell me about their cooking skills.  “I can make cheesecake!”  “I make the BEST cookies!”  

I spend as little time on the syllabus as possible, but because I am organized, I don’t need to.  They read and sign the class policies, which include expectations for both students and teacher — “I expect you to hold me to these as I will hold you to them,” I say, without a trace of a smile this time, meeting and holding each gaze in turn.  “I will demonstrate respect, responsibility and passion in this classroom.  You will do the same.”

So thirsty.  I always forget how much talking there is in teaching.  I will not leave the room to get a drink, even though it would be easy.  This is my classroom.  I am in charge.  End of story.

Every ten minutes or so, to lighten the mood as much as to learn their names, I reshuffle the stack of cards in my hand and call on another student to tell her story.  A little brother who has an imaginary friend.  A dream about red turtles and a shooting star.  A dog who went out for her last walk, came home and dropped down dead.  After the laughter and murmurs of sympathy, we address the story itself: why is it memorable? What do we love about it? How does it compare to what we will read this year?

Gently, I hold their collective hand through the quarter syllabi that show each and every assignment.  Next class: vocabulary and an oral quiz on summer reading.  After that, they’re on their own to remember and complete their work.  But I know you can handle it, I say.  

“I have to say,” says one student as I leave the room, “That was a fun class.”  As I enter the next: “I’ve heard great things about you, Mrs. Lowe.”

Of course every day won’t be like this.  But thank you, Lord, for letting this be the first.

Guess What's In My Head

Me: Je veux garder mon pantalon.

Student: I want to… something… my pants?

Me: Bravo!  Et ‘garder’?

Student: I don’t know that one.

Me: Think of what you would do with something you like.

Student: I would hide it.

Me: Okay… what if I tried to take it from you?  What would you do?

Student: I would smack you.

[Editor’s note: student is also a good friend and generally non-violent.]

The above dialogue illustrates one of the worst, and most common, teaching techniques: Guess What’s In My Head.  I was trying to help her define the word garder, to keep.  To me, the hint seemed obvious: of course you’d try to keep something you liked.  But looking at the sentence now, I am appalled.  There are a hundred different things you could do with something you liked, from framing it to eating it.  How did I expect her to guess “keep”?

As teachers, we have a fear of giving away the information; somehow we feel we haven’t done our job if we simply tell the student the answer, so we resort to cloak-and-dagger games.  It’s absurd, really, and yet I catch myself doing it all the time, and becoming frustrated with students who can’t guess what’s in my head.  I’ve been a lot more aware of it since re-reading the following excerpt from Judy Blume’s Blubber: Miss Rothbelle is an extreme case, but she reminds me that teaching means making sure students have the information they need, even if that means directly telling them what it is.

When she finished her song she was right next to Wendy.

“Wendy… can you tell me what was coming out of my mouth as I sang?”

“Out of your mouth?” Wendy asked.

“That’s right,” Miss Rothbelle told her.

“Well… it was… um… words?”

“No… no… no,” Miss Rothbelle said.

Wendy was surprised. She can always give teachers the answers they want.

Miss Rothbelle moved on. “Do you know, Caroline?”

“Was it sound?”

“Wrong!” Miss Rothbelle said, turning. “Donna Davidson, can you tell me?”

“It was a song,” Donna said.

“Really Donna… we all know that!” Miss Rothbelle looked around. “Linda Fischer, do you know what was coming out of my mouth as I sang to the class?”

Linda didn’t say anything.

“Well, Linda …” Miss Rothbelle said.

“I think it was air,” Linda finally told her. “Either that or breath.”

Miss Rothbelle walked over to Linda’s desk. “That was not the correct answer. Weren’t you paying attention?” She pulled a few strands of Linda’s hair… .

She walked up and down the aisles until she stopped at my desk… .“We’ll see if you’ve been paying attention… suppose you tell me the answer to my question.

”I had no idea what Miss Rothbelle wanted me to say. There was just one thing left that could have been coming out of her mouth as she sang, so I said, “It was spit.”

“What?” Miss Rothbelle glared at me.

“I mean, it was saliva,” I told her.

Miss Rothbelle banged her fist on my desk. “That was a very rude thing to say. You can sit in the corner for the rest of the period.”…

At the end of the music period Robby Winters called out, “Miss Rothbelle… Miss Rothbelle …”

“What is it?” she asked.

“You never told us what was coming out of your mouth when you sang.”

“That’s right,” Miss Rothbelle said. “I didn’t.”

“What was it?” Robby asked.

“It was melody,” Miss Rothbelle said. Then she spelled it. “M-e-l-o-d-y. And every one of you should have known.” She blew her pitchpipe at us and walked out of the room.

The Dialectics of Dialect

It's always a fun surprise to study the Imagists in the midst of studying Gatsby.  Although published within a decade of each other, the works are about as far apart as two works can be: on one hand are Fitzgerald's crazy aphorisms -- "There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired" -- and on the other, this:

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens.

The students reacted with unanimous delight.  "I LOVE this poem!"  "It's so easy to understand!"  "I can just picture a farm in sort of a misty rain."

I agreed with them: "Every word contributes so much to the image.  It's powerful because it contrasts: white, fluffy feathers against a wet, shiny wheel barrow."

"Wait, what are you saying?" one girl asked. "Wheel barrel?"

"Barrow," I said, slowly and clearly.  "Bear-row."

"I thought it was 'barrel,'" they murmured, almost to a person. "Wheel barrel."

Aghast, I realized their Baltimore dialect had reared its ugly head.  "Barrow," I corrected them.  "There's no 'l' at the end.  See?"  But they didn't.  They tried and honestly couldn't say it.  "Barr-oww?"  "Bear-all?"  "No, there's definitely an 'l' in there."  "It makes sense because wheel barrels roll.  They're on wheels, right?"

They were laughing now, and I was still stupefied.  "You really think so?  What about straw?"

"Strawl?" they responded.

I wrote the word on the board.  "S-T-R-A-W.  See?  No 'l.'"

"Strah?" "Straaaa?" "Stroah?"

Now I was laughing.  "You guys are SO from Baltimore!"

They loved it.  "Do another one!  This is so fun!"

We had to return to the poem then, although I was dying to hit them with "pull," "egg," and the ever-popular "down to the ocean."  With a little luck, they'll remember Imagism for a long time to come.

Down in the Dumps, and Climbing Out

Pascha is always the high point; after it, everything seems to tumble.  End-of-year deadlines approach with alarming speed.  Carefully-made professional plans unravel left and right.  Weekends pass in a frenzy of social events and dump me abruptly back at Monday morning, where class after class seems to have lost all interest in learning:

• Yesterday one (out of fourteen) students got one (out of eight) geometry problems right.  In case math isn't your thing either, that means there were 111 wrong answers and just one correct one.


• Other classes struggle with Fitzgerald (Did he have to spend a whole paragraph describing a drunk, weeping singer?) and Eliot (Would Prufrock please stop mooning over mermaids and just make a decision for once?)


• This evening I asked a piano student, who wore a slightly-sullen expression, whether she was all right. "Yes," she replied.  Then, thoughtfully: "Well, my nose itches."

Somehow it's still only Tuesday, though this week is a short one (we leave Thursday for five glorious days of travel in the South.)  So in case your week is going anything like mine, I wanted to share my best advice for climbing out of the deepest of fogs: friendship.

• Have pulled pork at Little Havana with people who love you too much to care (or even notice) that your eyes are swollen and red from the atmospheric pollen.  Laugh a lot.  Optional upgrades: coconut custard, Flying Fish Summer Ale and half-price entree night.


• Watch an episode of Anne of Green Gables.  Preferably one of the first ones, in which her rare and precious friendship with Diana saves her from a life of loneliness and despair.


• Read this heartwarming portrait of two teachers who stuck by each other through personal and professional difficulties and remain the closest of friends.  In New York, of all places.

Don't get me wrong.  True love is grand.  But friendship is what makes this all worth it.