Dinner for Eight

Recently, Rod posted an interesting conundrum about a fantasy dinner party for you, your spouse, and six other well-known people (living or dead, but in separate groups.)  Here is my list, which took me a couple of days of hemming and hawing to complete and a couple of weeks to write about:

Rod noted that your list wouldn’t necessarily be the people you’d most like to meet or even the people you most admire; they should be people you really think would make good dinner guests.  I like diversity, so I tried for an even mix of occupations, religions and gender (classic dinner-party etiquette mandates boy-girl seating, anyway.)

The Living:

1. Bono (Musician and Activist) He can make me weak-kneed with one soaring descant, and his occupation as a rock musician would certainly make for some interesting stories, but I’m actually most interested in his take on African politics and hearing about what it was like growing up under the specter of the IRA.
2. Carla Bruni (Model and Musician) No fantasy dinner party is complete without a French presence. She’s stylish, talented and completely classy, and the fact that she’s married to the President of France helps lend an air of political importance to the gathering.  (The air is the important thing; actual politicians couldn’t possibly be interesting dinner companions.)
3. Atom Egoyan (Filmmaker) I want to know where his ideas come from (I wrote my senior thesis on The Sweet Hereafter) and I want to hear about Armenia — what it means to him and what he thinks its future will be like.
4. Peter Eisenman (Architect) Believe it or not, this pompous philosopher was one of the first on my list. Back in my undergraduate days, we’d all drag ourselves to Tuesday crit, sleep-deprived and nearly suicidal, only to hear about his latest dinner party. They included the most unusual guests (German philosophers and rock musicians) and he always had something interesting to say about the zeitgeist that inspired them. So I guess I’m taking a gamble that he’s more fun over a bottle of wine than in front of a wall full of blood, sweat and Rapidographs.
5. Sharon Astyk (Writer, Activist, Mother) I respect Sharon more than almost any person I know [of.] Her deep faith, commitment to traditional ideals, and desire to create a better world for her children are amazing.  I also think she could hold her own against Eisenman in a debate (and could certainly make him feel like a bad Jew.)
6. Mother Aemeliane (Scholar, Nun) I couldn’t feel right hosting a dinner party without at least one Orthodox Christian guest, and I can’t think of anyone else who would be a better addition to this one. You may have heard the story of her miraculous rescue from a collapsed building, but unless you have been in her presence you can’t understand the tremendous force of spirit, combined with an even greater humility, that enables her to guide so many people with such grace.

The Eternal:

1. C. S. Lewis (Writer) He should be a required guest for any Christian taking part in this exercise. Brilliant, creative, thoughtful, funny, likes to smoke after dinner.  Yes, please!
2. St. Brigid of Kildare (Nun) She’s my patron saint, a disciple of St. Patrick.  And she once turned an entire bathtub of water into beer, so she’d be a handy person to have around!
3. Frederic Chopin (Musician) The token Frenchman: he lived a short life, filled with suffering, but bequeathed oceans of beauty to the generations that followed.
4. Anne Frank (Martyr) Another short, painful life, but one which inspired many. I worried about her young age at first but then remembered: teenage girls always have plenty to say.
5. e. e. cummings (Writer) Many poets are accused of being artists with words, but he really was one. The way he saw the world was truly unique.
6. Hester Prynne (Seamstress, Outcast) I was really stuck on this last one until I remembered there had been no injunction against fictional characters.  Considering how thoughtful and introspective this group is, I think she would have a lot to add to the conversation.

Your lists, please!  Answer or link below.

The Five-Minute Pitch

It started innocently enough: my students had 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 keep someone 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 write your own.

Click to read more ...

Thirty by Thirty

Although I rarely have the chance to read them, I'm really inspired by the articles in my professional association's quarterly journal.  They always have some interesting writing exercises that I'd love to be able to pull into my class.

A recent article about life goals brought me to a sort of bittersweet nostalgia.  A teacher explains an assignment given to him in junior high -- thirty things he wanted to accomplish before he turned thirty -- which was memorable enough to repeat in his own classes much later:

I wish I had that list today. I distinctly recall how that silly assignment really stretched my brain, asking me to look beyond that which was right in front of my nose, year after year to what seemed like an eternity. Thirty was old. Really, really old.

What do I remember from that list? Not much except wanting a fancy car and hoping to parachute from an airplane someday. I’ve had a few cars, none nearly as nice as the one on my list, and I wouldn’t throw my body out of a plane if you paid me. I still long to see my entries, especially the ones after the first ten, the entries I really had to think about, the quiet ones.

I do the same exercise with my Creative Writing class; I ask students to write thirty things they’d like to do before thirty years old with no category repeats. In other words, they cannot just write thirty different cars they’d like to someday own (some could actually do this). I also ask them to consider items outside consumerism and money—what they’d like to learn or know, whom they’d like to meet, love, or help. This assignment should be a little difficult, I tell them, if they invest some time to think about it.

Of course this made me a little sad.  I wonder about my own middle-school self: what would she have wanted me to accomplish by now?  On the other hand, what would I have done that really impressed her?

So I decided to create a list of thirty things I've done of which I'm still proud, honoring the parameters of the original assignment (no category repeats).  However old you are, I encourage you to do the same; if there are any surprises on my list, I'm sure you can find a few for yours.

1. Passed (briefly) for a native in several foreign countries.


2. Graduated cum laude from college.


3. Learned how to use a real film camera, and took some great photos with it.


4. Got paid to write.


5. Been a godmother to five lovely girls and one sweet, cuddly boy.


6. Survived two years of architecture school and many more of aftermath.


7. Taught lots of children (and a few adults) how to read, write, think and play.


8. Cooked many amazing meals from scratch.


9. Treasured those close to me.


10. Been interviewed on television.


11. Failed a class. Fought back.


12. Ran a 5K.  (Well, mostly ran.)


13. Aced standardized tests.


14. Made my cat purr just by talking to her.


15. Earned scholarships to pay for my education.


16. Planted a kitchen garden.


17. Sang (prayed) the most beautiful music in church.


18. Stayed to help when things came apart: folders, dishes, marriages, lives.


19. Took actual voice lessons from an actual voice teacher.


20. Lived and worked in Manhattan.


21. Discovered I love yoga.


22. Asked forgiveness. Constantly.


23. Married the right person.


24. Watched 70 perfect movies. (Most of the other 1842 belong on another list.)


25. Sent flowers, gifts and handwritten letters to lonely friends all over the world.


26. Played a spontaneous concert on Frank Lloyd Wright's concert grand.  Shocked tourists.


27. Read these.  And others.


28. Surprised my husband twice (party, guitar) and my father once (engagement.)


29. Arranged flowers for brides.  Made them smile.


30. Written 472 posts on a blog that's been lots of fun.

 

Let's Get it Started

"The most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows. Ascertain this and teach accordingly."

David Ausubel

My current grad course has an online forum, where we all take turns moderating discussions based on the text.  This was my week, along with my colleague James (we teach at the same school, but weren't really friends until we met out of school.  Isn't that funny?)

The effusive nature of most previous posts had bothered me, so I tapped into the Six Word Memoir for a framework: in six words, I asked my classmates to describe the methods of the most effective teacher they could remember. It was interesting to see the similar trends that emerged: openness and challenge were two of the most common.

Meanwhile, James used the above principle to run his forum.  Is this the most important thing? he asked -- and if not, what is?  Despite his many efforts at argument, he couldn't convince anyone to argue otherwise (except for the copout answer, "There is no single most important principle.")  One student offered a story in support: tutoring for a state assessment test, she came upon a question that referred to a letter written by Robert E. Lee.  Neither student knew who he was, so she tried to prompt them:

Me: Okay. Do you know any American Wars?
Students: Yes
Me: Alright. What was the very first American War?
Student: WWII?
Me: Well...actually i think it was the Revolutionary War... Do you remember what comes next?
Student: No. What does History have to do with this. I thought we were doing English.

So basically, I found out what they know....they know about different kinds of writing, but that isn't going to help them at all if they can't fit the writing into any of their prior knowledge.... I found out they don't know much about American history, so even though I am an English teacher, and responsible for them passing the English HSA, I have to not only backtrack, but backtrack completely out of my content area at this point.

After most of a semester in which you could hear a pin drop at any point in any class, we had suddenly revved everyone up.  The student who had shared this story went on to explain that he believed socio-economic status to be the single most important factor in determining success in school; if you were raised without the benefit of parental supervision and expectation, he argued, you couldn't possibly be expected to do well.  In reply, another student ended a rant with the following: "If you don't have the discipline to work things through for yourself, you deserve to be flipping burgers at McDonald's.  THE END!"  Another told of her own childhood as her voice shook with emotion: "My father was a drug addict, and my mother was never around.  But I'm not an outlier; they'll never make a movie about my life.  I just got myself to school, day after day, and here I am.  I'm doing fine.  I don't blame anyone."

James and I just gaped at each other as student after student broke his silence to unburden his soul and speakaloud of his insecurities and frustrations about the profession.  Somehow we had struck a nerve.  But how did we do it, and could we do it again?  That's anyone's guess.

Whenever anyone asks me what I like most about teaching, I don't hesitate to say: "Its unpredictability." You just never know what might happen next, and what it will be that gets things started.

Consumed

I have profaned myself with coarse sins and consumed my whole life with procrastination. (Lenten Troparia of Orthros)

Yep, that's me.  I have an almost-final exam on Wednesday and a list of 85 terms to learn before I take it.  I have about 60 defined and a couple dozen learned.  And what am I doing?  Procrastinating Blogging.

But this is important!  I think I'm onto something.  Deductive reasoning moves from general to specific, right? Starting with basic rules (children are more squirrelly on Friday than any other day) and moving logically to a conclusion (I will never teach another piano lesson on a Friday.)  Inductive, meanwhile, goes from specific to general; it begins with observation (Maia is always waiting at the door when Rob pulls up) and moves to universals (cats must have very sensitive hearing.)

I have ten students in my Creative Writing class, and I think I can categorize them all as Deductive or Inductive writers.  Deductive writers enjoy a very vague prompt ("Write a story about rain") from which they begin to construct specific characters, setting and plot.  Inductive writers prefer something very specific ("Begin a story with the following quote: 'I can't believe you stole those flowers!'") around which they can build generalities of time and place.

Personally, I am firmly in the former camp.  I always found those detailed prompts trite and constraining.  But after assigning the flower prompt, I was shocked to read half a dozen fascinating and completely different accounts of stolen foliage and its subsequent denoument.

Back to work, that is, unless someone wants to further distract me with a response . . .