Beyond the Call

Between construction delays, two hurricanes and an earthquake, things were off to a slow start this year, and administrators pleaded with us to be flexible in rescheduling events whose dates had already come and gone before classes began in earnest.  One casualty was Back-to-School Night, which was rescheduled twice and finally combined into one massive evening of upperclassmen, underclassmen and teachers.

The fun part of Back-to-School Night is watching the parents rush around, confused and harried, trying to find the classrooms their daughters use every day.  They take the stairs and arrive, huffing and puffing, with just as much anxiety as the students.  “Am I in the right room?  Did the bell already ring?  What did I miss?”  This is supposed to make them empathize with the students, but I think it has the same effect on us — when we see how difficult it is for an adult to keep pace, we’re a little more forgiving of the children of whom we expect so much.

This year, however, my grad school schedule interfered with the event, and I didn’t want to miss the second class after (due to an e-mail problem) I had been completely unprepared for the first one.  My principal was kind enough to excuse me once I told her I was planning to let the families of my students know ahead of time.  

So I wrote a letter and made sixty copies of it to send home with my students.  Their parents read and signed (and some even added a “Thank you” at the bottom, which warmed my heart.)  In compiling the notes, of course, some were missing, so the afternoon of the event I sat down with the school directory and spoke to about a dozen answering machines and one slightly-confused relative.

For the handful whose phone service wasn’t working (full voicemail, no voicemail, dead end) I resorted to e-mail, sending out a note with the same message: I was sorry to miss them, I had posted a copy of my class policies online, and they should feel free to contact me if they had any questions.  All told, the communication took at least as long as the event itself.

So it was lovely, the next morning, to receive an e-mail from one parent who was grateful for the communication, which she said was “beyond the call.”  She added that her daughter, typically a math person, was “actually looking forward to English this year, so you have made a great impression.”  

Sometimes one little note is all it takes.  This one is going in my portfolio for sure.

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.

Planning While Hungry

My mother taught me to always plan meals while I’m hungry: if it sounds good then, it will sound good while you’re fixing dinner.  (She also taught me never to grocery shop while hungry.  Anyone who has done this can attest to the wisdom of her advice.)

I’ve been remembering this for the last week as I plan out the school year.  It’s a light one in some respects: I only have three classes, and every other day I only stay for an hour.  In others, it’s much heavier: my classes are 20+ students each, where my former average was half that.  And I have seminars, observations and portfolio sessions to schedule as I prepare for my graduation and certification in the spring.  In reality, it’s probably just another year — the comfort of routine buttressed by the intoxicating pleasure of a fresh start from scratch.

Every morning I awake eager to organize time, weigh assignments and measure out the calendar.  It’s the sort of task that ordinarily makes my skin crawl, but this time of year, when the evening air is heavy and cool and the crickets lend their muted tones to the symphony of fluttering keys and shuffling papers on the other side of the wall, it just makes me hungry for more.

My Big Idea this time around?  Quarter syllabi — to ensure an even number of points in each term, a lack of overlapping assignments and clarity from the get-go regarding due dates.  My inspiration was my own professor, the one who taught my summer class: her extraordinary organization was such a gift that it made me want to pay it forward to my own students.

The Perils of Modernity

As part of my music organization project, I went through boxes and boxes of books given to me by a friend from church when she moved to a retirement community.  Stuck between them was a paper she had written for an English class in 1960:

Living in the middle of the twentieth century seems to be characterized primarily by one factor: Speed.  Everyone is in a hurry to do things, see things, go somewhere, or run away from something. Often one who merely sits and meditates is considered to be slightly wacky because he is not “on the go.” Everyone seems to be consumed by a feverish desire to go so that it has been increasingly difficult for people to relax and to learn to relax.

Having a sense of humor and being able to recognize and enjoy good humor is a primary asset in coping with the speed, pressures and tensions of modern life.  Therefore, it is important for every teacher to do what she is able to do in developing a sense of humor in her pupils.

True then and now.  Bravo, Miss Mary.

The Endless Summer

My school raised several million dollars for a major addition to the building, which was to take place over the summer.  Anyone who’s ever observed an ongoing construction project knows that deadlines are seldom met, so when the first day of school got pushed back several times, now holding at 10 days later than the original, our gleeful gratitude far eclipsed our shock.  However, the gift of a week and a half, just when I’m starting to get depressed about all the things I didn’t accomplish this summer, is nothing to sneeze at.  Here’s my plan:

  • Clean the house from top to bottom.
  • Organize all the junk in the basement.
  • Sell one or two more unused pieces of furniture (I’ve had pretty good luck with Craigslist, despite a preponderance of flaky people who simply stop responding when they’re no longer interested.)
  • Weed the gardens and harvest remaining produce.
  • Go through my piano and vocal music; purge and reorganize.
  • Catch up with friends I missed all summer. 

The real surprise? An earthquake that unleashed widespread devastation in the area this afternoon.  We’re slowly digging our way out from all the havoc.

Starting Over

“Once I finally learned how to teach piano the right way,” said the instructor who trained my mom, “I had to fire all my students and start over.”  She was obviously (and humorously) misdirected in this remark, but expressed clearly the familiar frustration of trying to teach a new system to an old and complacent student.

For other reasons, though, her words have an uncanny resonance to me at this moment. My studio is half the size it was at the beginning of the year, which was half of what it was when I began teaching from home, which was half again what it was when I used to travel to students’ houses.  Over the years my students have lost interest, moved away and succumbed to the seductive allure of home lessons; they’ve been replaced, but never in the same numbers.  I suppose I could start advertising, but I prefer word-of-mouth referrals because they ensure the parents know what they’re in for before they ever show up for the first lesson.

So here I am, with half a dozen kids and what could be viewed as an opportunity.  With twenty or forty students, cancellations are commonplace and overhauls to the schedule nearly impossible.  With six, I decided, I can try something I’ve wanted to do for years: group lessons.

I started small.  Two groups of three: one for beginners, one for advanced.  I told the families that for our end-of-year event, we’d replace the last lesson in June with a group class.  I dreaded the scheduling, but it actually wasn’t so bad, and I was even able to put the groups back to back for two solid hours of games and performance.

Surprisingly, though I’ve had lots of classroom and private teaching experience, this new hybrid format made me a little nervous.  I wrote out a schedule of games, reminders and stalling techniques in case I ran out of things to do.  And then I unlocked my front door and waited.

They came with parents and grandparents and anticipation.  They sat on the rug, pointed and spoke and clapped rhythms, worked cooperatively and let their personalities shine through.  The slower, more methodical boy accepted help from his bouncy, lightning-fast friend.  They both stared wide-eyed at the girl who played the last piece of the volume they had just started.  The preteens fell into joking and jabbing each other as if they’d always been friends.  They complimented each other and talked seriously about improvements for the future. When they left, smiling for a few parting photos, I wondered why in the world I hadn’t done this a long time ago.

Oh, yeah – because I couldn’t have done it then.  I can, however, do it now.  And I’m already scheming about how to make it a permanent part of our plans for the future.

How to Study for a Test

I have an embarrassing secret to share with the world.  I love tests.

I really do.  Something about sitting down and pouring out your knowledge onto a piece of paper, with the expectation of impressing your instructor and probably learning something yourself, is extremely attractive to me.  This probably has a lot to do with the fact that I've always tested extremely well.  I do procrastinate, but my memory is excellent (thank you, Suzuki!) and I enjoy organizing the information into clusters that I can easily wrap my mind around.

Grad school, unfortunately, is not heavy on tests.  Most professors shun them as "high-stakes" assessments (the other type of assessment is "authentic assessment;" honestly, which sounds better to you?) and instead assign papers, presentations or [terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad] group projects.  More than halfway through the program, I've only had one test so far, and it was open-book and taken online -- so basically, I didn't consider it a test at all.

So when I started Educational Psychology this semester and I read on the syllabus that there would be an exam, I'll admit, I was a little excited.  Whoopee!  Something to study for!  (This is where you all shake your heads in disbelief at my geekery.)

The format of the exam was very simple: Eighty-five terms, plus the possible threat of additional terms as relevant to the class material.  Twenty-five on the exam, to be defined in two (or fewer) sentences.  I relished pulling out and dusting off the old-fashioned studying methods I relied on through grade school and college; and while I haven't received the results yet, but I'm pretty confident it went well.  So, here's my advice:

Start early. Yes, I'm a procrastinator, but I also take good notes, both during class and while reading.  In a sense, that's "studying," because it's making definite decisions about what's important and relevant.

Define your terms. In this case, the exam was terms, which made it even simpler, but even for a Math or Philosophy test, the terms are key.  Even broader concepts should be distilled down to a bulleted list or outline; you have to have a structure for the knowledge, or it will never stick.

Read them aloud. If you're a strong aural learner, record yourself (this is also a good way to study -- you can simply play the recording while you're driving, doing housework or involved in a one-sided conversation.

Quiz yourself. Make flashcards, ask someone else to quiz you, or pause your recording after the name of each term.  You can't know whether you really know it unless you test yourself, and this is where most students fall short; they think reading over the material is enough.  Quizzing exposes the holes in your knowledge so that you can address each one until you know it well.

Cluster. This can be a good way to take a break from quizzing, which should be your main focus; group ideas, people and events that are related.  Graphic organizers can be very helpful here: flow charts, webs and outlines all help make visual connections between ideas.

Repeat. Until you feel so comfortable that you can joke around with your friends in the minutes before the test.

The Goal(s) of Education



After staring at the paper for about ten minutes and realizing the utter impossibility of such a task, I finally made some sweeping judgments: one area was of crucial importance, three of minor importance and four of little to no importance.  Here are my explanations:

50% -- Critical Thinking and Problem Solving. I know, I blew half my wad on this one area, but it's my own personal crusade: one of the things I wish I could change about the inhabitants of Earth is their inability to think -- I mean really THINK -- about the full implications of their actions and ideas. Regardless of what you learn -- oboe, quantum physics, balancing a checkbook -- that knowledge is useless if you can only apply it in one specific situation.  Can you teach yourself to sight-sing using the same scale?  Can you look at your company's budget and tell whether they're solvent?  If you can't think critically about it, you didn't really learn it in the first place.



10% -- Arts and Literature. If I had to choose between teaching a child Algebra or watercolor, I would choose watercolor.  Because beauty is truth, truth beauty.  (And don't dare try to tell me Algebra is beautiful.)



10% -- Preparation for Skilled Work. This may sound a little like the point of view I lambasted a couple of days ago, but I do think children need to learn a trade, whether it's keeping a home, building furniture or arguing in front of a jury.  They need to be able to support themselves and any future dependents. This is a very old idea, with or without the sense of entitlement that most students have today.



10% -- Social Skills and Work Ethic. This was bumped up to the second tier because of the first three words: "Good communication skills." Why, just this week, I fell headlong into a huge mess at church that was centered around a lack of communication with the correct people and a glut of communication with the wrong ones.  Avoid both extremes whenever possible.



5% -- Basic Academic Skills. The general public rated this first, at 22%.  But despite (or maybe because of!) my career in education, I firmly believe that basic academic skills are only useful insofar as they contribute to a growth of critical thinking.



5% -- Citizenship and Community Responsibility. This is important, but I don't think it's an educator's job to teach it.  Government is a necessary evil, not something to dwell on.



5% -- Physical Health. Also important; also not the job of an educator (unless the educator is also the parent.)



5% -- Emotional Health. We have more than enough emotional health in this country.  We are highly skilled at finding ourselves, treating ourselves and loving ourselves, and it is destroying our homes and families..  Thinking back, I'd actually like to give this a negative number in order to give more weight to the other categories!

An interesting observation, as we discussed this in class, was the fact that each respondent's life experience unfailingly influenced his or her choices.  A student who had been abused rated Emotional Health first; students who were active in sports rated Physical Health first. Being constantly exposed to plodding, linear thought, I focused on Critical Thinking.

One more comment: when my professor presented us with the public's answers, he had mistakenly copied them down wrong, putting Arts and Literature first instead of last.  We were all dumbfounded, and I experienced a fleeting moment of pride in my fellow citizens that was quickly dispelled when I looked it up online and discovered the mistake . . .

Sign on the Dotted Line, Please

When you're a slightly-obsessive perfectionist like me, even the most menial task can get under your skin, crying out for a more effective and efficient redesign.  Case in point: filling out forms.  I am continually amazed by the lack of thought displayed by people when putting together a document that will be used by many people over a great length of time.  Generally, there are three basic categories of glaring problems:

1. Space Planning

Ever seen one of these?
Name (Last, First, Middle Initial): __________

That's long enough to write my last name, maybe.  And my last name is four letters long.  My most recent favorite was the following from a grad school questionnaire:
Describe other experiences you have had as a student that have exposed you to professors, P-12 teachers, college students and P-12 school students who are people of color and how these experiences have informed your understanding of multicultural issues and contributed to your preparation to teach children from a variety of racial, ethnic, economic, and cultural backgrounds.

__________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________

Really?  That's all?  You don't want me to prove the theory of relativity or explain how a bill becomes a law?

And sometimes the form makes the opposite mistake.  Half a page down on the same form, the following:
Grade of students taught: __________________________________________________________

This makes me wonder whether I should list the grade of every student for every assignment, just to fill the space.

2. Misspellings

My department head and I recently came across a permission slip that had been left in the copier, and we attacked it with red pens before returning it to the teacher's box.  Passive-aggressive?  Maybe, but this thing was so bad, it misspelled "Catholic" and "permission" -- the purpose of the school and the purpose of the form, respectively.  One from my university recently misspelled the name of its founding order.

I understand dashing off an e-mail to one person in a hurry and not taking time to proofread.  I don't understand printing, photocopying and distributing something that clearly hasn't been looked over once.

3. Inconsistency

Mostly, this take the form of repetitiveness.  For years, my school asked me to fill out a biweekly progress report for students with learning disabilities; the form had two different places to write the date and the teacher's name.  Each time I filled it out, I indicated (through arrows, terse notes or blank spaces) that the form was repeating itself.  They never got the hint; they just stopped using the forms.

Other times, the forms ask contradictory questions, or they go so far as to invalidate themselves, as the renewal-by-mail passport application does: "Check Yes or No to the following questions."  Below the questions: "If you checked No to any of the previous questions, you MAY NOT USE THIS FORM.  Use Form DS-11 Instead!"

Well, I'm not really sure what the point of this post was.  I suppose I'm hoping, by having aired these griefs, to prevent the development of a Brazilesque society.  Plus, I have to say, I feel SO much better!

I Wished to Live Deliberately

One of my friends is trying to quit smoking.  He was successful for about six weeks, until work stresses convinced him to have one after a tough day.  Then he got a coupon in the mail for a free pack.  A free pack?!

"And now," he said, between drags a couple of days ago, "Here I am again."

It's an old story, the story of addiction.  In a way, it's foreign to me; I haven't had turns with cigarettes or alcohol the way "real" addicts have.  But in another way, I do understand.  I have known the grip of a desire that overtakes reason and routine, transcending even itself to become a monster that gobbles up time, money and energy, leaving disappointment and emptiness in its wake.  In fact, I see it almost as a foible that my own weaknessess have never spiralled into something I couldn't control after a bit of a struggle.  If I were addicted, I mean really addicted, I'd be able to get help.  As it is, I'm able to convince myself on a regular basis that things aren't that bad.

Take technology, for instance.  I just read this inspiring article about a group of Oregonian high school students who, led by their teacher, embarked on a weeklong technology fast:
On the third day, the 20 students in one period shared varying responses to the assignment.

"I feel really anxious because I don't know if I'm missing something important," Amanda Schenberger said. "I keep thinking, 'I can't wait for this to end because I need to check my e-mail.' How many Facebook notifications am I going to have after this?"

But others reported benefits. Ashley Marcy talked about driving with the radio off.

"I've driven the route to school a million times, but I noticed so much more," she said.

Robert Paige said when his parents aren't home, he usually turns on the TV and all the lights for comfort. This week, he had to find other things to do.

"I just kind of sat and thought," he said. "I was thinking a lot about where we're going with the world ... about technology and what impact it has on society."

What an idea, to sit and think.  I do it probably more than most people my age, but not nearly enough for myself.  I sense it in the panicky, crushing feeling that builds throughout the work week, while I'm bouncing from class to activity to assignment.  By Friday I am snapping at students, answering colleagues and clients through clenched teeth.  When I have time to think, I can re-order my priorities, recall my passions (both the good and bad sort) and live deliberately, the way Thoreau wanted to: "I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."  The "it" was the woods, for him, but for me it is simply the task in front of me.  To sit and think.

But thoughtful living is not possible if I can't keep myself from the screens that surround and seduce me, moment by moment, every hour of the day.  As I said, it's not an addiction, not exactly, but it is . . . disordered.  As my time slips away into oblivion, and in the face of a plethora of others' opinions and experiences, my own fears and insecurities grow.  I hope that Sharon's new challenge, both glib and inspiring in its ambition, will help turn me back into a thinking person, a patient person.  Or, alternatively, that it fails so miserably I have to actually seek help.