On teaching writing and rhetoric

Today I am working on a revised syllabus for my rhetoric and public speaking course. I had to make some revisions because 1. I didn't schedule enough time for speech-giving, 2. I scheduled classes for both Martin Luther King Day and Easter Monday, which are both days off for students, and 3. We had a snow day cancellation. That means we got 2 weeks behind. A bit embarrassing, but not irremediable. We'll present final speeches during finals week - the final is a reflection essay that they can easily finish in an hour.  So we can gain at least one hour back because of that mistake. And I can hurry along the speeches - one class is smaller, so they can gain another hour back simply by staying on time for their speeches. And finally, I can cut information about crafting presentations because they use templates anyway - and probably AI...

I have been thinking quite a bit about what this course should look like going forward.  Although a public speaking course, it draws on much of what I taught as a composition teacher. It takes Aristotle's Art of Rhetoric as its text, so it is a course in classical rhetoric, as well as in argumentation with a tiny bit of formal logic thrown in and some overview of rhetorical devices and stylistic flourishes. It is also a course in public discourse about people, ideas, justice, events, issues, etc. 

 At its core, it should really be a course in being human.  What I want this course to be is an opportunity for students to test out ideas, to practice defending their position on certain issues, and to work on their ability to express their ideas lucidly, forcefully, factually, aesthetically, ethically, logically, compassionately, etc., etc. This is the part of the class I need to work on. To that end, I am cancelling some reading/discussion one day and giving more time to class debate. And I'm trying to craft a way to encourage interaction with some Nobel Prize speeches and Wendell Berry's Jefferson lecture, and Chimamanda Adichie's TED talk on "The Dangers of a Single Story."  I want students to craft responses to these in class discussion - do these words mean anything to them - challenging or encouraging? But I wish I had more time in class for reading them closely. 

Next fall when I teach this class again, I want to spend less time reading Aristotle's Rhetoric, even though I enjoy this text more each time I go through it. The first read through isn't easy, although Aristotle purports to cover his ideas systematically. And he does! - it just takes a minute to find that system. It's basically this: Here are the 3 basic types of speeches, and here are the 3 basic types of proofs or appeals. Within each of those, we find further types of proofs and descriptions of character that apply to both the speaker and the audience. We learn about the kind of language and the kinds of emotions that can be appealed to in order to gain a connection and understanding. Then Aristotle gives us a third section of the book dedicated to delivery, language or style, and arrangement. This is the clearest section because it is so practical. 

I'm not sure I need to require my students to read the whole text, although it is not long. What I need to do is more pairing of Aristotle and contemporary speeches. Or perhaps read it backwards - start with the practical to win trust ... Or just make selections of the key parts. He does repeat himself.  

What my approach has looked like:

15 or so pages of reading before each class during the Aristotle unit, followed by analysis of speeches or writing speeches, some video clips that model a concept, short assignments as scaffolding for larger ones - like write a hook and thesis statement in class, voice exercises, a logic "workshop" and a rhetorical device hunt through MLK, Jr's "I have a dream" and the Gettysburg Address. I need to have them practice writing some "sound bites" or rhetorical expressions that they can use in their next speeches. I want to incorporate small group discussion - having students lead the questioning. This means they need to read and prepare before class. 

One challenge is combatting the use of AI. Since a lot of the grade for this class is based on their oral presentations, AI is not quite as much of a challenge, but I noticed last semester that students must have submitted their study guides to AI to answer because some of their answers on the quizzes were similar - but wrong. They would be close to what I was looking for, but using different terms or expressions that what is present in our text. Maybe they were just using a different translation, but I suspect they asked AI for the study guide answers, instead of looking to their texts. 

I struggle not to have a doomsday attitude about AI, but it is just too prevalent.  I hate that it is in my gmail inbox without my permission summarizing my emails.  I hate that the first response to internet searches is an AI response that often falls short. I hate that students think it is easier to give their homework to AI to finish rather than value the process of learning. And then there are surveillance and autonomous weapons concerns that no longer are the things of science fiction.  Meanwhile, I heard a clip on the radio a couple days ago about genome editing currently occurring. I'm guessing AI is involved in some way. Not hard to imagine a nefarious AI editing to make humans even more willing to turn over their brains to computers...

Which is why learning to communicate and to persuade others is an important human skill. The why is just is important, if not more, than the how.  My goal is to keep turning the conversation back to the question of what it means to be human: to reason, to feel, to admire and appreciate, to take responsibility, to love.

What I want to remember about teaching.

I'm still sifting through memories as I catch up to the present. Presently I am teaching again, part time. I have a seminar and a rhetoric class for college students and a "Laudato Si in Practice" class for my middle schoolers.  I had made some notes about what I want to continue to do and what I want to do differently from my time teaching middle school that I'd like to write out as a reminder to myself. 

First, I really need to do a better job of doing what's important now (WIN). My husband attributes the acronym W.I.N. to a motivational speech given by Lou Holtz years ago when he was coaching Notre Dame football. He may have made it up or borrowed it from someone else, I'm not sure, but regardless of the provenance, it is a guideline I should follow more frequently. Even now, here I am blogging when I should be raking leaves. But it's cold out there! It's important that I drink coffee and write NOW before I go back outside!

Ah, there's the difficulty: there are so many important things! But one of the things I learned over the last two years, was to prioritize my time.  I don't know that I did this well, but I was improving. I needed to get to school earlier to start the day before students arrived - that was important, and I did it. I got up earlier, got ready faster, and readjusted the start of my day by 45 minutes. This is a basic teacher practice, but in my time teaching college, it wasn't as pressing. Having my copies made and my first emails of the day answered before students arrived set the tone for the rest of the day.  Then I could stand at my door where I was supposed to be and greet students and converse with them a little. Was I always successful at this?  Absolutely not, usually because I didn't get myself organized the night before. But I kept trying.

So what is the MOST important thing while teaching? Taking care of the people. Taking time to get to know students and to attend their events and to meet with them. Taking time to support my fellow teachers and to greet the people working around campus in all kinds of roles. I tried to be positive and to be present each day - to not check email when students were in the room. To spend the 30 minutes of lunch duty visiting with students, not checking my phone or talking to teachers - unless something was pressing, like a schedule change or upcoming field trip, etc.  And although I didn't always succeed at being bright and chipper, I do think being optimistic was one of my strengths, although not a natural gift.  Our school had experienced some challenges and morale was low when I first started, so one of the things most needed was a can-do, positive attitude. 

Planning ahead was another practice that always set a better tone for the day. My second year was so much easier than my first because I had a better idea of what we could do in a class period, and I had some resources to use. I didn't reuse many of my lesson plans, partly because we were encouraged to write them differently my second year, and also because my original plans needed revision. But I did spend more time focusing on what needed to be done and how much time it might take. I paid more attention to standards of learning and to scheduling the lesson than I did my first year, when we were always running out of time because I didn't move us along when our 15 minutes, or whatever, was up. 

The challenge for planning was that I often didn't plan enough time for planning. Story of my life. I also needed to remember that less is more and not to let perfect be the enemy of the good. (I am full of clicheed aphorisms today.) I not infrequently set myself back by spending way too much time searching online for resources to teach a concept, when I would have been better served by creating a resource myself or just going with one that was fine.  While there are many amazing English content creators online, not everything works, and searching for just the right thing takes precious time better spent grading, or devising an activity that would work for our specific unit.  I loved looking at other resources for inspiration, but in between the specifics of our standards, our text, and our students, I found that creating my own resources was easier than using someone else's. 

I also learned to try to incorporate a choice activity for differentiation and to incorporate more review opportunities, either for openers or closers.  A single lesson was not enough time for most concepts to sink in, and I had to remind myself that even if a concept seems obvious or simple to me doesn't mean that I taught it clearly or that a single day of practice was enough. 

Another lesson: routine is my friend. Monday vocab. Tuesday grammar. Wednesday writing. Thursday reading. Friday review. Patterns making planning easier and help students know what to expect.  Block scheduling was not ideal, but breaking the block into chunks of time helped.

The biggest lesson I learned was to appreciate teachers more. They have a lot of personalities and problems to deal with. They have admin responsibilities, concepts to teach, parent communications, faculty team work, data analysis, grading, planning, managing dramas and materials. So much stuff. It was exhausting, but also exhilarating. I'm glad was I able to spend a couple of years in a classroom, and I miss it a little now - the involvement in students' and colleagues' lives that isn't present in the adjunct position. I don't miss the exhaustion, but I do miss the mission.  I am enjoying the balance I have right now as an adjunct, especially with the work of moving, but I feel a little like an empty nester twice over - my children are grown and my students have graduated.  Moving on to my next mission.

Poetry Month

The month is almost over, but I thought I would give a nod to National Poetry Month with a few poems from my class. Yesterday we talked about Wordsworth, Blake, Shelley, and Coleridge - no time for Keats and Byron, and Shelley got short shrift - just a quick discussion of "Ozymandias" as an example of Nature's power and permanence. (One of the themes of the day is "Nature's constancy in inconstancy.") Here are the others I assigned:  

William Blake, "The Lamb ," "The Tyger ," "The Fly," "The Sick Rose"
William Wordsworth "The World is too Much with Us ," "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," "Composed on Westminster Bridge ," "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798"
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner "

I've switched up the poems by Wordsworth in the past - sometimes skipping Tintern Abbey and instead reading "The Lesser Celandine" because we have a selection in our Norton anthology from his sister Dorothy Wordsworth's journals in which she mentions that he is working on a poem about that flower. I also have assigned "A Slumber Did my Spirit Seal" about being rolled around with rocks, and stones and trees," but it's depressing, and points to a different theme, although certainly it's about impermanence. 

Next week we'll read some Emerson ("Nature"), Emily Dickinson, "A Bird, came down the Walk," "A SERVICE OF SONG,""There is no Frigate like a Book," "A narrow Fellow in the Grass," "THE SECRET," "I Taste a Liquor"

Walt Whitman, "Facing West from California's Shores," "When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer," "Kosmos," " On the Beach at Night Alone," and Thoreau "Walking," and 3 chapters from Walden (I was assigning the whole book, but hardly anyone read it).  Then we turn to Gerard Manley Hopkins briefly:  "Pied Beauty," "The Windhover," "As Kingfishers Catch Fire," "God's  Grandeur." I meant to also assign "Spring and Fall," but left it off because it is more anthropocentric than ecocentric, arguably perhaps. It is a beautiful poem, though, and sometimes I'm tempted to croon "Margaret, are you grieving over Goldengrove unleaving? Leaves like the things of man, you with your fresh thoughts care for, can you?" to my own kids. It's strange and mournful, great for annoying teenagers when they are acting gloomy. 

Later in the term we will read Mary Oliver, everyone's favorite (sometimes I wish she weren't so popular because it feels trendy to read her poems, even though I enjoy reading them - just finished from the library her collection Blue Horses), Wendell Berry, W. S. Merwin, and Camille Dungy, whose poetry I was introduced to when she became poetry editor for Orion. Her "First Fire" is a good one for students (and teachers) in California wildfire zones. But my favorite is "What to Eat, What to Drink, and What to Leave for Poison." The title suggests a more ominous or foreboding tone, but the poem is a song of spring and full of delight - delight that I'm afraid strikes more at my heart's core full of homesickness for daffodils and crabapple trees than it resonates with my local students who don't know harsh winters followed by glorious springs. 

While reading an essay about minorities in the nature writing genre, I came across Tupac Shakur's "The Rose that Grew from Concrete." If I were better at popular culture, I would have known about this song and his album by the same name, and if I ever knew, I had forgotten. For some reason it reminds me of "To see a world in a grain of sand, and Heaven in a wildflower" by Blake - or maybe a similar poem? At any rate, I didn't include it in the syllabus, but by going down the rabbit hole of poetry by Tupac, I came across this moving verse: 

 (Links to an external site."

UNDER THE SKIES ABOVE: AFTER THE MISCARRIAGE by 2Pac

My child is out there somewhere
under the skies above
waiting anxiously 4 u and me
2 bless it with our love
A part of me a part of u
and a part of this love we share
will protect my unborn child
who lives dormant out there somewhere
Sometimes in my dreams
I imagine what it would be like
How could I properly guide him
when even I don't know what's right
Whether he is born in wealth or poverty
there will be no deficiency in love
I welcome this gift of life
given from GOD under the skies above

That's all I've got time for right now, but one of the parts of teaching I enjoy the most is rereading classic verses and sharing contemporary poetry with my students - it's fun to discover/rediscover insights and images. 

Poetry for April

Because April is going by faster than I can keep track...

Some quick notes:
Someone turned five on Monday! No party this year;  just cupcakes with co-op.

This was from a hike we took the other day at the end of the kids' Spring Break. We were looking for the superbloom but wanted to avoid crowds. We saw a few patches of wild mustard flowering and some random pink flowers. There are poppies planted along the highways, and some pretty blooms along our own coastal walk, so I'm not sorry we didn't drive out to the desert with the crowds. Or maybe just a little sorry.

Someone else turns 46 tomorrow! No party for him either; just Italian feast with cousins.

Sycamore Canyon hike

We have several other family birthdays in April, a couple confirmations, and Easter to celebrate. Holy Week already! I need to prepare a lesson for my fifth grade religious ed class. We just finished presenting living stations of the cross to the other classes, so we are due for some fun and games, maybe a craft, but I need more hours in the day to plan.

Lest we give too much thought to celebrating, I have also been finishing up all of our financial obligations -  the last three things are three CSS profiles. You would think the College Board would allow you to submit one file per family, but I have to fill it out for each college student. Same thing with the FAFSA. I also waited until April to file taxes  - five sets this year. plus seven state tax forms because of the kids making money in different states. Now I'm facing the April 15 deadlines.  Most of the taxes I do for free online, but California has the most complicated tax forms, and I didn't want to pay to file a second state tax, so I did it myself on a pdf. I'll pay next year. 

And classes have been rolling along. I had a heck of a time grading papers on Walden. A good chunk of them were excessively vague and/or redundant. They took me a while to grade because I couldn't figure out what they were about. I think when I put "collegiate level diction" as a criterion in the rubric, some students thought it would be a good idea to look up words in the thesaurus and sprinkle them through their papers.  Or perhaps they didn't read past page 9 in Thoreau's book, so they had to make some guesses about the rest of the book. I just know it took me much longer to grade than it should have.

Track season is also underway. I am again helping with middle school track, even though I was going to take a break this year. After today's practice, I may go into early retirement after all. Perhaps the moon is full or something, but these kids had a lot of energy. Except for running. They did not want to run. Parents, if your kids don't like to run, please sign them up for something like swimming or tennis. Golf, maybe. But not track.

By the first week of May, life will slow down considerably - track will end, college will end, our pre-school co-op will end, religious ed will end, all the financial aid documents will be submitted, and I can catch up on sleep again.

Until then, here are poems about wild geese that we read in class. We don't see a lot of wild geese here, although we do host wild parrots who nest here this time of year.  Occasionally I will see some visiting waterfowl on the bay, but I don't think I have seen any Canada geese, which are what I picture when I read these poems, although the exact kind of wild geese are never noted.  Thoreau also talks about the geese coming and going from Walden Pond.  The second two poems were written by Mary Oliver and W. S. Merwin, authors who passed away this year. May Wendell Berry write for a few more years yet, or at least be a pillar reminding us where we stand.

The Wild Geese

Horseback on Sunday morning,
harvest over, we taste persimmon
and wild grape, sharp sweet
of summer's end. In time's maze 
over fall fields, we name names
that went west from here, names
that rest on graves. We open
a persimmon seed to find the tree
that stands in promise,
pale, in the seed's marrow.
Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear,
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. What we need is here.

From Selected Poems of Wendell Berry,

by Wendell Berry.  Copyright 1998 by Wendell Berry.  With permission of author and Counterpoint Press, a member of Perseus Book Group. https://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/go-local/poetry-by-wendell-berry

The Wild Geese

It was always for the animals that I grieved most
for the animals I had seen and for those
I had only heard of or dreamed about
or seen in cages or lying beside the roadfor those forgotten and those long remembered
for the lost ones that were never found againamong people there were words we all knew
even if we did not say them and although
they were always inadequate when we said them
they were there if we wanted them when the time came
with the animals always there was only
presence as long as it was present and then
only absence suddenly and no word for it
in all the great written wisdom of China
where are the animals when were they lost
where are the ancestors who knew the way
without them all wise words are bits of sand
twitching on the dunes where the forests
once whispered in their echoing ancient tongue
and the animals knew their way among the trees
only in the old poems does their presence survive
the gibbons call from the mountain gorges
the old words all deepen the great absence
the vastness of all that has been lost
it is still there when the poet in exile
looks up long ago hearing the voices
of wild geese far above him flying home

— W.S. Merwin, from his forthcoming book Garden Time (Copper Canyon Press, 2016).  Copyright © 2016 by W. S. Merwin.  Used by permission of the publishers, www.coppercanyonpress.org. https://merwinconservancy.org/2016/09/the-wild-geese-by-w-s-merwin/

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good. 
You do not have to walk on your knees 
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. 
You only have to let the soft animal of your body 
love what it loves. 
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. 
Meanwhile the world goes on. 
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain / are moving across the landscapes, 
over the prairies and the deep trees, 
the mountains and the rivers. 
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, 
are heading home again. 
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, 
the world offers itself to your imagination, 
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting— 
over and over announcing your place / in the family of things.

https://onbeing.org/blog/mary-oliver-reads-wild-geese/

Skimming and diving

Since the class I'm teaching is something of a survey course, I have told my students that they can skim some essays, but then dive into others. Billy Collins uses a similar metaphor in his poem, "Introduction to Poetry" (I  think I have shared this before):

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem

and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room

and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski

across the surface of a poem

waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do

is tie the poem to a chair with rope

and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose

to find out what it really means.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46712/introduction-to-poetry

Most of my students aren't beating anything with hoses. The second quad started a few weeks ago, and my class size tripled from 14 to 44.  I thought with more students in the class, I might hear more opinions, more connections, but instead of more conversation in a large class, we have decidedly less. Fourteen is preferable not just for making it easier for me to learn names and grade papers, but also for making it easier for students to talk out in class. But despite their silence in class (We read an essay by Meriweather Lewis, so I asked about the purpose of Lewis and Clark's journey ... crickets....), I think they are thinking about some of the readings, at least based on their journal posts. I've had several really good submissions. I think what I need to do is call on these students by name. It's intimidating to speak up in front of a group.

The content of this class is not everyone's favorite genre. I recognize that some of these essays and poems are going to be boring for a good number of people, especially since none of them are literature majors, so whether they learn to love Wordsworth or Wendell Berry is not really a goal of the course, although that would be a nice outcome. I just hope I am helping them appreciate literature, which perhaps is harder than teaching about Wordsworth. Most of the students signed up for this course because it is a general education course that fits their schedule.

What can I do to make these readings more interesting to students who don't really like to read?  Sing and dance?  I've started to present videos of the bobolink singing (the chorister in Emily Dickinson's "Some keep the Sabbath"), images of Walden Pond now and then (and a story about how it is being polluted by swimmers peeing in it), and photos of my parents' farm in the fall, of our own trip to the desert, etc. I'm hoping that the visual imagery will capture their imagination, help them connect to what they read. Maybe by the end of the term, the students will not only recognize the names of some authors and be able to identify some of the different trends or tropes in nature writing, but also find a handful of authors they really like.

I probably am assigning too much to read, but it is a survey course. Since I recognize they won't read all of the essays, I give them permission to skim and dive - to pick a couple essays to browse and one or two to spend more time with - skim some, dive into some.

This term I am trying to be a little more systematic in the way I present information: I start class with reminders and announcements about assignments and upcoming events (Exciting news here: One of the design professors is redesigning Pope Francis's Laudato Si to make it more appealing and visually meaningful.  See a prototype here: https://issuu.com/seabrightstudio/docs/now-more-than-ever_prototype-draft07218 )

I've also started having them write down the answer to a question relating to their lives - for instance, last week I asked if anyone knew what ballot measures are coming up that relate to the environment. (I tried to use polleverywhere - an online survey program - with mixed results.)  The class before I asked them to write a short description of their favorite place and then share.  The day we discussed Walden, I had them add up all the costs of owning a car (like the cost chart Thoreau creates for building his house), and figure up how many hours they had to work a year to pay for it if they made $20/hour. (The average cost was about $4000 a year, by the way, 200 hours of work.) But then I lecture for an hour, and I see the phones being checked surreptitiously under the desk. I figure they are young adults, so I'm not confiscating phones, but perhaps I need a stricter policy on that because it seems to be a contagious activity. In the smaller class, this didn't happen quite so much.

At any rate, I enjoy what I'm reading. I get bogged down in finding interesting side notes sometimes, prepping for class, so it takes too much time, but I do recommend rereading Walden and skimming and diving through the Norton Anthology of Nature Writing. Which reminds me that now it is time to go outside.

Indiana farm in early November

Joshua tree late October

And then some

Every Monday and Wednesday night for the past six weeks I have been up past midnight, sometimes past one, occasionally past 2 am.  The fear of failure - and the stimulation of a glowing screen - have my eyelids peeled back; my heart rate is a bit accelerated with adrenalin and caffeine. Every night, I think I'm going to do this earlier next week! I'm going to prepare ahead of time. The devil of procrastination plus the inspiration of a deadline equals late nights.

I have been laboring over mini-dissertations on nature writers, ecoliterature, ecocritism, ecotheology, ecocentrism, lococentrism, anthropocentrism, the Anthropocene era, regionalism, bioregionalism, shamanism, pantheism, ethnobotany, etc.

I search websites and databases, get bogged down in reading interesting biographical facts about authors, unusual habits and habitats, critical dissent, pertinent data on consumption, water rights, logging and other environmental issues, and details about context, timelines, settings, and references.

I prepare powerpoint slides of flowers and natural parks and kinds of trees and rates of carbon consumption; make lists of links, copy and paste interesting facts and really good quotes onto word documents; then pick up the anthology of readings and think why am I doing all this research and not focusing on the text?!?

So next I make lists of page numbers to reference, bend corners of the textbook pages, note pertinent details, and finally go to bed.

In the morning, I can't remember anything until I open the book again. For instance, this morning I knew I had just read all these reviews and criticism of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, but I couldn't remember what essay I assigned my students by Annie Dillard.  Open Norton Anthology of Nature Writing to p 880: it was "Total Eclipse," a hyperbolic account of the 1979 total solar eclipse she experienced in Washington state. She talks about being in a suspended state of reality as the eclipse is occurring, like a time warp tunnel, a conflation of time and eternity. This is in between accounts of reading about miners, reflecting on a scary clown picture in the hotel room, followed by memories of a trip to a diner after the eclipse. The intentional juxtaposition of mundane and sublime is supposed to reflect the process of remembering and storytelling, I suppose.  I didn't assign it because I thought it was such a wonderful essay, but because it was short, self-contained, and related to the recent solar eclipse last August. My students could relate to Dillard's experience in a way they can't relate to Muir's swinging through pine trees during a hurricane just to be close to Nature. And, you know, being relatable is key to these kids.

I am afraid I am not relatable. Or maybe they are not relatable. I say something about Emerson or ask who wrote Moby Dick, and they can't respond.  They weren't sure about Robert Frost. Even Huck Finn is confused with Tom Sawyer. I thought they would get who the Beat poets were when I brought up Gary Snyder because they are from California - the land of pot and road trips and performance art. But no. One student did know that the Beat poets had something to do with some kind of music.

They do relate to the story of Sharman Apt Russell's toddler melting down in a tantrum in the Gila Wilderness because she cannot ride in the front on the saddle horse. They like Thoreau's comments on getting rid of clothing. They mourn Aldo Leopold's dying green-eyed wolf. They appreciate Rachel Carson's fear of a silent spring even if they didn't read the prologue, which is all I asked them to read. They can imagine seeing Eiseley's raven eating a dead baby bird and the mourning cries of the songbirds arising as it gulps the young thing down. They can share their own stories of encounters with black widows when we talk about confronting mortality and give detailed memories of grandfathers and grandmothers when we talk about the wisdom of the elders in conjunction with Snyder's eulogy to the old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest.

So I am taking notes about how to back off about 50 degrees from what I'm trying to cover. I keep cutting essays, even though I have a hard time not adding reading assignments because there are so many good, good writers, and so many essays about Important Things.  I want my students to hunger for these essays. I want them to be curious and enthused about the authors and the movements and the context. I want them to speak up about issues and observations they have made or heard in the news. Ask questions, make connections.

I do have a few students who read and think and realize it really isn't that hard to make a connection with these texts, even if it's "I just don't get why she brought up the scary clown." Excellent! Let's make some educated guesses!  And I do have a few students who will extemporize about "How then shall we live?" or "What value do we give to people and old growth forests?" "How do we balance the needs of the human community, the need for more space, fewer insects, more food, with limited, fragile, natural resources?"  These questions and ruminations don't need the support of the text to get the conversation going, which is better than no comment at all.

By 1 pm on Tuesday and Thursday, I am wiped out.  I question my existence, my choice to do this. Maybe I'm not a very good teacher after all. My teaching method is to throw a bunch of information out and hope some of it sticks. It is a "filling the pail, not lighting a fire" approach, although maybe some detail, some phrase will light a fire? I wonder if maybe I will not teach next year. I will stay home and homeschool the youngest. We will spend lots of time together in nature instead of reading about it.  We will simplify, simplify, simplify, and march to the beat of a different drummer. I won't be beholden to a boss, to a class of sleepy eyes. 

But then 10 pm Monday night rolls around again. I am balancing the text on my lap, peering through my reading glasses at the screen, thirty tabs open, a word document minimized, and a sheet of paper with scribbled thoughts on the desk in front of the keyboard.  I fold down the corner of a page, search for an image of the brush box tree. And I think, I love this...and this... and this...

Difficult decisions

We are coming down from two months of excitement and celebrations. Last week my cousins spent the week with us, and we had a wonderful stay-cation that gave us time to reconnect as a family and to recover from all of the busyness of the previous months. We still had a full week: two birthdays, the Fourth of July, visits from other friends and another set of cousins. But the pace was relaxed, and the kids were mostly happy. Lots of pool and beach time. I loved seeing the four-year-olds, our daughter and our goddaughter, play so happily together. Pictures to come.

The happy week was a welcome break from decision-making. Or perhaps the observation of my cousins' family complicated my choices. I am faced with a decision and self-doubt and haven't found a satisfying solution.

This latest moment of self-doubt is related to another job offer. I re-submitted a few applications a several months ago when I got spooked by the reality of having three kids in college and a rent payment well over our housing allowance.  But financial motives were only part of the reason - pride, ambition, plus a sincere desire to be a part of an academic community sharing in the joys of teaching and learning all contributed to the thought that I might want to go to work. I love being on a campus. I lose track of time reading essays and researching teaching materials. I have daydreamed about having a job and have envied people who are able to go to work and experience the satisfaction of doing a job well. I have more than once confessed to envy, both of my husband and peers, of those who can point to work well done or an achievement they have accomplished. I wonder how the woman almost nominated to be a Supreme Court Justice, Amy Coney Barrett, a mother of seven who was one of my classmates, manages to have a family and a career.

The fact that I had trouble finding time to fill out the application perhaps should have been an indication that maybe now was not the right time to look for a job.

Nonetheless, I got a call last week from a small, Christian, liberal arts school here in San Diego, and went to the interview and then the second interview, and now have an offer to teach a Culture and Literature class on Nature Writing on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10-1145. It's an eight week course that repeats during the semester, so I would teach the same class twice in one semester. That means fewer classes to prep.

If all the kids were in school, I would be turning cartwheels. Teach a class on Nature Writing?! At a small, Christian, liberal arts school?! Yes,  please!! It's a literature-based class, not creative writing, so even though I'm not a specialist in the genre, I have had a special interest in the topic. At one time, I thought I would write a thesis on Wendell Berry and rural literature of the Midwest. I can already envision a reading list, probably starting with a chronological survey - beginning with Aristotle and Genesis, and then addressing Copernicus and Galileo, then jumping up to the Romantics then the Transcendentalists, followed by another jump up to the beginnings of the environmental movement represented by Rachel Carson and maybe Aldo Leopold, and then spending a good chunk of time on contemporary writers.  The challenge would be to keep the reading list to a minimum. And I would assign student presentations to take some of the prep work off of me.

The choice would be simpler if I hadn't just decided a couple months ago to homeschool the four-year-old. If she wanted to go to preschool and I had signed her up, all would be nice and easy. But I went through all that angst a while ago and chose to homeschool her at least another year or so and see how it goes.

Then I spent time with my cousin and her beautiful, happy, well-behaved, homeschooled children.  Other encounters with homeschoolers and the votes of my previously homeschooled children assured me that I should return to a home-based education for our four year old.  My cousin loaned me Sarah MacKenzie's Teaching from Rest, which I devoured in a couple hours. It made me see how essential an eternal perspective is and question my decision to send the other kids to school.

But I also had just finished One Beautiful Dream by Jennifer Fulwiler, which gave me the hope that my desire to work can be balanced with teaching children at home.  I like her perspective that mom's work can be a part of the family mission. She also has a long-term perspective after a revelation that she was living a life "ruled by the tyranny of the immediate." I think that limitation led me to put the kids in school. She has this insight after witnessing a Mexican family enjoying each other's company and getting a family photo after church.

Here is her quote about creative work that identifies some of why, even though teaching would complicate our lives, I have trouble turning down this opportunity: "Being part of the creation of new life was an experience of God. Yet I also felt something similar in my work. It astounded me whenever I considered that only the creatures made in the image of the Creator can create. Among all the animals on earth, humans alone have the gift of creativity -- and, as people had experienced through the millennia, to use this gift is to experience something of God.

"Now I wondered: What if all desires to create -- both with children and with work -- are, in fact, all pointed in the same direction? What if both are different but complementary ways of getting in touch with the ultimate Source of creativity? What if following your God-given passion is not just okay to do during the baby years, but actually something that has the potential to enhance your whole family's life?"

My children also think I should teach at the college. They don't see the conflict. Just find a babysitter. It's only six hours a week. (Plus prep and grading...) Easier said than done.

I have both selfish and idealistic attitudes about teaching at the college. I also have idealistic attitudes about homeschooling, but they are contrasted with very real concerns about the souls and attitudes of my two younger children, whom I sent to school earlier. Would these children be different if they had been homeschooled longer, or would our temperaments have been in conflict? The old nature/nurture question haunts me.

As a parent, I note my failures more than successes. Maybe those words are the wrong choices to use. I liked Mrs. Darwin's recounting of the unique individualities of her children a couple weeks ago. Our kids are all different and unique, and our situation with moving made life complicated for a few years. We know homeschool families whose children have dropped out of college and floundered a bit. My husband reminded me of Mother Angelica's quote that the past is past and we can't change it, so there is no use in regrets, but I still wonder if the decisions we have made have been for the better or worse. For example, we could have chosen the tiny, conservative Catholic school up in North County, but my husband would have an hour commute, and tuition was pricey. Should we have made that sacrifice? I wonder. But disrupting our situation now would cause resentment. The kids like their school, despite my reservations.

Perhaps I can somehow incorporate some of what is best about homeschooling into our home life? Reading aloud more at night? A "Finer Things" night once a month?  (Combining Sarah MacKenzie's suggestion of a family symposium on truth, goodness, and beauty with the humor of "The Office.")  

And I know my own faith life needs to be deepened. My relationship with Christ is often pushed to the side while I focus on a to-do list. Time for prayer and contemplation is rare. I lose track of the centrality of my relationship with Christ - and family - easily. Will finding a creative outlet keep me focused on what is important at home?

Some people have the gift of being able to clearly see what their role in life and responsibilities are.  They are strong in their faith and clear about what is right and wrong. They can make a decision and stick with it. They have principles that guide their decisions, and their actions are in conformity with their beliefs. They don't second-guess everything.  I think I used to be this kind of person. I had a pretty clear picture of what I wanted our family life to look like. I remember going to a retreat based on that book "A Mother's Rule of Life" and filling out worksheets on our family mission. I wish I could find that page now because I feel like I've lost my way a bit.  Dante's "Midway through life's journey I found myself in a dark wood because the straightforward path had been lost" keeps echoing in my mind. 

My husband suggests trying out teaching for a semester. I think he would be happy if I could be content to stay at home. I know it would be hard to start something and then stop. Every morning I wake up wrestling with what to do and every night I go to sleep wrestling with the same questions. I don't feel at peace when I imagine saying no to this opportunity, nor do I feel at rest when I imagine doing it. I'm giving myself one more week to consider the options. May the Lord give me clarity. 

So many little things

I have been thinking of many things lately but with little time to process them; perhaps it is time for a quick takes type post?

1. While Northern California is suffering from wildfires, it has been scorching hot down here. School was out one whole day and two half days for heat because temps were in the 90s and the school is not air-conditioned. I was sorry I didn't neglect responsibilities and head to the hills. I have been craving a camping trip this fall, but it doesn't look like we'll have a weekend away after all.  I worried about my new friend I had made because I'm sure she doesn't have air conditioning either, but she called me yesterday out of the blue. I'm glad she remembered me and that now I have her number because a big locked gate surrounds her house, making it impossible to knock on her door.

2. A great deal of thought lately has been devoted to college applications. Our third son is in the thick of essay writing for an early decision deadline. I am once again knocking my head on the wall for not encouraging him to write more this summer.  I vowed this time would be different after the angst and suffering of watching the older boys write and writhe over this process, and yet here we are again with five days until the deadline and essays still needing revision. Life keeps interrupting.

3. One happy distraction is planning for our preschool co-op, which is going well.  About 8 moms and 12 kids (3 of whom are siblings in the 10-16 month range) are meeting Monday mornings at our church for a couple hours of stories, songs, and crafts. I've been having fun picking out activities from cheery online resources, although I am usually the story person and not the craft lady.  The idea is that each mom prepares for a station and that we'll rotate each month. The stations are circle time with prayer, story and sharing, then craft and activity - usually planned by a mom who has an OT background, so she incorporates gross and fine motor skills, then snack, music and movement, free play, and a final story. But someone is always absent, so we have only changed jobs a couple times, which perhaps is just as well because we are getting into a good routine. The kids know what to expect and are happy to be together. We have a good mix of boys and girls.  LC loves it - it is just the right mix of organized activity and unstructured fun. She comes home and asks for homework - coloring pages and letter pages and cut and paste number pages. Then on Wednesdays we have been meeting for a field trip or a park playdate. We were supposed to go to the pumpkin patch yesterday, but with the heat, we just went to the beach.

4. I had an interview the other day to teach at another community college, but I think I blew it accidentally on purpose. At the school where I am teaching now on base, enrollment is way down, so I only have one small class. With another kid heading to college next year, I'd like to add another class to my schedule, although with this pre-school thing, teaching CRE, and managing - or mismanaging - home life, I want the timing to be on my terms. So I filled out some online applications and got an email invitation to an interview. The drawback was that it was at the campus on the north side of the county a half an hour away without traffic.  I liked the dean of the department when I met her and being on a real campus again in a department - as opposed to the little regional office with two classrooms on base where I work now - was invigorating.  But in the interview, I revealed my limited schedule. I haven't heard anything back. I think about emailing to reconnect, but then I think, I don't really want that job anyway. The little one will be in kindergarten in two years. And as much as I think about what I would be doing if I didn't have a three-year-old, I continue to ponder homeschooling again.

5. The class I am teaching is going well. I had a student who actually asked for more work and not just anything - he thought Engl 102 was going to be a literature course, which at other institutions it often is, but not this one. This English 102 is focused on writing research papers. Over the last couple terms, I have trimmed the syllabus because students weren't doing the readings, weren't turning things in. Now should I lengthen it again? I am making up a list of recommended readings and will send him some vocabulary words for discussing vocabulary and a few prompts for paper topics centered around literature. And I'm rethinking my approach.  Meanwhile, I've been frustrated with my daughter's English teacher who consistently gives low marks on writing assignments but gives no feedback or explanation of his scoring. He handed out a rubric at the beginning of the term, but he doesn't indicate how the points he gives correlate to the rubric. In other words, he writes a number on the top of the paper and that's it. No other marks. As a teacher who devotes a lot of time to feedback so my students can actually learn from their mistakes (if they read it), I am almost irrationally irritated. I've told her to go and talk to him, but I also want to send a scornful email accusing him of laziness.d

6. Boy Scouts - Why? Why? Why? This is old news, but if you haven't heard, Boy Scouts of America is now allowing girls to join.  On their website it sounds like Packs and Troops will have the choice of whether or not to admit girls in separate parallel groups or in co-ed "family" groups.  On the one hand, I have often wished that my girls had the option to join something more like Boy Scouts.  My daughter and I both had negative experiences with our one year of Brownies - nothing particularly egregious; we mostly felt bored and we hate to sell cookies.  The challenge to success inherent in the programs offered by Girl Scouts is that the individual leaders determine the direction of the group, and if they are not outdoorsy types, then camping, hiking, boating, and those kinds of things don't happen.  I understand why women and girls are attracted to the program BSA offers.  However, I am skeptical about the success of a co-ed group. BSA already has Venture Crew and Explorers, which are co-ed groups for high schoolers. They haven't really taken off most places. My real fear is that the type of moms who are already involved in Boy Scouts are often the type who take the fun out of things by being bureaucrats and safety police - not that safety and rules aren't important, but the focus on paperwork and what not to do tend to limit what you can do. I am concerned that with more girls involved, more moms will get involved and soon the problems of Girl Scouts will be the problems of Boy Scouts. My first choice would be to continue the program that allows the boys to enjoy time with other boys and male mentors, and give the girls the opportunity to do something similar but different, which may be what happens with these parallel groups. I used to love the program I did with my dad called Indian Princesses (not politically correct anymore) through the YMCA. We camped, carved, burned wood and leather, and learned other outdoors skills. It was super fun and special to spend time with my dad doing outdoorsy, survival things.

The other complaint I would make to BSA is to bemoan the way this announcement was made - a public relations nightmare. Most of our scouting friends were completely caught off guard by this decision. It seems like a tyrannical move on the part of the Board of Directors to make the announcement with little conversation about the change among members. And it feels like a betrayal in a way of their own core principles. Of course, the reason why they did it without discussion is obvious - they didn't want to negotiate.

We are not quitting boy scouts - or scouting. I could be wrong in my pessimistic expectations.  Maybe LC will even be a scout. But I'm not celebrating the change.

7. We went to a dinner the other night (see top photo on the previous post) for the Seabee Historical Foundation.  We were one of the younger couples there. It was a night to honor the Navy's Construction Battalions and Civil Engineer Corps and to thank donors to the Seabee museum. And it was also a night of stories told by retirees about their experiences and about the generation that preceded them and that founded the branch of the Navy that builds and fights. One guy told a story about how during an air raid in Vietnam, the Seabees positioned themselves near the runway. As soon as the enemy finished bombing the runway and had flown off, the Seabees would come in with shovels and dirt and fill the holes. They don't get the glory, but they make it possible for others to do their job without dying.

There was another young couple at our table. The Seabee was from Appalachia, and his wife was from Poland. She had less of an accent than he did. But his hobby is working with programming and 3D printers and the programs he designs in his spare time are so complex I can't explain them here. So he wants to get out of the military soon and work on these models. What impressed me about his story is the contrast of his impoverished youth with his ingenuity and optimism about possibilities. Growing up without running water did not limit his imagination or confidence.

8. I have been missing fall weather and color, missing our older boys, missing having time to go on a weekend camping trip, longing to move away from our busy street corner in a busy city to someplace quieter, more pastoral. Here is link to a trailer for a movie about Wendell Berry: https://vimeo.com/216446791

It's a melancholy time of year, almost November, "no fruits, no flowers, no birds, no leaves - November!"
Remembering that old poem by Thomas Hood (I had to look up the author) reminds me to share a link to an article about Richard Wilbur, perhaps my favorite that has been passed around following his death: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2011/06/gods-patient-stet. From Mystery and Manners.

Notes on teaching online

Back in March I started teaching a couple English composition classes online for a military education program. This term I also have a literature class the covers Homer to Shakespeare. Most of my classes last 8 weeks. This one is only 6 weeks. Six weeks to cover over 2000 years of storytelling. It's a challenge.

I have been cogitating, somewhat out of the frustration of creating these classes and somewhat out of the frustration with the online learning that my kids were doing through their school, on the nature of online learning.  I fully understand the usefulness of it for my military students who are limited in their ability to attend class, especially those who are deployed. I also am grateful to have finally found a teaching job that I can perhaps take with me with when we move next. I usually meet with many of my students 3 times a term (but not the six week class).  Since the classes are for military members, frequently the in-person meetings are just a portion of the students enrolled, and we usually just have time to cover basics - no time for discussion.

This is a loss to me.  Teaching online just isn't as much fun. For one, I don't get a night out each week to go talk about books and writing.  And I miss live, actual discussions. Discussion boards last all of 1 comment. If it is really good there might be a reply, but usually just a post into the void.  Maybe I need to get better at asking questions - or make the discussions happen in real time. In live classes the discussions are what bring about the ah -ha moments are what made teaching most enjoyable.  To a certain extent, in the online "discussions" there are some exchanges of ideas and perhaps some learning that takes place in the forced comments.  But more of an "Oh that's a neat idea" kind of way, not an "I comprehend!" "I am moved!" "I see more/differently/deeper!" sort of way.

Another drawback to me is the presentation of information. I am not technologically savvy enough to create fancy video lectures. The couple lectures I recorded were extremely boring and took forever to upload. Then I tried Jing - which is a little more user friendly but only allows for 5 minute recordings over a static image.  So I mostly rely on written information - which probably are read about 67% of the time and to 57%  of completeness.  I also post links to the full version of selected readings and to video productions of many of the works - or in the case of the writing class, to other teacher's snazzier presentations of material. But I do very little textual analysis - another item lost when not teaching in person. It's something I should add, but I am afraid more written material will overwhelm students who don't like reading (even though they are taking a reading class).

In addition to modelling how to read analytically, when I teach in person I try to model how to do some writing strategies - or have other students share their ideas and their work in order to demonstrate the kind of content complexity and grammatical proficiency I look am looking for in written work. Online I simply assign a paper and then post a link to a sample paper somewhere on the internet. And every term there is someone who tries to copy a paper on the internet, or a portion of one, perhaps accidentally. No fear! There is a plagiarism detector for that!

(Every term I also have a student who writes about the benefits of legalizing marijuana. Benefits for whom, I have to ask? A benefit for students in online classes who can smoke while typing?)

Of course, online education doesn't allow for the type of immediate clarification that happens when a student needs reassurance or assistance - like how to take the marijuana article a step deeper.  I can answer emails and send messages, but what I share isn't instantly available to all. I know I could do more realtime class meetings, but right now I haven't set up the technology to do so, and since half my students are on ships or stationed on remote island missile ranges, I don't think realtime class meetings would be beneficial for everyone.

Finally, there is the weak community. Some of my students do know each other, and they meet at our brief meets, but there is little real community.  No one is motivated by a computer, but if a friend says, hey read this, you are more likely to actually read it.

The thing that makes me feel like a hoax is that this six week course is supposed to be the same amount of work as an eight week course or a 16 week course.  Does anyone really believe this? Does anyone look closely enough at a transcript later in life? I assign plenty to read, but it's impossible to expect a student taking two classes and working full time and juggling family responsibilities to read the Odyssey in a week. So I post summaries and summaries of summaries, and try to balance reading, writing, and life.

I am absolutely unconvinced students learn better online.  Is there any data for this? Any surveys that have mapped deep learning online? Students may be able to learn, but unless they are incredibly self motivated, it's too easy not to to do the reading, let alone engage with it. Some students give it their best effort, but others do not give it much thought. But there are lazy students who come to in person classses unprepared, too. Here's hoping I reach them all with something to remember about literature.

On Teaching

From James Matthew Wilson's "On the Overweening Pride of the Professorial Class" in Crisis Magazine:

     The proper life of the scholar and the teacher is one of drawing together the wisdom of the past, of keeping it alive, of developing it where it can be developed, and of passing it on, from the hands of the old to those of the young, as a tradition and inheritance. It is fundamentally an activity of conservation and cultivation, edging forward while looking backward, so that the wisdom in one’s care will not be lost. Again, as a great inheritance, its content is like a precious treasure that we already love for its accumulated glory and which we wish to pass down intact in a decided act of piety, reverence, and love. 

         The research of the professor should therefore be dedicated primarily to keeping something alive rather than to adding something new. The new supervenes on its own, left to itself, simply because the loving contemplation of what is good will always be by its nature fruitful. That is just the way with goodness. For my part, I have found I am at my best as a scholar when I seek specifically not to claim anything new at all, but only to explain what is old, what I have received in the common tradition, in terms inevitably distinct, because spoken in a new moment, but always in continuity and indeed intimate contact with what has gone before.
...
         The scholar of the Christian-Platonist tradition, whether in ancient Athens or medieval Paris understood himself not as in possession of knowledge but as standing before it in awe. Truth is one; reality constitutes a coherent whole; and all true education is a progress ever further into the depths of that whole. But, as we see in Plato and St. Augustine, for example, the philosopher is always the one who knows nothing. He knows he knows nothing, only because the truth is not his to possess, but rather is his to love. The true philosopher therefore looks on in perpetual wonder, staring into a truth that transcends us all, that is never to be comprehended, though our heart beats with intensity as we come within the corona of its beauty. The whole truth lies not in the mind, but rather the mind comes to rest in the truth.
          As the theologian John Cavadini argued in a lecture at my own university, some years ago, what is peculiar about modern inquiry is not that it is obsessed with a desire for new insight, but for the way it understands the nature of knowledge and the relation of the knower to the known. As my comments have already intimated, the ancient and medieval universities understood the cosmos, the whole of creation, as intrinsically wonderful. It was a cause of wonder, in itself, and also because of its origin as a gratuitous fruit of the generosity and love of God. To study nature was to sing the praises of the supernatural as one strolled down the road toward it. To study what was above nature—to contemplate God—was to enter in awe, wonder, and love, into perfectly intelligible mystery. Study was itself an act of devotion, a loving act where the mind comes to stand in intimate relation with that which is at one and the same time forever beyond it and always and already within it.

Poetry month winds down

One of my favorite parts of teaching the second semester of the writing class sequence is teaching poetry to students who don't have positive experiences with it. It is a joy to awaken just a bit of appreciation for or connection with a poem whose meaning the students may previously have found elusive.  A student just turned in a great reader-response paper on Shirley Geok-lin Lim's "Riding into California."  Lim teaches at UC Santa Barbara, just a short trip up the 101 from us. Would love to have her come talk to class, but that will be pocketed for "someday."

"Riding into California"

If you come to a land with no ancestors
to bless you, you have to be your own 
ancestor. The veterans in the mobile home
park don't want to be there. It isn't easy.
Oil rigs litter the land like giant frozen birds.
Ghosts welcome us to a new life, and
an immigrant without home ghosts 
cannot believe the land is real. So you're
grateful for familiarity, and Bruce Lee
becomes your hero. Coming into Fullerton,
everyone waiting at the station is white. 
The good thing about being Chinese on Amtrak
is no one sits next to you. The bad thing is
you sit alone all the way to Irvine.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/foolingwithwords/main_lim.html

And here is a little sentimental poem I connected with as I was reading it the other day to my wee one. I read it from a Tasha Tudor book, First Poems of Childhood, that I received, according to the inscription, from my grandparents for my first birthday.

Baby

George Macdonald (1824–1905)

WHERE did you come from, baby dear? Out of the everywhere into the here. Where did you get those eyes so blue? Out of the sky as I came through. What makes the light in them sparkle and spin?         5 Some of the starry spikes left in. Where did you get that little tear? I found it waiting when I got here. What makes your forehead so smooth and high? A soft hand strok’d it as I went by.         10 What makes your cheek like a warm white rose? I saw something better than any one knows. Whence that three-corner’d smile of bliss? Three angels gave me at once a kiss. Where did you get this pearly ear?         15 God spoke, and it came out to hear. Where did you get those arms and hands? Love made itself into bonds and bands. Feet, whence did you come, you darling things? From the same box as the cherubs’ wings.         20 How did they all just come to be you? God thought about me, and so I grew. But how did you come to us, you dear? God thought about you, and so I am here. http://www.bartleby.com/246/315.html