Monday, November 5, 2012

What Do They Teach Me?

Teachers praise the virtue of lifelong learning.  Much of what I really need to know, I have learned directly from my students.  My work has become increasingly frustrating, even heartbreaking, yet the magic of my time with students has not changed, and they teach me...everyday.

I have learned that they need me...not just to correct their comma splices or help them revise their run on sentences.  They need me to know them, to understand their lives, their dreams, their struggles.  They need me to be there everyday, to be present, and to require their presence in return.  We are a team in that room.  I've referred to it in a previous post as the beating heart at the center of the most important institution of our democracy.  A Problem Like Maria, September, 2010.

Even more, I have learned that my calling as a Christian is intimately linked to my calling as a teacher.  My students need love.  They need prayer.  They need me to be willing to give my time, talent and yes, even sometimes my treasure to help them navigate the path from child to adult, from student to lifelong learner.

I must be a candle, however small, however tenuous my flame, I must be a candle in my classroom.  I cannot merely curse the darkness.

That darkness is all around us.  It is in the grinding poverty that touches my own life and all too often engulfs the lives of my students.  It is in the clanging gong of a culture that tells them to defy authority, ignore the sacred, embrace vapid celebrity and empty violence.

The darkness has begun to move menacingly around the halls of this place I love so much.  It hovers over decisions to increase their class sizes every year, while telling them our decisions are based on "what's best for kids."  They are not numbers, units, or dollar signs. As someone who has been laid off due to budget cuts, I understand the gravity of California's fiscal mismanagement, and my rural community is no stranger to a recessed economy and shrinking opportunity.  However, those human beings in my classroom are not just delivery vehicles for ADA, and as their teacher, their teammate in that room, I am the one who must repeatedly remind those in power of that fact.

And yes, the darkness can even be seen among the people who have chosen this sacred profession.  A few can be guilty of treating it like a factory job, complete with punch card, coffee breaks and a numbness to the hearts and minds of the souls before them as maddening as a textile mill owner in the 1840s.   They are not the inconvenient roadblocks to your weekend motorcycle ride or trip to the coast.  No matter how exhausting and frustrating my day may be, I must not start to see them as impediments to my weekend.  Students know when we teach that way.  They speak up about it when we aren't around, and more importantly, they remember that we did not care enough to do our jobs.  Even while they cheer a movie day, they don't respect it.

When I am tired and demoralized, when yet another parent sends a rude email whose tone assumes I am the problem, I am the enemy, I sometimes gripe that this is a job, not a religious calling.  I say it with bumper sticker snappiness, but it belies my own discomfort because I know better.  No, I have not taken a vow of poverty and chastity, and I do not wear a black and white habit, but make no mistake, teachers are called.  We are called away from professions that reward us financially.  We did not choose cushy, respected, lucrative.  We chose challenging...no damn hard.  We chose thankless.  We chose poverty.  Why?

Because of the senior boy who breaks down and cries in a room of forty-seven other teens and does not care because he just needs his teacher to listen, to help, to calm his fears about the future rushing to meet him before he feels ready.  He needs her to tell him, "It's okay because you won't feel ready.  No one ever does, but you are...you will be...I'll make sure.  I'm your teacher, and I care."

Because of the sixth graders, posing with ear-to-ear grins in their Halloween costumes, who buzz with excitement over today's journal topic and can't stop talking because they bubble daily and furiously with creativity like a pot of boiling water, just waiting for me to drop the pasta.  Tell me about your day.  Write to me about what you would teach if you were a sixth grade teacher.  Come with me and let's learn the steps of mummification.  Let's click again on the part where we pour the brains into the canopic jar with the Egyptian head on it just because it's gross and fun and we forgot to notice we're learning.
  

Because of the beautifully written phrase about her father's heart attack and the snowflakes glinting around her face that day so many months ago.  Because of slowly unfolding description of his visit to Ground Zero, noticing how quiet, how holy, that place was amid the noisy cacophony of New York City.  Because sometimes ninth grade writing can actually move you to tears.  Did you know that?

Because of the teenager, from a supposedly self-absorbed generation, who quietly offers to replace his teacher's stolen cell phone with his own, or another who brings homemade cookies to say thank you for making her look forward to history class.

Because of the conversation about ethos, pathos and logos applied to Rufus Griswold's doctored letter from Edgar Allan Poe that so unfairly changed the public perception of one of America's finest writers.  We learned together that even a contemporary A & E Biography perpetuates the myth as fact.  Let's talk about the reliability of sources, even those at school, and then let's reel together, until you ask me, "Mrs. Weigel, do YOU ever read anything and actually believe it?"  A nineteenth century literary Battle Royal may not be the most exciting content for freshmen, but why do I teach?  Because it leads to questions like that.

Taylor Mali, teacher, writer and poet, offers some wisdom:



There is the teacher I want to be.  She lives in small moments, all too far apart these days.  She lives on my Pinterest boards with philosophy I believe and try to live by, with anchor charts I want to use, with warehouses of websites I need to explore.  She's there, that Platonic teacher, and I keep leaning toward her, I keep pushing myself to find her.  I keep hoping each student sees her at least a few times this year.

I keep wishing my school, my district, my leadership, my state,  would just allow me to be the teacher I know I can be.

Won't you just let us, my students and I, go into that room with adequate supplies, with reliable technology, with numbers that allow us to really know each other?  Won't you have a clear mission, a clear vision, so I can do my job?  Won't you please go tell those factory workers that the auto industry probably could use them because this profession needs a lot more passion and a lot less selfish complaining.  Go into that lunchroom and tell them the ship needs those that will swab the decks and trim the sails, and there's the plank if you don't want to work for students.

Our students need gardeners who will tend each shoot and speak kindly, who will offer water and sunshine.

I need to light a candle, not curse the darkness.  I am trying, and it is difficult.  Please help me because if you support me and steady my hand, together we can pass the flame along and illuminate this place again.  We can bring back its life, its spirit, and we can celebrate what we have made together.



Friday, August 3, 2012

Kindle Schmindle


The Kindle offers a clean, silent reading experience. I like the immediacy of having the book I want...now.  Just click on Kindle Store, and it's the Library at Alexandria. Well, not quite that grand, but you get the idea. I like the book light popping out,  helpfully allowing reading to continue well into the wee hours without disturbing sleepers nearby. However, all too often my Kindle experience has been disappointing, even disturbing. Why? Well, there are several reasons, not the least of which is I'm afraid I'm betraying the printed page.

Let me start with the strange Kindle feature at the bottom of each screen: your percentage completed.


First of all, I do not appreciate the encroachment of math into my sacred reading experience; it leaves me queasy and uneasy.  Similar to the tense moments while I wait to see how high the mercury rises on the baby thermometer, it's just not information I want. 27% is a number. I'd rather know that Katniss and Peeta are arriving in District 11 to greet Rue's haggard community of farmers. Tell me Mr. Rochester has just embraced Jane and called her an unearthly creature. Don't say 53% and counting. By the way, I'm making up those numbers. Kindle fans, please do not click to 53% in Bronte hoping to find that scene, and then send me neurotic comments about what Gothic treasure is actually found at 53%. Furthermore, Dear Reader, I think I may have graduate literature units revoked if I acknowledge publically that I read Jane Eyre on the Kindle. Well, the more accurate term is reread since the word only meant "to stoke a fire" when my eyes first moved through the pages of Charlotte Bronte's masterpiece. But I digress.

What disturbs me the most about this percentage feature is that it somehow makes reading a competition, and not just with myself.  At a recent school function, I spoke with the mother of one of my daughter's friends. I apologized for not allowing my twelve year old to attend the midnight showing of The Hunger Games with she and her daughter. (Mary is hoping her parents will relent by the time Katniss hits the theatres for a second installment). In talking about the series of books and her response to the film, I mentioned I was reading Catching Fire on my Kindle. Then, for no apparent reason, I shared that I was at 27%. She turned to me with a kind of smirk (did I imagine it?) and said "I'm at 35%." Why did it matter? To either of us? Why did I even feel the need to announce my percentage at all? Who cares? Is reading about the numbers or the experience? Character development? Rising Action? Do these things mean nothing? Am I just racing to the 100% finish line?

Something about that little % creates a feeling of inadequacy in me. It's no coincidence that the feature itself is called "the status bar." I bet that woman has hundreds more Facebook friends than I do, too. Furthermore, her blog has comments from every continent on the globe and followers who don't actually know her in the real world. Does she have a blog? I don't know for certain, but doesn't it seem like we all do? My great aunt has a blog about her garden, and my aforementioned daughter has at least three.


Blog gluttony aside, keeping track of mathematical progress through a novel doesn't even seem like something a reader would create. I bet it was generated by a tech nerd in a cubicle who wanted to garner some praise down at the Kindle factory, so he came up with the idea. He's also the type who reads the last page before he's actually on the last page. He looks at the number of pages and divides by 2 to locate see the exact middle of the book. He may even divide by 7 to give himself the number of pages he must read in order to finish the novel by the end of a week. I don't like him, or his percentage feature. He's a math boy, and he should keep his crazy ideas away from my reading experience.


My love-hate relationship with the Kindle continues when it comes to games. Thread Words. Every Word. That strange little one with the treasure chests. I love them all! However, they are digital and ever-present. It's much too easy for me to just click away from my novel and mindlessly look for a six letter word that starts with t and ends with h. I'm only human for God's sake. I want to read the detailed description of Jean Valjean as he steals the damn loaf of bread. I want to savor every syllable of the paragraphs as they unfold like drowsy summer roses, but I'm a busy woman. Let's be honest. As a working mother of five children, all under thirteen, my reading does not take place in a quiet parlour. I'm probably tackling Les Miserables while sprawled out on a toddler bed pretending to play hot wheels with my two year old. Don't judge me; he can't tell the difference. However, I can only stay focused on Hugo's prose for so long with constant interruptions like:

"Mommy, pay wif me," and "Look at big tuck, Mommy!"

Chances are I'm also dressing one of the many naked Barbie's in the Barbie bin, and desperately trying to find something that doesn't make her look like she's turning tricks. Believe me, there are not a lot of peasant blouses or baggy sweats in the Barbie collection.

I know this seems like another of my many rambling digressions, but I can bring it back around. Don't worry, Dear Reader. While my heart desperately wants to immerse myself in the fiction I so adored in my college years, my life is much more conducive to using the Kindle for mindless word games and searching on Amazon for books I'll probably never download. I successfully read the entire Hunger Games series using my daughter's Kindle, but then again Suzanne Collins is not Victor Hugo...or Charles Dickens...or George Eliot. The woman writes in fragments. Frequently.

The instant availability of these digital games lures me away from the reading I should do. Veggies are traded in for Twinkies, and Jean Valjean is poised, ready to grab the bread. He's still there on page...wait, I don't have page numbers. He's still there in some percentage I refuse to look up just to make my point. Katniss gobbled up the burnt loaf weeks ago, and the print on my keys is worn out from playing Every Word so much, but I can't seem to make the 21st Century technology of the Kindle merge with the thick, dense- with-detail novels of the 19th Century. They just don't play well together.



Regret

Asking teenagers to write about what they regret will not elicit much depth. It is not, as you might imagine, because they have not lived lo...