teaching

Post Holiday Deus ex Machina

No Telling


The holiday break is officially over in the morning and I’ve misplaced my work ethic. Maybe I left it in my other purse.

Coming off of the end-of-semester madness, I rode an adrenaline-tide clear into Christmas Day. There are crossed-off lists to prove this, although I was so thorough I threw them away afterward. Something happened Christmas day that made my metabolism, my forward motion, my internal combustion, go dead still. It wasn’t gradual. I’m telling you, at 10:30 a.m. on Christmas Day, I exhaled and tuned into a slug.

That was fine for a day, so I let it continue. The next morning I woke up at 8:20 or so, completely horrified. I never set an alarm (not that I normally need one) and slept without waking for nine hours. Those who know me best understand the seriousness of such a thing. I’m a five-hour sleeper, the one who drives everyone crazy by staying up at all hours and rising in time to make coffee at five. I’ve spent my whole life tiptoeing around while others sleep.

It scared me, sleeping all those hours. Whatever had switched off the day before took over my body, and now I’ve spent the past two weeks moseying through my days, slug-like, instead of strangling every single minute for a few more seconds. It’s been lovely, really, but it’s over tomorrow.

I just can’t wrap my head around it. On Thursday there will be rooms full of students, and I’ve a sneaking suspicion they’ll all be much more sluggy than I am. My job is to bounce into those rooms and get their internal clocks moving again, start the cogs and wheels and such humming. They’ve been staring blankly at television or computer screens for four weeks now, the academic legions of WE will need to wind our own rusty clocks first and in a hurry.

When I taught high school and enjoyed Christmas breaks that lasted, oh, an hour and a half, this never happened. The thing is, I’m not sure if I want to complain about it too much since the slug that I’ve become is fairly comfortable and reclining.

Too much leisure is worse than too little. Time to make a cup of coffee and dropkick myself back into living. Don’t worry, I’ll be quiet.

*****

P.S. – In my quest for threaded commenting – something WordPress does that Blogger doesn’t – I installed a commenting system called Intense Debate. Nice, but not as easy to use or pretty as I’d hoped. I guess I’ll hold out until Blogger adds threaded commenting, which I’m sure they will. I’ve asked nicely and all.

The downside is that in uninstalling my experiment, I lost a few comments. Please forgive me.

Save the Words

No Telling


Finally, a cause I can get behind. Somebody hand me a Sharpie and some poster board because I feel like wearing a peasant blouse and having a sit-in. Where did I pack those Gloria Steinem aviators?

Wayne State University has it’s academic fist in the air to save our language. No, no, no, this isn’t about non-native speakers or official languages or anything whatever to do with immigration, so don’t turn away. This is about saving the wispy, many-layered, pungent, specific bibelots of our language that are disappearing faster than we can tweet.

Their site is called Word Warriors, and they’re saving the language one word at a time:

“In early 2009 Wayne State University launched this Web site to retrieve some of the English language’s most expressive words from the dank closet of neglect, in hopes of boosting their chances of a return to conversation and narrative. Some of these words once were part of the common speech (it was hard to be a writer in the late 19th century, for instance, without “indefatigable”); others have capered in and out of the language like harlequins, dazzling and then just as suddenly departing; others — the wonderful “numinous,” for one — may never have been heard every day or even every year. Some, like “galoshes,” just went into hiding for no apparent reason.

But no matter why especially marvelous words have disappeared from everyday use, we believe the following selection that we and visitors to this site have made still deserves to be exercised freely in prose, poetry, song and story. Otherwise, we simply aren’t painting our speech with a full palette.”

The the Word Warriors’ 2010 List of “sadly underused or overlooked but eminently useful words that should be brought back to enrich our language” includes delights as bamboozle, mendacity, festoon, and scuttle. My brothers and sisters, there’s not a Southern writer living who could write a check without using at least two of these. These words falling into disuse is a sad first step leading inevitably to everyone grunting and pointing in 140 characters or less.

Here are a few more on the endangered list: conniption, dastardly, fetching, peccadillo, skedaddle, and zaftig. Can you imagine losing these words?

Luckily, you can participate by suggesting words that need rescue. Nominate a word on the Word Warriors site, then go out into the world and give these beauties a workout. Wave them like Old Glory before all the Southern lawyers die and take these with them to the hereafter.

We shall overcome.

(Image via Artworld Salon)

Teaching Other People’s Children

No Telling

I‘ve never been so ready for a Thanksgiving break in all my life, and I’ll bet I’m not alone. I love my students – all of them – it’s just important to have a little time apart. Right here at the end of the semester, Thanksgiving break is the chance to inhale before the final jumping in of final exams. It’s timely and necessary.

I’m fully aware that I’ve become a spoiled university instructor. Unlike most of the folks in the hall, I have memories of public school teaching. Years of thirty-minute lunches snarfed while standing duty in 100 degrees or in freezing temperatures. Years of forgotten homework and whining teenagers. Years of preaching poetry from a rickety pulpit. I loved every single, gut-wrenching minute of it.

It’s a whole different country teaching those who choose (and pay) to learn. John Rohweder, a wise man I miss much and often, used to remind me that we university folk have the best game in town: we teach the willing on a flexible schedule, and we even get paid to do it. John marveled at the gift of teaching every single day and never failed to make me feel like the luckiest woman alive.

We who teach participate in the miracle of learning, and we learn. We have it lucky and easy. For those who teach in the public schools, that’s not always true.

I know this is a time of educational confusion. Standardized testing and helicopter parents and school violence and the ugliness of the whole sordid world reflected on our young – it makes us cynical. Those who choose to stand at the front of the classroom take a vow of responsibility for other peoples children. There’s nothing weightier than that.

So while we’re being appreciative ’round the turkey table this year, say a little attagirl or attaboy to those folks who’ve dedicated their lives to nurturing other people’s children. They may be teaching your children. Maybe some of them even taught you.

Now spit out that gum and go say ‘thank you.’

Blogiversary: Because there’s Telling and there’s No Telling

No Telling


It caught me by surprise, what with all this National Day on Writing and classes and broken elevators and hugging The Perfect Grandson and such. In fact, I almost missed it.

Today’s my second blogiversary.

Celebrating such a thing publicly is odd. I don’t want to be that person in the office who walks around telling everyone it’s her birthday. What exactly are you supposed to do after such an announcement? Prompted congratulations are thin at best. Besides, I’m sure there are several dozen Southern etiquette violations involved, and we all know you go straight to hell for breaking those.

You’re the ones who deserve something, not me. So I’ve got a little something here for you.

I started this hayride for a reason. Two years ago I found myself telling my writing students to scribble incessantly, fearlessly, and then I went home after classes were over and realized I hadn’t written two creative words together in months. Months. My personal writing had taken a backseat to my everyday duties and became that thing I planned to do after the grading/laundry/phone calls/paperwork/planning/meeting/___________.

I wasn’t writing at all. Worse than that, I’d made the very thing I enjoy most into a dangling carrot I’d never quite reach. So I started this blog and decided to make myself get to the page on a regular basis. Absence did not make the heart grow fonder, it made me articulately weak and stumbly. For a couple of weeks I wrote in someone else’s voice – in fact, I channeled a whole slew of mysterious voices.

More than a few times, the frustration of my misplaced voice made me angry enough to quit altogether. Remembering the old days when making words was effortless only compounded the issue. How had I slipped into such a state?

Eventually, it became easier. I added what I now call my Scribbling Hour into my day – an appointment with myself to sit down somewhere and just make words. It’s the only appointment I never break. Between that and this blog, I healed enough to slam out a novel in thirty days last year. I am Writer, hear me roar and all that.

The thing is, I started walking the talk and things turned around. This blog was a big part of that and I’m thrilled I can share this with you. Writer’s block? Hell no. I don’t believe in that boogeyman. Self denial is real, though, and so is procrastination. Neither one can hide under that rock and call itself something swanky. Do I still have crappy writing moments? All the time, but they pass and even the worst of days can leave me a line, a name, a gesture that turns into something stunning later.

So in honor of the National Day on Writing, and as a present to yourself, go write something. It doesn’t matter if it’s awful or tragic or otherwise unsightly. Just do it anyway. If you really hate it when you’re done, then delete the mess or throw pages in the fire or whatever makes you feel better. Then open the same present again tomorrow. Keep doing it until your voice loses the rust and awkward pitch, because it will.

Everyone has something that needs telling. Go tell it.

No, I Haven’t been Lost, Stolen, or…

No Telling

…in the hoosegow. The one-two punch of midterm papers coupled with the sweet release of Fall Break has me a little shell-shocked. Especially since I spent the first day of the break wringing a tissue and running from computer to television over Falcon the Balloon Boy.

I still don’t precisely know how I feel about that whole business, but I’m crystal clear on a few things: I’m glad he’s safe. I want to know why he wasn’t in school. I want five minutes alone with tornado-daddy to discuss the finer points of parenting.

Don’t get me started.

At the beginning of this four-day Fall Break, I made a list of all the delicious, non-academic things I would do. Didn’t do any of them. I clearly accomplish more when I’m up to my eyeballs in too much work – something to do with forward motion and deceleration. A little free time and I languish.

Enough of that.

It’s Rained So Long, the Whole World Smells Like Catfish

No Telling
Photobucket


Forty days and forty nights, or thereabouts. A break here and there doesn’t really matter, because the rain only eases to lure me outside so it can begin again.

And it’s cold. Well, plenty cold for Arkansas. It’s in the 60’s here and all of us are scrambling for winter coats and portable heaters. It’s like living Portland. Or London.

I‘m guessing that neither place smells as bad as this, though. In the spring, we generally have quite a bit of nasty weather, but the temperature is lifting, greenness is poking out of the ground, and everything takes on a sort of sweet respiration. In the mack-daddy steam of the summer when temps hover in the 100s and 110s, the rain makes a sort of sizzling hot-tar smell. It goes away though, and on the worst days going out smells a little it’s raining tadpoles.

In the fall, it rains mud-bottom river catfish everywhere. It’s thick, I tell you, like the clouds just sucked up the worst parts of the Arkansas River and dumped it on your new shoes. If you stand still long enough in this weather, you’ll smell like you’ve fallen off a river barge. Musty. Mudcat-fishy.

This afternoon I trudged across campus in the mist and landed in a classroom that had the air off, the windows down tight, and the fifth class in a row of twenty or so students dripping catfish-rain all over the industrial carpeting. Ten minutes in, the smell was unbearable.

The Weather Channel – which is unfailingly incorrect most of the time – says we’ll be out of this mudcat-smelling hell by Friday. We get the weekend off, it seems. Monday it’s supposed to throw down again and last for days.

I’m actually looking forward to the ice storms.

Germ Warfare

No Telling


I look a lot like our gal Medusa right now. I’m not kidding.

Forget worrying about H1N1. At this point I think it’s a smoke screen for all the other menaces a few thousand freshman students can sling at you in the close proximity of the classroom. I’ve spent the last three days captive to some bug or other that’s nothing like The Swine. The germ-throwers caught me looking the other way and gave me a very uncomfortable stomach flu.

That’s okay. I’m felling better tonight and now I’ve got my head on a swivel for all their non-Swine health bombs. What’s next – strep? staph? mono? pink-eye? No matter. I’m onto their game now.

Tomorrow I’m going into class in an antibacterial Cloak of Invisibility. If anyone pokes fun, I’ll shoot ’em with Lysol and turn them to stone.

The Future’s So Bright, I Have to Wear Tinted Bifocals

No Telling

I gave my students a writing prompt today that bubbled up little pockets of angst here and there. Nothing wrong with that. In eighteen year-olds, frowning end-of-the-world moods tend to mean they’re actually thinking about something other than what to post on Facebook. I call that a win. The prompt was simple: Imagine yourself five years from now. What are you doing and who is around you? Five years from today, right now this minute, who ARE you?

The results were fascinating. Oh, to be young in a world full of possibility! Strangely enough, most of the young women saw themselves married at 23. Clearly they’re all snagging older men, though, because the gentlemen in my classes overwhelmingly said no to that sort of thing. They’re all waiting until they’re thirty-ish to marry. Probably a good idea, that.

Four classes of writing students – most of whom haven’t yet chosen a major – told me they will be gainfully employed and driving nice cars. A few wise ones said they’d still be in school, graduate school, and eating ramen noodles for another few years. Most anticipate careers that involve a minimal work for maximum cash, bless their hearts. I hope it all comes true for them.

It’s important to note that not one student mentioned anything about worrying themselves bald over paying off college loans. I guess it’s a lot like giving birth – you don’t believe the negative hype until someone tells you to push.

Of course, I wrote with them. Always do. In five years I’ll be fif…forty…um…six. I’ve been going backwards for a few years now and the math’s starting to confuse me. No matter.

There’s officially a lottery here in Arkansas now, and I’ve decided I’m going to win the Powerball. That’s the first thing. A gal needs a little pocket change to make it into her declining years without eating catfood, especially if she teaches for a living. The Powerball prize need not be in the ridiculous millions, either. I’ll be happy with 25 or so.

Five years from today I might very well roll the speedometer on the 2001 Avalon past the 80,000 marker. This may take a few extra trips to Little Rock between now and then because right now I’m on the cusp of rolling it over to 40k and it’s been a while. No, I won’t buy a fancy new ride with my Powerball money. I’m confident the Avalon is good for another ten years, easy.

If I wait long enough, maybe those flying Jetson cars will finally hover the showroom floors. I’m hopeful.

The Perfect Grandson will be in second grade in five years. I figure I can either shower him with gifts and sports camp money until he graduates, or hand him 10 million for four years of college. It’s likely I’ll do both while making a geriatric pest of myself in Em’s daily life. I can multitask.

Despite being flush, I’ll probably still teach. Can’t imagine not doing that, although all that grading might eat into my book tour. I wonder if I’ll be the first one to grade essays in Oprah’s Green Room? Guess we’ll find out.

There are some other things I wrote down about doing yoga and being thin, but that made me almost as angsty as my students, so I’ll stop there.

I told my classes that imagining themselves in a future place is the only way to actually get there. Making throw-away lists and having drunken epiphanies are unproductive and sometimes lead to a life in mom and dad’s basement. Several of them nodded, so I guess they must have uncles I went to school with.

Yes, it’s a hell of a curve-ball to throw the future at them this close to a Friday night. That’s fine. Like any coach, I plan to throw a few more until they’re swinging clean from pure muscle memory. In writing and in life, that’s the way it should be.

The Facebook Curmudgeon: Peer-Pressure Never Ends

No Telling


Okay, so after 3 1/2 months of Official Facebook Abandonment, I’m back on. I don’t have to like it, though.

I just don’t get it, really. Am I missing something? I Twitter, and that’s even beginning to make a little sense as long as I don’t follow people who tell me they just brushed their teeth. I follow a lot of editors, bloggers, and friends. I even follow Christopher Walken who’s certifiable and therefore entertaining. I’m not doing it very well myself, but it’s interesting to follow others.

Not so much with Facebook. After all those months the “friend requests” were staggering, as were the “gifts.” No one can convince me those apps are a good time. I don’t want virtual houseplants or anything that requires me to List Ten Things.

I‘ve discussed my history with Facebook before. You know, five years ago you couldn’t sign up without a .edu email address – it was nothing but college students. I signed up as a classroom experiment in which I made Facebook groups for each class I taught. For contacting students and answering questions, it worked beautifully.

Last night I logged on only to find I had over 500 friends – a scary mix of old high school buddies and recent students. It was decision time, and the youngsters lost out. I deleted over 400 students I’d accumulated over four years of the online classroom experiment. All that deleting was exhausting and gave me the terribly feeling I’d thrown out all the babies with the bathwater.

When the carnage was over, I peeked at my Friend Feed to see what was left. What remains reminds me of those old party-line phones where you picked up and heard other people’s conversations. Do I need to know Shelly lovingly prepared Spam and tater tots for dinner? Or that it’s late and Barry is tired? Is it any of my business that, without explanation, Linda’s changed her relationship status to “single”? No, no, and no.

My daughter wandered in as I sat there staring at the screen dumbfounded. Em tried, bless her heart, to convince me Facebook could be interesting. She showed me how to “lurk” or “creep” – clicking willy-nilly through and across and over layers of friends to find out the poop on everyone. It was like watching digital macrame and the end result was the same: I couldn’t make myself care. Besides, all her friends are funky and in their risk-taking years. All mine are dull and in their heart-attack years. She doesn’t see a lot of Spam-and-tater-tot updates, for example.

I did learn something important from Em’s Facebook Stalking Tutorial: if you don’t update your status, no one looks for you. Looks like I’m in the clear.

It all boils down to this: As terrible as I am at Twitter, I’m a much, much worse Facebook friend. My colleagues and closest friends are aware of my failure to socially-network properly. They forgive me in that Southern way by bless-your-hearting my digital eccentricity and trying to include me even if I never respond.

I’ll post a link to this on my Facebook status update as an act of contrition. Baby steps.

Serving up Freshman

No Telling

There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
– Douglas Adams

I won’t pretend to be philosophical tonight. My eyes hurt to much from grading and commenting on my first batch of freshman comp papers. Some of them are quite good. Some could stand another rewrite. A few others make me want to hunt down their previous school districts and have a talk with someone in charge of curriculum.

This is nothing new. Freshman composition is the great levelizer. Students come from subdivisions and trailer parks, farm roads and apartments to push hopefully toward some larger imagining of themselves. They’re scared. They’re pressured. They’re free. Regardless of their previous schooling, they all need to clear the same bar by Christmas.

It’s not an easy thing to go from big ‘ol catfish to minnow in a pond where you can’t quite see the bottom. Sometimes my students write about this transition and I can tell that the act of writing it is part of the larger process of growing. I like those papers. They’re spring from a variety of topics, but all of them center around an awareness of change.

Write your way through it, I tell them, find out where you’re going and the essay will follow you there. Here, try this.

There are other papers, the ones students think they’re supposed to write about topics too distant from their experience. In high school they wrote research papers with titles like “World War II” and received glowing scores. Some only want to write about my Forbidden Topics – cloning, abortion, gay marriage, global warming, any war – because they assume all writing is a large undertaking suitable only for weighty subjects. They want to begin with answers instead of questions.

Some argue that eighteen year-olds don’t have enough personal experiences to write about. It’s true, some don’t. They will, though, and soon enough. In the meantime, we weigh out the miracle and frustration of the everyday.

As I sit here with this half-graded pile of papers, there seems to be a sort of developmental rite of passage either crossed or not. Some are ready for what comes next, others need more time to cook.

For our second paper, I’ll adjust the temperature a bit.