Teaching & Learning

Emily’s Soliloquy; Then and Now

Emily’s Soliloquy from Act 3 in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town:

We don’t have time to look at one another.
I didn’t realize. All that was going on in life,
and we never noticed.
Take me back – up the hill – to my grave.

But first: Wait! One more look.
Good-by, Good-by, world.
Good-by, Grover’s Corners.
Mama and Papa.
Good-bye to clocks ticking.
And Mama’s sunflowers.
And food and coffee.
And new-ironed dresses and hot baths.
And sleeping and waking up.

Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful
for anybody to realize you.

Do any human beings ever realize life
while they live it? – every, every minute?

Stage Manager’s Response:

No. The saints and the poets, maybe they do some.

Emily’s soliloquy has been an overarching  paradigm in my life ever since using it with students early in my teaching career.  It’s served many purposes ranging from various literary themes, to the power of reflection for writing and in life.  I’ve used the example of the soliloquy often with others, thinking it was a secret recipe for seeing and appreciating the smaller aspects of our daily lives. But recently, as I approach the same age my Mother was, well into her widowhood, I understand that like Emily,  I too am deficient with a necessary ingredient to fully appreciate my day to day being…an innate wisdom.

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Conjunctions, Pronouns, and Ideological Absolutes

A version of this posting appeared in a column in the Daily News of Newburyport

 

Ultimately, … we must hold every school and district responsible for whether it has provided an education for all children that can be documented to increase choices of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” That is an American education.                        

Carl Glickman, author and Professor Emeritus University of Georgia

 

With Pride Month, the ongoing debates connected with policy and identity always get more pronounced.  It’s a month when I  find myself reflecting on my time teaching an Educational Structure and Change graduate course at the University of New Hampshire; and before that, as a middle and high school English teacher.  Dichotomizing Education: Why No One Wins and America Loses by Carl Glickman was one of the seminal readings in the course. It reminds of the power of conjunctions in our language, and how those small insertions in our writing or speaking hold an almost subliminal power.  A power of exclusion or inclusion; division or understanding…a power that seemingly “allows only one group to hold the truth and demonizes others.”

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No Wonder They Call Me Bitch…A New Connection

 

 

 

The opening lines of Anne Hodgman’s creative non-fiction essay, No Wonder They Call Me Bitch, are, “I’ve always wondered about dog food.  Is a Gaines Burger really like a hamburger? Does dog Cheese taste like real cheese? Does Gravy Train actually make gravy in a dog’s bowl, or is that just liquid dissolved into crumbs? And exactly what are byproducts?”  Living life as a writer and reader is much about the intersection of thoughts from what one is reading to the stories it conjures up through their lived experiences.  Hodgman’s essay has served me well in this regard over the years since I first discovered it in the 1990 edition of Best American Essays.

As a lifelong, avid dog owner, her unique writing voice drew me in. The bonus was that I found myself learning something about dog food, which until then, I had thought nothing about… its ingredients or what is consumed by animals we eat, chickens, pigs, cattle, etc. My  first connection while reading was a memory of my elementary school-aged daughter munching on one of our dog’s peanut butter flavored Milk Bone treats, which coincidentally found its way into Hodgman’s essay. It was like my daughter channeled her inner Hodgman with her sampling of a dog treat consisting of bone meal and chicken byproducts amongst the ingredients along with artificial peanut butter flavor. At the time it was more entertaining than thought provoking, and I didn’t pay much attention to the ingredients label on our dog’s food or treats during my early pet owning years.

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Language Builds and Divides Culture

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It seems the dysfunction in communicating with each another; of hearing one another; or looking to gain a sense of understanding with one another is a centuries old phenomenon  playing out with increasing intensity in today’s political environment.  I was reminded of this when I checked out a  recently published book, The Power of Our Language by Viorica Marian, at our local library.  The first few paragraphs of her Introduction used Peter Brugel’s renowned painting, The Tower of Babel, to make a point and brought me back to a visit to the Historical Art Museum (Kunsthistorisches Museum) in Vienna, Austria where the original painting graces its walls.

The short version of the story behind the painting is that God considered it blasphemous to build a tower to the heavens, so he created multiple languages dividing people into linguistic groups, rendering them unable to understand one another. The result was a palatial building that went sideways instead of up. I purchased a print of the painting at the museum, had it framed when I returned home, and it hung it in my office as a high school principal. It sometimes provided a reference point for centering discussions to build common understandings as we worked with students and each other to make teaching and learning more constructive.

Today, our democracy seems to be moving sideways, perhaps our version of Tower of Babel, due to an increasing inability to speak with one another. In a recent Atlantic Magazine article entitled, “Do You Speak Fox?”, Megan Garber describes our current state of discourse as both a national and personal crisis. She writes that Fox uses two pronouns, “you and they…that you are under attack, and they are the attackers.”  She notes that Fox language includes words like mob, socialist agenda, hoax, and invasion or open borders… and it’s continually a language of grievance.

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Writing, Reading, Technology & The Humanity of it All

“…in the meantime, we are going to concentrate on writing itself, on how to become a better writer, because, for one thing, becoming a better writer is going to help you become a better reader, and that is the real payoff.”

Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird; Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Several years ago, while co-teaching a high school humanities class, I was also doing graduate research on the relationship of writing, both formal and informal, impacted a student’s ability to read and think critically. The connection interested me in since reading William Zinsser’s book, Writing to Learn, and provided a reference for my own core teaching and writing beliefs. My thoughts on the teaching of writing continue to evolve given the reading and writing options available today including AI options like ChatGPT, Grammarly, and Rytr; but no matter what new technologies impact the writing landscape, there are two claims by Zinsser on writing for me that should always remain at the forefront for determining the value of writing.

Zinsser’s first claim was “Writing and thinking and learning were(are) the same process.” Relative to this notion, he went on to note “writing across the curriculum isn’t just a method of getting students to write who were afraid of writing. It’s also a method of getting students to learn who are afraid of learning.”  His second claim was, “ Writing is thinking on paper. Anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly…”  So, how do those claims about writing translate in a 21st Century world that offers a range of technology that potentially marginalize or even eliminate paper in many cases?

In classrooms, I have observed students who write and think better through the keyboard and screen, as well as students who respond better with a pencil or pen in hand to paper for developing their thinking regarding matters important to them or make meaning of the reading being done. Then there are pencils for tablets and voice options for ‘writing’ as well that are part of the equation.  However, options available for writing and reading face a number of obstacles (standardized testing/assessment, outside demands on instructional time, etc.) that have limited the informal writing experiences across disciplines providing conditions and motivations for reading and shared thinking. It’s the informal writing experience done in journals, as drafts, or in the margins of notebooks/textbooks(paper & digital) that promote deeper thinking and greater inquiry. Writing as part of an assessment is the product of one’s thinking; but discounting  informal writing opportunities that precede any assessment places limits and ceilings on that thinking.

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