Prepare the Ground Before Sowing the Seed

The teacher of the year in the Springfield, MO school district (largest school district in the state) said that she believed that education is built on good relationships with the students.  Interestingly enough, I talked to a principal today who said that what he looks for in a teacher is someone who builds good relationships with students.  I agree wholeheartedly with both sentiments.

As a teacher, I strive to build relationships with my students.  These relationships need not be friendly, or close, but they should be based, as the best relationships are, on trust.  I want my students to trust that I am giving my best effort, and that they are safe, and that I do have their best interests at heart.  On my part, I would like for my students to do their best, and be courteous, and respectful of my wish to help them and their classmates achieve.  I understand that they may come from a place where trust does not come easily.  My role in the relationship is to overcome this reluctance.  This is what is difficult, and also rewarding, in being a teacher.

Strangely enough, I can't help but believe that this belief is part and parcel of the reason the administration at my last teaching position released me.  They probably would not view it that way, but since my intents and goals were not a part of any dialogue I was involved in, I really am unsure how they would have viewed it.

The long and the short of it was, I had a student who could be difficult.  He was likeable in many ways, and intelligent, but events in his life had given him some trust issues which I had to overcome as a teacher.  This student was very interested in the military.  He asked me one day if I had any tattoos from my time in the service.  I said yes, and he asked to see it.  This was in class.  My tattoo is on my chest, visible when I wear a tank top (if I were to wear tank tops, which I don't).  I had shown my tattoo in previous classes, and didn't think anything of it.  Apparently, however, one of the students in class reported that I had shown my chest in class to a member of the elementary faculty, who told the superintendent.  The next day, I received an e-mail from my principal, asking if I had "bared my chest" in class.  I told him it only required me to pull down my collar slightly, and yes, I had shown my tattoo.  Nothing more was said, but several months later, my contract was not renewed.  The principal felt it was the tattoo incident which had lead to this state of affairs.  So be it, I thought.

Fast forward several more months, almost a year.  I encountered the student to whom I had shown the tattoo at a gas station.  He told me I had been his favorite teacher, and that he had decided after being in my class that he wanted to be an English teacher.  I am unsure he will follow through on this career path, but his willingness to even consider it shows me a high level of engagement in what I was trying to teach, which was my goal in the first place.

I do believe that good education is founded on relationships.  Before true education can occur, a positive, trusting relationship must be in place.  A good analogy (and I love analogies) would be that before a plant can grow, before a seed is planted, the ground must first be prepared in order to ensure the fullest bloom and the finest fruits.  Without the relationship, the students will do only the bare minimum necessary.  Mediocrity will be the result, and while I have not mastered the ability to foster a good relationship with each and every student, at least I am trying.

The Nature of Human Pleasure

I started thinking the other day about human pleasure.  I'm not talking strictly physical, although that is a part of of it.  I'm talking about the general idea of actions and a state of being that allows us to describe ourselves with the broad adjective "happy."

In my mind, I divided pleasuree into three areas.  These divisions are physical pleasure, social pleasure, and then existential pleasure.

Physical pleasure is obvious.  Sex, eating, scratching an itch, a cool drink on a warm day...all these and much, much more are the lowest form of pleasure in my mind.  This sense of pleasure is brought about primarily by satisfying our own needs, our physical needs, our basic survival needs.  This level of pleasure is usually enhanced by our bodies telling us "Good job, you did something necessary for survival."  Our bodies do this in the form of endorphins.  Unfortunately, our bodies are stupid.  When we eat, endorphins are released.  Every time.  So if nothing else is making us happy, we eat and then overeat.  The results of giving in completely to physical pleasures are never good.  When we try to find our happiness chemically, be it through a state of euphoria from chemicals naturally occurring in our bodies or if we introduce artificial chemicals for the same result, we are damaging ourselves.

The next level of pleasure is social pleasure.  This can be directed inward or outward.  We receive pleasure from recognition of our peers, and also for contributing to our peers' well-being.  We are happy when we are well thought of, or when we are thinking of others and doing for others.  In this context, we often are happy when we are doing "right."  Doing right generally means acting in a way that strongly promotes proper social interaction.  I'm not sure if there is a chemical correspondence in this area, but since people are essentially  hardwired to be gregarious and seek out the company of others, it is essentially the same.  I think this kind of happiness is often felt by the religious; those who are happiest in religious settings.  Of course, too much of this pleasure can also be harmful.  We can strive too hard for peer recogition.  We can also give too much of ourselves for others.  As a society, we point to those who give selflessly as being individuals to emulate, but there may also be a proper balance.

The next level of pleasure is the most difficult to achieve.  This is existential, or pure mental pleasure.  We perform acts or are aware in ways that do not directly benefit us physically or socially, but seem to strike a chord within that produces a quiet pleasure.  Outside artists are good examples of this state.  They often create works of art with no intentions of selling or achieving societal recognition, but take pleasure in the creation.  We can also achieve this state by simply taking pleasure in observing the world around us.  I sometimes can reach this state when I'm thinking.  When I find a way of perceiving the world that seems to fit, I am happy.  This kind of happiness will not have a person shouting from the rooftops or dancing in the street, but this type of pleasure also seems to me to be least likely to do any damage or have any negative effects.  I would also imagine that this type of pleasure is to be found spiritually by the truly devout.  This type of pleasure could be described as being at peace with one's self, at one with nature, feeling in harmony with the universe, or feeling God's love.

I don't believe we should deny ourselves all physical pleasure, but recognize it for what it is: a means to an end, but not the end itself.  Physical pleasure is our body rewarding us for staying alive.  The staying alive is the important part.

Social pleasure is every bit as important as physical pleasure to our well-being.  Do for others, and be happy when your actions and abilities are recognized.

Take existential pleasure when and where you can find it.  It is too rare, too precious.  Reward yourself by recognizing when  your are smiling for no particular reason.

I'ma School You on Schoolin'

For over a week, a simple bit of slang has been bothering me.  See two guys in the park, preparing to play ball.  One says to the other, "Get ready.  I'm going to school you."

Language always means more than it says.  This is not an example of one man saying to another, "I'm going to teach you so that you can play ball better."  What this man is saying is, "I will humiliate you."

Are you starting to see?  School = Humiliate.  This is what happens in schools all around the country every day.  Students are humiliated.  Before you think you are reading the rant of some rebel stating that all teachers are sadists like the teacher in Pink Floyd's The Wall, let me state that this is not what I mean at all.  Since I have begun teaching, I have met few teachers who do not work hard every day to try to improve the lives of their students.

I'm talking about the system.  The grading system.  Give a student an A, whether that student deserved one or not, and the student is happy.  Some students rightfully expect A's every time.  They learn, master the lesson, and produce legitimate proof of that mastery.  Other students do not.  They may have learned it, and chosen not to produce proof of mastery.  They may have not completely learned the lesson.  They may not have learned the lesson at all.  So we give them an F.

To me, F does not say try again.  I have a feeling that F says try again to any student.  F says only one thing:  you failed.  Ask any student what F stands for.  They will tell you.

We need to get rid of F.  Of course, that may also mean getting rid of A.  And there goes all that money we give our children for getting A's.  As much as we all love our letter system of grading, I think it is time that it goes.  We should establish our expectations of a lesson, and there should be only three possible outcomes:  Mastery, Competency, and Try Again.  There will be students who will push themselves to achieve mastery, or students whose abilities and backgrounds lend themselves to more easily achieving mastery in some areas.  Wonderful.  Let's celebrate this, but discreetly.

All students should achieve Competency.  If we are unsure what competency looks like, then we shouldn't be teaching the subject.  We draw clear parameters and minimum expectations.  These may vary from student to student depending on ability level based on pre-assessment, but the parameters must be there.

And there will always be Try Again.  This is not shame.  This is not humiliation.  This is not schooling.  This is education.  Try Again does not mean for the student to try again without further instruction.  Try Again applies to the teacher as well.  If a student does not achieve competency, then this is just as much if not more the teacher's fault than the student's.  If the student does not care enough to Try the first or second time, this is a flaw in our education system. 

There Has to be More Than the Carrot or the Stick

So much of our society is based on a carrot/stick motivation, and the most obvious purveyor of this method of motivation is the educational system.

For those not familiar with the metaphor, it is based on plowing.  You may have seen the cartoon with the donkey plowing with a stick dangling a carrot on a string out in front of him.  That might be one aspect of stick/carrot, but it is not the one I have in mind.  The one I have in mind is the reward/punishment aspect.  If the mule plows well, he receives a carrot.  If he doesn't plow well, he is beaten with a stick.

Our entire grading system is set up this way.  Students are offered an A and accolades for performing to teachers' expectations, and receive an F for not meeting those expectations.  This in turn translates to positive or negative treatment at home.

Punishment is meted out when students receive an F.  That is the stick.  Of course, studies in conditioning show that once the negative stimulus stops, eventually the student will return to the state of affairs prior to the punishment.

Rewards are given if students meet or exceed expectations.  This is the carrot.  Those same studies show that once the rewards stop, often the behavior which merited the reward.

Of course, we also can incorporate the dangled carrot metaphor as well.  We tell students that if they make good grades, they can get scholarships, etc.  Nice carrot.  If they get scholarships and go on to college, they can get a degree and then get a good job.  Nicer carrot.

Educators will tell you that in an ideal outcome of those scenarios, eventually students will internalize the motivation through some magical process, and become intrinsically  motivated.  And this does happen for some students.  Often, these students go on to become teachers, and, since it worked for them, they will also apply it and perpetuate the process.

I'm more concerned with those students who do not.  Students should not be treated as mules.  There are many students who immediately understand that the dangled carrot is not the promise of the carrot.  There are students who never internalize the motivation and who stop performing once the stimuli, positive or negative, stops.

There are also students who learn to always expect the stick.  Just as students internalize the positive aspect of the reward, there are others who internalize the negative aspect of the stick.  They come to believe that they will always, eventually, get the stick.  I believe the term for such students is oppositional defiant. 

Of course, developmental studies show us that younger children are not complicated enough to think beyond the carrot and the stick.  They perceive the entire world based on the effect on themselves.  That is a given.

But shouldn't an aspect of education concentrate solely on reaching those students for whom the carrot and the stick don't work? 

Students should be encouraged to develop into the people we want them to be.  Not mules, whether they are good mules or oppositional defiant mules.  That is what our current system does.  There has to be a better way.

Too Many Revelations...

I e-mailed my master's thesis to my committee last night.   The stories were done, in the sense that I was tired of looking at them and could come up with no further corrections.  Or maybe it was the fact that each change I was making didn't seem to improve them, or maybe even that each change I made improved them immeasurably but required me to make further changes throughout, so that the sense of it all was lost.  Anyway, I was tired of looking at the damned thing.

The stories gave me less difficulty than the critical introduction.  I had to display what I had learned in the MSU writing program.  This was not made easier by the fact that I had completed my coursework for the degree almost twenty years ago.

Each time I sat down to work on my critical introduction, I had a new revelation about my work.  The best thing to do would have been to seamlessly interweave those revelations into the introduction to produce a coherent whole, but apparently that was not to be.  My revelations at times conflicted, or at the very least were not complementary.

For example, last night's revelation was that plot is an artificial structure in a story.  What is real is character. In order to achieve pure mimesis, a story should not have a plot.  This, of course, seems absurd on the face of it.  Plot is one of the essential elements to story.  That lead me to the further thought that plot is created by the reader, just as meaning is created by the participant in life.  So meaning in life is an artificial construct.  Of course, the fact that it is artificial does not lesson its importance.  We must create our own meaning in life.  It is what is to be human.

So a good story for me allows the reader to create meaning, and construct plot and purpose.  This would allow a story to better achieve mimesis.  And the meaning created may be the same for many people, because we are all shaped by relatively similar influences.  But the meaning will vary for some.  And a writer's job is to give meaning to those who want it, and put in the possibility of various meanings.  In order to achieve this, stories must be left to some extent open ended and full of possibility.

So anyway, I have brilliant leaps of logic like this (often spurred by a paradoxical consideration of Stephen Crane poetry and Douglas Adams tomfoolery).  Then I try to explain it, and then tomorrow I could reread that or listen to something else that would set off a new train of thought and I'd be gone on that again.

Thinking is fun.  Everyone should do it, but maybe moderation in thought is as important as moderation in everything else.

No War Here on "Wars On ..."

Is it just a media term?

In the 60's, Johnson's administration declared a war on poverty.  I don't think we've won that one.

In the 80's, Reagan's administration declared a war on drugs.  That one isn't going very well, either.

For the new millenia, Bush declared a war on terrorism.  The outcome is kind of hazy there, too.

Since then, in the media, there has been a war on just about everything:  The right accuses the left of a war on religion, the left accuses the right of a war on women, there was a documentary about the educational system's war on children (http://www.thewaronkids.com/), there is a war on intellectualism, a war on family values.

I believe in the power of language.  All this talk of war makes war an acceptable state of being.  I prefer peace.  It seems to me the use of the term "A war on ..." makes war seem like a desirable past time, be it against something like drugs or something like religion or women's rights.

This may seem picky.  I may be oversensitive to language and the nuances of meaning.  I will admit there are certain terms I find unacceptable, and certainly usages of acceptable terms in unacceptable ways that chap my posterior.  "War on" has just made its way on to that list.

I think it's in the bombastic nature of our language today.  We overuse superlatives.  I blame the media, the internet, and the constant stream of information that everyone is exposed to every day.  To get our attention, the media has to use more and more words of power, and with the overuse of those words, the power is lost.  Pity.  So many wonderful words that were once useful in describing singularly power emotions, actions, and concepts now can be borrowed and used for whatever mundane purpose we wish.

Listen, people on the right.  There is no war on religion.  While many things I have read show that we are becoming a more secular nation, no one has started bombing churches on a regular basis.  If there was, church bombings would certainly be less newsworthy.

Listen, people on the left.  There is no war on women.  There are certain people on the right who have beliefs that differ from yours on how women should deal with the issues of reproduction, but the extremists that resort to armed action are still rare.
 
So please, no more "Wars On ...."  Can we just call them what they are?  They are simply issues.  Let's say we are addressing those issues, not declaring war on them.  Inflammatory language is no way to begin a civilized discussion on the issues on which we disagree.

And please let's not start any more wars.  You hear me, Rick Santorum?  Address the issue, but don't declare war.

You Say Tomato, I Say Daffodil

Spring is not really my favorite time of year, but it is a close second.  I like the fall.  Spring does have, however, much to recommend it.  We all come out of winter dazed, hungry for the sight of green, ready to shed coats and start living outdoors again.

As I drive around in spring (and my drives usually include detours and "shortcuts" down little travelled roads) I keep an eye out for those early harbingers of spring, the first sign that we are really leaving winter behind: daffodils.

I'm not talking about those well-tended daffodils that crop up in flower boxes and beds in inhabited houses.  I like those daffodils that come up by abandoned houses, or in places where no sign of a house remains except those happy-seeming ghosts of homesteads past.

I have seen foundations easily over a hundred years old surrounded by daffodils.  I have seen daffodils in corners of fields, still growing in a straight line that has to represent a flowerbed long since decayed along with the hand that once tended it. 

It may seem this essay has taken a turn for the morbid, turned to death and decay, but the history of the daffodil supports a turn like that.  Daffodils, known to the ancient Greeks as asphodel, were said to grow on the banks of one of the rivers in Hades, planted by Persephone after she was abducted.  They lift the spirits of the dead.  Because of this, they were often planted on graves.

And now they mark the graves of old farmhouses, long since gone.  They bloom so early in spring that often all about them is still sere and brown, still too new from the harshness of winter to show the signs of stirring growth.  But who could look at the happy yellow of the bloom while pondering the disappearance of the past and not feel, if not cheerful, then nostalgic?  If those blooms can raise the dead, then they can surely raise the spirits of the living.

We are still here; we are still walking around, and we need those daffodils to pull our flagging spirits out of the doldrums of February, through the storms of March, and push us forward into the full bloom of spring.  Daffodils represent the gateway, the way back, the rebirth of the year.  William Wordsworth hit the nail on the head when he wrote:

"For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils."