Teaching – Page 5 – College Ready Writing 1.0

Dilettante, Generalist, or Unfocused? Teaching and Research Tensions

Conference season is upon us academics. I’ll be going back to Sherbrooke in a few weeks to present a piece of my dissertation, investigating how a translator and editor worked together to produce a collection of translated poems. I just presented last weekend on Dany Laferrière’s practice of rewriting his novels, specifically looking at the transformation of La chair du maitre into Vers le Sud. This summer, I’m working an essay on how Nalo Hopkinson uses the female body in her speculative fiction.

Oh, and I teach writing.

I’ve recently become more acutely aware of how my “research output” reflects my image of a scholar (both a teacher and researcher). Should I be moving more towards presenting and publishing on teaching writing, as that is where my professional career seems to be heading? Should I try to find more English authors to study and write about as I teach English? Can I indulge my growing interest in digital humanities, with the limited resources at my disposal (time and money)?

The question of resources is not a trivial one. I do not have a great deal of travel support, and it is expensive to fly anywhere from where I currently live. I teach a 5/4 course load, all of which are writing intensive. I had to cancel going to THATCamp, an experience I had been particularly looking forward to, because it was hard to justify the expense. My past training, publications, and current teaching don’t scream digital humanities; why do I need to change directions, yet again?

I get bored very easily, and I like to have lots of ball up in the air, mentally. When I get burnt out from writing about the middle-aged menopausal body as magical, I can move to how and why an author rewrites his life story. And then, if I can focus on either of those topics, I can comb through the new thoughts related to my dissertation in an effort to change it into a book. And then, on a break, I revise and refine my writing courses.

When I was hired for my (brief) tenure-track position, it was as a generalist, a role I felt well-suited for. Intro to lit or world lit? A PhD in comparative literature certainly prepares you for that. Postcolonial? Got it. Immigrant writing? Got it. Minority? Got it. Popular? Got it. Teaching experience, especially with non-traditional student populations? Yup, got that, too. While looking for my first tenure-track job, I was most successful with the generalist jobs I had applied for. I can imagine that my research and interests were either too diverse (or, too focused on one or two authors) for a more specialized position.

There is a thread that connects all of my interests, however, and that’s the process and results of writing. If it be translating, rewriting, or imagining, it seems to always come back to writing. Even my MA thesis, concerned with magical dystopias, is essentially about books that are making clear arguments about the (possible) future. How do we shape and reshape ourselves and the world around us through language? I suppose this is what we are all doing in literature, but I wonder how many of us would describe what we do in such general terms? We are often sent the message in academia that our research and teaching be hyper-specialized, or at least unique. I know that what I am doing is unique, but perhaps I haven’t stuck with any one subject long enough to become hyper-specialized, and thus well-known, in order to become a “successful” academic.

I expressed my thoughts and apprehensions on a recent post on Dr. Davis’ Teaching College English blog. Her thoughtful response:

I figure, I may never be “the” expert on a field, but I can have multiple important contributions to a number of disparate studies.

This, ultimately, is what I aspire to. I might never be an expert in any one area (although I’ll wager there are few other academics who have devoted as much time and mental energy on Dany Laferriere as I have), I want to and can have multiple contributions in a lot of different areas. It might not ultimately benefit my career, but I’m doing what I love. For that, I am grateful, even if I do look a bit like the academic equivalent of a flake.

Teacher or Preacher? On Basic Writing, Gen Ed Courses

I have a particularly bright student in my developmental writing course this semester. While I know why he is in my class (ACT scores not high enough), I’m not entirely sure how that happened. It would seem that he fell through the cracks. He is everything that you dream about in a student, especially when you are teaching developmental writing: he attends class, he takes the work seriously, does his homework, and participates in class discussions. But I know that he resents the hell out of my class, especially when I have to come down hard on the other students who don’t show up, don’t do the work, and don’t take it seriously. One day I made sure that he knew that I knew that the speech was not meant for him. He shrugged, said he understood, but it got his back up when I started to preach. I hate church, he said, and I don’t want to hear a sermon at school.

This conversation took place almost a month ago. It’s troubled me ever since. I want my classroom be an open place for an exchange of ideas, but, at the same time, there are certain lesson, sermons so to speak, that the students need to hear, often repeatedly, if they hope to be successful in college. While taking the time to do the work and taking that work seriously doesn’t guarantee success in college, it certainly increases the odds. I know there are students who can do little to nothing during college and still do well (I was one of them), but I also know that my developmental students can’t afford to allow school to be the last thing on their list of priorities if they want to graduate and not have wasted their money.

I speak from a position of experience. I have taught developmental and other lower-level general education courses for more than ten years now (seriously, when did that happen?). I’ve seen the students who struggle and ultimately succeed versus those who don’t even bother trying. I also know that one of the ways we learn is through repetition, so I repeat the core mantra every chance I get. But what does that say about my teaching style or my attitude towards my students. On one hand, I want to treat them like adults, but on the other hand, I seem to scold them like children. Minister to them like a flock of unthinking sheep. But if we teach in an influence-based society, is it any wonder some of us adopt a strategy that mirrors some of the most successful personalities, like the preacher?

Teaching might not be a vocation, but there are some very real similarities between what I am expected, required, or choose to do in front of the classroom and what a good preacher does. But is this a good thing? Religion is often seen as a means of indoctrination, and it pains me to say that in some ways, I am trying to indoctrinate my students on how to be successful in college and beyond. I’ve written before how for many of us in academia, institutions of higher learning are the new church, and our religion is based on the tenants of hard work and critical thinking. Some sections of society think that if everyone had a little more God, this world would be a better place. Nationally, however, the common refrain is that this world would be better place if were all just had a little more higher education.

In my classes, it boils down to getting my students to think critically about why they are in college, and then convincing them to use that as motivation to do the unpleasant tasks that are required of them. I know I am supposed to make my classes relevant and engaging, which I try very hard to do, but when faced with a classroom full of students who tell me that they hate writing and reading, well, no matter how exciting and entertaining I make the assignments, they will still have to write and read, in my class and beyond. So, yes, I guess I am a bit of a preacher, trying to convert the masses. But, it is only one of the many personas I use when I teach.

At least he didn’t say I reminded him of a missionary. That’s a whole other can of worms.

How to Evaluate Teaching? Tale of Two Classes

This semester has been a study in contrasts for me. I have two of the same class on different days, and the two classes couldn’t be more different.

The class that is on one set of days has “lost” about one third the students. On any given day, only about 14 students are present of a class listed at 23. The class itself takes place at mid-day, so one would imagine that it is neither too early or too late in the day to reasonably justify many of the students not showing up. But the students who are left are a pleasure to teach; they participate thoughtfully in class discussions, always have their work done, and, if they don’t, generally don’t make excuses. They are engaged with the readings and invest real time and effort in the essay writing process. Their grades are generally good, and even those whose grades aren’t stellar are making a real effort.

My other class is first thing in the morning. I don’t think one student has dropped it, and they all show up consistently and persistently. But the class is painful. While they all show up, more than half the class doesn’t seem to have done the homework. No one wants to offer any sort of meaningful contribution to class discussions. They visibly resent any work they are assigned. And the list of excuses I get from them is bordering on infuriating (this is the class that inspired my post on ethos and emails). And while they all dutifully go through the motions on the writing process, they rarely ever actually change anything in their papers. And it shows in their work. Grading their papers is an exercise in endurance.

The content in the classes is exactly the same; same readings, same assignments, and ostensively I’m giving the same lectures. But of course, the dynamic in each class is completely different. But it leads me to wonder how we can effectively evaluate teaching (or, to use current rhetoric, ensure accountability)? I don’t know how this different dynamic will translate in my students evaluations at the end of the semester. I’m also not sure that if the results of a peer evaluation would be the same if they came to one class over the other. On the one hand, I have a dynamic class with lots of absences, versus a less dynamic class with stellar attendance. Does my apparent failure to engage my early morning class reflect a teaching deficiency on my part anymore than my success in the later class represent an inherent gift or talent? Nor will the final class average really reflect communicate anything meaningful; thinking about it, the two class averages will probably turn out to be identical, with one class of failures because of no-shows balancing out some very good students, while the other class will just generally be lower.

We, as teachers, cannot control what kinds of students we get in our classes. If they drop or not is not always a reflection of the job the teacher is doing. Nor is their willingness to take the work seriously or their ability to do it well. I am not afforded the flexibility to simply throw out the syllabus because it is not working in one of my classes. I can’t control what time of day I teach (students HATE morning classes). I can teach the same course in two different classes and get two completely different results. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t evaluate and give periodic feedback on professors’ performance in the classroom; I’m saying we need to take the long view and remember, so much of this is out of our control.

Writing Advice: Take Your Time

Seems like I’m back to writing about teaching and my students after a bit of a break to talk about higher education more generally. Today, I handed back an essay assignment to my first-year composition students. Being that this is second semester, most of the students taking my class either failed their first try or did developmental writing during the fall semester. Needless to say, anything we write in the class is a huge challenge for both the students and myself.

I blindsided them in a way by demanding that they have a meaningful thesis for their recent compare and contrast essay. I struggled with how to help them figure out what meaningful things they could say in their essay without simply telling them, your essay could be about x, y, or z. I wanted them to work through it on their own. Each student had their own unique ideas, as well as their own unique set of challenges. How, then, do I maximize my effectiveness?

It turned out that the only way I could do it was to work with them one-on-one. I read and gave detailed feedback to a draft and set aside class time for conferences. A large part of what I ended up having to do was cheerleading, reassuring that yes, they did have a good thesis, examples, and organization. Yes, I had to talk out some of their thesis or suggest better examples, but for the most part my students had good ideas that they just didn’t believe were good. But, to me, it felt like pulling teeth, getting this essay out of my students.

When the long (we worked on this essay for almost a month) process was finally completed and the students handed in their essays, I was thrilled with the results. Each student had, indeed, found their thesis and crafted an essay that tied their sometimes disparate examples together. The class, or at least the part of the class that actively participated in the process, did very well. And I told them as much. But I also pointed out the one important factor in their success: time. They took the time to work on their essays. The time and effort paid off, but they needed to understand that if they wanted to continue being successful in their essay writing, they needed to give themselves the time.

Learn what is the most difficult part of the writing process and start early enough to get that part done without panicking or rushing. Look at your schedule for the semester, and rather than blocking out the weekend before the essay is due, block off the one two weeks before it is due. Even if you’re not actively writing, at least plan to start thinking/reading/free writing/outlining on the topic. Take the time to sit down and run your ideas by the professor at least a week before the essay is due (it’ll look good for your ethos, too). Allow yourself an opportunity to try, fail, and then try again. Make sure you can read through the essay at least once, carefully, before handing it in.

All of this takes time. I tell my students that one thing that I do is give them the gift of time in my class to allow for them to see that if they take the time, they’ll get results. I’m hoping that if they can see the impact extra time has on their final work and final grade, they’ll really take the lesson to heart. I’m not optimistic, I’m sorry to say, but at least I tried. And I can also sleep well at night knowing that, for at least one essay, we did it and we did it well.

Student Ethos and Email Etiquette

I’ve been silent this past week, in part because I got sick, fell behind, prepared the house for weekend guests, planned my soon-to-be four-year old’s birthday party, partly because while I had a whole list of planned posts, I couldn’t concentrate on writing them. No, I was distracted by trying to come up with a way to write the following posts without impacting my own ethos as a writer and a teacher in higher education.

I received a number of emails from my students all at the same time that really, really got under my skin. Now, I am (still) a regular visitor to College Misery, and I talk to my colleagues, so I know that my students are not an anomaly and professors all over the country are dealing with emails from students that are…frustrating in any number of ways. What really bothered me was that we have just spent an entire semester talking about ethos in writing – how a writer is perceived and how students want to be perceived as writers, students, professionals. We are even doing a blog assignment so they can really start to think about how they are seen by people other than their professor.

But nonetheless, I think it’s important that students realize how their emails impact their ethos with their professors. This, of course, should be expanded to face-to-face meetings and any assignment, written or otherwise, handed in to their professor. And I tell them this. I had hoped that the lessons about ethos, even though not explicitly taught, had been applied by my students to other facets of their communications with me. Namely, their emails.

But I guess not. This troubles me not because their emails communicated to me that my class was indeed not a priority, but because they haven’t applied what they have learned beyond the classroom setting, beyond what they were “told.” And again, I can imagine an undergraduate reading this and complaining, I didn’t mean it that way. And I get that how a student understands the ethos they are (trying) to present versus what a professor may actually read and receive.

For example (and this is an example based on an email I received this week), a student emails explaining that he has an opportunity to go hunting but it would mean that he would miss two [out of three] of the classes this week. Would it be ok, and he promises he’d make up any work that he missed, especially if I let him know now, before he leaves.

Now, some additional context. They have a paper due next week, and the classes missed are peer review/writing workshop classes. This student is pretty good; not the best but also not the worst. I can imagine the student thinking that they were doing the right thing by a) letting me know they intended to miss class, b) not lying about why they were missing class, and c) showing initiative by proactively asking for the work to be missed.

For me, all I read is: your class, in fact, university, is not that important to me. And that may be true. But why, then, should I, someone with over 100 students all taking writing-intensive classes from me, make you a priority, or devote extra time to you? I also wonder about how serious a student he is when he claims he can keep up with the work while outdoors trying to shoot animals.

Critical thinking. We, as professors, want our students to develop the skill. Employers want employees with that skill. But my students can’t think critically about their own communications with their professor, the person, for better or for worse, who holds their future (through their grades) in their hands. It’s frustrating. I don’t care that the student doesn’t care about my class. I care that they don’t see what that might be a problem.

This email will become a unit on ethos, on digital communications, on email etiquette, and on why my students are even in college to begin with. I’m sure I’ve opened a can of worms by writing about it, but it’s been bothering me for a week, and I needed to get it off my chest.

What do you think? Why do students have such difficulty recognizing how their communications with their professors impacts their ethos?

What Ed Tech Can’t Do

In Fahrenheit 451, one of the characters describes what school is like in the near future:

But I don’t think it’s social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription or painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don’t; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of film teacher. That’s not social to me at all. It’s a lot of funnels and a lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and then telling us it’s wine when it’s not.

Now, read a Tweet from a teacher in LA:

f2f is going 2 end up being security aka paras 2 make sure kids dont get on facebook in jr college f2f will disappear.

If Sir Ken Robinson (and many others) are right that the way schools are set up now was to prepare workers for factories, what are we preparing our kids for now, increasingly relying on computers to teach them? How to follow orders from a machine?

This is, of course, a dystopic view of the future, fueled in part by the fact that I am currently teaching Fahrenheit 451. But, I can’t help but wonder, are we really helping our most vulnerable students when we increasingly rely on technology rather than more traditional face-to-face instruction. Where are the mentorships, the relationships, the systems of support, of learning how to “think with others“? Certainly, we need to prepare students for a world that is increasingly interconnected through technology, but when do we say, enough, and start valuing, really valuing, personal interactions, rather than seeing it as an unnecessary cost, a budget line that is easy to eliminate.

Apparently, technology and online education is the real disruptive influence in education, allowing us to offer degrees for less than $10k. Having written about this very issue for the University of Venus recently, I remain skeptical. In the comments, the author of the post on creating a degree that costs less than $10k addresses my concern about teachers needing to eat with a response of only wanting teachers who are truly passionate about teaching. Great. More about how teachers are supposed to sacrifice everything for the greater good of “education. ” I am all for a more entrepreneurial approach to education, but I think we are trying to think bigger, rather than the true disruption coming from going smaller. If anything, money is being spent in the wrong place, in infrastructure instead of people.

I’m starting to see the movement in education as analogous to industrial farming; we all embraced farming technologies because food got cheaper, safer, more plentiful, and easier to grow (ok, education hasn’t gotten any cheaper, but isn’t that the goal of increasingly using technology?). But we now see that it might be cheaper, but it isn’t any healthier (and in many cases less healthy), it is more devastating to the over-all environment, and only economically beneficial to a handful of massive multi-nationals. Is this really the kind of education we want to offer our children, particularly our poorest and most vulnerable? In poor neighborhoods, they’ll be fast food and private online edu.

The disruptive innovation in farming and food isn’t in technology; it’s in scaling down, finding balance, quality, and over-all sustainability. Organic farmers, growers, and animal ranchers, urban farmers, and others are changing the way we think about food. We might see disruption coming from similar sources in education. Take for example a movement in England where people have taken over abandoned buildings and turned them into schools; curious people, some smartphones, and voila, learning. No bells, no whistles, no nothing. That’s disruptive. Not providing standardized pre-packaged education online offered by underqualified individuals with little to no support. Government, school boards, and universities need to reinvest their money in the people who teach and create knowledge; the rest can clearly fall away and not impact education. In fact, it may facilitate it.

Next fall, I will be integrating a lot more technology in my classroom, in part because of forced standardization and accountability. But part of it is trying to make my class more effective. My job is to teach, but it is also to coach my students, particularly my developmental students. It’s to disrupt their worlds in order to encourage critical thinking or knowledge creation. A computer program might be able to award a student a “badge” (again, what is that preparing students for in their professional futures?), but a computer program can’t look a student in the eyes and tell them that they can do it, they can write, that they truly did a good job, ask them the right questions to get the heart of whatever problem they’re having, care enough to keep asking, or even express sincere disappointment when they let you down.

There’s a reason why the children of professors overwhelmingly go to small liberal arts colleges. There’s a reason why rich and middle-class parents fight to send their kids to good schools with small class sizes and good teachers, and will continue to do so, no matter how expensive it becomes. Technology is a tool, not a replacement, nor a silver bullet, especially for our most vulnerable students.

Maybe none of this matters. Maybe we are training our most vulnerable students to listen to machines rather than people. Workers of the future.

What is College For? Spring Break Vs Reading Week

In Canada, because spring comes around so much later, we call the week vacation that occurs during the semester that occurs during the first months of the calendar year Reading Week. I still call it that, out of habit. My students here, they have no idea what I’m talking about. Spring Break, I say, it’s what we Canadians calls Spring Break; it’s just cruel to say spring when there’s still three feet of snow on the ground. But, I also think that it’s a reflection of a different attitude Canadians hold towards higher education.

I asked one of my developmental writing students what he was planning on doing for Spring Break. He’s off to Florida to party. This particular student has missed a great deal of my class because he had strep throat (yes, he had a doctor’s note). This student is also repeating the class because last semester he partied too much. If anything, I was hoping that the student would take this week off to rest, recover, and catch up in his classes. But no. I probably won’t be seeing him for an entire week after Spring Break because he’s recovering from alcohol poisoning, lack of sleep, proper nutrition, or any combination of the three.

I know that this student is not an exception. Many of my students, in fact many of my students who are the most vulnerable in terms of their grades, will be spending the week off unwinding in unhealthy ways on “SPRING BREAK!!! (copyright MTV).” I understand that students (and their instructors/professors) need a break. What I don’t understand is how students can justify the time and cost of 5-9 days in Florida/Mexico/wherever. My students constantly complain that they have too much work, no money for food or for printing their papers. And yet, March rolls around and suddenly, there’s money to be had and time to be spent.

(And no, I never did Spring Break. The one year my friends went to Florida, I was stuck on a work term. My other trip to Florida in college was for a training camp, which was subsidized by the school; we swam or worked out 4-5 (or more) hours a day. If we had been out drinking, it wouldn’t have been pretty the next morning at practice.)

This attitude is not limited to Spring Break; many of my students consistently show up hung over (or still drunk) on Friday mornings, but complain that I am asking too much of them to buy a 45 cent folder for their essays. Students, studies keep telling us, are studying less and less, but seem to be partying just as much as they ever have. College now is about the experience, and the experience is everything and anything except what happens in the classroom. Which is fine, but I tell my students that there are way better ways to spend the tens of thousands of dollars they are currently spending on their college “experience.”

There was an essay recently that extols the virtues of learning through hanging out. But when I ask my students what they do when they hang out, they admit that it often involves getting pass-out drunk or stoned out of their mind. What, then, are they learning by “hanging out” that they couldn’t learn while not also paying college tuition? Drinking, drugs, and sex are acceptable behavior in college; kids of the same age who are engaging in this kind of behavior and are not also college students are considered deadbeats. What’s the difference? Tuition, and a couple hours of courses a week that the student may or may not attend. For some students (and I include myself in this), they can get away with this and still come away with their degrees (and futures) in tact. But for the majority of my students, they can’t get away with it; they don’t graduate, can’t get a job, and are left in debt.

Personally, I wish I had been encouraged to save my money, work, and get the parties out of my system so that I may have actually benefited from my education. It’s what my husband did, and it benefitted him immensely.

In fact, the university encourages this kind of laissez-faire attitude towards the educational purpose of college by consistently investing money in the “experience” side rather than in the classroom (for example, building stadiums and then increasing class sizes, hiring adjuncts instead of tenure-track professors). Why should students take me seriously when the university doesn’t, either? So, enjoy Spring Break. Just don’t expect me to cut you any slack when you’ve forgotten everything you’ve learned; I spent my break reading.

Teaching: Do I Make A Difference? Is it Enough for Me?

I’ve started reading College Misery. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing. Every day, anonymous professors, adjuncts and instructors contribute posts that essentially vent about the worst parts of their jobs. Unsurprisingly, the worst part of their jobs, on many days, are the students. And as I read through the posts, I am struck by how familiar, how real, the situations they describe feel to me. I have taught theses students and classes full of these students before. Like an unending flood, the students keep coming with the same deficiencies when it comes to both their skill level and attitude towards education.

Inevitably, I think, every teacher asks themselves, do I really make any difference? As I went through and graded my students’ first major paper assignment, I wondered if my teaching really had anything to do with the quality of the papers, or if the good students would have earned an A whether they had attended my classes or not. And the poor essays, did my teaching and guidance make any difference at all for them? Am I making any impact on my students’ learning, or am I simply assigning and evaluating, awarding grades and credits?

This is not a trivial issue. We are talking about the purpose and nature of education in two of my classes. Am I simply reinforcing what Paulo Freire calls “the banking concept of education“? Actually, I’m not even sure I’m depositing any knowledge (or even information) into my students; as one comment on my post about fear of failing as being the only motivation for students suggested, am I just simply creating a “compliant class”? But I wonder how useful Freire’s solution of involving true dialog is even feasible in classroom full of students who have no interest in communicating? I want to disrupt their normal learning pattern and expectations, but I have no idea if my students are even interested in coming along for the ride. Are they just complying to my request to be disruptive in order to give me what I want?

Around and around it goes in my head. I don’t know why the same material that I taught last semester is producing such different results in me; last semester, I was invigorated, while this semester, I am despondent. What is the point of all this? Why not do what the university implicitly and explicitly tells us to do, which is to lower expectations, lower standards, keep the kids happy, enrolled, and (eventually) graduated. But then I read about other professors who are as engaged and passionate about “activating the classroom” and disrupting our assumptions as to how and where learning should take place (and why). We’re out there, teaching and writing about our experiences. And then I remember, I’m probably not nearly as brave (in terms of the risks I am willing to take in my classroom) as these professors, and given my position as a contingent faculty member, I can’t afford to be, either.

And then, something happens. I walked into my developmental writing class, and a student nervously tried to get my attention with a tentative, “They published my essay.” Which essay? Who? Turns out, he submitted his narrative essay on an event in his life that shaped his attitude towards education to his local hometown paper and they published it. He was embarrassed because he was so proud of his accomplishment. I almost burst into tears in front of the class I was so proud of him. Imagine, a student goes from hating writing to being a published author, in no small part because of the work we’ve done in my class. I made a difference.

Any another post about teaching would probably end right here. But mine does not. I’ve written before about how teachers/instructors/professors are often coerced into accepting less pay because of the “psychic wage” (via Marc Bousquet‘s writing). And I am drawn to what Worst Prof Ever has to say about teacher burn-out and seeing teaching as a “vocation” (especially the part of about divine calling; sounds a lot like what Freire was talking about, especially when you consider the original educators in the colonies were religious types). Has my own business stalled because I am too burned out from my own teaching? Have I crossed over from loyalty to desperation, or at least into the realm where my devotion to my students outweighs common sense?

To conclude, the answer to the first question, do I make a difference? Yes, I know I do make a difference for my students. Is it enough for me? I don’t know anymore.

What Is A Thesis Statement? Or, Using Literature in a Writing Class

In my Freshman Writing class, we have just finished reading Fahrenheit 451. The students are writing an essay comparing America in the novel to our present-day society. They discussed the similarities they observed in small groups, then we came together to share our observations as a class. They then had to go and find a variety of sources (one book, two peer-reviewed articles, two others of any kind) that illustrated or backed up their claims about our society. After that, they had to choose quotes from the book and match them with quotes from the sources.

At this point, 90% of their essay has been written. This is probably the easiest essay they’ve ever written. Except for one little thing: I asked them to tell me why this comparison matters. So what? What do we learn by doing this comparison? Their thesis isn’t just: This essay will compare and contrast Fahrenheit 451 with our current society. Their thesis should be: This essay will compare and contrast Fahrenheit 451 in order to…

From the looks on their faces, I’ve clearly rocked their world. We had a long discussion on what the similarities could mean and why it is important that they mean something. I used my recent brush with wordlessness as an example: I had many of the same symptoms as a stroke, but I wasn’t having a stroke. Their are important distinctions to be made when making a comparison and just because something looks the same, doesn’t mean it is. At the same time, if there are lessons that Bradbury wants to teach us using his fictional world, can we apply them to better understand our own situation?

A compare and contrast essay without a clear purpose is just two lists. Any essay that doesn’t have a clear purpose is just a long series of words. If a students is able to answer the questions, why am I writing this or what am I trying to say, then they will not have any problems writing any assignment. And the answer has to be something more meaningful than, because I have to. The answer to the question is your thesis; as long as everything you write is in service of your purpose, then everything you write will have meaning.

One of the most common issues I had with my first batch of essay is that they were writing to fill pages, not fulfill the purpose of the paper (rhetorical analysis); most of their observations were good, but the students didn’t tie their observations back into the central thesis. For how many of our students is that ultimately one of the biggest issues, staying on topic or realizing they have a clear focus from which to write from? Or that they need to organize their essays in order to best serve their central purpose?

But, ultimately, this is an exercise in critical thinking. They have to come up with their own purpose, their own thesis, or at least try. Some already have made connections and shaped a thesis. Other have an idea but are having trouble putting it into words. And I know that in two weeks, when the final draft of the essay is due, I’ll have some who still won’t have a thesis. At that point, I’ll give them some suggestions. But I want my students to do the hard work of coming up with one little sentence on their own.

This is why I still like using literature (or even pop culture) in my writing classes. When we engage with ideas in different ways, we can “force” students to think about our world in a new and challenging way. It is only when a students’ pre-conceived notions are disrupted can they begin to form their own ideas, their own thesis statements. It’s important not just to give them materials that are engaging, but to provoke different ways of engaging with it.

Why Physical Activity is Important for Learning

I spent the weekend doing yard work. In fact, I was disappointed that it was raining last weekend because I wouldn’t be able to use the brand-new rake I had just purchased. Over the past two morning, I raked up all of the leaves, dead twigs (oh, the dead twigs!), and pine needles as I could. I am clearly new at this, as I didn’t think to check to see if we had any large garbage bags to put them in. Once our two garbage cans were full, I then spent the rest of the time re-organizing the piles so that the grass underneath them wouldn’t die, leaving brown patches all over our lawn. I tried watering our lawn using the kids’ fun sprinkler, with strange results.

I have never been one for house work, yard work, do-it-yourself projects, or anything domestic, stereotypically male or female oriented. I was a bit of a space-cadet, as it was referred to, and I would much rather spend my childhood afternoons reading, making up elaborate fantasies, or coloring. As I got older, it became a function of swimming 30+ hours a week on top of school; when the weekend rolled around, I just wanted to sleep and do nothing, or maybe hang out with my friends who I never really got to see during the week. Most of my family on the other hand…

Just to give you an idea, our family (specifically, my grandfather and his brothers) owned a cottage up at a lake, and we would often spend our weekends there in the summer. My idea of a great weekend at The Lake (as we called it) involved reading the six or seven books I had brought along with me, mixed in with some quick dips in the lake. My grandfather, mother, and brother, on the other hand, worked the entire weekend. Granddad always had some sort of project that needed to be completed around the cabin (which, to his credit, he had built himself with his brothers’ help). It drove him absolutely mad that I would just sit there and read. They tried to force me to help, but would quickly dismiss me when my gross incompetence became obvious.

But there have always been a few things around the house that I didn’t mind doing: cleaning the bathroom, painting, and scraping ice from the driveway. For one, I was able to do the jobs alone and at my own pace. One of the things that I always hated was my mother or someone else hovering over me in order to either rush me or tell me how I could be doing it better. It was also a rather tedious activity that involved some physical exertion. There was a clear goal, and I could just tell everyone to go away, leave me alone, and it will get done. That often stood in stark contrast to the rest of my life, where interference, distraction, and a feeling of not accomplishing anything dominated. It was comforting and satisfying, both physically and mentally, to get the task done; a task that I completed with my own two hands.

All of this to say that it’s really weird that I enjoyed doing the yard work today (and by extension, enjoyed hiking last Friday). But I think it’s just my body’s way of trying to balance out everything that’s going on in my mind. It used to be swimming that helped me maintain some sort of balance, but now I am left with little time to make it to the pool. It may also be because we now own our home, and I want to take pride in this little piece of land that is ours (it’s a double-lot). Say what you will about class issues, but I grew up in the suburbs with a mom would loved to garden, and while I might now have a green thumb, I am not going to be that neighbor with the shitty lawn.

My New Year’s resolution this year was “stability.” Part of that is trying to achieve some sort of balance for myself so that mentally, I remain stable, too. I’ve been working out more, with friends, to take care of my body, as well as my mind. The Huffington Post recently had a piece begging legislatures and school boards to protect sports from budget cuts. I would have to agree. If one of the things we hope to teach our children is resiliency, then teaching them how physical and mental health go together is important. But it doesn’t have to be just about sports; one lesson that my grandfather left for me to learn on my own is that there is a great feeling of pride and accomplishment when you’ve put your own sweat into a project. And that it can ultimately be relaxing.

It’s a lesson that I am continually learning and one I want to model for my kids, even if they don’t hear it until much, much later.