What Now?

Other voices, other rooms, part 2

Last month I copied the idea and title for this series on teacher observations from Mean Something, who has her own such series going. My goal this year is to observe colleagues in the classroom as I keep figuring out exactly what it means to be a high school teacher. My first observation for the year was a colleague, Mrs. Q, who's teaching the same 9th-grade class I am, and this past week I observed the other teacher, Mr. Z, who's doing the same class, so now I've seen all of us in action.

Mrs. Q and I are very similar in our self-presentation (i.e., we're loud and move around a lot), so I was interested to see the contrast with Mr. Z, who is an incredibly funny guy who is really low-affect; he's all about the hilarious quip muttered under his breath with a straight face. And indeed he is pretty low-affect with the students, sitting quietly in his seat as they sit quietly in theirs, although he hams things up a little more for their benefit. The quietness of his class may mean that really shy students are more likely to speak up, and he does call on students in a really nurturing way -- that is, he puts them on the spot, but with such gentleness that they come out of their shell a little -- although by the end of his class I was going a little crazy about how quiet everything was. I couldn't hear a word that some of the students were saying as they whispered their tiny little comments to the class, and their fellow students couldn't hear them either. So everyone did speak in class, which is great, but I didn't think that they were listening to each other. Certainly my students don't all listen to each other either, but they do often build on one another's comments, and that wasn't happening in this one class that I observed. (Obviously a small sample size, so I take my own conclusions with a grain of salt.) And students clearly have a good relationship with him, which isn't surprising, and they continue to talk fondly of him years later.

He's also a really good, really careful reader of texts, which I admire, and so I love to talk with him about the texts we're teaching, but my own judgment is that this carefulness slows him down a little too much in the classroom. Over the years, I have reconciled myself to the compromise that one must sometimes paint with a broad brush and leave some things untouched in order to move through a text, and my sense is that Mr. Z is still fighting against the need for that compromise. Now, I should say that I had mostly come to this judgment about Mr. Z's class before I observed him, based solely on what I'd heard from him and others about his class. In particular, I will admit that I am dismayed by his decision each spring to teach only the first half of Wuthering Heights to the 9th-graders so that they can go really carefully through the first half, and then he asks them to finish it over the summer; and really, how many of the students do we think do this? He simply can't bear to leave interesting details in the first half unmentioned, but of course the result of that decision is that the vast majority of the students don't know anything at all about the second half; I would far rather students have read the entire novel and think a little less deeply about it, which is what Mrs. Q does and what I will do this spring.

After all, people have been reading Wuthering Heights for fun ever since it was written, outside of English classes and without benefit of an English teacher pointing out every single important detail; our 9th-graders are not likely to pick up the novel entirely on their own, but I want them to enjoy the experience of reading it much as they would if they did pick it up on their own. My own pedagogy for novels and plays -- one that I have been criticized for by some of my colleagues, but I'm sticking with it -- is to prioritize the narrative sweep and characterization, because I think that these are the things that have kept people reading novels and watching plays over the centuries. We certainly talk about things like symbols and explication and all the rest, but I want us to move fast enough so that we stay excited about the story itself. So I'd rather have students read The Tempest quickly enough so that they stay interested in what's going to happen, and then we can slow down and talk about it for another week so that we make sure we've dealt with several major themes and important scenes. And I am perfectly happy with the fact that there will be several other important things that we never did get around to talking about; after all, the project is not to have exhausted the text but rather to have read and enjoyed it and sharpened analytical skills along the way. I probably have that theory in part because I've taught college and am used to having only two or three days on a particular text, so I feel like we're covering oodles of things now that I'm in high school and spending two or three weeks of four classes a week on a text. My colleagues, on the other hand, many of whom used to teach classes that met five times a week, bewail how little time they have on each text.

I have such vivid memories of dreadful English high school classes in which we slogged our way through texts so damned slowly that we lost all sense of story and didn't even care anymore about what happened to Pip anyway. (Great Expectations was ruined for me in 9th grade, when we spent 10 weeks getting through it.) And I never, ever want to be one of those high school teachers who ruin books for their students. Admittedly, I was the kind of high school English student who would one day go on to get a Ph.D. in English, so I maybe wasn't normal, but I think that I can make these texts fun enough so that most of the students are having a good time with them, and I can still expect high-level thinking and analysis in student papers. I'm clearly a little defensive about this, mostly because my fellow junior English teachers are all of the stripe who think that it's important to go very, very slowly, and there's been some tension among us about how quickly I move. Last year I fretted a lot about this difference, and this year I've taken the strategy of just not talking to my colleagues at all about what we were working on, a plan I was able to maintain until we started talking about our trimester exams, when one colleague got snippy with me. But, as I try to remember, they are probably also feeling defensive about their own pedagogies, and indeed I am silentely criticizing them, so maybe it makes sense that we're all a little prickly. So my goal for the winter is to start observing my colleagues for the junior class so that I can appreciate better the good things they're doing. And then in spring I'm going to venture outside of the department and observe folks in other fields.

Okay, I ventured far from my observation of Mr. Z in this blog post, but after all, the whole point for me to observe colleagues is to keep figuring out what is and isn't working in my own pedagogy.

Divided by a common language

I temporarily freaked out my freshmen today by talking about "the larger project of studying vocabulary." I meant, of course, that we study vocabulary so that we can actually learn new words, enjoy language, and communicate more adeptly. They thought I was talking about a big graded assignment that they hadn't yet heard of. They kept asking "what is the larger project?" and I kept answering "the larger project is to learn," and they asked "But when is that due?"

Once we figured out our cross-purposes, it was pretty funny, but for a moment there, we were all quite upset, they because they couldn't figure out what additional work I was asking them to do, I because I thought they were resisting the very notion that the point of education is actually to learn something.

I told this story at today's department meeting, and my chair pointed out that my use of "project" had been a fairly academic use, whereas students tend to think of "project" as a poster or something, anything graded other than a paper or test.

Such linguistic mishaps aside, all continues well on the teaching front. I was incredibly impressed with my freshmen's maturity today in our discussion of Holden Caulfield's obsession with "flits" in The Catcher in the Rye. And my juniors were full of lively rage at the end of The Scarlet Letter (as they always are when I teach this); they uniformly think that Dimmesdale and Hester should run away together and let their eternal souls take care of themselves. Partly this is because the students are young and romantic and think that no one should ever let anything stand in the way of true love; several students today plotted ways in which Dimmesdale could kill Chillingworth, dump his body in the forest, and then he and Hester could run away to Canada together, and when I pointed out that murder was a pretty big sin, one that Dimmesdale would surely go to hell for, they found this a petty obstacle. Mostly, I'm realizing, their objections are because most of them (even the religious ones) don't believe in any theologically consistent way in the immortality of the soul, so for them Dimmesdale is trading a sure thing (being with Hester now) for a gamble (the possibility of immortal salvation), which they see as a pretty risky bet. Anyway, it's oodles of fun to talk about a book that the students are that engaged in, and I play it pretty over the top, pantomiming Dimmesdale's ripping open his shirt to reveal his chest. It's all very risque and exciting.

And now, grading awaits me tonight. If I could just stop thinking about their papers in the aggregate and instead think of each one as an individual conversation, this would go much more smoothly. That is unlikely to happen, however, so instead I'm going to pour myself a glass of wine and get cracking.

Miscellany for a gorgeous Sunday

• After a cloudy and rainy few days, today was bee-yoo-ti-ful. D. and I only last week "discovered" a local park, and today we took advantage of the day's gorgeousness to go for an hour's walk there. "Park" is really too puny a word to describe this beautiful green place, which comes with two peaks (one offering lovely views of the city), many trails, three small ponds, a variety of trees, and dogs galore, all of whom are supposed to be on-leash and almost none of whom actually are. A lovely way to start a Sunday.

• Indeed, the walk was a much better way to start a Sunday than church would have been. I have a couple of posts brewing about church stuff these days, which I'll post soon.

• After that lovely beginning, I had to go to work. FGS is a boarding school (although actually fewer than half of the students live on campus), and so the faculty each have five or six weekends when we're on duty. Being on duty is actually not a big deal: Friday night I was the adult presence at the gym, so I graded and read and surfed the 'net and generally just hung out while small groups of girls came to work out, play volleyball, or watch TV in the lounge. Today I drove the shuttle van that takes boarders to the local mall and other stores; my duties today meant that I got to get errands done at Target, PetSmart, and Starbucks (where I graded a set of quizzes) all while on duty, so that's none too shabby.

• Last night I went to the FGS fall play, which was fun enough if very much a high school play. I've taught half of the actors, and it was impressive to see something they've devoted so many hours to outside of all of their other obligations. The play did, however, convince me that Jane Austen without the dry, witty narration is simply broad comedy.

• At the play, I sat next to a colleague who had never read or seen any Jane Austen at all. I actually hadn't realized that was even possible in this age of Austen saturation.

• This same colleague is someone I have a friend crush on. He's new to FGS this year, and I was immediately drawn to him -- as, I should say, are most of the faculty as far as I can tell -- because he's just such a great guy: funny, warm, smart, and a Joss Whedon fan to boot. What's not to love? Plus he's just come to high school teaching from college teaching, and it's been interesting to see his adjustment to this new world, especially when my own such adjustment is so recent (and, indeed, ongoing). Thus far our friendship has been limited to hanging out at school, but I really want to become better friends with him, so last night at the play I suggested that we get together sometime outside of school. It totally felt like asking someone out on a date; I was all nervous and fluttery and inarticulate. (He said "yes," but not until after Thanksgiving because he's going to a conference.)

• I have grading to do tonight, but all I really want to do is finish reading Stephenie Meyer's Twilight. I started reading it strictly to keep my finger on the pulse of young people's culture, and now I want to finish it strictly on my own account. Not great literature at all, mind you, but curiously compelling, and I'm already committed to reading the whole series. My hunch is that the series will go downhill, but the novels are quick reads, and this is a great way to connect to my students, most of whom are convinced that these are the best books EVER and who are very excited that I'm reading it. Plus the movie is coming out. (Mean Something, have you started it yet? I know you put the book on your list for the same reason I did.)

• Perhaps because I was on duty this weekend, I'm not really in the mood to go to school tomorrow, but it's nice to realize that "not really in the mood" is about as bad as my mood gets about school most of the time, and even then I'm looking forward to the discussion I'm scheduled to have with my students tomorrow. Today is a day when I'm feeling so very, very lucky to have my job.

Okay, that's pretty much the whole weekend right there. Boring but good. And now I should get to work ... except that I have Twilight sitting on the arm of the chair next to me, and is there really any point in kidding myself about what I'm going to do next?

Really? Seriously?

Tonight when I checked my email, there was a message from a guy I kind of knew in college, a friend of my roommate's. He's a guy I slept with my senior year, once because I wanted to and then a second time because he guilted me into it and I didn't have a clear sense of my own voice and my right to say "No" since I'd already slept with him once. He came along during my brief episode of deciding I needed to broaden my sexual horizons; it was a short-lived moment in my life, and I was just as glad when it passed [ETA: and in fact, the exploration largely consisted of reading about bisexuality; sleeping with this guy was the extent of doing anything other than reading and talking!], but in the meantime there was this guy whom I then had to kind of avoid for the last few months of college.

I haven't spoken to this guy in 19 1/2 years. And now, now, he wants to check in and catch up? Really? Seriously?

Man, sometimes the internet kind of sucks.

I should say that it was a perfectly pleasant email, but I'm still slightly creeped out. I've never been one to stay friends with ex-lovers, and I've been perfectly happy not to speak to this guy for two decades. I just can't figure out why he's interested in catching up with me. D. says that I should just ignore his email, but that seems sort of rude, and certainly he hasn't done anything to deserve my rudeness; on the other hand, I hardly want to start up an ongoing conversation, and maybe it's sort of creepy that he even contacted me.

Very odd, all the way around. Or maybe this sort of thing happens all the time in this internet age and it's just that there aren't all that many folks out there that I've slept with?

Oh, and he'd found a picture of me online, and said that I look very nice although no longer 21 and passed on his compliments. Weird. Plus he was really oversharing, telling me about his first wife's mental illness, etc. It's just so strange, because it's not like we were even friends 20 years ago.

Most peculiar.

Working to believe

I was stunned last night. I hadn't let myself think about the possibility of Obama's actually winning; I'd gotten quite superstitious about it and kept running around knocking on wood all the time. But it happened; it really happened. I wonder when I'll actually be able to believe it?

My home state was one of the ones to watch yesterday, and I was incredibly moved to watch election results roll in. The last high school in my area didn't desegregate until 1971, a couple of years before I started school; 37 years later, folks got to vote for the first African American president. I can't believe I've seen this in my lifetime.

I stayed up late to watch the speeches, and I have to confess that I did so largely because I was so anxious about the possibility of violence. I couldn't sleep until I saw Obama give his speech and then leave the stage; only when I thought that he was safe for the night could I relax.

I'm really glad I stayed up to watch; both McCain's and Obama's speeches were important and powerful in different ways, and I finally started to believe that it had actually happened.

This morning, driving into work after 5 hours of sleep, I started crying as I heard the speeches again on the radio. I'm so moved, so inspired.

This joy is tempered, of course, by California news on Prop 8. Fighting against prejudice is a long, hard battle, with triumphs along the way but ultimate victory still out of reach.

Pins and needles

D and I were in line at the public library at 10 minutes until 7 this morning so that I could vote before work. The line wasn't bad, but folks were taking photos of it anyway -- maybe to document their participation in a historic moment? There was quite the little frisson when the doors opened, and an excited murmur ran up and down the line. We got through in fairly good time, although D. paused to inform the polling officials about a few violations: electoral signs posted on the library property; two guys handing out flyers right outside of the library door; and a poll worker who inadvertently had his newspaper opened to a prominent ad against one of the ballot measures.

I was so nervous that I'd make an error that I kept checking my ballot over and over again until I turned it in.

The big disappointment? No "I voted" stickers at our polling place, dadgumit. I love those darned stickers!

I was fine during the school day -- lots to do, plenty to keep me busy -- but now that I'm at home, with unlimited access to TV and internet, I'm moving into a paralysis of anxiety. I've been home for 2 1/2 hours and gotten nothing done, and I'm afraid that this is what the rest of the evening looks like. My thought had been to get grading done while I waited for results, but that hasn't happened yet.

The eastern polls close in 15 minutes; maybe I'll calm down a little then?

Quilting

October truly was Exploding Head Month for me this year (which is the way I've been misquoting Ms. Mentor's phrase all these years; turns out she actually said October was the month of Exploding Head Syndrome).

If I'm ever again tempted to go on a school accreditation visit, followed immediately by Parents' Weekend, which in turn overlaps with a big home improvement project, all of this coinciding with college recommendation season, please do tell me to think again, won't you? All of these were fine things in and of themselves, but their congruence in a two-week period was a bit much. I slept almost 10 hours last night and am hoping to do the same again tonight.

And somehow this was the month when I decided that the thing to do was to develop a new hobby. On the one hand, this was a crazy idea. On the other hand, when do I more need a hobby, something that clearly is Not Work, than when faced with work, work, and more work?

So I've been taking an introductory quilting class on Thursday nights, at a quilt store just a few minutes from FGS. And I'm having fun, even if each week I think, "I can't possibly go to class; I simply haven't a moment to spare." And yet I've gotten myself there all three weeks so far and am quite sure I'll be back for the remaining three. Okay, admittedly I cried a little on the way to class on Thursday because I was just so stressed out, but I was still ultimately glad I'd gone.

The nice thing is that, on the first day of class as we were all introducing ourselves, most of the students said things along the lines of "I'm terrified of sewing" or "In theory I know how to use a sewing machine, but I haven't touched one in years" or the like; these are my people! Well, there's also the one older woman who's been making couture clothes for herself for years and is taking this class just to learn the tricks of the quilting trade; but she is clearly the odd one out and is a very nice person to boot. We're making a small quilt, the sort one would use as a baby blanket or a wall hanging. I signed up for the class the day before it started, which meant that I wound up choosing my fabric in literally 20 minutes, so I'm not entirely in love with how the quilt is shaping up in terms of the material I chose (way too brown), but heck, it's my learning quilt. Someday I'll make a big and beautiful quilt because I will have learned on this little, overly brown one.

We're at a tricky stage in our quilts now, the point at which we're matching up our various pieced squares and it's becoming painfully clear to us all just how uneven our cutting and seam allowances have been because the damned squares just won't match up! So this past Thursday was a very frustrating class for several of us ... and of course that was the day I'd cried on my way to class, so I was already on edge from the beginning. The teacher keeps pointing out to us that these are our very first quilts ever and that there is a learning curve, but we're all a little stressed because things aren't perfect. And then near the end of class I realized that something had gone awry in my stitching, and I got so upset about it that I was blinking back tears, and so I started to pack up because I had decided I just couldn't stay through the end of class. (Years ago I made a rule for myself re: cross-stitching that when I got to the point of tears, I would pack up for the day, because for heaven's sake, it's a hobby and not something to let myself get that upset over.) The teacher was making her rounds to check in on everyone, and I showed her the "dreadful, dreadful mistake" I'd made and asked her if, as I supposed, the thing to do was to rip everything out and start all over. It's possible I sounded a touch melodramatic and hysterical. She said, "Oh, that reminds me" and called the entire class to order:

"I forgot to tell you all something," she said. "When you make a mistake in quilting, ...

... no one dies."

We all laughed, and then she showed me that my "dreadful, dreadful mistake" could be easily corrected in less than 5 minutes with minimal effort.

I really like this teacher, needless to say. And it's a good thing for me to take bits of fabric and turn them into something with a discernible pattern; it's somehow magical and quite rewarding, even if the damned blocks won't match up perfectly.

And I do think that, despite the hectic pace of the last month, it is a good thing to be interested in a project that uses a completely different part of my brain and for which the stakes are just so very low.

When the time comes, rest assured that a picture of the finished quilt will be forthcoming.

A healing experience

Remember the tooth drama from last spring? The one that wound up involving oodles of money, lots of time and pain, and the loss of my sense that my good teeth make me a good person? The one that gave me a panic attack and heart palpitations?

Well, I had a routine semi-annual tooth cleaning this afternoon, and it was delightfully, wonderfully routine. Some cleaning, some polishing, some flossing, some inspecting, and I was back out the door without any drama at all. Just like the old days.

The nice thing is that I hadn't realized until today, talking to the dentist, that the tooth-in-question actually feels normal now. If he'd asked me a month ago how the tooth was doing, I would have told him that I think it's a goner and has to be pulled. But somehow in just the last couple of weeks, the nerves have finally settled down such that I no longer notice the tooth when I'm chewing. Looks like the whole operation was ultimately successful.

The hygienist today is new (and I like her much better than the former one), and the dentist and I were quite funny as we related to our dramas of the spring, how much despair and frustration and pain and tears -- on everyone's part! -- we had experienced together.

I do actually have a small cavity, one that they discovered last time but that was the least of our worries, so I need to make an appointment to get it filled. So the days of my perfect teeth are gone forever, but at least I'm no longer freaked out about the dentist.

Jackhammers!

I don't know why it didn't occur to me that the guys working in the basement would be using jackhammers to dig into the perimeter of the basement floor. It should have been obvious to me, and yet I just didn't expect it.

I am, of course, grateful that I don't have a job involving jackhammers on a daily basis like these guys do. But the thought of grading to this accompaniment is kind of daunting.

Plus, this project has already involved yet another half-hour of physical labor in addition to the almost two hours I did last night, piling everything in the basement away from the walls. Apparently in one area of the room I hadn't gotten everything far enough away from the walls, so I had to wrestle more heavy things into the center of the room while they got started jackhammering away in the other part of the room. They did give me ear plugs, though.

And I now have a call into the plumber in hopes that he can get out here today or tomorrow to take care of a major disaster that we discovered on Saturday when we had other workers out here pulling down the (badly done) dry wall and subflooring from the finished half of the basement. When the dishwasher was put in several years ago, the plumber expanded the kitchen drainage with a nice bit PVC pipe that connected below the subflooring to the original metal pipe ... which has over the years rusted completely away. So every time the dishwasher has been run for who knows how many years, the water has simply poured onto the concrete floor beneath the subflooring. Super.

So the hope is that, in two days' time, the plumbing problem will be fixed and there will be a French drain around the perimeter to take care of water and moisture that comes in through the foundation during heavy rains such as we had this summer. D. and I will be a good bit poorer at the end of this, but we will also literally be improving the foundation of our home, which will be a good feeling.

Oh, and the jackhammers seem to have stopped, so maybe this will be an intermittent rather than constant noise throughout the day.

Not sure this is possible

One of the payoffs to working part of Saturday for Parents' Weekend is that we get Monday off, so we still get a full weekend. I did a little work yesterday but was mostly catching up on sleep and rest after the exhausting week that was. So now major work must happen today! Fortunately, its being Monday and all, work feels in order, so I have that going for me. Plus D. is away all day, so it's just me and the cats and all this work.

So here is my boring to-do list for the day:

• Grade 29 Shakespeare explication essays. They're short, but of course this item on my list is what gives rise to the blog title. [19 MORE TO GO -- THAT'S A LITTLE PROGRESS, RIGHT?]
• Read 10 chapters of The Catcher in the Rye and write up a reading quiz for my 9th-graders (on this latter point, I'm just modifying the quiz that a fellow teacher uses) [DONE]
• Hang around the house while workers bang away at things in the basement. This requires no effort on my part, of course, but does mean that I can't go grade elsewhere. [This did require about half an hour of work moving things further away from one of the walls. DONE FOR THE DAY.]
• Be here while the dumpster guy comes to take away the dumpster that we rented this weekend while other workers were banging away at things in the basement. (We're obviously in the midst of A Project; we're trying to take care of the damp problem in the basement.) [NOT HAPPENING UNTIL WEDNESDAY NOW, BUT AT LEAST IT'S SCHEDULED.]
• Call the plumber. [HE'S COME AND GONE TO THE TUNE OF $350]
• Check in online with a couple of people. [DONE]

All of that is probably more than I can actually get done, but I will no doubt get cranky and bored while grading and so perhaps can distract myself with other projects:

• Draft two college letters of rec. for former students; deadline is Nov. 1.
• Prepare for tomorrow's department meeting (have a piece to read, some things to go over, etc.)
• Grade four sets of vocabulary quizzes. [THREE SETS DONE]
• Start work on the 9th-graders' essays that need to be returned by Thursday. The ones I've read so far are really bad, which was depressing me yesterday, which is why I've switched to the juniors' papers.
• Unpack D's and my suitcases from our respective trips out of town last week. We did finally get the suitcases into the bedroom from the living room, which is some progress, but there's no reason not to get them emptied and back in the basement. [DONE]
• Tonight have D. try to figure out an email problem I'm having.
• Plus bits and bobs of straightening up and clearing out. [KITCHEN CLEANED, ERRAND RUN]

I'm going to work on Dr. Crazy's model that accomplishing 60% of a list is success, which makes all of this more bearable. (I think 60% is her figure; anyway, you see the point.)

Okay, it's almost 9:00, so here goes!

THE FINAL REPORT, 11:00 p.m.: Well, I don't think I accomplished 60% of the list, but I hadn't counted on the jackhammers and having the plumber actually be able to come out to the house today, so I'll call it a productive day anyway. And now I have a short week ahead of me, which is a nice bonus.