From Feb. 4, mostly written on the bus, so that it simply trails off...
Missed Mass yesterday. Planned to go to the 5:00, but didn’t really want to get up at 4:00 to shower (hadn’t done so yet), and decided to get up at 4:30. At 4:30, I made no new plans, as their absurdity would become immediately apparent, but just kept putting off the getting-up. At around 4:57 I conceded that I was not going and watched the Super Bowl instead. Tonight I did not dilly-dally quite as much, and so am attempting to get to the Basilica for 6:45 confession. We’ll see whether I make it. I caught the 6:00 bus, but the train I catch afterwards doesn’t disgorge in any proximity to the church. I might have to take the city bus on the same route, which is where the unlikelihood of my making it in time becomes most likely.
The night is foggy. One sorrow of life in middle America, one bolster to an hereditary nostalgia for Ireland, is the lack of fog in the former – at least in my part. A kind of glamour – and here I copy C. S. Lewis in noting that I mean the old meaning of glamour, magic, not the true modern definition, ala Audrey Hepburn, or the false modern definition, ala Paris Hilton – takes over the landscape. Especially at night, forms appear out of the nothingness and the world seems ancient yet unexplored. The world is not the old world yet, yet come out of the fog, I will be I, my things will be wet.
I wonder whether there is a half-life on my teaching career. I was told by my “cooperating teacher,” he who supervised me when I student-taught (I believe they were once called “mentor teachers,” in a slightly more hierarchical age), that one’s best years of teaching are the fifth to the fifteenth, when one has the most energy and zeal, the least exhaustion, the most creativity, the shallowest of ruts. I have no true creativity. Often I am seized by a zeal for some new way of doing things, but I rarely hold on to that zeal. An example will serve: When I was in college, I learned the meaning of the word “schanachie.” I don’t remember now whether I spell this correctly (anyone who cares to check may look up albums by the Chieftans – their Ballad of the Irish Horse is published by a outfit of this name). In Irish it means “story teller,” and I was instantly seized with the thought that it would be a great name, at a school that calls its teams “The Fighting Irish,” for a literary magazine, and that I would be the one to start that magazine. I walked around in an unobtrusive sort of a fever for a few days, but never mentioned it to anyone, or only to a few non-literary types, primarily because I was utterly unsure how to go about founding a literary magazine, partly because I had the feeling that I would be mocked for such an unabashedly Irish name (this due in part to a stay in Dublin, where the locals are anything but sentimental about their heritage), partly because I didn’t know many literary types, though I could certainly have found them in my English classes. Eventually the fever petered out, and I soon learned that there was already a literary journal, called The Juggler. Though I had two poems published in it, during my senior year, I never bid to join its editorial team.
I have no true creativity, I said above. I do, though I don’t exercise it. And when it comes to teaching, I am not particularly interested in finding ways to interest them. I am interested in literature. I want them to come in interested in one of three things: literature specifically, learning generally, or academic success. Unfortunately, even at a school as smart as this one (our lowest PLAN test predictions were 18-22, for two students, meaning that the dumbest kids in my school – or at least the worst test-takers – score as well as the average kids at my last school), I run into plenty who are uninterested in any of these things, or at least uninterested enough often enough that they don’t put the effort forth.
My favorite teachers were the ones who were clear, organized, lively, and had interesting or provocative things to say about their subject. Where the subjects in question were just not that interesting inherently, at least to my limited brain, the first three could be pretty successful. From seventh grade through high school, when I first really became a student, I count two science teachers, two math teachers, two history, one economics, one theology, and three English teachers as my most effective. I discount two more English teachers who were good but not quite on the level of their English peers; they may have been as good as the other non-English teachers, but my natural liking for the subject may have improved my opinion of them. Not one of these people used much in the way of “student-centered learning.” Not all of them were personally inspiring (Let me just note how much I hate the sanctimonious braggadocio of “I don’t teach; I inspire” sweatshirts. Let your students say it if it’s true.). All of them, however, were personable, in control of their classrooms, knowledgeable about their subject matter, and able to present it clearly. I’m not even sure they were each and every single one of them that organized in their presentation. I don’t know how tightly their assessments measured precisely what they taught (potentially one of my weaknesses). But I do know that I learned with them.
I am clear in what I say. One of my refrains is, “Is that clear?” I look them in the eye. They nod. I understand that this question is not always answered honestly, but …. But what? Perhaps I should test them more often, ask them to repeat what has been taught in their own words, some of the less able ones, at least, but the classes are sometimes so difficult to move forward at all that sometimes one just has to move on so the smarter kids don’t get bored out of their skulls. And sometimes I do that stuff, but it doesn’t stick with all of them.
The night is foggy. One sorrow of life in middle America, one bolster to an hereditary nostalgia for Ireland, is the lack of fog in the former – at least in my part. A kind of glamour – and here I copy C. S. Lewis in noting that I mean the old meaning of glamour, magic, not the true modern definition, ala Audrey Hepburn, or the false modern definition, ala Paris Hilton – takes over the landscape. Especially at night, forms appear out of the nothingness and the world seems ancient yet unexplored. The world is not the old world yet, yet come out of the fog, I will be I, my things will be wet.
I wonder whether there is a half-life on my teaching career. I was told by my “cooperating teacher,” he who supervised me when I student-taught (I believe they were once called “mentor teachers,” in a slightly more hierarchical age), that one’s best years of teaching are the fifth to the fifteenth, when one has the most energy and zeal, the least exhaustion, the most creativity, the shallowest of ruts. I have no true creativity. Often I am seized by a zeal for some new way of doing things, but I rarely hold on to that zeal. An example will serve: When I was in college, I learned the meaning of the word “schanachie.” I don’t remember now whether I spell this correctly (anyone who cares to check may look up albums by the Chieftans – their Ballad of the Irish Horse is published by a outfit of this name). In Irish it means “story teller,” and I was instantly seized with the thought that it would be a great name, at a school that calls its teams “The Fighting Irish,” for a literary magazine, and that I would be the one to start that magazine. I walked around in an unobtrusive sort of a fever for a few days, but never mentioned it to anyone, or only to a few non-literary types, primarily because I was utterly unsure how to go about founding a literary magazine, partly because I had the feeling that I would be mocked for such an unabashedly Irish name (this due in part to a stay in Dublin, where the locals are anything but sentimental about their heritage), partly because I didn’t know many literary types, though I could certainly have found them in my English classes. Eventually the fever petered out, and I soon learned that there was already a literary journal, called The Juggler. Though I had two poems published in it, during my senior year, I never bid to join its editorial team.
I have no true creativity, I said above. I do, though I don’t exercise it. And when it comes to teaching, I am not particularly interested in finding ways to interest them. I am interested in literature. I want them to come in interested in one of three things: literature specifically, learning generally, or academic success. Unfortunately, even at a school as smart as this one (our lowest PLAN test predictions were 18-22, for two students, meaning that the dumbest kids in my school – or at least the worst test-takers – score as well as the average kids at my last school), I run into plenty who are uninterested in any of these things, or at least uninterested enough often enough that they don’t put the effort forth.
My favorite teachers were the ones who were clear, organized, lively, and had interesting or provocative things to say about their subject. Where the subjects in question were just not that interesting inherently, at least to my limited brain, the first three could be pretty successful. From seventh grade through high school, when I first really became a student, I count two science teachers, two math teachers, two history, one economics, one theology, and three English teachers as my most effective. I discount two more English teachers who were good but not quite on the level of their English peers; they may have been as good as the other non-English teachers, but my natural liking for the subject may have improved my opinion of them. Not one of these people used much in the way of “student-centered learning.” Not all of them were personally inspiring (Let me just note how much I hate the sanctimonious braggadocio of “I don’t teach; I inspire” sweatshirts. Let your students say it if it’s true.). All of them, however, were personable, in control of their classrooms, knowledgeable about their subject matter, and able to present it clearly. I’m not even sure they were each and every single one of them that organized in their presentation. I don’t know how tightly their assessments measured precisely what they taught (potentially one of my weaknesses). But I do know that I learned with them.
I am clear in what I say. One of my refrains is, “Is that clear?” I look them in the eye. They nod. I understand that this question is not always answered honestly, but …. But what? Perhaps I should test them more often, ask them to repeat what has been taught in their own words, some of the less able ones, at least, but the classes are sometimes so difficult to move forward at all that sometimes one just has to move on so the smarter kids don’t get bored out of their skulls. And sometimes I do that stuff, but it doesn’t stick with all of them.
posted by J. R. R. Hawking | 8:49 PM
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