There are plenty of pieces of literature that I love and many of them really work in the classroom. I enjoy teaching Shakespeare. A student once asked why we study Shakespeare. I asked him if he wanted the company line or the real reason. The company line is that it makes students culturally literate, helps teach decoding, will be useful in future English classes and blah, blah, blah. I told the young man that I wanted to show students something that was really beautiful! I wanted them to be able to understand and appreciate why Shakespeare’s plays were magnificent.
It is that enjoyment of language and playfulness with words that Shakespeare engenders made me think that what I wanted to write about was one of Will Shortz’s Sunday word games. I have used these in class for many years and kids love playing with language. I want my class to be a language playground with fun rides and challenging tasks.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s collection of short stories, Welcome to the Monkey House is always a huge success and for good reason. Students are challenged to go beyond the surface meanings and examine Vonnegut’s social satire. Some of the stories have a science fiction flavor while others are very much grounded in our contemporary world. Vonnegut wonders if, “most of the world’s ills can be traced to the fact that Man’s knowledge of himself has not kept pace with his knowledge of the physical world.” Vonnegut’s stories ask students (and me) what really makes us human beings and what elements in our world threaten that? What do we become when we sacrifice our humanity for convenience, beauty, longevity, or power?
Although I’ve never taught one of Robert Heinlein’s works of science fiction, I would love to do so. I remember the aphorisms that are the intermissions in his novel Time Enough For Love. Lazarus Long’s little lists of wisdom spoke to me so strongly that many of them still go through my head on a daily basis. Here are only a few:
“Everything in excess! To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks.
Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
Does history record any case in which the majority was right?
Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.
Yield to temptation; it may not pass your way again.
Anything free is worth what you pay for it. “
I have used some of these statements as the seeds of debates in Sophomore English and they have appeared on t-shirts for the writing performance club I sponsor. Maybe someday, my students and l will read Stranger In A Strange Land and grok together!
I am not sure that this is what my department chair was assigning. When I asked some of my colleagues what they were doing, one just said, “Don’t over think it, David. Just find a poem you like and write about why you like it.” I hope that isn’t what this is about. In any case, that is not what the assignment will be for me.
And that choice is perhaps the best reflection of me as a teacher. I made the assignment my own. I took it where I needed to go with it. If students have the skill and freedom to do that in my classroom, that will be my real “fire.”
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Words Of Fire: Part 1
Recently, my department chairman asked all of us to write about a piece of literature that was important to us. He asked us to find a quotation and then write about what it means to us. His assignment was based on the collection, Teaching with Fire, which is described as a, “glorious collection of the poetry that has restored the faith of teachers in the highest, most transcendent values of their work with children.”
What do I choose? What do I write about? Frankly, I haven’t had a crisis of faith about teaching, so there hasn’t been a piece of literature that has restored it. I do not have a single text that is my touchstone and source. So I tried to reframe the assignment: could I find a piece of literature that represented my teaching values? What about a piece of literature that I loved? How about something that really worked in the classroom?
The real source of my teaching values is my own educational experience. It was in the classrooms of giving and gifted educators that I discovered the reasons I am a teacher. It helped that I studied with the same college professors who had trained many of my high school teachers. My mentors’ mentors guided me! Yet, I can clearly recall a statement that shaped my beliefs and crystallized my “prime directive:” the goal that I should do everything I can to foster the independence of my students. So it made perfect sense, when I read about the concept of approval/disapproval in Viola Spolin’s Improvisation for the Theater:
“We either fear that we will not get approval, or we accept outside comment and interpretation unquestionably. In a culture where approval/disapproval has become the predominate regulator of effort and position, and often the substitute for love, our personal freedoms are dissipated… We do not know our own substance, and in the attempt to live through (or avoid living through) the eyes of others, self-identity is obscured, our bodies become misshapened, natural grace is gone and learning is affected…The expectancy of judgment prevents free relationships within the acting workshop…True personal freedom and self-expression can flower only in an atmosphere where attitudes permit equality between student and teacher and the dependencies of teacher for student and student for teacher are done away with. The problems within the subject matter will teach both of them.”
I clearly remember the extensive discussion of this concept in my college class. The goal is to help students find intrinsic motivation for their learning rather than do it to be patted on the head like a good dog. We were warned against motivating students merely with the desire to please us, their teachers, or the fear of displeasing us. Instead, we were challenged with the task of helping them meet the subject matter on their own terms and find themselves in the learning. It is a powerful and difficult concept. With each of my choices in the classroom, I try to say to my students, “don’t do this for me; don’t do this because I will smile or frown on you; don’t do this because you like or dislike me. It isn’t about me. It is about you.” It is my job as the teacher to create the environment and circumstances for my students’ learning and then get out of the way!
What do I choose? What do I write about? Frankly, I haven’t had a crisis of faith about teaching, so there hasn’t been a piece of literature that has restored it. I do not have a single text that is my touchstone and source. So I tried to reframe the assignment: could I find a piece of literature that represented my teaching values? What about a piece of literature that I loved? How about something that really worked in the classroom?
The real source of my teaching values is my own educational experience. It was in the classrooms of giving and gifted educators that I discovered the reasons I am a teacher. It helped that I studied with the same college professors who had trained many of my high school teachers. My mentors’ mentors guided me! Yet, I can clearly recall a statement that shaped my beliefs and crystallized my “prime directive:” the goal that I should do everything I can to foster the independence of my students. So it made perfect sense, when I read about the concept of approval/disapproval in Viola Spolin’s Improvisation for the Theater:
“We either fear that we will not get approval, or we accept outside comment and interpretation unquestionably. In a culture where approval/disapproval has become the predominate regulator of effort and position, and often the substitute for love, our personal freedoms are dissipated… We do not know our own substance, and in the attempt to live through (or avoid living through) the eyes of others, self-identity is obscured, our bodies become misshapened, natural grace is gone and learning is affected…The expectancy of judgment prevents free relationships within the acting workshop…True personal freedom and self-expression can flower only in an atmosphere where attitudes permit equality between student and teacher and the dependencies of teacher for student and student for teacher are done away with. The problems within the subject matter will teach both of them.”
I clearly remember the extensive discussion of this concept in my college class. The goal is to help students find intrinsic motivation for their learning rather than do it to be patted on the head like a good dog. We were warned against motivating students merely with the desire to please us, their teachers, or the fear of displeasing us. Instead, we were challenged with the task of helping them meet the subject matter on their own terms and find themselves in the learning. It is a powerful and difficult concept. With each of my choices in the classroom, I try to say to my students, “don’t do this for me; don’t do this because I will smile or frown on you; don’t do this because you like or dislike me. It isn’t about me. It is about you.” It is my job as the teacher to create the environment and circumstances for my students’ learning and then get out of the way!
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