Twenty Years of Summer Reading!

When people ask me what I have been doing all summer, I sometimes answer, “reading!” Although that response is not complete, it is truthful. Summer reading is one of my favorite parts of the break. In June 1995, the Deerfield High School English resource center (the WERCS) had a summer reading program that asked students and staff to provide a description, response, and some basic information about the books we read over the summer. Then we got a t-shirt. I still have the T-shirt!

The writing I did for that program was the beginning of my reading journal. Although the summer reading program did not reappear the next year, I continued to write about the books I read. I have written several hundred entries in my journal over the past twenty years.

The second book I wrote about is one that has stuck with me: Microserfs by Douglas Coupland in which I finally learned the difference between a geek and a nerd. After I read Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls by Mary Pipher, I felt like I had to share it with my students. As the father of a very young daughter, it was a particularly personal for me.

Since I started my reading journal in 1995, many of my entries are rereads. Some I read when I was young, some I reread and wrote multiple entries. A few times I read different versions of the same book, as I did with one of my favorites, A Stranger in A Strange Land by Robert Heinlein.

I did a considerable amount of teacher reading too. I found Alfie Kohn’s Punished by Rewards to be challenging. It made me reflect on many of my grading and evaluation practices. Vivian Paley’s You Can’t Say You Can’t Play affected me both as a parent and a teacher. I never thought grammar would be an interesting read, but Stephen King’s memoir, On Writing, was so engaging that I shared it with my students.

My book journal chronicles my research into vegetarianism. Although it was the famous Animal Liberation by Peter Singer that launched my change of eating, I read everything from John Robbins’ Diet for A New America to collections from the editors of Vegetarian Times to books exploring what it mean to raise children in a meatless household.  

Many books in my journal were recommended by students. One young woman insisted I read Ishmael by Daniel Quinn and another assigned me Jane Yolen’s version of Sleeping Beauty, Briar Rose.  One student gave me a great gift and introduced me to Neil Gaiman! 

I read travel books preparing to go overseas. I read plays, anthologies of short stories, and historical fiction. I discovered an interest in the Civil War thanks to Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels.  I read best sellers and obscure titles, biography, graphic novels, and collections of essays.  Shakespeare, avant-garde works, religious texts, and instructional works also make regular appearances in my journal. I have already written lists of my favorites, so I will not repeat that here.

Recently, I have been reading books with my outstanding science fiction book club. Each summer, I read books nominated for the Hugo awards. All of the Harry Potter books are in my reading journal, too, thanks to my son who insisted I read them right after he did. As a teacher, I have read plenty of young adult novels.

This summer, I read several Hugo nominees, books about college and teaching, a fascinating book on race, and some travel books! Although I read all year round, summer reading continues to be a very special literary vacation! 

Escaping the Noise!

This summer, I could not escape from the blaring sounds of leaf blowers, garden tools, construction vehicles, and jackhammers! I was trapped in an anti-symphony! Closing the window only turned down the volume – and not enough.

My street was under construction. They were tearing out most of the curbs and replacing them. The school behind me was under construction. They were renovating the student cafeteria that faces the back of my house. My neighbors’ landscapers seemed to live at their homes and one was replacing their roof. I wished I owned earplugs!

I wonder how people who live in very noisy places can focus. When even one of the construction sounds stops, even briefly, the relief is enormous.  My days have been punctuated by the beep-beep-beep of vehicles backing up – into my house and my head.

Sometimes it is hard to focus on the important things because of the noise. It may be the latest television show or the most popular game app on the phone. It maybe the spin from politicians that is purposely designed to make me angry, indignant, or divert me from the real issues.

The noise distracts me and makes me unable to hear clearly. It makes it more difficult to think logically and focus on what is really important. For the past few weeks, I have cherished the few moments when quiet and clarity prevailed.

As we head back into election season, I fear that we all will be living in a construction zone. It will be challenging to cut through the noise and hear the real issues and ideas. It will be all too tempting to stick our heads into the ground, put in earplugs, or escape into the banal world of triviality and escape. Noise hurts, and when it surrounds us, we are not our best selves.

Have you ever been in one of those uncomfortable and noisy conversations where you fear you might say anything to change the subject or turn off the loud rhetoric? It is the conversational equivalent of a truck beeping in reverse for a very long time. How do we handle this? What do we say? Do we look at our laps and wish for silence? Do we add to the noise by raising our voices above the rest or simply talk about the weather or the local sports team?

I have been seeking silent focus. It has been difficult to find. I fear that will be the case for a while. However, I am teaching myself to tune out the noise by writing like this, and by becoming more involved in important and meaningful activities. I don’t notice the noise when I am with my family or working with my students. I notice it in those moments in-between.

Noise keeps us from being who we really are. Noise prevents us from thinking fully and deeply. Sometimes, those who do not want us to take advantage of our higher intellects use noise to prevent significant conversation. Sometimes noise is the accumulation of all the trivialities and distractions that are far more salient and attractive than the important matters that count.

There is a place for small talk and idle conversation. However, it should not replace big talk and substantive thought. Easy answers, quick platitudes, and flashy distractions are the cotton candy of our social diet. Living in the noise is not healthy. We must create spaces and times when we can slowly, thoughtfully, and quietly think.

College Essays and Recommendations Matter, Write?

Chainsaw killer schools were what we used to call colleges that made admission decisions purely based on students’ grades and test scores. Without recommendations or essays, these colleges would admit kids even if they were chainsaw killers, as long as they had the right numbers. Essays and recommendations as ways to colleges could see students’ characters, and go beyond statistics.

Can colleges prevent chainsaw killers from getting in? Do they really want to? Are they seriously considering the qualitative information in addition to the quantitative statistics? Are essays and recommendations just grade point and test score window dressing?

Students, parents, teachers, and counselors spend hours and dollars making sure that college application essays portray students in a positive light. The Common Application, which is used by 548 schools, requires one or two faculty recommendations and a counselor recommendation for each applicant as well. An application package is now a dossier on a child and goes far beyond grades and an ACT or SAT composite.

However, an article in the New Republic by Stanford Associate Professor Mitchell Stevens is titled, “Stop Obsessing Over Your College Essay – Admissions Officers Don’t”. Professor Stevens asserts that “Remarkably, all this scribbling has almost nothing to do with whether the student gets in.”  He goes on to state that, “personal essays rarely got even cursory attention from admissions officers. There were simply too many files to consider in too small a time frame, and too many other evaluative factors that mattered much more.” Stevens cites his experience of a year and a half observing, “in the admissions office of a top-tier liberal arts college” as evidence that the essay, “can be great marketing.” Is the essay merely a mirror? Are we writing to the wind – or ourselves?

As a high school English teacher, I read hundreds of essays each month. It is a time consuming and grueling process, even when I am not actively grading the work. How many more essays and recommendations do admissions officers have to read?

According to the New York Times, the University of Chicago received 30,369 applications in 2013. As a Common Application school, that means that each of these applicants sends them three recommendations and one essay. In addition, there are two supplemental essays. Students pay $75 to apply.

According to their website, the University of Chicago has thirty-three admissions counselors. That means that, if each of them read the same number of applications, they each read about 920 applications. Each one, remember, has three essays and three recommendations. If each counselor spends only two minutes on each of these six elements, then we are talking about just over 184 hours without looking at the rest of the application. If each application gets a second reader, then each counselor is now spending his or her two minutes per item for over 350 hours. And the University is making over two million dollars in application fees.

Professor Stevens’ school, Stanford, had even more students apply and similar requirements. Perhaps he has a point. Perhaps all this writing is more for the writers than the readers. If this is the case, if the essays and recommendations are far less important than many of us in high schools have been telling students, what does this mean? Should we spend less time on them? Should we ask colleges to reconsider requiring them? Would any student (or parent) believe us if we told them not to worry so much about these elements of the all-important college application?

If colleges and universities justify the essays and recommendations as a way to prevent chainsaw killers from being admitted, the epidemic of sexual violence on campuses would be evidence enough that these vehicles (or the minutes of reading) are not effective. According to the Washington Post, “Overall, there were more than 3,900 reports of forcible sex offenses on college campuses nationwide in 2012, up 50 percent over three years.” Clearly, character is not being evaluated well enough.

Are they all chainsaw killer schools? Are our students, teachers, and counselors whistling in the wind? I hope not. I have spoken to countless college admission counselors who earnestly tell me that they read these essays and recommendations. Do they all? Do they spend enough time? Does it matter enough?

While students might learn about themselves through the process of writing college essays, staff is not benefiting from writing recommendations. Writing recommendations is time away from students. Come clean, colleges. Be more transparent. Tell us about your real process and the relative worth of all this writing. If recommendations and essays are not major players in the admission decision, is it time to let them go? Maybe it is: this year, the Common Application is allowing schools to make the essay and the counselor recommendation optional.

Midsummer Blues

We are only about a week from my mid-summer. It is not the real middle of the summer and not the summer solstice, but the time when I have been away from school for the same amount of time as I have until school starts: the middle of summer break.

The middle is when the bell goes off: summer is now “ending” and school is “around the corner.” The back to school sales started immediately after July 4^th, and I have learned to ignore them. But they are like that gnat buzzing around my ear.

I have two opposite responses to midsummer. I want to savor summer. I want to do all the things that I have not yet done. Yet, the urge to start to prepare for school grows more powerful the second half of the summer. I have done school planning throughout the summer, but at this time, I become more critical of myself and I start to feel as though I haven’t done enough. I look at my list of school tasks and beat myself up. I have been wasting my summer! What have I done with this time?

School is not the only clock ticking in my head. I am hyper aware that my family and I are experiencing a “last.” This is most likely the last summer that my entire family will be home together over the summer. My daughter just finished college and will be starting graduate school. My son will be a senior in high school. Next summer, one will be at grad school far away, and the other will be getting ready to leave for college. After that, our paths diverge.

This doesn’t mean that we won’t have vacations and holidays together. However, the odds of having anything close to a summer like this again are very slim. And it is almost over!

So I am trying to make this summer move in slow motion. I want to savor being together and not anticipate being apart. Even the negotiations about who gets a car to drive are making me melancholy. I don’t want to do school work, but I know if I don’t, I will pay for it later. Maybe that is a price worth paying.

The rest of my family seems keenly aware of this landmark as well. My daughter is spending tons of time with her grandparents. They aren’t in the same place with my son as they are with my daughter – and that is okay. He doesn’t feel slighted, but I wonder if he’ll get a similar opportunity.

We aren’t sitting around staring at each other. Both of my children have jobs. My wife and I are busy doing all those things that we cannot get to during the school year. I am busy, and fighting that busyness.

Summer is about to wane. My family’s life is at a turning point, too. It is going to take more than a few hundred words here or a few months of summer for me to adapt to our new world. It is not that I am not ready for it; it is that I am a little scared it isn’t going to be as nice as the brief interlude of this wonderful summer.

Next year and next summer will not be like this –and it is half over. Time to stop whining and savor this super summer while it is here.