September 13, 2007
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[Burning the candle at both ends? Check.
I haven't dreamed lately, nor have I gotten up in the middle of the night these last few days/weeks. I have literally been pooping myself out, physically & mentally.]
I read the most intriguing essay last night… it really got me thinking about teaching and reflecting and conversations that are had in “faculty lounges.” The essay came out of the September 2007 TETYC (of course), and the author/writer stated something pretty true for me – teachers “work in isolation from our colleagues, sharing little of our experience beyond the extraordinary” like the tough student or the plagiarized paper or the whatever. He (Kinsey McKinney) mentions too that these typical conversations usually lead faculty members to advice sessions or monologues (some teacher always has it “figured out”) instead of reflection(s). He recalls when a writer (Sommers) from the March issue of TETYC stated that we give “true accounts” in our conversations of what happens in the classroom rather than the tidied versions. Why are we so afraid to look like we haven’t quite figured it out yet? Why can’t we just reflect on our practice without judgment from others? Why must we always have the answer?And those, in my opinion, who think they have figured it out, have possibly subtracted all flexibility and creativity out of their classrooms and pedagogy, so much so that they’ve used the same syllabi semester after semester. Is it still working? According to them, those who give the monologues & advice, yes they have. Huh.
I’d like to reply to the author of that piece by showing him my reflection tool – this blog. I know I don’t know it all, but I am okay with that. I like having something to strive for, something that challenges me daily.
Another connection I made in the piece: He mentions Randy Bass’ call for teachers to believe “in the visibility and viability of teaching problems that can be investigated as scholarship, and not merely for the purpose of ‘fixing’ them” and that correlated, for me, to Deb Tannen’s view of how men report-talk & women rapport-talk. When it comes to what’s happening in the classroom, we need to be more women-talk-like and reflect on it instead of just stating the facts as men-talk would suggest. Don’t fix it (as men would like to do, usually), but reflect on why it’s working or not working. It’s not a perfect comparison, but it’s the connection that popped into my head while reading.Other items to note:
= The What Works For Me & Instructional Notes = aren’t a conversation. “It’s a monologue on how to be an excellent teacher, when some days I’m just trying to figure out how I could forget to teach thesis statements” (25).
= “We don’t know what we know until” we blog it.
= “Let’s truly welcome one another into our fallible classrooms and revel in the unpredictability of our work” (27).On a much more positive & factual note: I am teaching Creative Writing 292 this spring! I am so thrilled. I’ve found the textbooks that tickle my fancy (Writing True: The Art and Craft of Creative Nonfiction by Perl & Schwartz… The New Well-Tempered Sentence by Gordon). What’s even better? The book, Valley (see my left side list of literature to read), is something I may copy pieces of for the course… it’s a wonderful mish-mash of genres and creativity.
