Another semester ends...and by definition, a beginning.

Forgive me.  It is at this time every semester that I wax a bit nostalgic, and then I try my best to rein it in.  How is it that we, as teachers, spend two, three, or five days a week with 75-100+ students, learn their names and habits, discuss their lives with them, hear their joys and their tragedies, and then are expected to simply let them go?

This profession is one of loss, and I mean no negativity by that.  But when you work every day to help other people to better themselves, you lose a little bit of yourself every time one goes away.  I'd really like to write something more upbeat, but I am nothing if not (sometimes painfully) honest.  Yes!  So and so is now a successful _______, and I might have been a tiny part of that.  But the fact remains that we are in the business of letting go.

I can't help but think, at this time every semester, what it will be like when my children are ready to leave.  Yes, I know it may be sentimental to describe students as children, and most of the time, I don't think of them in quite this way.  But after today, they will parachute away like dandelion seeds, like Charlotte's tiny progeny, and fly off into their lives.  And I will likely never see them again.

Oh woe is me.  Poor baby.  And give me a break.  But I simply can't help it.  Another group of students has come and gone, and I am left in the same place.  The small office I share with a colleague, slowly being buried in papers left behind and post-it notes.  Perhaps it is that now, at 40, I could be their mother? But no, I don't think that's it.

My entire life has been a series of meetings and leavings.  Some slightly longer than others, but none as long as I'd like.   Bussing out and moving and college and marriage and flight school and moving, moving, moving...there are so many people who hold small pieces of me that I have no way of getting back.  I have no regrets, but I am given to reflection.  Cry me a river.

Perhaps it is the fact that I am about to enter the last semester of my most recent life chapter:  my MFA in poetry.  In all likelihood, these wonderful friends, sisters and brothers, will be simply Facebook friends in less than a year.  This program has affected me in more wonderful ways than I can mention here.   Perhaps it is the fact that my beautiful daughter lost another tooth; one more step on her way to her own life, separate from mine.  And, there's always the chance that I'm just plain silly.

I remain, ever, a part of larger things, blown on the breath of a child, left to travel and land where I may, and there to take temporary root.

If all else fails, punch 'em in the face.

It is the end of week eight.  For two months, I have been working out with Tony Horton and P90X.  This is a record for me and exercise.  I am definitely stronger, but I have had a major realization.  I am not yet, nor was I for quite some time, in shape.  Dang.

Apparently, I have been fooling myself for quite a while.  If I may say, I have always been physically strong.  My mom and dad are both what they call work horses, and I inherited those genes.  I have never had trouble  moving furniture, hauling mulch, picking up and chasing children and large dogs.  I have never asked anyone to carry anything for me.  All of this led me to believe that I was in relatively good shape.  Boy howdy was I wrong.

Over the past eight weeks, I have yoga'd and kenpo'd and cardio'd faithfully.  I feel better, my clothes fit better, but I am not the lithe young thing I thought might appear after two months.  In fact, I have not yet lost any weight.  Which tells me two things:  1. I didn't have as much muscle as I thought I did.  2. I had a lot more fat than I thought I did.  Double dang.

Here's the thing.  I'm sticking with it.  Whether it's because I'm 40 or because this program appeals to me doesn't matter.  I should say that a good portion of the reason I like it is because I'm pretending to punch and kick people.  Grabbing by the collar and knee to the face might be my favorite.  Say what you like, but yep.  It helps.  What matters is that I've found an activity I like that I can do with the multitude of things I've got going on.  No gym, no special equipment, no babysitters.  Yay me!

So...I encourage you to find your activity.  Join me in feeling better.  And, you know, kick some bastard in the chest.  What could it hurt?

Warning: Rant

At 6:30 pm, D and I sat down to watch the CBS Evening News as we most often do.  In the middle of the headlines/teasers for the night's stories was something close to the following:  surgery can cure diabetes.  D actually stood up and raised his hands in the "touchdown" formation.  Being Ms. Skeptic, I said, "Type 1 or Type 2?"  There may have been an expletive in there; I can't quite recall.

Needless to say, the segment was on gastric bypass/ gastric sleeve surgery intended for people with Type 2 diabetes, or PWD2.  As a mother of a six-year-old PWD1 and wife of a forty-year-old PWD1, I am up to here with the general conception that diabetes is ONE disease.

It is most assuredly not.

Type 2 diabetes can sometimes be prevented or even reversed.  Type 2 diabetics are typically overweight or even obese.  Type 2 diabetics are not typically insulin dependent.

Type 1 diabetes cannot be prevented.  Type 1 diabetics can be any size person.  Most that I know are in enviable shape.  Type 1 diabetics are insulin dependent.

Type 1 diabetics will DIE if they do not have their insulin.

Type 1 diabetes cannot be controlled by "diet and exercise."

Why does this piss me off so much?  Because when a reputable news source headlines their nightly news with a "surgical cure for diabetes," I want to see an artificial pancreas that works.  I want to see FDA approval of islet cell transplants.  I want to see my daughter's stem cells, which we pay to have stored each year, cure her.

I don't want to see her lose the feeling in her fingertips because she has tested her blood sugar for thirty years.  I don't want her to take one more effing shot.


So please, if I may be so bold, be precise with your words.  1 or 2.

Catching Up: Weeks 4 & 5

This semester is going by so quickly!  And just so you know, I have switched topics for my critical paper.  Instead of writing on the use of poetry in the composition classroom, I am writing on the poetry itself - doing more of a critical analysis.  This will focus on hybridity and/or pluralism in American identity as represented in poetry.  Specifically, I'm looking at Agha Shahid Ali's A Nostalgist's Map of America (remember him?), Robert Penn Warren's Audubon:  A Vision, and Louise Gluck's Averno.  All three are wonderful books - check them out!

Now, am I giving up on the critical thinking through poetry experiment?  No!  I continue to use this technique in my classes.  Last week we read and researched Warren's "Tell me a Story," and this week we are using Kim Addonizio's "Scary Movies."  Overall, this warm-up strategy is still working well, and my students are being exposed to poetry and poets they might have never read otherwise. Our in-class discussions are productive and continue to be relatable to writing in general.  Take Tuesday's class:  one student blogged his "story" based on Warren's poem.  It was VERY brief and had no detail.  We ended up having a good talk about showing, not telling, and emphasizing that showing is necessary in academic writing as much as it is in creative writing. 

I am putting off this topic until the end of the semester so I can gather data from the entire experience, rather than trying to force a paper out of half a class.  I plan on writing this paper and trying to publish it at a later date.

So...identity - hot topic.  Controversial topic.  And something I have been fascinated with for just about ever.  Wrote my master's thesis on it using Salman Rushdie novels.  (Which you should read, of course!  My favorite is The Moor's Last Sigh.)  Right now, I am examining the poetry mentioned above with regards to the speakers.  Each of them are living on the edges of several different "worlds."  How they reconcile, or do not reconcile, those worlds to form a cohesive identity is my area of interest. 

Week Three: Waxing Nostalgic

Regarding Rumpelstiltskin:  did you know that, at the end of one of the Grimm versions, Rumpelstiltskin actually tears himself in half?  He has a fit, stomps his foot into the ground so far that he can't get it out, and his solution is to literally divide himself.

Are we doing our children a disservice by "Disneyfying" folk and fairy tales?  What are the consequences if Hansel and Gretel are not going to be eaten by the witch, but instead, say, lose their cell phone privileges?  What if Little Red's grandmother is not eaten by the wolf, but is instead, say, locked in a closet?  Is the lesson learned?  Do we coddle our children, even in their stories?

Should my six-year-old understand that Snow White's step-mother wanted her step-daughter's heart ripped from her chest and presented to her in a beautifully crafted wooden box?

These are some of the ideas my classes discussed as a result of their research into Maxwell's poem.  Good discussion; interesting topics.

Then, we read this week's selection:  "Snow on the Desert" by Agha Shahid Ali.  The poem is from the book A Nostalgist's Map of America.

When I picked this poem, I did so knowing full well that it is (for my students) long.  But it is so beautiful and compelling (for me) that I wanted to try it. 

One of my students compared the imagery of the fog opening and then closing as the speaker's world closing up, and several others mentioned liking the idea of driving through the desert knowing it used to be the bed of an ocean.  Everyone got that this poem was about the relativity of the passing of time.  If you're reading this, I hope you read the poem and get what I'm writing about.  If you haven't yet, let me give you the first lines:

“Each ray of sunshine is seven minutes old,”
Serge told me in New York one December night.

“So when I look at the sky, I see the past?”
“Yes, Yes,” he said, “especially on a clear day.”

I don't think I'll ever look at the sky the same way again.  How much do I want to write a poem that does this? 

Back to my classes though - I found that many of my students have never actually been to a desert.  It is so much a part of my upbringing, going camping across the southwest, growing up in Southern California, that it is hard to believe that less than 10 of my 75 students can visualize driving across a landscape so desolate that one doesn't need to be told it once was a sea to believe it.  Pictures do not do the desert justice.  It is something one has to experience first hand.  I wonder how many of these students will ever actually go.

There were plenty of opportunities for research in this poem for students of all areas of interest.  Some of the things they are looking up are the Bangladesh War, singer Begum Akhtar, the Papagos, saguaro cactus, and the book (?) The Desert Smells Like Rain.  Can't wait to see what interests them come Tuesday.

Now...is this working?  Yes.  The poem warm-ups are putting my students into the thinking mode.  They are actively engaged from the beginning of class:  reporting their research, listening to the new poem, blogging, reading and listening to the blog entries.  This has translated into more actively engaged students overall.  Today, we did our first whole-class critique of a student's first draft, and I got better responses than is usual. 

And...I'm reading poetry not just for my own enjoyment, but also for my students' range of experience.  Perhaps we'll get some new readers of poetry?  Perhaps someone will venture out to the desert and feel the passage of time.

Liar, Liar, Pants on...

Week two:  poetry experiment.  So this week my students returned with their research on Moore's "Baseball and Writing."  Elston Howard was the first African-American to be on the Yankees.  He held all kinds of records, and he played in ten World Series, winning six.  A-mazing.  This is just one thing they learned.  We discussed how writing was similar to baseball in that writer's block is an "injury" one must treat, that writing is difficult, but worth it, and that, again, reading effectively is a process and a practice.

Then came Thursday.  I have all kinds of fantastic poets on my reading list for this semester.  These are writers whose poems examine American identity with artful thought.  But I could not find a poem that I felt was appropriate for the second week of teaching my freshmen.  One of the reasons last week's poems were what they were was for their "ease of use."  Establishing trust in my classroom is the most important thing I can do in the first few weeks.  No trust equals no results.  I didn't want to drop an emotional bomb week two.  So...I spent three hours Thursday morning searching for a poem about identity that was not too heavy, man.

Then, I found Glyn Maxwell's "Rumpelstiltskin."  What a fantastic little huge poem.  We read it.  Then they blogged.  We talked about lying, living two lives, privacy issues including OnStar and GPS, color theory, what nurses need to know about patients who lie and the reasons they lie, what teachers need to know about students who lie and their reasons, the nature of signifiers (!), and the relativity of truth.  Yes, yes we did.

And...at least 50% of my second semester freshmen have never heard of Rumpelstiltskin.  Seriously.

Tuesday, I expect to hear about how knowing the folk tale makes (or doesn't make) a difference in understanding the poem.  I expect to hear about spinning straw into gold.  And I expect to discuss the importance/significance of naming.  Most of all, I expect (hope?) to hear interest in their voices and to see passion for learning in their eyes.  How fantastic.

Week One Critical Paper or What Percentage of College Freshmen Despise Poetry?

So I've decided to document my progress on my critical paper using this blog.  For those of you who are not Converse College MFA students...in the third semester, we are required to write a +/- 25 page critical paper on some aspect of our chosen genre.  I am a poetry student and a composition teacher, so I thought it would be a great idea to try to combine the two.  Here's my snappy paper title:  Using identity themed poems to encourage critical thinking in the composition classroom.  Huzzah!

There are two reasons why I went in this direction instead of analyzing a specific poet or group of poets.  One:  one of my classes last semester came to the conclusion that they don't like poetry because they "have to think about it too much."  Two:  critical thinking is necessary for good writing, and many of my freshman composition student need help in this area. If I'm honest, that's an understatement.  Businesses regularly lament the lack of writing skills of their newly graduated hires, and the rest of the university regularly asks us folks in the English Department just exactly what we are doing with writing, 'cause their students can't.

Week one:  I presented my idea about using poetry to encourage critical thinking.  I gave a survey to my students asking them about their experiences with poetry and research.  My students inwardly (and outwardly) groaned.  I assured them they would not be graded on their analysis of the poems.  We would be using poetry as warm-up exercises to get into the critical thinking/writing mode.  They felt a bit better. 

On Tuesday, I read Billy Collins' poem "Introduction to Poetry" and had the students blog about their responses to the poem.  That went OK.  They "got it."

On Thursday, I read Marianne Moore's poem "Baseball and Writing."  They didn't "get it."  I discovered something wonderful, though.  After the first reading, every student understood that the poem talked a lot about baseball, and that there was supposed to be some connection with writing.  Their blogs showed that they "got" more than they thought they did.  And I was able to explain the process of reading actively without having read a single chapter in our textbook.  Read the piece through once.  Write down what you understand.  Read it through again.  Look up what you don't understand.  Read it through again.

The fact is that many students stop reading whatever is required for their courses because they don't "get" the first few lines.  Ethics, philosophy, logic, sociology, and psychology texts may seem to be beyond their understanding, and so they stop reading.  I contend that if a reader can simply read through a piece once without stopping and ignore what they think they don't know, that reader will be able to write down something about that piece.  That something will then be clarified on the second read, or possibly the third.

This is when my students say, uh-huh.  Right.  I barely have time to read all this stuff once, and you're asking me to read two or three times?  And I say, yes.  That's what it takes until you become a better reader, and becoming a better reader will help you become a better writer.  That's the goal.

Assignment for next Tuesday:  write down one idea, word, phrase, or name from "Baseball and Writing" to look up.  Look it up.  Report back to the class.  The idea behind this assignment is to get my students to take a small second look at the text through research.  We'll see how it goes. 

At the very least, I had fun introducing myself to my classes and going over the syllabi for the first time in a long time, I got to share some poetry with composition students, and I got them thinking right off the bat.  Yay me!