No Time?

Kinds of blue

I have writer friends who say they don't have time to write. Yet they have time to post on Facebook about not having time to write, time to post Instagram photos of the food they're eating in restaurants, time to eat in restaurants. Time is something much on my mind these days. I can see hints in my toddlers' movements of the little boys they will become. Sometimes, in the right light, I can see the men they will one day be.

Let's check out the "yocks" over there!

Time moves too fast, so often. Here's something I want to tell my friend (and my students!) about time and about writing: I don't have time to write, either. I need that time to delight in the amazingness that is two growing boys. I need that time to grade papers, to buy groceries, to run, to do yoga. Whole weeks, months sometimes, go by without my sitting down for an hour or two to compose my thoughts. But I still think of myself as a writer. Eventually, some of the ideas I jot down here and there will get refined, between the laundry and bedtime, between the papers and prepping, between the breaths. This is what it means to me to be a writer. If I waited until I had time to write, I'd never write a single word.

My job takes up most of my non-toddler time. I can't seem to find the focus or space I need in order to grade at home—there's the possibility that someone will wake up at naptime, or at night I zone out by mindlessly surfing Facebook or watching Tremé. So I go to a café near the UC Berkeley campus that stays open late. Two rooms of tables are packed with folks mostly working, heads bent over laptops, textbooks, or stacks of papers. I walk in, and I'm transported back to my days as a graduate student, when I could count on running into my friends at our favorite coffee shop or the library's café. We'd grade companionably, or read for seminars while gossipping. I loved the texts I was studying in school, but even more than that, I loved those long days and nights spent sipping coffee and working, the sense that we all belonged to the peculiar tribe of people who spend Saturday nights grading papers and reading books. Now, I hurry home by 9:30 instead of staying out until the library closes and heading out to dance afterward. But the café gives me the illusion for those two hours that I have turned the clock back, that I am back with my tribe. 

I am editing this piece while the boys nap. It's risky. I suppose that I could also be doing something else—watching a show, reading yet another parenting book, working on college recommendation letters. And all of those things will be done in time too. But right now I have more interest in wringing these thoughts out, so I can move on and think of something else. I choose to write. Maybe my friends who say they don't have time to write simply choose to do something else.

Spending some time watching paint dry. Literally.

Examining Writing, pt. 2

I left off here.

Assume, for the moment, that we're not going to stop teaching classes that focus on a region, a type of literature, or a theme. How do we revolutionize our teaching of writing without completely reinventing the wheel?

What are some practices that might help students become better writers and better thinkers? How can we get good essays without having to grade every draft and revision? How can we get students to see their own work critically?

Practices I've used with some success include regular journaling and freewriting a là Bard College. But that has usually been in the context of my Advanced Composition class, which I use as a laboratory for teaching writing; in the context of most other classes, so much time devoted to writing and sharing our writing would be impossible, since we'd also have to look at the text we're reading. I've also spent time using student work to discuss various aspects of analytical essay—the formal stuff like opening and closing paragraphs, integrating textual support, and making clean transitions between ideas. And I'm a huge fan of getting students to write about the text to each other in informal spaces.

But is it possible to assign papers that are less formal, yet that still approach the text and manipulate it in some way? In other words, if it's a given that students must learn how to write something resembling an analytical essay (and that's a big "if"), is it possible to go about it sneakily, by having them write something else, something they enjoy writing more? (Of course, there's another question that arises here: is school supposed to be about enjoyment?)

Should the writing reflect the reading? Or should it intersect with the world in a broader sense? I'm thinking right now of an essay I read in Urban's literary magazine, which is clearly influenced by a piece of literature, but isn't an analytical essay in the way that we teach it. But it is a great essay, and a fine piece of writing.

I know this post is long on questions and short on answers. But the reason I'm blogging isn't necessarily about stating all my beliefs and coming up with a list of the best possible practices for teaching English. I'm blogging to figure out what I think the big questions are and to reflect on what works and what doesn't work, and what I still need to figure out for myself as I continue teaching.

Not Out of the Cave Yet

I have made it through the beginning of the school year! I have a course description prepared for my spring elective, I have great students this year, and I don't feel like the new kid on the block any more. I do feel like the kid who has too much to say about everything and who hasn't yet learned to keep her mouth shut. I see so many things we could be doing differently, from the way our schedule works to the way we assign papers. I wonder if we are not revolutionary enough. I wonder if we will ever be. I don't like being a revolutionary, but this phase of my life seems to be a revolutionary phase. Perhaps such thoughts are mere shadows on the cave wall. There is more to consider than revolution. I wonder what happened to me?

How did I go from being the girl who wanted to study only the classics, the great books, to being the woman who wants to see a more global approach to education? The desire to look for something new in the stream of discourse seems to me to be a privilege I have gained by dint of my education. That is not to say I wouldn't do it all over again. There is something about having spent four years learning for the sake of learning that is very precious to me. I want all of my smart, curious students to do the same. Even so, I wonder if the way to make classic texts available and interesting to the kids might be to integrate them purposefully and deliberately with a study of more contemporary texts, texts that are equally worthy of attention and study.

I wonder. But then I think that my passion for, e.g, the ancient Greeks shows when I teach the Odyssey to my freshmen and when I teach Sophocles to my sophomores. I prefer Socratic seminars to teacher-heavy lectures. Is that enough? (I doubt it, somehow. I know I can be a better teacher.) I wonder whether my students know that knowledge for its own sake is worthy of pursuit. (That's not entirely true; many of the students at my school have fascinating interests and know a great deal about plenty of things that I would never think of learning about.) I had a student inform me today that he could see why he might, as a future computer programmer or engineer, have a need for math, or science, or English. But he saw no need for history! I asked him whether he was planning to live his entire life without talking about the rest of the world or about politics in this country -- how could he expect to be an informed citizen without some knowledge of history?

I should not have been shocked, perhaps -- these are some very bright, very driven kids -- but I was never one of those kids. I was the kid who thought that in order to understand the world, I had to look at the origins of whatever world I lived in. For me, that meant the Greeks and Romans and Kant and Nietzsche and the rest of the canon. Now, I wonder how much of that canon my students will ever read; worse, I am guilty of the crime of wanting to read as much non-canonical literature as I possibly can. So I come back again to the idea of a privileged position. Time to change the topic:

Today was the day that I asked my students to think of essay-writing not as a chore, but as a way of expressing their thoughts. I asked them to describe aspects of writing that they enjoyed. After much thought and much sarcasm, they seemed to agree that the sense of satisfaction that arises from completing a thought or figuring out what they really mean to say was the most pleasant thing about writing. I spoke to them of my own struggles to write: I am a sporadic writer at best. The muse doesn't sing in me often. I am making a commitment to spend a few minutes every week reflecting on teaching, or life, or whatever on this here blog. The test will be over the next few weeks, the busiest of the school year. I am looking forward to being a part of the conversation, instead of solely taking in others' words, even if for a long time I am talking only to myself.