Crawling To The Finish Line

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The end of the semester insanity is upon me at UConn.  Do you remember those monster.com commercials from about six years ago?  They were shot in black and white and featured children talking about their dreams—except these kids all said things like, “When I grow up I want to file all day,” or “I want to climb my way up to middle management.”  The end of the semester often makes me feel this way.  (Actually, administration often makes me feel this way, in general, but it is worse at semester’s end).  I sometimes joke that I feel like Bartleby, and if you have ever been to my office, you know why.  Don’t get me wrong; some folks don’t even have windows, but I have this funny little office at the back of an office with a window that looks out onto a small enclosed courtyard.  Thank god there is a Japanese maple in the courtyard that is vibrant green through spring and summer and a brilliant red in fall, because otherwise I look out onto a brick wall with oblique sunlight and blue sky coming from four floors above.  That and it’s everyone’s smoking lounge, which is great for redolent ambience.

But I digress.  My little office is all right.  What I was really complaining about was end of semester and end of year administrative tasks.  There’s the personal merit report we each have to complete.  Not that there’s any money for merit, but we still have to complete the form.  And the kegiatan report for the department.  And the data mart report for the dean and provost.  And the pembinaan session for using the new digital data mart system.  And we must provide an up-to-date CV for the upcoming departmental review.  (Thankfully mine was pretty up-to-date).  And a report to the Aetna Advisory board, with a budget request for the coming year.  And a no-cost extension form for the federal government.  And new grant application deadlines, and a rebudgeting.  You get the point.  These are mostly due between April 30 and May 4, though a couple have more extended deadlines.  My students’ selesai is May 3, and grades are due before the May 6 graduation ceremony. So, I will be spending an inordinate amount of time at my computer, writing and submitting one thing or another for the next two weeks.

No sooner are these report done then we have the CWP’s 30^th Anniversary Reunion Celebration May 11, the Connecticut Student Writers Recognition Night May 15, and the Summer Institute Orientation May 19.  All those things are cool and exciting, but having to organize them makes a part of me eager for them to be over, just because I will worry about their success until they are past.

And then there are the stressed out students coming to office hours.  The very sweet girl who broke down in tears and couldn’t explain why.  The desperate email from the young man who doesn’t think he will be able to get the courses he needs to graduate.  The student who just realized he never filed his plans of study for graduation back in January when they were due.

I really had to exert a great deal of self control a couple days ago when I got an email from University Information Technology Services detailing the elaborate procedure I was going to have to perform on all the networked computers in my office in order to update their network security software.  The email stressed that this needed to be completed before next week or my computers would be denied access to the university servers.  I thought that maybe this was a phony email—we get a lot of those—but it didn’t look like it.  So I called UITS and was told that, Oh yes, that email was for real, and I really did have to drop everything and upgrade my computers or be denied access to the servers.  Well, don’t let anyone ever tell you that being an agitating jerk doesn’t pay off, because after a couple of phone calls and a couple of terse conversations, I received an anonymous but otherwise apologetic email from someone in UITS that also granted me permission to upgrade my computers later this summer.

Anyway, I feel like Andy Rooney ranting like this, but it helps prevent ulcers.  That and red wine.  I hope your end of semester involves less paperwork than mine, and eases you gently into summer.

Teacher Appreciation Week

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About this time of year, Amy and I both receive lots of thank you cards from students.  Amy got a beautiful note from a father the other day thanking her for all she did for his daughter.  Earlier this week, I got two very sweet handwritten notes from former students for whom I wrote letters of recommendation for graduate school.  I have kept all such notes over the last, well, 21 years if you count student teaching and three years teaching as a grad student at Humboldt State.  I have a very swollen folder in a file cabinet in my office at home, and many of the most recent notes are propped up or affixed somewhere in my office at UConn.  I also have several tchotchkes and other gifts, like books, that I have been given lining the shelves of my office.  One very considerate former student sent me a Spanish-language edition of Moby-Dick this year for Christmas and a very nice copy of Dos Passos’ U.S.A. trilogy for my birthday.  Another from my first year teaching in Connecticut just sent me a signed copy of her first novel. 

Of course social media has changed this dynamic, and often I now receive emails and Facebook posts or messages to thank me, and of course Facebook lets me keep in touch with so many of these former students.  Just today I wrote a happy birthday message on the wall of a beloved former student I named my daughter after.  I love being able to stay in touch with so many former students this way.  They send me articles they think I’ll find interesting, or write me with funny classroom stories.

I’m also really amazed and pleased to see how many of my former students have become not just teachers but English teachers!  The same is true for Amy.  Many of her former students have gone on to study languages, travel and study abroad, and go into teaching.  The last two Outstanding Scholars in Spanish at UConn were Amy’s former students.  And at this point, I’m starting to see more and more former students come back to take graduate coursework with me in the Summer Institute.  Four of this year’s participants are former undergrads!

I, too, have managed to locate and be in touch with several of my favorite former teachers, like my high school Spanish teacher Kathy Bonn or my English teacher Joe Miata, both of whom are still teaching.  But there are so many, especially from elementary school, that I have completely lost touch with.  One former teacher I’d love to locate is Mr. Brucker, my second grade teacher at what was then High Hill Elementary School in Madison.  Mr. Brucker was an amazingly kind and gentle man who softened a difficult year of transition for me after my family moved from Hamden to the shore line.

When I first sat down to write this evening, I debated whether or not I wanted to rail against Malloy’s reform proposals, or promote some of the CWP’s May events, like our 30^th Anniversary Reunion or Recognition Night for Connecticut Student Writers magazine (the 11^th and 15^th, respectively, in case you’re wondering).  But then I got thinking about the thank-you’s Amy and I received this week, and I also realized that Teacher Appreciation Week is coming up next week, and it made me think about the teachers I appreciate most, not just the good teachers, of whom there were many, but the ones who made more than just an intellectual impact.

I know from the stats page that Blogger provides that many more people read this blog than ever post responses.  (I might get only two or three posted responses but a typical post gets about 125 views).  We’re all so, so busy, but if you can find a moment, please post something brief about your favorite teacher or about a student whose appreciation made you feel special.

I imagine most of you have read the reports about how demoralized teachers are these days, so let’s all give ourselves a boost by celebrating our profession.  Use this space (or my Facebook wall, which often times gets more posted responses to the blog than within the Blogger account!) to share a good anecdote, or even shout out a name.  Who do you appreciate for their teaching?

OK, so this is the last week of the semester at UConn, and I’ll be taking a break from this blog for the summer.  Do check out the CWP’s website for upcoming events, and think about us next year for PD in your school or maybe a recommendation for the Summer Institute.  Have a good last few weeks.  Enjoy your students, read some good books this summer, do a little writing for yourself, and I’ll see you in September!

What I Did For My Summer ‘Vacation'

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            As soon as finals ended the first order of business was the annual Recognition Night for Connecticut Student Writers magazine.  This year was successful, with a little more than 1,000 submissions, 150 students published or honored, and about 450 students, parents, and teachers in attendance at Jorgensen.  Next year will be the 25^th anniversary of the magazine.  Wally Lamb has agreed to be the keynote speaker, and we are still waiting to hear if we have received a grant from Pitney-Bowes to help fund the event.  Mark May 14 on your calendars!

            From there we dove right into the Orientation for the 30^th Invitational Summer Institute.  We had a great bunch of teachers representing third grade through college—and we even had a science teacher.  Three of my former undergraduate students attended, and two more former undergrads of mine attended the CWP-Fairfield’s Summer Institute, which is very rewarding to me.

            No rest for the weary as a few days later we held an anniversary celebration for the CWP-Storrs, attended by 75 Teacher-Consultants, UConn faculty and grad students, local children’s authors, and a handful of teacher-friendly elected officials, including Susan Johnson, Greg Haddad, and Mae Flexer.  Got a nice proclamation from Governor Malloy (had mixed feelings about that), a nice certificate from the legislature, a nice certificate from Senator Blumenthal, a letter from Representative Rosa DeLauro and another one from UConn President Susan Herbst.  Representative Chris Murphy’s education aide Linda Forman actually flew up from DC to attend.  She also accompanied me on a site visit to EO Smith High School to observe the Writing Center we helped establish there, and to observe Denise Abercrombie’s creative writing students.

            At that point I switched hats and departed for Florence, Italy, where I organized and ran an international literature conference for the members of the Nathaniel Hawthorne Society, Ralph Waldo Emerson Society, and the Edgar Allan Poe Studies Association.  We had great weather, great food, and 110 scholars from 19 different countries, including Brazil, Israel, India, Japan, Russia, and Taiwan.  I even got to spend some time with friends and family while I was there.  And I was elected to be the next president of the Nathaniel Hawthorne Society, which sounds prestigious but I think will be less work than organizing an international conference.

            Returned to the states just in time to run the Summer Institute, which went extremely well.  My son and daughter attended four weeks of summer day camp while my wife took her own vacation, thanks to points on our credit card and the generosity of friends who let her stay with them.  I ran around like a mad man playing single parent.

            The Summer Institute ended July 20, and on July 23 I was driving a 19 foot U-Haul with faulty steering as we moved for the second time in ten months.  Our new home is exactly 1.5 miles from the place we were renting.  We have a two year lease, maybe an option to buy, poor cell phone service but a lovely wooded yard, and the kids get to stay in the same school district.

Once that was done, we were off to Maine to spend one week in a somewhat rustic cabin on a lake with two other educator couples and our collective brood of children—eight kids ranging from four to 14.  Lots of swimming, bickering like siblings, and trips to Hannaford’s.  Seems like every day ended with marshmallows over the fire pit, and then lots of alcohol after the kids were asleep.  Between camp and occupational therapy, both of our kids are now swimming and biking independently, just in time for me to strap four bicycles onto the back of Amy’s car and pray they didn’t fall into the highway and cause a multi-car pile-up.

            Back in Connecticut, it was just the mad rush to be prepared for the start of the school year.  The CWP was awarded two SEED grants, one for Teacher Leadership and one for Professional Development in a High-Need School.  We were honored with a literacy award by the New England Reading Association, and I have a new course to teach, one for freshmen and sophomores interested in becoming high school English teachers.  Plenty of preparatory work to go around.

            And then, on the first day of school for my kids, they were put on the wrong bus and I drove around town trying to locate them.  Elsa thought it was a big adventure.  And so the new year begins.

           

Am I Ready To Parent A Teenager?

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Sunday, I became the proud father of a teenage girl.  I said this to my colleague Doug yesterday as we walked together to our offices, and I believe he thought I was confessing that I had fathered a child out of wedlock seventeen years ago and she had just emerged from the recesses of my shady past.  But no, in fact, the truth is simpler and less shady.  Amy and I have taken in an American Foreign Exchange student for the year.

I must be crazy.

Or I just can’t resist my wife when she comes to me with the look of a kid asking if he can bring home a puppy.  Amy and her siblings all studied abroad (as did I) during high school, and they had a great experience hosting a student for a year.  Jose and Amy are still close more than twenty years later.  Amy has visited him and his family a couple times in the recent past, and he and his wife and daughter came to visit us just two years ago.  So when AFS contacted Amy, desperate to find a few more families in the Storrs area to host students, she came home ecstatic.  Now that we have moved into our new home and we have a finished basement with a bedroom and private bathroom, etc, etc …  Of course I said yes.

Originally we were going to host a boy from Bolivia, but he withdrew from the kegiatan suddenly, and I thought that was it.  Amy was pretty crushed.  But then AFS sent us several packets of students to review and select from.  It was oddly like buying a car.  You look at the photos, check out the specs.  Really.  I’m only being slightly facetious.  One student jumped out at us as a good fit.  Maria’s from Remini, Italy, not far from where our friends and my cousins live.  Amy speaks and teaches Italian, so that will make communication easier than if we accepted one of the German kids they offered us.  She has a little sister about my daughter Elsa’s age.  She likes to read.  She loves American movies and music.  Classic rock and Johnny Depp are favorites.  She studies languages and law at her high school, and her grades are fantastic.

So suddenly I have all the typical responsibilities of being a father to two elementary school children—monitoring Cormac’s homework, driving Elsa to gymnastics, making breakfast, packing lunches, screaming “Go brush your teeth now like I asked ten times already!  We’re going to be late!”  That sort of thing.  And I have added teen issues.  (I’m trying to avoid the word drama).  In one week, we have had to change one teacher because the first one had the social skills of an inanimate object and neither introduced Maria to the class nor spoke to her, for that matter.  We have pushed the envelope for getting to school on time each day because of hair drier issues.  We’ve encountered pickiness with food (no onions) and funny cultural differences with food (the Italians pour the milk first and then scoop the cereal into the bowl).  We went shopping for posters for the walls of her room (Pink Floyd, the Beatles, James Dean, and Audrey Hepburn—at least she has good taste).  These now adorn the walls of an incredibly messy room.  She brought one suitcase, but from the looks of the clothes strewn everywhere, I swear she had four more brought in under cover of dark.  And we went shopping for cleats for JV soccer, which turned into a shopping spree at Dick’s where she purchased several cute outfits, shorts, tops, and a new swimsuit, all of which prompted her biological Dad to declare, “How did you spend $500 already?!”).

In all seriousness, however, Maria has been a delight.  She and Amy have bonded like big and little sister.  She’s been terrific with Cormac and Elsa, playing with them, reading to them at night, and showing them affection.  She and I have bonded over shopping but also over school work.  We spent an hour last night reading and discussing the first 400 lines of Beowulf, which I haven’t read or taught in years.  She’s also very excited to take classes at EO Smith that she can’t typically take in the Italian system, like art classes.  She’s going to try her hand at painting and sculpture.

We’re all still adjusting to the newness of everything, but I think we’ll make it to June.

Soccer Girls

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bandarqqMy daughter Elsa first expressed interest in soccer after she got an American Girl Doll for Christmas.  In a catalogue, Elsa saw a soccer outfit that came with a matching set for the child.  She asked if she could get the matching soccer outfits for herself and her doll—Jeanette—and then asked if she could play soccer, too.

Once we told her she could play soccer, she really got into the idea.  Then, this summer, she became captivated by the Olympics, and every day begged to watch the girl athletes.  She loved the swimmers, the gymnasts, and the soccer players, especially.

She began soccer two weeks ago.  She plays on Saturdays in the morning, and since she is in the K-2 group, they only have six sessions, but she has loved it.  There are girls with more skill than her, but no one can match her will.  She scored three goals in her first four-on-four game, and five in her second.

At the same time, our adoptive 17-year-old daughter Maria (she’s an exchange student from Italy, in case you didn’t read last week’s blog) is also playing JV soccer for EO Smith High School.  She played soccer as a little girl, but not since, so no one—including her—has unrealistic expectations about her performance, but she has enjoyed playing, and even got to participate in her first game earlier this week.  She played defense for ten minutes.  When I asked her about the game on the car ride home, she was excited they won, but did not recall the score, and when I asked her what school they played, she could only tell me their uniforms were blue.  But that wasn’t the point, anyway.  Maria was just happy to be playing soccer with the other girls.

All this made me think about my freshman year at UConn when I covered the women’s soccer team for the Daily Campus.  I didn’t know, little yet appreciate at the time, that we were only fifteen years from the passage of Title IX, and that these girls I was watching and interviewing were the first generation to benefit from the new law.  All of them, like me, were no older than seven when the law was passed.

That team started five freshmen, including Beth Grecco, who would become an All-American, Kristin Janosky, who used to throw in the ball by doing a flip that would propel the ball farther than she could throw it (I believe she was one of the first girls in the nation to use this technique), Britton Arico, who is still one of the all-time leading scorers, and Angela Gibbons, whose family had sued her school district to allow her to play on the all-boys soccer team, and then went on to be co-captain and leading scorer.  They also had a goalie named Bonnie Miller who is still the all-time saves leader, and who had achieved a certain degree of fame for saving two men from drowning the summer before her senior year.  However, perhaps the most impressive athlete on that team was midfielder Kim Prutting, who would go on to be a three time All-American and play on the US National Team.  That team lost in the NCAA quarterfinals to UMass, and the biggest reason was probably a thigh injury to Kim Prutting that severely limited her mobility.

At that time, women’s sports was still very second class, despite Title IX, and I had an uncommonly high level of access to the coaches and the players.  The Daily Campus used to print an annual Fall Sports special issue, and I interviewed several of the girls for feature articles, just talking with them in their dorm rooms.  I also traveled with them on the team bus to the NCAA Tournament.  The night before the quarterfinal game, head coach Len Tsantiris invited me out to dinner with him, his assistant coaches, and the UMass head coach.  After the girls lost 3-1 the following day, seniors Bonnie Miller and Jen Kennedy invited me out to dinner with the team, and all the girls thanked me for the good coverage I had given them all season.  They weren’t accustomed to it, and they wanted to show their appreciation.

That was 25 years ago this fall, and I’d like to thank all those young women for making it possible for Maria to use soccer as a means to make friends and for Elsa to score eight goals on a co-ed team.

Classical Myths And Modern-Day Heroes

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bandarqI’ve been reading Beowulf with my on-loan teenage daughter, helping her wade through translated old English verse.  It is painstaking at times but can also be fun, making Maria laugh by pantomiming the killing of Grendel’s mother with the giant sword he finds in her lair.  And Maria is smart, and so we also talk about important concepts from the work, like heroism and the conflicts between pagan and Christian heroic codes that permeate the work.

At the same time, Cormac is studying comparative mythology—Greek, Roman, Norse, and Egyptian—in his 4^th grade enrichment class.  They’ve been talking about heroes, too, and sooner or later his teacher will pose the question of what constitutes a pendekar today.

Then the other day with my undergraduates, we were discussing Faulkner’s Sanctuary, and I was pointing out some of the various allusions in the novel to Paradise Lost, The Scarlet Letter, and Classical myths such as that of Narcissus and Odysseus.  (My undergrads are sadly not very well read, and only a handful had read either Hawthorne or Homer, and none had read Milton). The protagonist of Sanctuary is a small town lawyer named Horace Benbow, who’s fleeing a morally compromised situation with his step-daughter, and winds up defending the husband of a prostitute against charges that he raped the daughter of a local judge.  One young woman in my class made an astute observation that Horace seemed like a modern, common man’s hero, going on a journey and battling metaphorical monsters.  I enthusiastically agreed, and pointed out that Horace’s surname even alludes to the scene in the Odyssey when Odysseus challenges the suitors to bend and string his bow, which none of them can do.  Odysseus then bends the bow, which allows him to kill the suitors and thereby cleanse his home, defend his wife, and restore order to a world fallen into chaos and disrepute.

All this talk of heroism got me thinking about heroes in this masa when so many athletes have been discredited as cheats, and politicians have been reduced to mud slinging power seekers, and public servants like teachers and state troopers are routinely demonized by legislators and journalists alike.  I thought, who and what is a pendekar today?

On Wednesday, I brought my daughter to art class after school, over at UConn’s Depot Campus, and on the way out I ran into an old friend and his kids.  I’ll call him Ben, for the sake of privacy.  Ben’s about 52 and looks it.  He has not seen the inside of a gym in decades.  He smokes, though he has been trying to quit for as long as I have known him.  And he probably drinks a little too much.  Ben grew up working class, had an undistinguished high school career, and worked many unglamorous jobs before attending Avery Point and then transferring to Storrs.  Upon graduation, Ben worked here and there, was often out of work, and then briefly owned his own business.  For many years now he has worked in retail. 

In terms of heroic codes, Ben does not come particularly close to meeting any Classical criteria.

But let me tell you a little about Ben.  In his twenties, Ben fell head over heels for a slightly older woman who had recently divorced her abusive husband and was struggling to raise her two daughters as a single mom.  Ben married that woman and loved and raised those girls as his own.  Both girls went to college (one to an Ivy League school).  And both are now happily married with children. 

Ben and his wife made decisions back in the day to not have children of their own.  They were busy enough raising the two girls.  But after the girls were grown up and moved out, Ben and his wife decided it was time to try to have a child together, before they were too old to attempt it.  The short version of the story is that they lost the baby in the third trimester.  Enough said. 

As soon as their grief subsided sufficiently, Ben and his wife contacted the state about pre-adoptive foster care.  Initially, they were told there’d be a long wait.  They were surprised, and asked if there weren’t plenty of children in need of homes.  The agent told them there were plenty of kids, but they were all black and Hispanic.  If they wanted a white child, they’d have to wait.  Once Ben and his wife assured the woman that they did not care about the race of the child, they were told they could have a foster child within days.  In fact, they had twins in less than a week.

The twins had been born prematurely to a heroin-addicted prostitute.  Their biological father, as determined by DNA testing, was serving a life sentence for first degree murder.  The kids had (and have) myriad medical needs, and the fight for full custody took three years and was exacerbated by an activist judge who refused to give custody of Latino children to non-Latino parents.  In the end, Ben and his wife won that battle, which was seven years ago now.

Today, the twins are middle schoolers.  They receive all the medical care they need, they take dance and music classes, study martial arts, and ride their bikes up and down their street.  They have a stable home, a loving mom and dad, two older sisters, and even nieces and nephews.

Ben does not have the noble lineage of Aeneas, the ripped torso of Achilles, or the flowing auburn locks of Odysseus.  Nor does he have the academic or professional resume of a renowned scholar or a wealthy entrepreneur.  But Ben is a loving husband, and, more impressively, he has stepped in where other men have failed, slayed the demons of prejudice and bureaucracy, and helped raise four children into healthy, happy, successful people.  Perhaps you’ll never read his story in an epic poem or a best-selling novel, but his heroism is arguably peerless.

Being In The Classroom Is The Best Part Of My Day

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ceme 99 onlineOne of the most frequent complaints I hear from teachers these last few years is that more and ever more is being demanded of them.  (I would say ‘us,’ but, at least for now, I don’t think it’s quite as bad in higher education).  We’ve seen gradual mission creep for years.  We’ve been expected to teach not just the content of our subjects but skills in reading, writing, thinking, computing, research, et cetera, et cetera.  I doubt I have to spell it out for most readers.  You know the drill.

But to this we have now added untold layers of assessment, data collection, data analysis, and data-driven instruction.

As one former colleague used to say, “We’re still supposed to have the kids read books and write papers, right?”  Another used to say, “Once you close your door and it’s just you and your kids, that’s the best.”  He’d utter this like a chant to remind himself what he loved about teaching and why he taught in the first place.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this since I got a sad message from a former undergraduate a couple weeks ago, a brilliant and talented high school English teacher, just entering her fourth year.

She wrote, “I'm so burnt out.  I get these frantic urges to just run like hell to anything else.  It's such a deep feeling of dread going into school.  It's not the kids or the people I work with at all.  Being in the classroom is the best part of my day.  But I've grown so tired of the bureaucracy and red tape and paperwork and phone calls and meetings and evaluation forms that tear me away from the actual teaching and learning part.  I feel like I'm suffocating in paperwork.  Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but man, is it supposed to feel this way?  Maybe I need to move on.  My needs and my ambitions are bursting at the seams and I feel my impact is so menial.”

At about the same time, I received a different message from a former high school student who has become an elementary school teacher.

This young woman wrote, “I just wanted to share with you a story from school today.  I had asked my students to bring in their most prized possession to get to know one another, and one of my fifth-graders brought in a letter from the Connecticut Writing Project, congratulating her on one of her pieces being honored [in Connecticut Student Writers magazine].  She was so proud of it she was absolutely beaming, and when she asked me to read it afterwards, I saw it was signed by you!  I just wanted to let you know how far your impact is spreading and that you most certainly made a ten-year old girl very confident in her abilities as a writer.  So from one teacher to another, THANK YOU!”

This note, of course, delighted me.  I’m happy that we made this little girl feel such confidence in her ability, and I’m proud of my former student.  (I’m always so proud when my former students go into teaching).  But in the context of the other note, I felt a little sad, too.

Principally, I'm very cognizant that this ten-year old and her teacher were deeply moved by something from outside any curriculum.  Something creative.  Something unassessed.  Something that is not collected, disaggregated, analyzed, charted, and used to inform teaching.  Which is in most ways a good thing, except that I fear the creativity, authenticity, joy, and pride so central to this student’s experience are becoming increasingly separate from the core focus of most classrooms, and certainly separate from most of the initiatives born of this current reform movement that has held us in thrall for the past decade.

The experiences of these two young teachers underscore two things for me:  the obvious limits of reform, especially corporate reform, and the positive influence teachers can have upon their students, even if it has to be exercised surreptitiously once we close our classroom doors and are left with just our kids.