Thursday, October 28, 2010

Week 5

A student from last winter term requested a letter of recommendation so I squeezed in some time to do this by getting up extra early one morning last week. I let her know that the letter was ready. Did she want to pick it up or should I mail it to her? She'd maybe pick it up after my p.m. class the next Tuesday. Great. But she didn't show and had let me know in an e-mail sent about the time I expected her to arrive. I e-mailed back. Would she like to pick it up at a different time or should I mail it? No reply for two days. Then she asked that I mail it to her, but she did not send an address. I e-mailed back asking for that information. No reply yet. I don't think she is taking this letter of recommendation as seriously as I am. What do you think? And never mind that I had to manipulate the language to show this student in the shining light of deserving.
Another student asked to stay after class ostensibly so we could go over her essays. What we really talked about is her life. She is 17 years old and has a five year old son. Yes. She became pregnant when one of the men living in her household forced himself on her. She barely knew what it meant to have a period. Yet this young woman is putting herself through college, raising her son, working as a translator and found a safe place for her younger sister to live. She is determined to rise above her circumstances and carve out a good life for her son and for herself. She is well on her way in spite of being robbed of a childhood.
I don't know whether or not I'll miss these personal encounters with students. Sometimes they just cause too much of an emotional response from me.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Week 4

This last fourth week of school is about that elusive event known as the "teaching moment" where teacher and students are interacting on the same plane absorbing and reflecting an epiphany of knowledge gained at precisely the same time in each of our brains at once. We all celebrate this oneness together with a kind of supernatural energy that causes a weird educational euphoria for all of us. It's rare and it's worth the wait. I try to make it happen as much as I can.
Well. It certainly did not happen in my morning class. I tried 16 ways to Sunday to tie together the current readings and a language exercise with a writing assignment due next Tuesday. I only managed to get quizzical looks from student faces. They could not understand my expectations. In desperation, I stood in front of them and waved my arm and hand in the air as if I were erasing everything that had happened in the last few minutes. Then I moved my body to another teaching area in the classroom and came up with a different way to explain the assignment. I think it worked. We'll see on Tuesday.
I thought about this experience several times before my afternoon class when I'd have to deliver the same lesson and make the same assignment. I came up with a new strategy that hit right on. The "teaching moment" occurred just after the assignment was made. Students began talking about what topics they would choose to write about with a lively enthusiasm not often witnessed in a writing class. One young man actually stood up and asked happily, "You mean I can write about types of zombies? REALLY?"
"Absolutely," was my sincere reply. And then he went on to tell the whole class about his plan to get this essay completed. He took off after class announcing his intention to get started right away. And then he came back into the classroom and "oh, yeah-ed" me with, "This is the first time I've ever, ever been truly excited about a writing assignment." His response mimicked what was going on in several other corners of the classroom just then. We all "got it" at the same time.
I will definitely miss these extraordinary moments when teaching and learning come so seamlessly and so speedily together that we all feel as if we have had brain growth at precisely the same time.

Monday, October 18, 2010

Week 3

In the writing class this week we studied and discussed the tricks about writing in the descriptive mode. We took a close look at some of the essays in the text that featured description starting with Momaday's fabulous piece "The Way To Rainy Mountain." I loved watching the students figure out how he presented the simple narrative of visiting his grandmother's grave by folding it into word pictures of the Kiowa landscape. His ancestors were defined by the land that nourished them and he was wildly successful helping the reader "see" Rainy Mountain at the end of the merciless desert. The acceptance of the struggle to get through the heat and harshness of the land is something we white people don't really understand. When the students undid all the layers of the details in the story to discover how another ethnic group defines itself was a joy.
But the real joy of the week came when my four year old grandaughter really and truly read a story called "Ted and Peg." This thinly plotted bookette only had one or two descriptive words in the whole thing. Sentences featured the short e sound and I won't give anything away by letting you know that after Ted and Peg met, he wanted to paint his hen red. LiLi read every word sounding them out carefully with only a little help from me. It was a miracle. I was one of the very first people on earth to experience one of her very first reading experiences. It happened during our "nest rest" time covered up with our favorite blankets while the sun and a little autumn breeze whispered through the open window above us.
Magic for college students was, I have to admit, outshone by the reading of "Ted and Peg" by the proud and delighted LiLi.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Week 2

Ten piles of papers arranged in perpendicular stacks of five waited on the desk for my assessment and grade. I needed to complete two and part of a third stack of papers per day for four days to be comfortably ready to return them to the students by the next class meeting. The papers were journal entries about reading and writing habits and unforgettable places. I read about a hated fourth grade teacher who made a terrified little girl read aloud. She hasn't liked reading since. Two students made Baghdad with its heavy heat and second by second danger come alive. Someone else wrote about tending horses with her dad in the way back part of Montana. It reminded me of cowboys riding the range in the days of the Old West. One woman wrote about the loss of eight cousins to a house fire. And another writer described the "forest" next to his boyhood home where he and his friends built forts and trails to their own young boy specifications. Others wrote ineffectively about "awesome" trips to Disneyland, Hawaii, and the Oregon Coast. They don't understand yet that those meaningless words just lie flatly on the page not even attempting to kick up some life into the experience of wind-whistling rides or a sun that sinks into a tepid sea like a slowly dipped teabag. But they all try and if some essays jump off the pages while others just lie there barely breathing, it's all okay. I finished them in time to read more of my murder mystery before taking them all neatly graded and commented upon back to class.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Week One

Hello Terry,
My name is A. Student and I have been attending Clackamas for 2 years ago just wrapping things up this year and trasfering out!
I was supposed to take MWF classes due to working full time, but have to now switch to TTh. Your class works perfect for my schedule and I was hoping if I come to class prepared on thursday, and have an add/drop slip, did attendance today look like there is any room? If you could shoot me back an email and let me know that'd be great!

Thanks so much for your time,

A. Student



A. Student,

You may check in with me at the beginning of class to see about space availability. Your first assignment is to re-write your e-mail. Type it up double-spaced with all the errors corrected. I will review the content of the first day for you. For now, think about the power of language.

Terry