DHS Room 208

Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

Wikispace by Advanced Placement Literature Class

“The Passing,” a short story by Durango Mendoza, has been a regular offering in my Junior English classes for a number of years.   Mendoza,  Muscogee Creek/Mexican from Oklahoma, weaves a short tale about a boy named Sonny who befriends a young Indian (called Joe Willow) who passes by his home each evening on the way from work.    They become spiritually tied through the realization that they both live with their step-dads.   Later Joe Willow’s passing to the afterlife leaves Sonny reflecting on his loss of his friend to the cold spring rain.

While teaching in New Zealand two years ago, I searched for a copy of the story and finally resorted to contacting the Mr. Mendoza directly and he graciously set a copy to me via an email attachment.

the20passing1

My classes predict the primary meaning of the title prior to reading and reflect on its multiple meanings after.  A followup writing assignment focuses on their personal experience with people they have know in passing.  Many of their short works are among the most poignant and heartfelt works I’ve seen from high school students.

Today’s passing of NBC News’ Tim Russert reminded me of Mendoza’s story.  Russert was the consummate political news reporter who was well known for his love of baseball and football, his comradery in political circles and his devotion to his family.    Though a public figure, many viewers felt a connection to him for a variety of reasons;  for me it was a common childhood in upstate New York and pride in our sons.  His passing leaves me feeling I’ve lost a friend, even though I never met him.  Rest in Peace, Tim.

 ”Testing Is Not Teaching:  What Should Count in Education”  by Donald H. Graves

I mentioned in a prior post that while reading this book, I felt that Graves was preaching to the choir.  Since Maine’s Education Department gave up on its self-designed Maine Educational Assessments (MEAs) and local assessment initiative, and threw all its eggs in the SAT basket, I’ve noted the plethora of objections to this high stakes, snap-shot form of testing and agreed with most of them.  Until I reached Grave’s essay entitled “Assessments That Raise Standards,”  I was wondering if the book was just a rehash of all those objections or if he had anything new to offer.    Having finished, I have to say that he has succeeded in provoking alot of thought on the subject of national obsession with standardized testing in schools and what steps we should take to augment it. 

That we depend solely on the SAT to rate our high schools and students borders on lunacy and is the source of a great deal of consternation on the part of educators throughout the state, no matter how rosily the commissioner and her cadre of lapdogs likes to paint it.   But at this point, the most salient question is: what do we do until sanity returns and the political pendulum swings?  

I’d suggest there are a number of corollaries to Grave’s assertion:

Teaching is Coaching–as a teacher and an athletic coach, I’ve long held the view that I’m a teacher on the playing field and a coach in the classroom.   I reject the authoritarian approach to teaching and try to model the techniques and skills we think the kids need.  From there its all coaching.

Life Is a Multiple-Choice Test–We’re constantly faced with situations in which we have to choose between a number of options; a conversation with a friend in which we are A) sympathetic, B) sarcastic, C) distracted, D) concerned, or E) None of the above, etc.  Life experiences, genetic code and upbringing are all factors in which choice we make.   Conditioning is a key element in all decision-making and how and where we learn this conditioning is critical.   In a sense, life is a series of tests and those that are successful are the ones that develop the skills to address the greatest variety and severity of tests. 

All Writing Is Testing—No matter what the prompt, our written response is a test of our skill in stringing together those words we have in our memory-bank into the flowing expression of ideas with a unique voice and style.   Fluency.   In a sense,  SAT multiple-choice testing demands the same breadth and understanding of vocabulary as writing does and fluency is the key to success in both.   I would contend that there is a parallel between multiple-choice testing skills and writing skills in that regard.  Improving a student’s vocabulary and the ability to distinguish between those words will improve both skills.

All Learning Styles and Performance Styles Should Count—Just as we each have a different mix of Learning Styles, we each have different performance styles.  There’s nothing more frustrating than being the parent of a hands-on learner when dealing with educators and there’s nothing more frustrating than dealing with the parent of a hands-on learner who insists that their child must have that option to the exclusion of all others.   The multiple-choice question is one we need to address, but realistically, we need to develop skills in a variety of different learning and performance styles.  Its incumbant on teachers to assess students in all those areas.  And students need the encouragement from their teachers and parents to do their best to improve in all of them.

Learning Should Count the Most in Education–The best assessments are those that reflect the process of learning and focus on skill acquisition not the banking of knowledge.  The SAT reflects a very narrow set of skills and learning and must be supplemented with a variety of assessments.

Above all, educational leadership depends on a concept that is well expressed in the words of Lao-Tzu:

 A leader is best

when people barely know he exists,

 Not so good when people obey and acclaim him,

Worse when they despise him.

But of a good leader

who talks little when his work is done,

his aim fulfulled,

they will say:

We did it ourselves.

Tonight was the Candlelight ceremony for the DHS Class of 2008.  It was my priviledge to give the English Award to two seniors who distinguished themselves in writing and language arts for the past year.

Taking the perogative we English teachers think we always have, I used the poetic option to say a few words about our recipients.   The poem was posted on The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keilor  http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/   June 2nd and features a Maine writer:

I always have at least a couple maps on display in my classroom and I enjoy using them as teaching tools.   Today we located Athens, home of Socrates, at the start of a unit on Oedipus Rex.

My favorite map is one of New Zealand. 

When Jacob’s options for college dead-ended on waiting lists in the spring of 2005, he said, “Dad, can I go to school in New Zealand?”  He knew I had a friend, David Hall, who had worked at Camp Calumet with me one summer, and that I’d kept in touch with Dave. 

A few phone calls and internet search resulted in applications to Victoria University and Massey University and later that summer an acceptance to VIC, Jacob’s first choice of the two.

With Caleb on his own and Jacob set to go to New Zealand, I recalled Dave telling me New Zealand hires about 20% of their teachers from overseas, so I decided to check it out.   First, a search in the national educational news source, Teach NZ and then scanning the Education Gazette resulted in a number of English teaching possibilities. 

On Jacob’s first trip to Wellington, I managed to secure an interview at Gore High School on the South Island and a one-year position filling a leave-of-absence.  While Jacob attended the Summer term there (November to February, 2006), I requested a leave at DHS and by the end of January I was on my way to NZ.

I’ve been reading Don Graves’ book “Testing Is Not Teaching” this week, much of which focuses on the proliferation of high stakes testing in High Schools in the US.   These snapshots, like the SAT (the exam we use in Maine to determine our No Child Left Behind status) and PSAT and others, are the anti-thesis of what most of us teachers think our students and schools should be judged by, and Graves is preaching to the choir as far as I’m concerned.

The irony for me, is that in New Zealand, assessment drives the curriculum.  But the results not only gauge how well the students and schools are performing, the assessment is based in skills acquisition and learning at the same time.  The range of assessments and performance exhibits is wide and provides options for students to secure their credits and move on to the next level.  

Moderation of assessment by each department in the school not only ensures consistency in grading from student to student, it also serves as a professional development opportunity for the teachers.   I found the environment envigorating, and the professionalism of the staff I worked with to be outstanding.   Since returning to the US, I’ve reshaped my approach in the classroom and even find that SAT prep has a place in the overall scheme of things, although I could still do without it.

Teaching in New Zealand and working with the staff at Gore High School was transformational for me.  My only regret was having to leave early to take care of some personal business at home. 

Miraculously though, I also realized what I’d left behind and not long after my return to Maine, convinced Beth to marry me.  I’m still thinking there might be a chance that I can convince her to go back with me for an additional New Zealand experience. 

GORE HIGH SCHOOL, Gore New Zealand 

MEMOIRS By Pablo Neruda

The 1971 Nobel Prize for Literature winner’s Memoirs respresent more than the recollections of a prolific and unique writer.  They document some of the great political and cultural figures of the world in the mid-20th century.     Neruda spent many years in foreign service at a time when literary and artistic leaders were tapped by their governments to represent the best of country’s culture in embassies and consulates across the globe.  Names such as Pablo Picasso, Mao Tse-tung, and Fidel Castro intermix with many of his Latin American and Spanish-language peer group in a book that is as much history as narrative.

Neruda’s prose rivals his poetry in its breadth of style and tone.  The author drew on the geographical and political environment whereever he lived, as inspiration for his work and as clay for his poetic figures.   The prose, unmistakeably and understandably, has a poetic quality which distinguishes it from any other.

Neruda believed in the empirical quality of poetry, an intrinsic or essential part of life itself:

“On our earth, before writing was invented, before the printing press was invented, poetry flourished.  That is why we know that poetry is like bread;  it should be shared by all, by scholars and by peasants, by all our vast, incredible, extraordinary family of humanity.”

ESSENTIAL NERUDA, page ix

 But he also recognized the need for form and tradition in his poetry.   He railed at those that boasted too greatly of their creativity:

I don’t believe in originality.  It is just one more fetish made up in our time, which is speeding dizzily to its collapse.  I believe in personality reached through any language, any form, any creative means used by the artist.  But out-and-out originality is a modern invention and an electoral fraud.

Still it is essential to keep one’s interior bearings, to stay in control of the additional material that nature, culture, and a socially-committed life contribute to bringing out the best in the poet.

MEMOIRS,  page 266

He expressed an awe and humility in his own writing that transcends the great body of his work and the tributes it received.   His work passed through him as though he were an instrument or vessel of some higher force and he was the faithful steward, obligated to bring the pen to paper, the message to the reader.  He performed his service to the world with satisfaction:

OCTOBER FULLNESS

Little by little, and also in great leaps,

life happened to me,

and how insignificant this business is.

These veins carried

my blood, which I scarcely ever saw,

I breathed the air of so many places

without keeping a sample of any.

In the end, everyone is aware of this:

nobody keeps any of what he has,

and life is only a borrowing of bones.

The best thing was learning not to have too much

either of sorrow or of joy,

to hope for the chance of a last drop,

to ask more from honey and twilight.

Perhaps it was my punishment.

Perhaps I was condemned to be happy.

Let it be know that nobody

crossed my path without sharing my being.

I plunged up to the neck

into adversities that were not mine,

into all the sufferings of others.

It wasn’t a question of applause or profit.

Much less.  It was not being able

to live or breath in this shadow,

the shadow of others like towers,

like bitter trees that bury you,

like cobblestones on the knees.

Our own wounds heal with weeping,

our own wounds heal with singing,

but in our own doorway lie bleeding

widows, Indians, poor men, fishermen.

The miner’s child doesn’t know his father

amidst all the suffering.

So be it, but my business

was

the fullness of the spirit:

a cry of pleasure choking you,

a sigh from an uprooted plant,

the sum of all action.

It pleased me to grow in the morning,

to bathe in the sun, in the great joy

of sun, salt, sea-light and wave,

and in that unwinding of the foam

my heart began to move,

growing in that essential spasm,

and dying away as it seeped into the sand.

ESSENTIAL NERUDA,  pages 171 & 173

Beth and I visited Neruda’s home at Isla Negra on our trip to Chile in April and enjoyed walking the same ground and breathing the same ocean air as a truly great artist and unique human being.   See my travel post at:  http://cmaddaus.blogspot.com/2008/05/isla-negra-chile.html

Thomas L. Friedman’s column in the New York Times today deserves a look by anyone who’s in Education, anyone who’s a parent or both.   http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/opinion/25friedman.html?hp

His conclusion hits home in any number of ways:  There are so many good reasons to finish our nation-building in Iraq and resume our nation-building in America, but none more than this: There’s something wrong when so much of an American child’s future is riding on the bounce of a ping-pong ball.   

Our school district has cut an English teacher and a Science teacher from next year’s budget, in spite of level enrollment projections, in the face of reduced revenue from State and Federal sources.  While I understand the Superintendent and School Board  holding the line on the budget and wanting to maintain Athletics and Arts programs, the impact will be to increase class size and reduce elective courses, to the detriment of our student’s education.   It’s not that those of us who remain won’t try to overcome the impact, but we can only do so much. 

Continuing the ‘war’ in Iraq and leaving our children’s education to chance seem like two concepts we should discard and we need to do so both on a local level, through our own activism, and globally, in the November elections.

While this site is intended for use in my high school English classroom, I’m more than likely to go off on tangents–for instance this one prompted by the photo above, a view of Old Riga in the Baltic, former Soviet, State of Latvia.   Riga is a vibrant capital city of nearly a million people, resting on both sides of the Daugava River, just short of its emptying in the Baltic Sea.

 My great-great-grandparents lived in Latvia under Russian rule during the mid-19th century and both great-great-grandfathers were teachers.  Johann Karl Ludwig Maddaus taught art and worked as a protrait artist in Riga, while Andzs Ratminders taught in a small school in rural Vecpiebalga for 63 years.   It’s more than likely that I got the teaching gene from one or both of them.

 I visited Latvia for the first time in 2005,  roaming Old Riga, visiting Johann’s artwork in the National Art Museum and a church in neighboring Estonia, and literally stumbling on Andzs’ gravestone in Vecpiebalga.   I hope to return again later this year. 

 You learn who you are by learning where you came from.

 CM