Final Speech - Public Speaking 1st Period

June 2014

Superlatives bother me.

When someone labels a thing or a person “better” or “best”, I often find myself asking what their point of reference is.  What is the scale?  What is the standard deviation?  In the end, I look for a way to disagree with the designation.  At the very least, I tell people, “It’s only the best so far.”  My pessimistic attitude reigns supreme.

But sometimes fate has a funny way of making hypocrites of folks like me.  So it is with a healthy dose of irony and humility that I dub this The Best Public Speaking class I have ever had.

I don’t wish to leave such a comment unproven so I offer the following examples in support of my argument:

1. If I asked Peter to come up here right now and perform an impromptu storytelling, everyone in this room would get pretty excited.
2. If I asked George and JD to reconstruct their semi-inappropriate performance of “The Graduate”, everyone in this room would sit up just a bit straighter in expectation.
3. If I asked Meredith the simple question: “how are you today?” we would doubtlessly get a 15-20 minute diatribe about her driving adventures in Lynchburg prior to school.
4. If I asked Sam McCorkle to come up here and run his prose one more time, complete with that awful Yoda voice - dude, it really is bad - you would all enjoy the nostalgia one final time.
5. If I asked Mckayla to come up here and deliver the most devastating dramatic interpretation she was capable of, we would easily be in puddles of inconsolable tears by the end.

I could go on; the list is long.  But maybe this reason is stronger than the rest for proving this is the best Public Speaking class I have ever taught: when I add my own thoughts, a quick comment, on something and I look out over the faces and intellects of this room, I see every face and every eye and every mind paying attention.  And I am humbled.

I didn’t always know this was what I wanted to do.  I had intimations early on, though, that being the center of attention was something special.  In third grade, I contracted the chicken pox and was homebound for three weeks.  I was bored out of my mind so I purchased and listened to the new hit release album, Michael Jackson’s Thriller, and, without seeing his music video, I constructed a dance routine complete with backup dancers.  When I returned to school, I entered the yearly talent show, found some backup dancers, bought a white sequin glove ($2.99 at Sears) and won second place.  In eighth grade, I read a biography of Walt Disney for a class assignment and instead of giving an oral book report in class, I rearranged the desks in the room to create a Space Mountain-like roller coaster, complete with pop-up cue cards detailing important events in Mr. Disney’s life.  At the end of my senior year, two things happened in short order.  I won the VHSL State Forensics Championship in Extemporaneous Speaking and I was selected as one of three graduation speakers.  Each of those were amazing moments in my life and, in their own way, prepared me to do this today.  Teaching, for me, is half content-related (I have to know what I am talking about or why should anyone listen to me?) and half presentation (I have to say things in an interesting and worthwhile way or I’m just an automated delivery system).

I truly don’t know what kind of teacher I am.  I look out at your faces, at your eyes, and I find myself crushed between two thoughts.  One, my words might be the only interesting ones you hear today or all week; this moment might be the one that I can say something that years from now affects someone in this room to change their life for the better or decide in their own way to give back to a community and a people to which they feel indebted.  Second, my words the scant minutes on the clock are all keeping you from being able to go home or least leave here and if I could hurry both of those up, that would be great.  So I’ll settle for somewhere in the middle.

I do this thing, this teaching, which really is just trying to present the truth to teenagers, trying to help them not be so miserable, downtrodden, misbegotten, deflated human beings because I refuse to think of the future in those terms.  For every day you came to school and didn’t want to, for every subject that you took a test that you felt uncertain about, for every class that you finished in June and thought “it can’t really get harder”, I want you to realize: you’ve beaten them all.  You’re still standing.  You’re still breathing.  You’re the sum total of your successes not your failures.  And as you bask - rightfully so - in your individual and idiosyncratic power, know that somewhere behind you sits a teacher of public speaking that can’t help but be incurably and sensationally proud of you.

As a wise hobbit once said, “I am glad that you are with me - here - at the end of all things.”  I wish you the very best ending and bright, happy new beginning.

This I Believe

Note: I wrote this as a response to NPR's ongoing "This I Believe" series.  I shared it with my students today but thought other folks would enjoy reading it.

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This I Believe

One of my idols in this world is a professor of literature at Yale University, a man by the name of Harold Bloom.  Before I understood anything about metaphor, pathos, or verisimilitude, I was reading books by Dr. Bloom on things like Alice in Wonderland and Rudyard Kipling.  What I was coming to terms with was a very simple question related to the act of reading and learning (which might be two words describing the same action): If I claim to have no time to read this now, then when?  And If I don't attempt it, who will?  My answers to these questions form the basis of the kind of teacher I am today.

Sometimes I look upon my profession and status as a kind of last line of defense (though I am not given to war metaphors).  Hence my answer: I have to attempt this thing, this teaching and helping students become better and deeper writers in their own vein, because I have no certainty that anyone will ever perform this service again in their lives.  Also: How can I claim I have no time to do now what I have to do (grade papers, plan my lesson, talk to students about their writing) when tomorrow brings me a new set of demands on my time?  These questions and answers invariably bring to me some of the most famous words by the late Dr. King when he spoke of “the fierce urgency of now”.  Today is the day you will get feedback on your writing and style and today is the day you will realize that thing or trick that makes you a better writer.  Today is the day that a minor, humdrum sentence becomes through the skill of your pen and the wit of your mind something amazing to dazzle others in a blinding rhetorical light of articulate prowess.

One of my favorite movies is Pixar’s “Ratatouille”.  In that story, we are reminded on several occasions that the most mysterious thing about cooking (or any creative artistic endeavor) is that anyone can do it.  “Anyone can cook!” Chef Gusteau exclaims.  And that anyone which is everyone also refers to you.

I believe that you want to be a better writer and I believe in it so whole-heartedly because I want you to be a better writer.  In short, I believe in you.

The Personal Side of High Stakes Testing

Dear Son,

You are eight years old, soon to be nine, and tomorrow you go to school to take the first of what will unfortunately be many, many, many state level high stakes tests that too many people believe say everything about not just you and your mental acuity but everything about your teacher, your school, and your community.  Sadly, this couldn't be further from the truth as these things are just tests.  They are a single snapshot from a single perspective of how well you seem to grasp some academic concepts: reading, math, science, a sense of history.  As such, I would never tell you not to care about them, just as I would never tell you to not care about school.  Learning and education are the single most important thing in your life right now and should be for a good long while.

Yet the world around you has chosen to blow the importance of these tests so far beyond normal that now we must add artificial weight to them.  And because I do not possess the tools to change that, I am sorry.  I am sorry that as you went to bed tonight the only thing you wanted to talk about was how many questions might be on the test.  Because, you see, I care what the test asks about because that's the nature of learning and growing.  Will it ask you questions about ancient Egypt or modern China?  Those are wonderful and important things to know.  Know your world; know math; know the planets and ask about gravity.  In fact, let's learn about gravity together because, damn, it still confuses the hell out of me.

But it kills my soul when we talk about whether the multiple choice questions will be in this format or that for that is truly irrelevant information to the cosmos.  So don't get me wrong: I hope you do well this week.  I hope you walk into all 6 days of this test (Monday through Monday) and find it easier than you expected.  I hope each afternoon you look over at me when I get home and ask, "What's the big deal about these things anyway?"  And I hope if you do hit a snag, a question that seems really obtuse, that you stop, take your time, think it through and answer it to the best of your ability.

I hope you do well not because I want to see perfect scores.

Not because I want to compare you to others.

Not because I think it says something about you or your teachers.

See, I want you do to well so you can grow up and end these things for your children.  Survive this hideous hydra-like beast so that when you are done and out and grown... you can slay it once and for all.

Dad

Just An Ordinary Tuesday Miracle

Do one thing everyday that scares you.

Several weeks ago, before Spring Break, several teachers in the English department with me got together to brainstorm how we should structure this coming 2 single week remediation blocks of time our school was putting in place starting April 15th.  We had a lot of options combined with a lot of restrictions.  Make it fun! But don't let kids get out of hand!  Make it educational!  But don't let kids be bored or fall asleep!  Relate it to state standards and the testing format and the individual student needs in your room and the school climate as a whole and whatever you do don't - don't - ask for help funding any of it.  Typical edu-babble stuff.  But the heads that came together settled on a pretty good plan: take the AP Language students in my classes, for whom the end-of-course reading test was a breeze and ask them to help work in a one-on-one fashion with some of the kids in other 11th grade English classes, for whom the reading test was a literal barrier to graduating high school.  Create the best and most powerful form of teaching and learning known to man: the personal kind.

I have to admit that I worked for a good week on how I would approach my kids to ask for their help.  I didn't want to deceive them into thinking this would be easy or every minute would be barrel-of-monkeys fun but at the same time I thought this was an opportunity in the most up-close-and-personal way anyone could ask for that we could bridge the single biggest divide at school.  Once I realized that my kids would benefit from this too, the appeal wrote itself.

It was melodramatic in places but never dishonest.  "What if that hour a day," I remember saying, "is the longest period of time in their entire day that someone listens to them in a positive way and helps them?"  That might be over-the-top but no one who works in a public school in this country could refute its essential truth.  See, in the end, I hoped to dispel the stereotypes that tend to get built up in schools on both sides of the divide.  I wanted to tear down the sense that some of my students labor under ("Well, they're all just lazy over there") as well as misconceptions other students have about them ("Well, they're in AP classes because they're just plain smart").  This goal would be combined with the more academic one: helping students who otherwise might not pass this standardized test to actually pass it.

And that was my greatest appeal.  To my kids: "You hate this standardized test and you have every right to.  But you are not the ones it is out to get.  So what if you foiled not just this test but the suits and ties in Richmond who made this test and sit so smugly in their offices thinking no average level English kid could pass this test?  What if through your effort and your attention and your work you helped that student whom the test knows can't pass it... to not just pass it but blow it out of the water?"

It worked.  I had double-digit signups in all my classes.  Then I got nervous.  What if it didn't go well?  What if personalities clashed?  What if a series of infinitesimal things added up to a gigantic failure?

worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum

So this week we started.  Monday I spent 5 minutes with my kids fielding some questions and generally going over how things would work.  It was all very structured: icebreaker activities, a little bit of reading comprehension but nothing deadly dull.  The first half was the getting-to-know-you bit and it went... well.  Actually, better than that.  It was like kids from different sides of the country or even other countries were meeting for the first time and finding... they had a lot in common.  There were some great conversation starters.

One question went like this: Which administrator really gets on your nerves?  Two students from different classes would pair up and something like this emerged:

"Hey I'm Kylie."
"I'm Jaron."
"So, what answer did you give to this one?"
"I said Mr. Brown."
"Oh, really, like, why?"
" 'Cause he always up in everyone's business when he don't need to be, you know?"
"You mean like dress code?"
"Yeah."
"He busted a friend of mine last week for that.  So stupid."
"Yeah, one time he told me..."

And there they went.  Two students who normally wouldn't even look at each other in the hallway much less smile or converse found pretty neat common ground.  Those kinds of conversations typically morphed into ones about classes and subjects and friends and family and home and...

It was working; it was really really working.

Tuesday was the next test.  Would these somewhat forced friendships stand up over more than a single hour?  Would the kids want to work together again?  Tuesday was a bit more academic with tiny bits of test prep thrown in.  Average level kids read a passage, got some help with pronunciation and vocabulary, then together with my AP kids banged away at some main idea and tone questions.  There was prodding and questioning in the right places: "Why do you think he phrased it that way?"  "What point is she making?"

I rewarded the kids who got top scores with candy (always a winner with teens) and dangled the reward before those who came close.  Another chance; another little passage and this time, you can do it!  90% or bust kids!  All of that went really well.  I don't know that we changed comprehension levels or reading skills or anything so grand.  But the average level kids spent an hour working on skills without the fear that an adult was watching of grading or judging.  It was just two kids with a common goal.  (That goal being candy; I mean, let's not kid ourselves here.)

As the period closed down, I let them stop about 5 minutes early.  "Take a break," I said.  "Chat it up; bell will ring soon.  Enjoy your candy."

Then, as I was passing a pair of students, I overheard them talking, probably picking up the fragment of a conversation from earlier.

"So, you were saying..." one of my kids prompted.
"Yeah, like she was all screaming at me and I wasn't gonna take that so I walked out 'cause don't no body scream at me."
"Where did you go?"
"Naw, it was late and I didn't want to go like all the way to my aunt's house so I slept in the back seat of the car while my mom cooled down."
"Just like hung out there?"
"Sorta.  I mean, her boyfriend showed up so I didn't go back in the house until like 2 in the morning but whatever.  Ain't like she never thrown me out of the house before."
I snatched a quick glance at my kid and her face, her expression will be forever imprinted on my brain.  I will never forget because it spoke volumes.  It said:

My God.  It's you.  I know all about you but only because I've read about you or heard about you from my teacher's.  I'm a doctor's kid and I've never not been allowed in my own house at night.  But you're here in front of me and not in the words on a page or in a newspaper article.  I'm not trying to visualize you or imagine anything about you because you are here in front of me telling me this story and I can't believe my god you exist here in this school in the classroom right next to mine and somehow I never knew and you're here.  It's you.

My student didn't say any of that out loud.  The bell rang a few moments later and the other girl smiled and hurried out.  Another bell to another class to another teacher.  Nothing this kid hadn't dealt with before.

Except someone sat and listened to her in the most positive and re-affirming way for possibly the longest period of time anyone would that entire day.

The Rational and the Subversive

Still plugging through Zen.  Ran into page 150 earlier today and two adjacent paragraphs hit me with completely opposite effects.  The first:

The real University, he said, has no specific location.  It owns no property, pays no salaries and receives no material dues.  The real University is a state of mind.  It is that great heritage of rational thought that has been brought down to us through the centuries and which does not exist at any specific location.  It's a state of mind which is regenerated throughout the centuries by a body of people who traditionally carry the title of professor, but even that title is not part of he real University.  The real University is nothing less than the continuing body of reason itself.

Most of this sits well with me as it echoes Thoreau in my head.  Tear down the structures, the things of this world that tend to represent thought and intelligence and wonder and yet still I have my mind and in my mind I have the images and feelings associated with those things.  Similarly, tear down the institutions responsible for instilling learning within us, deny them accreditation, do what you will and the process of learning and thinking and growing will still take place.  In this way, great education is not contained within walls anywhere, a sentiment the great thinkers of our race would agree with (Socrates, Twain, Whitman, Hemingway).  It also suggests the idea that teaching is something pretty innate as it contains the sum total of the desire to help another.  In this way it is an expression of ego but also of altruism.

The next part thus:

In addition to this state of mind, "reason," there's a legal entity which is unfortunately called by the same name but which is quite another thing.  This is a nonprofit corporation, a branch of the state with a specific address... But this second university, the legal corporation, cannot teach, does not generate new knowledge or evaluate ideas.  It is not the real University at all.

This discredits learning in a way that contradicts what I see in the first graph.  The narrator/author seems to want to separate the experience of school from learning.  Ok, he has precedent there.  Twain: "I never let schooling interfere with my education."  But the difference, I think, is the belief that learning CAN happen anywhere.  It is not confined to the classroom ("I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately") but neither is it, by definition, mutually exclusive of the classroom.  To defend the first and refute the second is illogical.  University structures may suffer flaws, as all organizations do, but until our culture produces enough roaming Socrates to meet with the masses under the tree of knowledge, then we need organization.  Question the method this learning tradition operates on, sure; but do not demolish its foundation or you remove the argument for learning altogether.

The Kantian Side of Sparkplugs

Suppose a child is born devoid of all senses; he has no sight, no hearing, no touch, no smell, no taste--nothing.  There's no way whatsoever for him to receive any sensations from the outside world.  And suppose this child is fed intravenously and otherwise attended to and kept alive for eighteen years in this state of existence.  The question is then asked: Does this eighteen-year-old person have a thought in his head?  If so, where does it come from?

Years ago, well decades ago, I was perusing the bookcases in the E.C. Glass library when I came across a book that looked mildly interesting:  Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M Pirsig.  I read the jacket cover, picked it up with the intent to check it out but never did.  Why?  Who knows.  Did I see some Shakespeare or John Donne?  That sounds like the 17 year old me.  So imagine my surprise when, again perusing the stacks of the high school where I became myself, I again found this book.  This time, I thought, I take it up.  Here and now with all this reading and learning behind me surely the book will resonate.

The excerpt from above is from one of the sections the narrator describes as a Chautauqua, which a quick Google search indicates is a kind of "adult education movement" in the United States some time ago.  A scan of its history suggests it was a kind of pseudo-intellectual movement for somewhat non-intellectuals in the country to espouse whatever was on their minds.  I'm instantly on my guard: there's way too much anti-intellectualism in this country as it is, if you ask me.  "I'm not smart and I'm proud of it" seems to be the new American motto.  "Science is for sissies" and so forth.

So the story, such as it is, divides itself between these metaphysical/spiritual ramblings and a loose narrative about a motorcycle ride across the northern states of the country, from Michigan to Montana.  The narrator, his son, and a couple of friends.  He's aloof in a "I'm thinking about big things" kind of way.  And some of the big things are interesting: Kant and the history of empiricism.  But for the most part the narrative seems to be a gimmick to hold his dis-separate thoughts together.  As such this reminds me of another philosophy book I read a couple of year ago, Sophie's Choice.  My response to this book is much my response to that one.

Meh.

I like spilling words as much as the next person but there's something about philosophy books couched in literary traditions that don't sit well with me.  Here's an intriguing narrative, the author seems to hold out there.  And while you're on this cycle with me let me expostulate what beauty is and the empirical rationale for finding both truth and beauty in the world.

Sigh.  Can I get off at the next town?

My 17 year old self was probably wise to take a detour with Shakespeare, whose philosophy is second to his art, as it should be.  Hamlet provides us a more complex and powerful world view than any pop-philosophy book ever has.  There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreampt of in your philosophy, Horatio.

Some of this analysis is not just though.  I have to admit to being turned off on page 128; I've never found my way back to the author or narrator after he said: "From that agony [read: ancient man] of bare existence to modern life can be soberly described only as upward progress."  Not sure that giant factories that pollute our rivers and deforest our planet, weapons that can annihilate us several times over, and technology that pulls us away from sunlight and fresh air can be described by any rational human being as "progress".

I suspect 50 more pages and I'll be returning to my Thoreau and Whitman as replenishment for my soul.

Pathos and Les Miserable (Part 2)

A little less than a month ago I laid out my initial argument for our sense of pathos in Hugo's perennial masterpiece, "Les Mis".  I suggested that the convention of our affection as being Val Jean and his charge, Cossette, were wrongly founded.  If we are indeed asked to "pity" those in miserable circumstances, then surely Hugo as a relevant artist of words would provide us with reasons to feel such pity.  My thrust, then, was three-fold: Javert, Eponine, and ultimately Fantine.  I consider that side of the argument "the bright side" or the optimistic one.  At least, as far as one can be optimistic in a book (and time period) of pretty complete despair.  This time, though, comes the negativity.

I knew even after my first reading that while Jean Val Jean was cut after the martyr figure, the heroic Victorian man who sacrifices all he has for another, and thus at least mostly deserved the pathos that Hugo seems to artificial dress him in, the little tyke, this Cossette, had none of this.  I couldn't initially say why; but now I think I can.  And it has everything to do with conscious ignorance.

Cossette is born into ignorance, one might argue.  Her mother leaves her at a very young age with the almost Dickensian Thenardiers.  They manipulate her and her mother for nothing short of a king's ransom.  They fake report illnesses of the child to exact more money from the mother.  This of course leads Fantine to her ultimate debasement and one could argue her death.  But Cossette is never aware of any of this.

What does she know?  She knows she's unhappy.  She knows that the Thenardiers' children get better clothes, better toys and dolls, a better life (such as it is - though one could argue it's all squalor).  She is never aware of her mother's last desperate hour to see her; she is never aware that Val Jean, whom she comes to call Father, risks everything including his life several times over to keep her safe - not only safe but comfortable and happy.  After he liberates her from the Thenardiers and escapes Javert it is some time before we see the two of them again.  And when we do, how impoverished are they?  Well, see, that's the thing.  He has set up shop in Paris and works here and there providing her with pretty nice things.  She gets a childhood that most Victorian girls of impoverished backgrounds never get: walks in the park, pretty clothes. Oh and love.

The love triangle was inevitable, I suppose, as most Victorian literature functions on it in one way or another. But I wonder if that's half the problem: Marius love Cossette; Cossette loves Marius back (once she knows who he is) but they can't meet; so Marius uses Eponine to get to Cossette.  And of course, Eponine loves Marius.  While some love triangles function dramatically it strikes me that the most notable instances of love triangles in literature are comedic, not serious.  (Think Shakespeare in Twelfth Night.)  So this begs the question: why do we feel bad for Cossette again?  Because she born in bad circumstances?  Sweetie, get in line.  Because she can't be with the one she loves?  The one she saw across the park for the first time yesterday afternoon.  Once again, see Shakespeare who did the distance-lover-thing first and better.  Anything left?  Pity her because Marius is compelled to return to the barricade and fight in the Revolution?  Except he survives, once again, because Val Jean risks his life to drag him (unconscious lover that he is) to freedom.

I think it's the Eponine thing that really bugs me.  Marius is making a choice: the more beautiful woman?  The one who appears wealthier?  The one who is out of reach?  That's a pretty classic trope: want the thing you don't have (Cossette) rather than what's faithful and right in front of you (Eponine).  And while it doesn't make me like Marius, at least I know his type.  But Cossette.  I can't pity her.  Because she never knows any of this.  Hell, she allows Val Jean to be cast out while her new husband thinks he is a Royalist traitor.  How's THAT for thanks?  And when they both figure it out: his deathbed of course.

In this way, she's the ultimate one percenter.  Born to squalor and degradation.  Lifted out by someone kind and benevolent.  Completely unconscious of her fortune or how it came about for pretty much the entire novel.  Completely unconscious that the man she loves is hurting someone close to him...  for her.  Just... unconscious, in so many ways.  I suppose then it's fitting he is dragged away from battle literally unconscious.

It's worth noting that the characters I suggested last time as deserving our pathos: Javert, Eponine, Fantine... these are characters who are the opposite of unconscious in every way.  They are AWARE.  They understand in a deep and metaphoric way their place in this struggle and story.  They are, to quote Dr. Bloom, "free artists of themselves".  Interesting that their freedom then, in a sense, requires the ultimate sacrifice from each and every one.