The following is from Beyond Good and Evil. It was written by Freddie Nietzsche in 1886 and was his last book of aphorisms. I have found it helpful when applied to teaching. “He who fights monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into the abyss the abyss also gazes into you.”
I’m not altogether sure why I like the preceding quote so much. Perhaps, it’s something about staring into an abyss or dealing with adolescents that I find appealing about it. Whatever it may be I have found it comforting.
On another note I’d like to take the time to finally come out and say it -F teacher movies. From the producers to the cast –f ‘em. Nothing has been more of a pain in my ass than that Freedom Writers. I haven’t seen it, but nearly every student in my Freshmen English class has. They all stare at me bewildered at the fact that I haven’t grown into a challenging, personable, angry young woman. I’m not sure what to tell them. I haven’t seen the movie yet so I don’t know exactly what I need to do to become more Hillary Swank like. Maybe if I just shot for Michelle Pfeiffer or took a stab at being an Olmos. I don’t know which one would be easier for me to accomplish. Olmos drove a beetle. Pfeiffer had a leather jacket. I already own a leather jacket.
I’d also like to take the time to say that teachers, like firemen and policemen, should have uniforms. Maybe gold plated suits with top hats. I want to walk down the street and have people know why I have lines in my forehead. I don’t just want them to think I fret over things I can’t change.
While I’m ranting, Annhieser-Busch just put out a commercial that caught my eye. One that matter-of-factly make me almost vomit. Cops helping people. Firemen rising from ashes triumphant –three babies and a liter of kittens under each arm. The caption read Annhieser-Busch salutes those who serve. No trash men. No meter maids. No teachers. WTF? I wasn’t naïve enough to go into this teaching gig expecting accolades. I knew that it would be both thankless, physically tiring and emotionally taxing. But I’ll be damned if I sit back and watch my favorite beer company salute firemen and policemen and not even mention a teacher. Two weeks after teacher appreciation day. Oh well.
All in all. You’d think that teacher movies would ward off people from teaching altogether, but the stubborn and strong willed head forward –without gold plated uniforms. Humming Nietzsche phrases like the following.
“He who is a teacher from the very heart takes all things seriously only with reference to his students –even himself.”
(1) I drink it all the time and I still don’t know if this is the correct spelling
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Teaching Allegory
Teaching Allegory
In my Senior British Literature class we have been looking at P.B.Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound. Going into this mini-unit I was aware that it would be a rough road. I felt that my passion for Prometheus Unbound would carry over to my students. I was wrong -sort of.
As a class we first looked at a brief biography of P.B. Shelley’s life. Then over the course of the next few days we began to read Shelley’s epic. I had the students read ala Reader’s Theatre, where everyone was assigned a part and would pop up out their seat when reading, flailing their arms, screwing around with their voices, etc. This seemed to go ok for the actual epic. We would stop and try to look for clarity using an allegorical model. Students seemed to respond pretty well to all of this-god bless them. They liked the traditional allegory of Prometheus as a revolutionary and Jupiter as a tyrant. This is the one that Mary Shelley alluded to in a note to Shelley’s posthumous published Complete Works.
The reading of the two acts (we didn’t read three or four) went considerably well, especially considering that these are seniors, in their last semester, in their last fifty-minutes of school. Students appreciated the clarification, seemed to like Shelley’s philosophy and enjoyed looking at the epic as an allegorical model, or so I thought.
To cap off our reading of Prometheus Unbound we looked at two critics. One John Rieder who is a difficult and terrible writer. In the article we read he goes over the allegorical importance, characters, etc. We then read an article by Newman who is much easier to read and writes developing a seemingly logical argument that provides plenty of evidence. He’s kind-of like the John Stossell of Shelley critics. Newman writes there is no allegorical model in Prometheus Unbound.
We would read these articles in class. I would do most of the reading aloud. Students who read along were to pick fifteen vocabulary words that they were unfamiliar with and got in the way of their understanding of the article. They were to use five of these vocab words to give a summary of a portion of the article. I felt that this homework assignment would strengthen reading skills for these soon to be college freshmen. It seemed to go over pretty well. Except, I only had about three-quarters of my class interested.
In the end, I gave my students an assessment that they were to argue against Newman’s article and create their own brief article-that was to be published in the New Yorker. The context was that they were professors that had made their career upon their interpretation of Shelley’s poem as an allegorical model. Their task was to argue against Newman using examples from the text, etc. Their tenure relied upon this. I selected two passages from the text for students to choose from. And this is when reality came crashing in.
Three-quarters of my students began to work in class and the other quarter was lost. I tried to prompt them to start making sense of what they felt the passage meant, but as it turned out many of them agreed with the Newman article. They asked if they could just agree with Newman and write a brief couple of paragraphs on why he was right. I said no and tried to continue helping these students.
Any ideas for differentiation with this assessment? I feel that I put a few of my students at a great disadvantage by not allowing more alternatives.
In my Senior British Literature class we have been looking at P.B.Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound. Going into this mini-unit I was aware that it would be a rough road. I felt that my passion for Prometheus Unbound would carry over to my students. I was wrong -sort of.
As a class we first looked at a brief biography of P.B. Shelley’s life. Then over the course of the next few days we began to read Shelley’s epic. I had the students read ala Reader’s Theatre, where everyone was assigned a part and would pop up out their seat when reading, flailing their arms, screwing around with their voices, etc. This seemed to go ok for the actual epic. We would stop and try to look for clarity using an allegorical model. Students seemed to respond pretty well to all of this-god bless them. They liked the traditional allegory of Prometheus as a revolutionary and Jupiter as a tyrant. This is the one that Mary Shelley alluded to in a note to Shelley’s posthumous published Complete Works.
The reading of the two acts (we didn’t read three or four) went considerably well, especially considering that these are seniors, in their last semester, in their last fifty-minutes of school. Students appreciated the clarification, seemed to like Shelley’s philosophy and enjoyed looking at the epic as an allegorical model, or so I thought.
To cap off our reading of Prometheus Unbound we looked at two critics. One John Rieder who is a difficult and terrible writer. In the article we read he goes over the allegorical importance, characters, etc. We then read an article by Newman who is much easier to read and writes developing a seemingly logical argument that provides plenty of evidence. He’s kind-of like the John Stossell of Shelley critics. Newman writes there is no allegorical model in Prometheus Unbound.
We would read these articles in class. I would do most of the reading aloud. Students who read along were to pick fifteen vocabulary words that they were unfamiliar with and got in the way of their understanding of the article. They were to use five of these vocab words to give a summary of a portion of the article. I felt that this homework assignment would strengthen reading skills for these soon to be college freshmen. It seemed to go over pretty well. Except, I only had about three-quarters of my class interested.
In the end, I gave my students an assessment that they were to argue against Newman’s article and create their own brief article-that was to be published in the New Yorker. The context was that they were professors that had made their career upon their interpretation of Shelley’s poem as an allegorical model. Their task was to argue against Newman using examples from the text, etc. Their tenure relied upon this. I selected two passages from the text for students to choose from. And this is when reality came crashing in.
Three-quarters of my students began to work in class and the other quarter was lost. I tried to prompt them to start making sense of what they felt the passage meant, but as it turned out many of them agreed with the Newman article. They asked if they could just agree with Newman and write a brief couple of paragraphs on why he was right. I said no and tried to continue helping these students.
Any ideas for differentiation with this assessment? I feel that I put a few of my students at a great disadvantage by not allowing more alternatives.
Friday, May 4, 2007
A Pen Note from the Desk of Taco Fighter 3011
It’s a funny thing-teaching for three months, or so. All of your habits begin to change. You start going to bed earlier. You start taking care to make sure that nothing is stuck in your nose, drinking less/ or much more and much earlier, etc. You may even begin to alter your dress. You may not wear certain t-shirts; you may not wear t-shirts at all. You begin to wonder that if you wear certain things some of your students may secretly make fun of you behind your back-they probably will anyhow no matter how hard you try to not draw attention.
When you become the “teacher ”(footnote 1) you can’t help thinking about what your students may be thinking about you. I remember as a younger-man I often used to think that my teachers had no life outside of class. I’m not sure exactly, but I think at the time that I felt they just crawled underneath their desks and waited for the next morning. Lord knows what I thought they did over the weekend, let alone over the Summer.
As the “teacher,” I have often been walking thinking about what my students think that I am doing. I think that they’re probably thinking that I’m at home reading, planning for tomorrow, practicing on delivering my next lesson to a bored old aunt. In many cases they are right. I’m generally at home these days, prepping or I’m out doing other things my students would expect of me, like taking too long to pick out a bar of soap. Standing there in the aisle, nervously trying to make a decision, wishing for some reason the other customers would leave, so that I can better make my decision, and then, grabbing the cheapest one. Ivory, yuckola.
To put my Captain-Obvious-Hat on-teaching is some tough work, probably one of the hardest jobs you’ll ever love-thank you very much Ameri-Corps. I’m not sure if all overworked and dedicated individuals take on these “classic-teacher behaviorisms,” the role of the responsible adult, but I’m not sure how long they keep it up. Do you ever get better at this job? Probably, but like anything worthwhile it’ll probably take a lot of time and effort.
I’m looking forward to the days- perhaps fifteen to twenty years from now-when we (newbie teachers) can go in bleary-eyed and hung-over and give an excellent lesson on paragraph modeling. It’ll take some time, perhaps years of practice, but it’ll all be worthwhile, when we saunter out of school at three pm make our way down to the studio apartment and curl up with our cat or dog, because no woman or man could ever find a teacher lovable, no matter how noble a career they believe it is and even say it is at cocktail parties.
While, I’ll readily admit that the first few years do look bleak-I’ll make preparations to ensure that there are some rewarding things that come out of the first few years, other than experience, human connection and the warm feeling of goodwill. I’m thinking one day I’ll steal every stapler in the place, just for a day, just to sit back and see the chaos ensue. Imagine all of the pastel notifications, highlighter-green scheduling sheets, everything, free-floating-not a staple in sight. Oh man that shit will be gangbusters. It’ll make it well worth the low-pay, under-appreciation, social ostracizing, and down-right ridicule due to our poor life decision skills. Oh, well f-it, commitment to a bit. Right?
(Footnote 1)- I use the quotations only concerning me. I don’t think I’ve actually taught anything more than how to match your shoes to your belt, carry a smug underserved sense of accomplishment and simultaneously retain an air of mysteriousness. It’s true, you really teach your students yourself. Watch out Bay Area, they’ll be flipping your burgers, shinning your shoes, and making you coffee-you’ll see the smug look. Go ahead, feel confident about it. Ask, dollars to donuts they’ll probably have been in my class at one time or another.
When you become the “teacher ”(footnote 1) you can’t help thinking about what your students may be thinking about you. I remember as a younger-man I often used to think that my teachers had no life outside of class. I’m not sure exactly, but I think at the time that I felt they just crawled underneath their desks and waited for the next morning. Lord knows what I thought they did over the weekend, let alone over the Summer.
As the “teacher,” I have often been walking thinking about what my students think that I am doing. I think that they’re probably thinking that I’m at home reading, planning for tomorrow, practicing on delivering my next lesson to a bored old aunt. In many cases they are right. I’m generally at home these days, prepping or I’m out doing other things my students would expect of me, like taking too long to pick out a bar of soap. Standing there in the aisle, nervously trying to make a decision, wishing for some reason the other customers would leave, so that I can better make my decision, and then, grabbing the cheapest one. Ivory, yuckola.
To put my Captain-Obvious-Hat on-teaching is some tough work, probably one of the hardest jobs you’ll ever love-thank you very much Ameri-Corps. I’m not sure if all overworked and dedicated individuals take on these “classic-teacher behaviorisms,” the role of the responsible adult, but I’m not sure how long they keep it up. Do you ever get better at this job? Probably, but like anything worthwhile it’ll probably take a lot of time and effort.
I’m looking forward to the days- perhaps fifteen to twenty years from now-when we (newbie teachers) can go in bleary-eyed and hung-over and give an excellent lesson on paragraph modeling. It’ll take some time, perhaps years of practice, but it’ll all be worthwhile, when we saunter out of school at three pm make our way down to the studio apartment and curl up with our cat or dog, because no woman or man could ever find a teacher lovable, no matter how noble a career they believe it is and even say it is at cocktail parties.
While, I’ll readily admit that the first few years do look bleak-I’ll make preparations to ensure that there are some rewarding things that come out of the first few years, other than experience, human connection and the warm feeling of goodwill. I’m thinking one day I’ll steal every stapler in the place, just for a day, just to sit back and see the chaos ensue. Imagine all of the pastel notifications, highlighter-green scheduling sheets, everything, free-floating-not a staple in sight. Oh man that shit will be gangbusters. It’ll make it well worth the low-pay, under-appreciation, social ostracizing, and down-right ridicule due to our poor life decision skills. Oh, well f-it, commitment to a bit. Right?
(Footnote 1)- I use the quotations only concerning me. I don’t think I’ve actually taught anything more than how to match your shoes to your belt, carry a smug underserved sense of accomplishment and simultaneously retain an air of mysteriousness. It’s true, you really teach your students yourself. Watch out Bay Area, they’ll be flipping your burgers, shinning your shoes, and making you coffee-you’ll see the smug look. Go ahead, feel confident about it. Ask, dollars to donuts they’ll probably have been in my class at one time or another.
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