Not Teaching Writing

I’ve been teaching college writing courses off and on since 1985 or thereabouts. I’d doing it again this spring–I’m teaching two courses of basic writing, and one course of college writing. And just about the time we headed into this term it dawned on me that the one thing I’m not teaching is writing. My students already have the marks-on-paper stuff down cold.

It took a student bringing in a paper he had “written” by speaking to his computer for me to realize this. Since then, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’m teaching. Is it grammar? No–there are grammar checkers. Is it spelling? No–spelling’s a visual memory; memorizing word lists isn’t going to make anyone a better speller. Is it modes of writing? Not really. What’s the point in being able to spout a particular format of essay on command?

It seems to me that what I am doing is teaching students not how to write, but how to think. I teach them how to find,  gather, and evaluate information, and document where they got it. I teach them how to go beyond the obvious to the hidden messages buried in imagery and context. I teach them how to weigh conflicting opinions. I teach them how to reason a problem through, make judgment calls, lay out their findings in simple, persuasive terms.

If I do my job right, I prepare my students for every other class they will take in college–and for every day they will live afterwards. I am teaching them how to learn about and understand the world.

Remembering Jim

I met Jim at a time of crisis. My life had spun out of control, and I didn’t know where to turn for help. By great good fortune, I was referred to him by a career counselor.

I think that between the two of them, Jim and that career counselor might have saved my life. Because of the time we spent together I learned to look at my life and my own actions in different ways—and I learned that, when life is too much to handle, I might have to let go of some of the big things, but I can still manage the little things.

I learned to be less concerned with whether something was “right” or “wrong” based on some abstract standard. I learned to develop my own standards, based on principles that were important to me.

Because he was my counselor and I was a client, I didn’t know him in a personal sense until years after our counseling sessions were over, but three things came through loud and clear in every conversation I had with him.

1. He believed deeply that each of us has the right and the responsibility to live thoughtfully, mindfully, and positively.
2. He absolutely understood that sometimes doing that requires difficult choices, and a lot of courage.
3. He believed that people are capable of making those choices, and finding their courage.

Sometimes that was irritating. Sometimes I didn’t want to be responsible. Sometimes I wanted my life to be something that had just “happened” to me. If I was just a victim, I wasn’t responsible—I couldn’t be held accountable for all the stupid stuff I did.

Jim didn’t let me do that. He kept reminding me that though I might have been victimized in the past, it was in the past, and that now, in the present, I was the one in charge of my life, and my choices. I wasn’t a robot, programmed in early childhood. I was a person, and if I ever wanted to move beyond the pain of my past and present I was going to have to start making the choices that would lead me to a better place. He refused to be my “paid best friend.” He refused to accept the idea that counseling might go on for years and years. He refused to let me wallow. We talked about hard stuff—and then he challenged me to find ways of releasing the pain, and leaving the damaging patterns behind. He reminded me that I didn’t need those old, limited coping mechanisms—that the circumstances that had spawned them had disappeared into the past.

The day came when I no longer needed help remembering that I could shape my own life, and we said good bye. In later years we talked occasionally. More often, he would email me things he had written.

He wrote often about how to best challenge and support students to take charge of their own choices, and how hard that could be when in many ways they were not in control of their home and school environments. He cared deeply about the subject, and I can think of no better way to honor him than to pass on something he mentioned frequently in his writing: When life seems too big to handle, don’t worry about managing everything—just find one thing you can do to prove you are in control. Do your homework. Make your bed. Wash your clothes. Read a book. Exercise. Let yourself lose control sometimes—but you choose the time and place. You don’t have to do everything. Just do something. And then, when you’re ready, maybe something more.

Jim chose the time and manner of his passing, and that presents all of us with a challenge. It reminds us that no matter how much he may have helped us meet the challenges in our lives, his own life held challenges that, in the end, he felt unequal to meeting. If Jim had had a Jim, maybe he would have had that reminder that he need not do everything, that it was all right to let things go, as long as he didn’t let everything go. Maybe it would have made a difference. Maybe not. It’s easy to fall into the trap of making his decision be “all about me”–if I had been a better friend…if I had had a solution to offer…if I had called and emailed more often…But I choose not to do that. I choose to accord him the same respect and faith that he gave me when I needed it most. I choose to believe that, as a thoughtful, rational, intelligent man facing extremely difficult physical issues, he thoughtfully and carefully made the decision that would allow him to step away from the painful past and present into a better future. Above all, I respect his right to make that choice.

In the end, his death poses the same question for me that he often posed in counseling sessions. I can see him now, sitting, legs crossed, loafers neat, plaid shirt freshly pressed, listening to me do battle with what seemed an unbeatable foe. And then, when I had wound down, he would simply say, “That sounds like a challenge. What are you going to do about it?”

He’s no longer here to ask the questions. But perhaps the best way to remember him is to remember the words he used to express his faith in humanity, his conviction that each of us is capable of dealing with whatever life dishes out.

This is a challenge. What am I going to do about it?

Just In Time For Mother’s Day!

Check out the great gift items for moms and moms-to-be (and especially appropriate for single moms)!

I’ve just opened up a new department in my CafePress store–this one is chock full of gift items for moms and babies, all inspired by and coordinated with “Benchmarks: A Single Mother’s Illustrated Journal.”

There are blankets. There are baby clothes. There are hats. There are thermos bottles. There are maternity shirts. There are blank journals, shower invitations, notecards, banners, and a plethora of other things just right for new moms–and particularly single moms. Why not start with the journal, and build a custom gift basket today?

Basket items
Memoir (available in illustrated gift version, trade paperback, and kindle)

Sacred Sperm

The recent debate over what we might call “non-reproductive rights” has, as so many things do, led me to question the meaning of life, which, in turn, reminded me that I don’t watch nearly enough Monty Python. And so it was that The Boy and I found ourselves sitting at the kitchen table, watching musical clip of “Every Sperm Is Sacred,” from Monty Python and laughing ourselves sick in between efforts to sing along, with full vibrato and faux cockney accents. We’re easily entertained.

Of course, once that song gets into your brain there’s no way short of major surgery of removing it, so we were singing it again on the way to school this morning. We lost some of the tune, but the vibrato and accents sounded better. So we pull up at a stop sign and shift into “talk” mode.

“Sperm is just such a weird word,” I say. “It sounds like tapioca. And uvula sounds dirty. And I’m not the only one to notice that–remember Monster House?”

The Boy doesn’t remember, and we are at the school, anyway, so he makes a hasty escape before things get really, really strange. He knows me well.

I drive thoughtfully around the block to Burger Hut.

“The usual?” asks the jenniferlady who owns the place. She knows me well, too. She knows that I always order the exact same thing for breakfast, so I don’t have to wast brain power mulling options–brain power that could, oh, for instance, be put to observing and mourning the fact that “spay” sounds like an operation performed with a shovel, by the dead of night, at a deserted crossroads, while “neuter” is the sound a small red economy car overloaded with a large unshaven man and far too much dirty laundry might make as it creeps around town.

“Five thirty five,” says the jenniferlady, hasping her window open.

I slick my credit card out of my purse and scritch my signature with a pen that is nearly dry.

And then I drive away, shifting gears to ponder why it is that the medical equipment people, who certainly should know better, would choose to name their company Siemens. The reason the farm and garden company named itself Onan is obviously–these are tools for people who spill their seed upon the ground. It makes an unfortunate kind of sense.

It strikes me that words dealing with sex and reproduction are often like that–words that (if you’ll pardon the metaphor) feel funny in your mouth, and conjure strange images. “Penis,” is a small red-headed clown in big bulbous shoes (all right, that one makes sense), but why would “testicles” sound like something you would keep in the freezer? And why does clitoris sound like a hairstyle that involves lots of bobby pins, hairspray, and rhinestones? And think of ovary. It sounds like a room where owls hold concerts. Prostate is a car part–part of the fuel injection system, I think. Scrotum sounds like something you’d use to scour burned beans out of the bottom of a kettle. And intercourse is something that occurs on freeways, at the National Mall, and in airports.

Associations like these make discussing sex a mirth minefield in our house. Not that it isn’t a mirth minefield, anyway. When we discussed birth control we ended up blowing up rubbers like balloons and flying them around the house. All of which brings us back to Monty Python’s song, and why it’s so very, very memorable–and, I contend, appropriate.

I think I’ve mentioned before that Medieval medical charts associate a Muse–the divinities associated with inspiration for the various arts and sciences–with each area of the body. Guess who got the groin? Yep, Thalia–the muse of comedy. Perhaps it’s a reminder that for all its power, and for all the sublimity that can be a part of it, sex is also us at our most human, our most bumbling, our most vulnerable, our most comic. While it is lovely in many regards, esthetically pleasing it is not. It’s strange. There’s a reason why children’s first response to the subject is often, “Ewww.”

So what’s the point? Maybe it’s time that the loudest mouths in the debate over who has the right to regulate sexuality and reproduction remember that sex isn’t something we goose step through. It’s lovely, and squishy, and awkward, and smelly, and let’s face it, sometimes it’s darned funny. It’s a subject that brings with it a whole boatload of associations, and beliefs, and fears, and needs. Sex is an incredibly intimate act, not only because when we do it we are quite literally putting our lives into one another’s hands, but because it lays us open, makes us vulnerable, exposes us in a way few other things do.

Perhaps that’s why hearing anyone laying down the law about how we should deal with this very intimate part of life seems like a sort of rape. It takes something profoundly personal and precious and strips it bare in the marketplace. And how is that different from Monty Python making songs about sacred sperm? It’s all the difference in the world. There is a reason sex and humor are linked. Both celebrate us at our most human. Both thrive in a world where individuality, creativity, and spontaneity are respected. And both are diminished, and ultimately destroyed, by those who hate and fear individual expression–those who refuse to accept our common humanity, our frailty, vulnerability. They are destroyed by those who cannot laugh at themselves.

An (Im)Modest Proposal

So I’m reading the news again today and I run across the latest iteration in the ongoing labyrinthine argument on who gets to decide who gets what form of birth control, how much it will cost, and who will pay for it. After reading for quite some time I felt satisfied in my mind that providing women with birth control pills is a good and fiscally sound thing for insurance providers to do.  Witness my surprise to read further and learn that women who hold opinions like mine are being considered drains on society, irresponsible leaches who are demanding that the public play for their private pleasure, and, not to put too fine a point on it, no better than they should be.

Well, that sort of sent me back to the drawing board, which was a very good thing, because on consideration I realized that my initial position (that birth control pills are frequently prescribed for reasons other than prevention of pregnancy, that even when they are prescribed as a prophylactic it is cheaper to prevent a pregnancy than to later fund an abortion or the life of an unexpected child, and that in any case the company offering healthcare coverage, and not tax payers, pays for the pills), was shortsighted.

I was dealing with symptoms. How much better would it be to deal with the first causes?

Because I have a highly trained mind and believe that the right solution, surgically applied, is far better than a less specific remedy more broadly applied, I bent my big brain to the subject, and yes! There it was! The answer! And within ten minutes! No need for a Congressional Committee. No need for questions of shared expense. No need for histrionics and name calling, or for calls upon a Higher Power to support an otherwise dodgy argument! Just a pure, simple solution to the problem of unplanned pregnancy, based on a sound understanding of human biology. Here it is:

In every case except one, the birth of a child was preceded by cross-gender sex. If we rule out the repetition of that one Noteworthy Example, we can rest assured that we can safely, securely, and reliably limit or completely eliminate all unplanned pregnancies by simply outlawing cross gender sexual activity.

I ran this past the House Leroy, who saw some flaws with my plan, but I had control of the keyboard so I felt I could safely disregard his reservations. This plan is a good one, reliable, so simple even a childlike woman can grasp enough of the basics to implement it reliably. And best of all, this plan has Stood the Test of Time.

Take the case of Lysistrata, who banned all sexual pairings as a means of applying pressure to end a war. A careful reading of the play by Aristophanes reveals that the women would have been more effective had they understood that intra-gender pairings would have in no way have lessened their plan’s overall effectiveness. Indeed, had they understood the powerful role such pairings can play they could have quite possibly maintained the ban on inter-gender pairings indefinitely! But there you are, too soon old, too late smart.

So that’s it, ladies. We have it within our power to give the folks militating against safe, affordable contraception for women exactly what they want–a nation full of women who will have inter-gender sex only when a child is a sound emotional, financial, and social decision, and will reserve all other sexual activity for intra-gender pairings. They’ll be so pleased!

Finals

We’re nearing the end of the term here at the remote, isolated outpost of higher education where I teach basic writing courses. The thing about teaching writing courses is that they work best when there’s a certain level of trust and intimacy between writers and audience. Many of the assignments require students to explore some facet of their own experience. The upshot of this is that I have a window into the lives of the students who sit in my class that many other teachers don’t have. In any given term, I have a good idea who is struggling with personal issues, who is single, who is married, who has lost–or gained–a loved one, who is having a positive–or negative–experience at school.

I’ve been teaching writing for a long time, and I have rather come to take that window into my students’ lives for granted. But this term has been out of the ordinary. A huge percentage of my students are single parents. Many are attending school as a path out of a long family history of poverty. I have students who have recently returned from Iraq and Afghanistan, and are going to school on the GI bill. Some students have had unexpected deaths in their families.

We are a small, comparatively poor town, and half of my class reports in by television from even smaller, poorer towns. I teach night school, so many of my students come to class after having already worked a full day, in some cases at grinding physcial labor. And still they come to class, and they sit there, and listen, and write their papers, and revise, and rewrite. And I can see how very tired they get.

And while I wish I could just let them have the time to relax, to unwind, and to catch their breath, I don’t. In fact, I work them all the harder, because that’s my gift to them–the benefit of every bit of wisdom , encouragement, and support I can cram into those hours we share. And they learn. As far as I know, I am the only writing teacher who encourages students to rewrite their papers, over and over and over again. And I grade them over and over again, because the best way to teach writing is to give people the opportunity to write, and to see how they might express themselves more clearly.

Teaching this way is hard work. Sometimes it gets confusing. But we keep doing it because I am teaching more than making marks on paper–I am challenging the people who come to my class to look at their lives in new ways, to explore ideas, to look beyond the simple, trite, common knowledge that “everybody knows” to the deeper wisdom behind it. And I’m doing this not because of who I am, but because of who the people who sit in my classes are. They are people who, in spite of living in small, backwoods, rural communities, have dared to dream of moving beyond the world into which they were born–or in which by happenstance they find themselves.

I read their papers, and sometimes my heart breaks for them, but mostly I am awed, humbled, and grateful that my life offers me the opportunity touch so many lives, to offer hope to people for whom hope may be a rare commodity, to offer support and courage to people whose lives may hold a lot of challenges and pain, but also a seed of a dream. Every week, I get to meet with around twenty-five people who, in a world of uncertainty and diminishing resources, have dared to envision a life that holds more.

In the past, I taught writing. These days, I find I’m spending a lot of time fostering creativity, urging my students to think outside the box, to consider avenues to success that don’t depend on traditional nine-to-five jobs, to explore non-traditional housing options, to dream big, because in times like these our dreams are our treasure. As long as we can dream, we can never be beaten.

And that is the gift of teaching–the deep wisdom that lies behind the obvious pattern of teacher talking and students listening. If the teacher takes the time to listen, her students can teach her the power of dreaming, and of working to make those dreams come true.

My students don’t read this blog–most of them don’t even know it exists. But today I wish they did. I wish they knew what they mean to me, and what they teach me simply by showing up to class, with their tired eyes, and their dreams, and their willingness to write, to think, to rewrite, revise, rethink, and rewrite again. I wish they knew how I hope that something they hear, something they learn, will spark an idea that will carry them beyond where they are now, to a place beyond where they have ever dreamed of being.

The Gift of the Flu

We’re sick at our house. For the past week and a half we’ve been walking around hunched over, hacking, coughing, and wheezing, sleeping sitting up, and alternating all this fun stuff with frantic dashes for the bathroom. The idea of sleeping all night has become a pipe dream, something we speak of fondly as we sit on the porch, swathed in blankets and sipping vile brews that, all marketing to the contrary, do nothing to promote health or comfort.

So what do we do to pass the time? Well, we lie around with our eyes closed, and sometimes, when we’re feeling particularly lively, we listen to NetFlix. To be more specific, we listen to old TV series on NetFlix, so we don’t have to exhaust remote hands and brains by searching out something new to watch every hour or so. Somehow The Boy has stumbled onto the original Japanese “Naruto” cartoons, which he must actually keep his eyes open to understand, since they’re only subtitled in English. For the last week, at random hours, day and night, fraught conversations of which none of us understand a single word issue from his bedroom, or the living room, if he’s feeling particularly perky.

The House Leroy has been steadily working his way through “Law & Order,” a project that I fear will outlast all of us.

And I? What have I been watching, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you. I’ve been watching “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Yes, it’s true. The Buffster and I have been getting to know each other far better than I ever really cared to know her in the past. Maybe illness has made me shallow. Maybe it has made me easier to please. I can lie there in bed, tucked up with my Kindle Fire and Lilo and Lila, and marvel at the flexibility of Buffy’s stunt kicker. Now there’s a girl who can really bend. And fast?

But let’s face it–even sick, it would take more than Buffy’s amazing flexibility to keep me watching. Fortunately, that something extra is there, particularly as the episodes go on, and on, and on. The early episodes are very much teeny-bopper eye and brain candy–the very thing, in fact, that is ideal watching for sick folks.

But as I continued to watch I noticed something interesting. I was enjoying the show more and more–and for all the wrong reasons. The dialog, for instance. Dialog is supposed to develop characters. Well-written dialog helps to make the people speaking it seem more real. That’s not the case in Buffy dialog. What happens instead is that the show slips ever farther into self-mockery and–dare I say it?–self parody. It’s hilarious when Angel–Buffy’s main heartthrob and intermittently good guy vampire played by David Boreanaz–finds himself nearly being staked by character after character in one particular episode. Finally he says, “What’s wrong with you guys? I haven’t been evil for a long time!” And everyone in Buffy land takes it at face value.

The line does nothing to develop Angel’s tortured character as a vampire suffering a gypsy curse that ensures that he will never, ever, have a satisfying sex life unless he’s willing to risk becoming “evil” again. What the line does is spoof off of the “is Angel a good guy or a bad guy this week?” gag. And very well, too. When I am better I plan on using the line, myself.

Angel is not alone. The show’s characters are high school, and then college age. And yet their characters don’t look, dress, act, or talk like anybody in that age group. It’s a stunning example of success in spite of doing everything “wrong.” Take Cordelia, for instance, mean girl extraordinaire. Episode after episode, she dishes up venom and bile, all packaged up neatly in well-modulated tones–and the other characters simply take it in stride. No one commits suicide as a result of her meanness. She winds up having a bizarre mop-closet affair with Zander. It’s all very strange, and very odd–and it works because the show itself seems to understand that it’s a parody of itself.

Probably the character that demonstrates this best is Spike. Spike is Angel’s mirror opposite. Angel is dark and brooding. Spike is bleached and cheerfully wicked–or as wicked as he can be, once he gets The Implant that prevents him from hurting humans. Where Angel suffers agonies at being deprived of the Pleasures of Buffie’s Person, Spike maintains a working, loving relationship with crazy vamp chick Drusilla. The pair is well-matched, and Spike is devastated when Drusilla leaves him for an eviller dude.

Spike is perhaps the unlikeliest comedic genius on television today. It is impossible to watch him endlessly strive for true evilness, only to bumble hilariously without laughing. Sick as I was, I found myself perking up a bit when Spike showed up onscreen.

I’m getting better now, and I’m finding that my interest in Buffy, her pals, and their doings is fading as the last of the meds clears my system. Buffy and Angel have split the sheets and Buffy has a new guy who, let’s face it, is really just a Ken doll in camo. No fun, though Buffy is at long last Getting Some, now that she doesn’t have to worry about dooming the world by having sex. It looks like Spike’s implant is going to get removed, too, now that he’s teamed up with the Frankenstein monster created by a Guv’mint doctor shortly before it killed her.

There are something like seven seasons, which means that I have fodder for flu seasons through 2015 or so. So there it is–how I’ve been spending my time. The meds should be gone by tomorrow. I’ll sound smarter then.