- Explicit teaching

In the first few moments of her three-day workshop, Supporting Reading Comprehension, Writing, and Study Skills at the Landmark College Institute, Linda Hecker prompted participants (I was one of five) to introduce ourselves and say why we came.

When it was my turn, I answered that I wanted to learn and develop more explicit teaching methods, to help not only my students with learning disabilities, but all students I work with. We were invited to tell the story of a student, and I talked about A., who, when I very clearly proposed to him an alternative structure for his paper, said to me: “I understand what you mean, but I don’t know how to do what you’re saying.” I’d like to know, I said to Linda and the group, how to teach better those students who don’t intuitively know all the little steps involved in tackling a big writing task. What’s involved, for example, in summarizing a passage or chapter? I know how to summarize — but do I know how to teach the same skill?

In the workshop, I did learn a strategy for teaching the summary, and picked up a few tools as well. Landmark emphasizes multimodal teaching, which engages a student aurally, visually, and kinesthetically in learning.  Even though their faculty have developed this kind of teaching to reach students with learning disabilities and AD/HD, this pedagogy is applicable to all learners.

Indeed, after three days at Landmark, I wanted to try out some of these exercises and tools not only on students, but on my own reading and writing practices. They’re more than effective — they seem motivating and, dare I say, fun.

What follows here is a select list of some of the ideas, remarks, readings, tools, and websites that seemed most immediately interesting to me. Certainly, there was more. It was a great experience, and, if you teach, I recommend that you go.

- Plenty of balm…

and no bees.

bee balm, 7.1.2009

Where do bees go when it rains, and when it rains so much?

- Meager light

Photosynthesis, which occurs in plants, algae, and some bacteria, uses energy from sunlight to convert carbon dioxide into organic compounds. This is food, and plants need food to grow.

If you live in Massachusetts, you may have noticed that there has been what I would call NO SUNSHINE in all of June. Well, maybe there was one day, or two afternoons. Overall, though, there has been a noticeable lack of sun.

And, yet, my sunflower plants, along with the grass, hydrangea, hosta, ajuga, clematis, and all else that is green, have grown steadily. The tallest ones are up to my hip. In a rare and transient moment of June sun, Eli took their picture:

sunflower plants, 6.16.2009 at 6:25pm

Their continued growth is evidence that something continues to happen even though I might say that growing conditions are limited or unfavorable: wet, dark, cold.

What meager light we’ve had seems to have been enough.

Maybe it’s worth us remembering in our own lives that, even when conditions seem limited, subtle processes continue to unfold and yield good things: ones we don’t force, ones that surprise us.

- A state for writers

Lydia pulled me over to the table.

“Look at this,” she said and held up a worksheet that Grace had brought home from third grade, called “United States Regions.”

Lydia pointed to a spot on the U.S. map, on which Grace had labeled all 50 states, where she creatively spelled the name of one of them:

Pencilvanya

Kind of a mash of “pencil” and Uncle Vanya, no?

Which kinda reminds me… My friend James, who lives and works in that state, is blogging again.

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The image, “Pencil Dust,” is published by .klash on Flickr.

- What they call the first version

In Eli’s room, on top of a pile of school work, I noticed a first version of a short story he wrote for his English class.  He categorized the manuscript a “ruff jraft.” Ah, so Eli.

At dinner, I asked the others what they call the first version of things they write.

Grace: a sloppy copy

Lydia: a rough draft (”But I only call it that if I’m sure I’m going to rewrite it.”)

Jimmy: a piece of shit

There you have it.

- Uneasy nostalgia

Outside Founders Hall

I finished writing and revising “Dead and Gone,” and I sent the essay off to editors of a journal who asked to see more of my work. One editor e-mailed me back today, confirming its receipt. All I can do now is wait.

A few readers and friends have asked about the incident central to the essay: a meeting between my Wellesley College professor and me.

That scene, which is the last excerpt from the essay I’ll publish here, is at the center of the story. It’s what I most recall about that professor and my relationship with him, and it’s what I have turned over and over in my mind as I have considered my college years (1983 – 1987) and what the encounter has meant to me.

Curious?

- Incomprehensible

The June 13th issue of The Economist is on the kitchen table, and Grace, who loves magazine covers, is examining it. I’m puttering around the kitchen. She asks, finally, “What does it mean?” So I lean over her shoulder and take a stab at explaining the visual metaphor: “Right now, the world is experiencing huge financial problems, created by people who are adults now. However, the problems are so huge that it may take 30 or so years to solve them, and the people who will be most burdened by these money problems are babies now.”

Grace responds, “I still don’t get it.”

Jimmy has entered the kitchen and offers a more concise explanation than mine: “The world is in debt right now, and the people who caused the debt are Mom and my generation and the Baby Boomers’ generation. However, the people who are going to pay for this debt are babies and children right now, like you.”

Grace looks again at the cover. “I still don’t understand.”

Honey, you shouldn’t have to, I want to say, but there is nothing more to say, because she is only nine years old.

- Watermelon hill

At the urging of Grace, I planted one watermelon seedling, in a little hill I made in a leftover patch among the sunflowers. It looked so attractive, a bit of green surrounded by black dirt, and it occurred suddenly to me how attractive the squirrels would find the bare dirt. So, after some thought, I sprinkled on them some cayenne pepper, which looks, in these photographs by Eli, like fairy dust.

- Evidence

Last summer I started and made substantial progress on a draft of a memoir/essay about having a crush on one of my Wellesley College professors, *not* having an affair with him, and reading many years later of his death from prostate cancer. A first excerpt is here, and another one is here. (There’s also a reflection on writing the essay here.)

Then, I put the essay aside for the winter and did other things and wrote other pieces as well as lots of comments on student work.

Resolved to finish the draft, I picked it up again a couple of weeks ago. I hit a snag when I felt I had exhausted my memory of that time in college. Searching for something concrete, I opened up my college archives (a green cardboard box) and found three papers I wrote for that professor.

Ah, evidence. It helps. In writing about those papers and his comments, I found my way back into the essay and finished the draft. It’s funny how artifacts function, however. While they are more lasting and stable than memory, our interpretation of them is often — usually — slippery.

Excerpt #3, “Dead and Gone (draft)”:

All that I have left from Mr. K’s class (History 245) are three papers I wrote, typed, handed in, and got back with his handwritten feedback and grade. These are my only concrete artifacts of my time in that course. Who knows, though? Maybe in the College Archives, or in his own papers, there are records of that course from that semester: a syllabus, a grade book, his own notes if he kept them. (All teachers must keep some sort of notes.) But this is all I have and all I’m willing to put my hands on.

- Overheard and overbought

I heard this today, as I stood in the check-out line at my local grocery store. It’s a revision of a well-known saying, and another customer was sharing it with another clerk.

When you complain, you complain alone.
When you laugh, everyone laughs with you.

That seems good to remember.

And what was I buying at the grocery store? I’ll tell you, and I’ll also tell you that I noticed, as my 14 or so items were picked up one by one and scanned, that none were essentials.

• 3 liters of Polar seltzer (for Grace’s 3rd grade party)
• 2 half-gallons of Minutemaid lemonade (ditto)
• 1 box of Cheez-It Party Mix (afternoon snack)
• 1 jar of roasted sunflower seeds (the protein to go with the Cheez-Its)
• 1 sandwich roll (okay, I need that for my lunch — I’m home today)
• 1 single-serving sized bag of potato chips (ditto)
• 1 hosta (to fill in a blank spot in a shady patch)
• 2 six packs of those mini soda cans: Diet Pepsi and Diet A & W (because)
• 1 bag of ice cubes (for Grace’s 3rd grade party)

Not only do we live in an age of complaint, we (still) live in an age of excess. I mean, none of those things are items I need. And yet I bought them, and will again.