The Best of Time and Place

In 2007, Eric Schlosser wrote a short piece called "The Freak Show." His aim: to show the variety of artists and events that contributed to his understanding of America and offer a brief perspective on the country.

Using his writing as a model, I created my own inventory of stuff that has shaped my view of the United States. It was a definite challenge to pare down my list. For every name and event listed, I thought of five more that easily could be included, especially when considering musicians and filmmakers. Here it is:

The Best of Time and Place

My idea of America was formed by my dad explaining to me how politics works and why it is vital to treat all people with respect, by the music of the Dead Kennedys, Bob Dylan, and dozens of unknown indie and punk bands driving town to town in their vans, by the films of Martin Scorsese, the Coen Brothers and Jim Jarmusch, by writers like Walt Whitman, Tim O’Brien, and the art of Chuck Close, by characters like Huck Finn, by Reagan’s theory that taxes for the rich will trickle down to the rest, by the 1980 hockey team defeating the Soviet Union, and our questionable response to 9/11.

The America that I love combines patriotism with a healthy sense of scepticism. It is made up of people who strike out for the unknown and create their own lives, but who also never forget that they are a part of something greater than any one person. The stories that have forged my perspective can be dark: a low growl meant to warn strangers to tread carefully. At the same time, the optimistic sense that, as Walt Whitman says, “we have the best of time and place” lingers on.

And a short video accompaniment.

Thanks for reading.

The Immediacy of a Conversation

The Process
It started with an early morning phone call to Kevin Hodgson, fellow #clmooc traveller. Our chat lasted about 10 minutes, which I uploaded, unedited, to Soundcloud. There were pauses, non-sequiturs, and stumbling attempts to formulate questions (by me). It was an untidy and excellent record of our voices on a July morning, full of springboard ideas.



My next task: shape the 10 minutes so that those ideas could flourish. I accomplished this in Soundtrap. My first decision--remove my voice. I did not make this decision because I am averse to hearing myself. Like most people, I am not crazy about listening to my voice, but I have done it often enough to not get hung up on how strange it sounds. Instead, I cut myself out in order to highlight Kevin.

After snipping a bit more, I added a few musical interludes. I enjoyed playing around with these bits of guitar loops. I listen to podcasts and am always interested in the way that music shapes narrative, moves conversations along, and accentuates mood.

Satisfied with how I highlighted Kevin's compelling thinking about the morning, the unknown, the need to let ideas simmer, I uploaded the Soundtrap file back to Soundcloud as a post that was now half as long as the original.



A Take-away
It is fantastic to hear Kevin's voice. While I've always enjoyed his writing, listening to him reflect on how and why he creates feels even more immediate.

But why?

Maybe this is due to the unified, polished quality of published writing. As readers we know that writers struggle, revise, and, probably, feel a degree of frustration in order to articulate a thought sharply and clearly. (I just spent 10 minutes on that last sentence. . .) But, typically, this is not what we think about in the moment we are engaged with an essay, blogpost, or article. Instead, our minds are occupied by the ideas. If I consider the writing itself, usually it is to relish the masterful way the writer has shaped a particularly powerful moment.

Returning to the point about immediacy, as I listened to Kevin talk, I could hear him working out his ideas in the moment. Seeking, revising, emphasizing: these were happening simultaneously. Or, to put it another way, I got to listen to Kevin's thinking process. I heard him cobbling together explanations, searching for examples, making leaps and taking momentary rests. For both of us, there was this lingering anticipation of what might come next. Maybe this is what it comes down to. In a conversation, anticipation is in play for both the speaker and the listener, whereas, when we read a piece of writing, the shared anticipation is gone. Only the reader feels it.

As I think about this now, I wonder how much different his remarks would be if I emailed him some questions and asked him to respond in writing. It is quite possible that the ideas would be the same. However, Kevin is indisputably a great writer, and I am sure his answers would be executed in a more planned and polished way. Without a doubt, it would be an absorbing piece of writing and one that I would gladly dig into. Sometimes, though, it is conversation, with its messiness, that supplies brighter glimmers than polish can provide.

Dear Next President

In the midst of this election year, the National Writing Project and KQED have created Letters To The Next President. The idea: motivate students and teachers to get involved. The point is not to campaign for a particular person, but to articulate issues and raise questions that the next leader should consider, regardless of who it is.

Regardless of specific policy positions, I want the next president to be thoughtful, honest, and tolerant.

With that in mind, here's my (first) letter, multimedia style:

Thanks for watching!

They're Not Students. They're People.

Over the last few years, I have grown more and more disenchanted with the traditional research paper. Specifically, I felt like the questions students selected lacked emotional resonance. This dissatisfaction led me to experiment with different ways for students to generate questions that mattered. Then, not long ago, I read an interview with Brian Grazer in which the Hollywood producer talked about his use of curiosity conversations. Immediately, I saw the potential application and set out to have my students conduct their own curiosity conversations.

My idea was that through the conversations with a family member, friend, teacher, coach, or whomever, students would hear something that could become a springboard to research. Ultimately, I think the project was successful in this regard. Students ended up with questions about happiness, about curiosity and passion, about work, about leadership, about creativity.

However, as I listened to the conversations, I was struck by something deeper and more critical. I was reminded that my students are people.

Ok, so that sounds a bit ridiculous. After all, what else would my students be. But let me explain.

After 19 years of teaching, one thing remains certain: there is never a lack of things to do. The year starts fast and never really lets up. One problem with the frenetic pace is that sometimes I lose sight of who my kids are outside of class. I end up seeing them as students who appear in my room every other day at the predetermined time, work for 90 minutes, then move on. Where have they come from? Where do they go to? What fills their days and minds besides the novels I ask them to read and the questions I ask them to consider? I don't really know.

Listening to the conversations, though? Here they were. Their voices, removed from the classroom, filled the space in my house.  The surroundings certainly added to the intimacy. As my own family moved through the room where I listened, my students talked with their mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, and friends. In this moment, it was not about teacher and student; instead it was one person listening in as other people shared funny stories, fears, philosophies, and memories. They were no longer names on a roster who I needed to guide through a curriculum.

 Listen from 1:00-2:30

In their easy back-and-forths I heard them laugh at family jokes, sound surprised by a parent's own plans and hopes, compliment a sibling or friend on some accomplishment. I heard them as loved and loving people, full of gratitude and understanding.

Listen from 0:00-1:30

Such a powerful reminder.

And one more important point regarding technology and citizenship. While our devices can often times stand in the way of genuine connection, this is a great example of the way that they can strengthen bonds and deepen our sense of each other's humanity. Too often digital citizenship gets framed as a conversation about privacy and branding. But this reduces the idea of citizenship in a ridiculous way. The conversation must be about how we use technology to practice the same skills that are important in our face-to-face relationships: thoughtfulness, kindness, creativity. This project showed me one way to bring this conversation into the classroom.

Snap To It: A Creative Challenge

April is National Poetry Month. This year, I decided to celebrate it by giving myself a challenge: create one original piece of Shapchat art each day that would combine some kind of visual with a line from a poem.

Going into the project, my main goal was to learn Snapchat. As a parent and teacher, I have seen it become the preferred social media platform for young people, so I wanted to get a sense of it. What I discovered, though, went beyond how to use the app. Here are 3 of the more important things I realized.

I like poetry.

Sounds funny coming from an English teacher, but I don’t spend a lot of time with poetry in my classes. Typically, I’ll throw 3-4 poems at my students over the course of a year. And these end up being my go-tos. Since this project required me to find 30 lines of poetry, I had to range far beyond the old standbys. This searching and reading reminded me of how powerfully poets combine language and brevity in order to convey their thoughts about the deepest, most complex questions confronting human beings.

Tim O’Brien, my favorite writer, says that all we have is 26 letters and a few punctuation marks through which we try to make ourselves understood to others. Poets are in the business of using these letters and punctuation marks to make concise observations about our world. Gabriel Orozco, one of my favorite artists, says that he wants to be intimate with the world, and art is the attempt to build bridges so others can also experience that intimacy. Poets use a slender toolbox indeed in order to build their bridges.

I like to use my technology for a purpose.

Here I am thinking about the way so many of us fall into the scroller trap. Think about how often you or people you know fill downtime with tech time. For years, I resisted getting a phone. Now that I have one, I find myself reaching for it when I have a few minutes with nothing to do. Like when I am picking up my kids from soccer practice, am in a waiting room, am on a train. More often than not, I am looking for nothing in particular. It is mindless scrolling. I have tried to be more aware of this tendency and to resist it.

My poetry project gave me a goal or destination for these moments. Throughout April, when I found myself reaching for my phone to fill in some seemingly empty moments, I went to poets.org or the poetry foundation and read poems. I was always on the lookout for the poems and even specific lines that made me say, “whoa! yes!” For the lines that gave me that chill factor. Instead of tuning out during the downtime, this searching kept me thinking. Interestingly, I found myself putting away the phone after a particularly compelling poem in order to think about what I just read and how I might use it in my project. As an educator, I have participated in numerous conversations about helping kids to become thoughtful, critical, and creative citizens, online and off. This project helped me to achieve these goals.

Speaking of creativity. I like to create (and to give myself creative challenges).

A few years back, I read a book by David Gauntlett called Making is Connecting. It is wonderful and I highly recommend it. In his writing, Gauntlett offers his definition for everyday, personal creativity. For Gauntlett, this kind of creativity is typified by making something novel for oneself. Too often, he found that definitions of creativity were written with society in mind. For something to be considered creative, it needed to be judged and accepted by a community of experts. Like Gauntlett, this view of creativity ignores the creative urge we all feel. When I made the Snapchat images, I was primarily concerned with making something pleasing to me. I knew others would see my creations. That is the point of social media. However, my main concern was with my experience. How did I feel while in the process? What kinds of decisions did I need to make as I created? How well did I execute those decisions? What did I think about the finished work?

Taken together, these questions and this thought process gave me a sense of autonomy, a sense of agency, and a deep sense of satisfaction. Consider how many decisions we make everyday, and, of those decisions, how many are done without thinking. This kind of creative project provided me with thoughtful decisions. Color choices, layouts, text position: for such small works, the choices could be almost overwhelming. But these choices required intentionality, and I liked that feeling.

Ultimately, the project led me to this: Yes, I could be a creator, not a consumer. I could bring something new into the world, even if on a small scale. I could translate an idea into a tangible work. I feel accomplishment, even when I struggled. Or especially when I did. Well worth the investment.

     

Here is a link to the entire album.  

Teaching Failure: A Curiosity Conversation

The Hollywood producer, Brian Grazer, is known for his blockbuster movies, like Apollo 13, his blockbuster hair, and, more recently, his habit of having "curiosity conversations." While it is unlikely that I will duplicate either of the first two accomplishments, as soon as I heard about the last one, I knew that I had to try it.

As a teacher, it is critical that I remain a learner. After all, how can I ask my students to challenge themselves in new ways if I am unwilling to do the same. In the last year, my desire to learn, to be a student, has led me to woodblock printing and Kurt Webb.

Kurt teaches Ceramics and art at my school, Glenbrook South. While I have known Kurt since I started at GBS 19 years ago, it is through his generous mentorship in printing that I have acquired a deeper appreciation for who he is as a teacher, artist, and colleague. Our carving and printing sessions typically turn into rich discussions on creativity, education, and culture in general. He seemed perfect for my first attempt at a curiosity conversation. And he did not disappoint.

As you listen, you will see my comments. These are questions I found myself asking. I think any one of these questions could make for an interesting, thought-provoking bit of research. If you have a question of your own or a response to one of mine, feel free to leave it on the Soundcloud track or as a comment to this blog.



Thanks for reading and listening.

Considering Individuality

1
Healthy, free, the world before me, leading wherever I choose.

2
A learner with the simplest. . .a novice beginning.

3
. . . I wanna be somebody

4
These are the voices we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world.

5

6

Why?

7

8
Slow down here. Is there something I can say to delay 
this troubling attitude from sinking in?

9 
You are here,

10 
The powerful play goes on and you can contribute a verse


because nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

12 
Believe your own thought, believe what is true for you in your private heart is true for all.


Isn't this more like it?  Raise them confident.  Raise them Bold.

14
Nobody living can ever stop you.

15
Then again

16
For nonconformity, the world whips you with its displeasure.

17
Be bold.  Be confident.  Be yourself.  Such basic advice, we hear it in commercials for cars and for in jingles for jeans.

18



19
But these are just ads--unreal ways of being.  In the end, what if it just leads to pain?  Not to mention rebellion.

20
But the play is going on.  I want them to contribute a verse.

21
I want them to say 

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1. Walt Whitman, "Song of the Open Road"
2. Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"
3. Saul Williams, "List of Demands"
4. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"
7. Brian Jonestown Massacre, "Wasting Away"
9. Walt Whitman "O Me! O Life!"
10. Walt Whitman "O Me! O Life!"
11. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"
12. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"
14. Woody Guthrie "This Land is Your Land"
16. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"
18. Levi's Commercial, "O Pioneers"
21. Jurassic 5, "I Am Somebody"