Faculty WebPage For John Goldfine

Mar. 25.  I was depressed to see in the school newspaper that we are starting up a committee to enhance ‘diversity’ on campus.  If all this word meant was that we would look for ways to make students of all races, religions, nationalities, and  sexual preferences as happy and successful as possible at EMCC, that would be grand.

But it would also be a first, because ‘diversity’ winds up meaning something different in the other schools where it has become a focus of attention.  Usually it turns into a wedge, dividing the campus between those who want to judge all people according to the content of their character and those who see some special cachet attached to essential characteristics people are either born with, like race, or acquire very early in life, like religion.

Over the past few years, anyone looking through the Chronicle of Higher Education or such websites as www.erinoconnor.org  knows that ‘diversity’ is the foot in the door for  campus speech codes, for mandatory sensitivity training, and in bigger schools, for segregated dorms, special treatment for certain groups, and for racial quotas and preferences.

All of that leads in turn to a campus climate of hypersensitivity to diversity, hypocrisy about what is actually happening, an increased likelihood of lawsuits over diversity issues, attacks on faculty for what amount to thought crimes, and subsequent administration waffling over academic freedom. 

The only positive outcome I can see from an increased concern for diversity is that the school administrators protect themselves from charges that the school is insufficiently diverse.  We get to congratulate ourselves publicly on our diversity (at the possible expense of condescending to those people we are so pleased to have aboard—are we happy to have them or happy to have people, any people, who we imagine are representative of the races, religions, nationalities, and  sexual preferences we call diverse?)

What is lost is the old melting-pot idea that we are simply all Americans, equal before the law, and free to do whatever our abilities allow us to do.  I have a personal stake in this: my daughter--who is racially black and Asian and culturally a Mainer—often finds people assuming they know all about her because she is ‘black’ or ‘Asian.’  But, for all their good intentions, they are ignoring the actual person and seeing only the externals, which  in her case (and, I like to believe, in every case) say nothing at all about the person within.

So, let’s welcome anyone who has the credentials to come here.  Let’s go out and do our very best to find applicants who will benefit from EMCC.  Let’s do everything we can to help everyone and anyone succeed.  But let’s not ask people their race, religion, nationality, or sexual preferences.  Let’s not notice and let’s not care.

Mar 24.  Some of my students are really making me nervous.  They've either given me no long essays at all, instead of the six I should have seen, or only one or two, and I'm afraid they're thinking like this.

Worst case: someone gives me eight or ten essays on the last possible day of the semester I'll accept them, and they sound nothing like the student.  Last year, for example, I got one of those end-of-the-semester jobs, and the guy who passed it in, as macho a guy as you could hope to find, was writing about his boyfriend this and his boyfriend that!  Did I think he was gay or did I think that he was getting his essay from a source outside his own brain?  (And hadn't even bothered to read the essay he'd borrowed!)

Mar. 24.  Most of what I do causes pain, often great pain.  English teachers and dentists.  So, it's fun when I can teach someone something without hurt.  Happened today, to my skipper, in fact.

After writing me a half-dozen skimpy intro grafs over a half-dozen weeks, Monday he came through with a corker.  Today he showed me the finished essay: the corker of an intro and three strong support grafs.  He was stumped over an outro. 

But looking at the intro a second time--it told a complete story.  The graf split right in half easily, and the second half, withheld until the end of the essay, would bracket the support material and make it even better.  Even build a little suspense, which is not anything I ordinarily encourage.  I drew a line around the second half of the graf and then an arrow to the bare bottom of his page.  Oh yes! Essay complete, no more cavities.  Painless English.

Mar. 22.  The calendar says it's spring, the State o' Maine says no.  But to give the lie to the weather, while I was sitting in the reception area of Maine Hall today, a student of mine left the building and started down the walk.  After a few steps, he began skipping--big, proud skips, clicking his heels and throwing his legs first to one side and then to the other, without any regard for gravity or what watching people might think.  His skipping was infectious because a girl who stepped out just behind him also began skipping to catch up.  It takes courage to skip when it's as cold out as it was today.  It also takes courage to let your body simply and fully express your pleasure in being alive.

So, not only did this student earn praise for taking risks in his essay today, but a few hours later he's getting more for stepping outdoors and kicking the dust of class off his steeltoes in style.

Mar. 19. The last thing a teacher should confess is that he's not much of a learner, but in my case, that's the simple truth.  If you try to teach me something and I don't get it immediately, I become embarrassed, confused, furious, disgusted at you and disgusted at me.  I had many such moments 'learning' FrontPage from work-study AJ Rutherford--FrontPage, the very program I'm working in right now.  Fact is, I only know three things about FP and I don't know them very well.

When given a choice, I avoid a teacher-learner situation if I'm the one on the learner end.  I'd rather walk five miles out of my way than walk ten feet down that road and so I've taught myself a lot of things, using books or trial-and-error, but at the cost of a lot of time.

Which brings me to notorious #28 in the 101 in-class assignments.  It has two elements: first, it's a fine example of internet research.  Second, since there's so much of it, it gives students a chance to practice that oh-so-vital research skill of skimming.  You can't read it all!  Not in the time I'm going to give you.  You've got to hold some of it in your head, not worry about retaining too much, and just catch the gist of it.

To make it worse, I don't start by summarizing it or telling you what it's all about.  Student's worse nightmare: teacher won't tell me what he wants!  Teacher just wants me to look at something--who knows what the heck weird stuff it is--and just react to it!  No guidelines, no structure!

I wouldn't give this assignment the first week of class.  I wouldn't give it if I hadn't calibrated the amount of frustration and confusion it generated and figured it was within the limit a college comp student could cope with (however unhappily) at this point in the semester.

For most people, I guessed right.  For some, I didn't, and they left class having decided that I was a bad guy for dealing up such nonsense, and in a few cases being really quite annoyed at all those feelings of embarrassment and confusion I described in the first graf above.  I'm sympathetic, really I am.  I have been in those very same shoes and walked my many miles in them.

The 'But'?  (Teachers always have a 'but.')

But it's hard to get by if you can't open yourself to a little creative confusion.  Otherwise, life is just an assembly-line where you bolt on 38,000 widgets every day, every eight hours, and nothing-but-nothing is ever confusing.

Mar. 18.  I've been poking around in www.ratemyprofessors.com.  Kind of a morbid fascination looking at colleagues' ratings (the Boss is hot, the students say, and gets the good ratings she thoroughly deserves.)  Also, from other campuses, checking on friends, former friends, old girlfriends, acquaintances, Jennifer Finney Boylan, names I  recognize, and so on.  Morbid is defined as: a "preoccupation with unwholesome matters."

My all-time favorite prof, someone I've slept with every night since 1945, is not rated at all.  Go figure.

Mar. 17.  Joyce Hedlund says in a recent email memo that faculty and staff will meet in a forum Friday: “to gather any ideas you might have about addressing our shortfall …prior to making decisions about how to address…needs…and save resources.” 

In 17 years at EM I’ve been to many—too many—forums like the one Joyce has scheduled.  The elements of  the forums never change. 

The president (I’ve seen four so far [and one acting, I think]) tells us that we have all been doing a wonderful job with fewer resources than we need and s/he would like to thank us for the extraordinary efforts we put forth to make Eastern Maine the first-class college it is.  We are the very best.

The president then segues and says: as we all know, there are severe budget problems.  Fuel oil went much higher than expected or budgeted due to an unforeseen international  situation beyond anyone’s control.  The enrollment went way down because students couldn’t afford us due to the bad economy--or students came rushing in due to the same bad economy, but we practically lose money on each one since we haven’t raised tuition since 1953.  And, as usual, the legislature failed to fund the Part 2 budget, or screwed us on Part 1, or the Governor requires an 85% across-the-board cut in every agency.

And, so, now, sadly, it’s no longer a question of cutting out the fat because that has already been done.  Future cuts will take away muscle and bone, and determining what has to be cut is going to be the hardest, most personally wrenching decision s/he has ever made.

Before those decisions are made, however, the president would like to hear from the faculty and staff about their ideas.

Right then, someone always seems to pop up with a complaint about some obvious money-waster: lights left on; a faculty member copying a Brownie list on state paper; food thrown away in the cafeteria; students tearing up the grass with vehicles.  We discuss these various items as if our problem with funding came down to a bunch of individual mistakes or misdemeanors.  If the students took smaller portions and didn’t ruin the lawns, and if faculty turned out lights and watched the copying—then, the money saved would greatly reduce--or perhaps even solve!--our problems.  Pennies add up, you know.

(This part of the discussion is pure nonsense, of course, because these things are chump change and they do NOT add up.  They don’t add up to a strategy.  Or even tactics.  They’re just overhead.  They will always be with us.)

So, then the forum turns to the question of money-making ideas.  Someone brings up budgetary gimmicks, like furloughs, and notes how the budget seems to be balanced on the backs of the little guys.  Someone always seems to offer to take a personal salary cut—if we all take salary cuts, then we won’t lose jobs, right?  (As if this were practical and contractual and wouldn’t simply enable the legislature and the MCCS to direct slim resources elsewhere!)   People toss out ideas like charging much more for parking tickets and handing out a heap of them and raising fees for parking stickers.  (More chump change!)  We talk about writing our legislators to explain to them that the state’s economic future depends on our work.  (As if John Fitzsimmons doesn’t bore them to tears with that same speech year after year.)

So there we all are in Mathieu: emotional, anxious, disturbed, angry, frightened: half-blaming ourselves for the fix we find ourselves in, half-blaming Augusta or politicians or administrators or (my personal and perennial favorite blamee) politician-administrator MCCS President Dr. John Fitzsimmons (—and why shouldn’t the buck stop with him for all he’s done and for all he’s failed to do over the years!!??)

Have we accomplished anything in this forum?  The president thanks us for our ideas and our concern and our concerns and assures us that whatever decisions are made will be hard ones, not easily arrived at, etc etc. 

We walk away, perhaps feeling listened-to, though we know full well none of us had anything very useful to say, anything that would have the smallest effect on events.  Management would like us to feel that its decisions are transparent and that in time of crisis we are in some way a family sharing the burdens and pulling together.  However true or untrue those feelings are, a Friday forum is a way of promoting them.  Is that a good enough reason for a forum? Maybe a memo would both lower the anxiety level and save time—and time, as we all know, is money…

Mar 15.  Every day I deal with students--and colleagues too!--afraid to write.  Afraid that their writing will expose them as fools, leave them naked to other people's smirks, bring them face to face with their own inadequacy.  What can I say?  It's all possible.  Writing is different than any other schoolwork, except perhaps art.  Anyone who tells you that it is not risky, that you are not exposed, that no one will ever judge you through your writing either doesn't know what he's talking about or is lying.

I love to write with my students in class--I did that extensively last semester in ENG 162.  Every time anyone sits down in front of a keyboard, there is no telling what might happen, and I like being there with students experiencing the possibility of creating something neat or the other possibility too: making a fool of myself.  It's important for a teacher to take that chance before he starts dealing out advice.  A few times in 162 I wrote stuff I really hated, and the only way I could bring myself to read it to the class was to dissect it afterward to make clear why I hated it.  Maybe that taught them something.  Another time what I wrote wound up too personal and I decided not to read it at all.

That's writing for you--if you know where you're going to arrive before you even start, why bother?

I have a student right now who's got all sorts of major mechanical errors and who's struggling with a five-graf structure.  But this man has what many students with better skills will never have: a grand appetite for telling stories, fantastic stories rich with detail and character, oh-my-gosh stories with all the good dirt dished right up.  He isn't holding back a thing!  And for all he's got going for him, he's still got trouble in the course because of the skill-stuff.

Writing--it ain't for sissies. 

I know sometimes students--and colleagues too!-- look at this web log and shake their heads: what a fool!   And I look at them and shake my head: why aren't they writing?

Writing--it ain't for sissies. 

Mar. 15.  Beware, Caesar, the Ides of March or something like that.  Today IS the Ides of March, right?  Or is it the Ide of March?  Woooof--I'm too tired after teaching four straight classes to figure out what the heck the Ides are or the Ide is.  Is it something I could google?

I was reading military history last night.  Battle of Shiloh in the Civil War--the first big slaughter.  More casualties in the two days of Shiloh than in ALL the American wars up to that date--Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Indian wars, Mexican War, and the Civil War to that day in Tennessee.  That's a lot of dead and wounded people.  Later in the Civil War, battles like Antietam and Gettysburg were a lot worse even than Shiloh.

Two famous generals were wounded at Shiloh--Sherman took a bullet through the hand and Nathan Bedford Forrest (still a colonel), while personally leading a cavalry charge against pursuers, rode into a nest of Yankees, had a bullet lodge next to his spine, somehow grabbed a Union soldier and threw him up behind to shield him from further shots, and rode off into history.

People willing to face death are always impressive.  People who display physical courage and aggression and who thereby increase their risk of dying are even more impressive--at least to men, at least to this man.  Maybe it's a guy thing exclusively.  That certainly is what the missus will tell me when she reads this.

I'm posting on it because my reading brings up the question of leadership, which is certainly a question asked daily even in an educational hierarchy: I have my bosses, who are not just phone-call makers, paper-signers, speech-givers, and committee-meeting-facilitators. They are also supposed to lead, whatever that may entail.  Offering a vision for others to see, a direction for them to follow, a model and example of professionalism?  And, of course, as a teacher, I'm supposed to be doing the same for my students.

To be a good general it isn't necessary to have been shot and being shot is certainly no guarantee of good generalship.  On the other hand, there is a certain quality of boldness, of damning-the-consequences which leaders' personalities perhaps show.  The gunshot wounds might be an outward mark of that something inside.

What the equivalent of a soldier's gunshot is for teachers I'll write about some other Ides of March.

Mar. 13.  Sometimes I feel like I'm on cheap drugs during the school year because of the way I experience time.  Think rollercoaster.

Right now, time seems to be dragging--we've just passed the midpoint in the semester--like a 'coaster slowly slowly climbing that first long incline, just cresting the peak.  Everyone's screaming in anticipation because in just a second...whoosh!  The coaster accelerates insanely fast down the slope and at the bottom a wicked twist....  And the semester will be over, the second half having gone by much faster than the first.  A course like ENG 101 which is backloaded (a lot of isearches seem to get written near the end of the semester) makes the student feel the rollercoaster car is accelerating into a brick wall. 

Mar. 12.  Spring must be in the air, because over the past few days I've had quite a few students writing about sex and sexy topics, topics which make even an old sinner blush in class, topics I wouldn't dream of spelling out here on a website whose existence is not completely in my hands.  But 'sex' and 'sexy' cover the territory okay--let your imagination run to its farthest limits, then push it a mile or two farther!

Even the paper about mashed potato eaters... was sexy.  What could be sexier in the food world than mashed potatoes?  You play with them and they take any shape you like and so are a perfect mirror of your fantasies.  My student writer was pretty funny on the mashed potato volcano makers, the road builders, and so on.  Personally, I load my unpeeled mashed p'tatoes with anything I can get away with: anchovies, horseradish, cheese, parsley, dried tomatoes.  Or all of the above at once.  And what does that say about me? 

Mar. 12  The warning notices went home, and this week I've been dealing with cleanup.  Many surprised students--their surprise always astonishes me.  It's true that my deadlines are lax, and I don't ride herd on students' comings and goings, and a lot of late student work could theoretically appear like magic on my doorstep in May to save the day at the last second, but when I literally haven't received more than one or two assignments from someone midway in the semester, I project that rate of production over the next two months, and what possible other prediction could I make than eventual student failure?

So, I would understand a student worried, anxious, distressed, depressed, panicky, resentful.  Nearly any adjective but 'surprised.'

Also a few angry voices from students, as if now they suddenly see the truth: I turn out to be a traitor.  Not really cool at all.  These students assume that real teachers monitor student tardiness, attendance, classroom deportment, attitude.  These teachers are wicked strict so, just like high school,  the students rebel and revolt if they can get away with it or resentfully truckle under if they can't.  Now, the teacher who only focuses on your work and who doesn't care about the rest of that stuff--well, that kind of teacher is cool, right?  So he'd never actually send home a warning notice?  He'd never actually flunk a student, would he?

Well, he would--and I had a few angry people who thought I'd misled them into believing that college English courses required no work.

This post may sound bitter, but there's a small stupid part of me that always thinks I should provide what students expect after 12 years of public school education, and my bitterness is my way of fighting off the self-doubt.

Mar. 11.  Oh yeah, I am going to pitch my ENG 162 Creative Non-fiction online course for the fall semester.  I'm going to walk the halls, sit outside the lunch trailer, crowd into the desk in the reception area.  And when you see me, I'm going to be carrying a bunch of baggies with two Hershey's kisses in each one--that's to get people to open the baggie. And inside the baggie will be a folded piece of paper, and people may only open that to wipe the chocolate off their fingers, but once it's open they'll see writing and curiosity will force them to read this:

(Go ahead--click it!)

Mar. 9.  Ace former EMCC student Patsy Husson (currently knocking their socks off over at Husson's nursing department--Patsy was a first-class pickup for them and a first-class loss for us!) has a fine, fine genealogy paper in my 101/sample isearch folder.  It's the first one in there, and that isn't by accident.

When I had a couple of students doing genealogy isearches this semester, I asked Patsy if she would be willing to share her expertise with them.  She said sure, which, knowing her, didn't surprise me.  What did surprise me is this, which she sent along a day or two later to the students.

Mar. 8.  While the missus was away, guess what I did?  Unh-unh, wrong guess!

Last night just as I was starting to fry some sausage as the foundation for my bachelor supper, who should appear on the porch but my friendly neighborhood evangelist who shows up every few months to witness, testify, quote scripture, leave a few tracts, and make yet one more attempt to save this poor sinner.  He uses me to sharpen up his preaching, and I use him... to train the dogs.  I'll listen to whatever he has to say, if, when he steps over the threshold, he will say, "No, down!" to Scooter and hold his hands out in a down-gesture.  The evangelist does what I ask but says it with so little force and conviction that the dogs are half-convinced he's being ironic and really does want them to jump on him with their muddy paws.  "Say it again," I said.  "Like you mean it.  Like you're saying it to the Devil."

I hadn't talked to anyone with a higher IQ than barkbark-bowwow since I left school Friday, so I invited him in and while I ate supper, he told me who was responsible for crucifying Jesus--he takes the old-fashioned view--and I told him how I trained Chloe to stand on her hind legs and spin like a ballerina.  I'm not sure either of us were especially enlightened by our exchange.

Mar. 7.  Last semester I wrote to all the advisors trying to get students steered toward my ENG 221, 'Writing History Close to Home.'  And...one student signed up.  Course never ran. 

Why dream up electives that interest me but don't sell well to students?  Probably because I want to teach writing only, and it's lit, art, and film courses that transfer.  After the basic comp, business, and tech writing, most colleges seem to consider writing a nice frill without any real academic weight.

A day may come when I break down and work up a fiction-writing course.... [No, wait a minute, John.  You don't want to teach fiction!  Ever.  Ever!--ed.]  Okay, okay, right,  I will never teach fiction.  But I  have taught ENG 162, Creative Non-fiction, which uses lots of fictional techniques and might be interesting to someone with fiction ambitions.

I'm going to see if I can send an email to all the StudentOne accounts pitching an online version of ENG 162 for Fall 2004.  But if you're reading this and getting excited, be aware: the max is 20.  Maybe talk to your advisor early to be assured of a slot, eh?

Mar. 7  Teaching writing is a constant struggle to find--not what I think--but what what part of what I think might be useful to say to students.  I'm always submerging ideas, thoughts, opinions, prejudices, jokes--and just trying to find the helpful remark or comment.

I finished 'She's Not There' last night and have been struggling all day to know what I think.  The book brings me face to face with bigotry--my bigotry--and as I said in the earlier post, I can't seem to let it go, though I dislike thinking of myself as bigoted.  I can't find anything helpful to say to myself.  Just when I think I may have quelled my dark side for a bit, out pops the English teacher, sneering at the very idea of changing a name from Jim to Jen--spare me the lecture on the signifier and the signified--and at the hushed piety everyone's voice seems to assume when the word 'she' is applied to Boylan.

Mar. 5.  I feel so silly.  Why do I ever say 'never'? Wasn't it just Monday I was telling my classes the how-to-do-research assignments were over so students should just head on out and start digging for answers to those isearch questions?  Yes, Monday.  I kept that plan for nearly 96 hours, nearly a record!  Then yesterday, I realized I ought to steer people to the newsgroup end of google's many many powers...and, uh, therefore, a new how-to-research assignment in class.  Crow, mmm-mm, tastes so good.

Mar. 5.  Yesterday I started a conversation with a student about an isearch by saying that there are two things the internet can get people to pay for: porn and genealogy info.  Well, the student isn't doing an isearch on porn, though it's a perfectly fine topic.  I felt like a bit of a fool--okay, a major fool--when the student pointed out to me that I wasn't talking to the student working on genealogy.  Next seat over, Goldfine!.... I rolled my chair over, wondering if I should I give the right student the same spiel.  Yeah, I started, but the life had gone out of it--like a joke someone doesn't get.  The moment had passed. 

My voice trailed off: "You heard that, right?"  She said yeah and we went on.

When I goof like that, I blush.  My face burns.*

*A student from last year read this post and wrote commenting on how difficult it must be to keep names straight.  It is, but the midpoint of the semester is next Wednesday at 10:25., so I do have the names straight, more or less--the problem wasn't mixing up the students.  It was failing to attach the right isearch topic to the right student.  That I don't claim to be able to do all the time, and the students stare at me like I'm senile when I say, "Now, you're writing about turning your grandparents' retirement home on Mt Desert Island into a combination auto junkyard/hog farm, right?"  They say, "No-oooo, I'm trying to find out about my hangnail problem."  Oh yeah, yeah, I remember now....

 Mar. 4.  I'm reading 'She's Not There,' a memoir by Jennifer Finney Boylan, chairwoman of the English Department at Colby in Waterville.  There's a lot about the book to morbidly fascinate me, the least of which is that I was a major in that very same school, very same department.

Of course, for keeping up the interest level, there's nothing like knowing that Jennifer Finney Boylan started her career as a Colby prof as James Finney Boylan.  James Boylan had the irreversible operation.  I keep arguing with the missus about the book, about the operation, about Boylan's description of her despair as a man--and the missus keeps saying, 'Why do you care?  Why does it matter so much?'  Why indeed?

I like to imagine myself tolerant, broadminded, libertarian and always say that, all other things being equal, no one should be stopped from finding his or her own way to hell.  But I'm having trouble letting this one go.

Mar. 3.  The worst story I know about George Steinbrenner: early in his career as owner of the Yankees, his team was at home, two down, two on, two out, ninth inning.  The hitter hits a long long long fly ball, going going going...oops, caught right in front of the Babe Ruth plaque. Everybody heads for the showers--game over, Yanks lose.  Right?  Maybe not!  George Steinbrenner is shouting to his lackeys: "Where's everyone going?  Both those runners crossed the plate before the ball was caught.  It's tied!"

In baseball, except for stories like that, nothing is new.  Every situation has happened somewhere, sometime, some of them millions of times before, and baseball is a game where everyone is always being reminded of the situation, the history, so they know what to do.  How many outs, what are the signals, is this the time to send a runner, what's the pitcher like to throw in this situation, what was the pitch the guy struck out on last time--everyone is always communicating.  A lot of the stuff is elementary and a big league player has heard it a thousand times before, but how many millions a year do you have to make before you no longer need to hear 'make him pitch to you' or 'don't give him anything too good to hit.'

In dog and horse training, the missus and I are always helping each other remember stuff we already know but sometimes forget under stress.  The horse is standing in my way on the beatdown path across the snow.  Instead of taking it as a training opportunity, I see it as a dominance challenge.  I bull right into him and knock him out of my way (and take the risk of having my head kicked off.)   The missus reminds me: make him back, make him step aside, then click and treat.  Duh, yeah, why don't I use my head for more than a hatrack?

And sometimes I can see her adding unintended complications to a trick or giving an unclear cue...that sort of thing.  Still helping each other out after 35 years.

Watching each other's work, reminding each other of simple rules does NOT happen in teaching, where each teacher lives out his professional life in solitary splendor with only students to witness.  Why, for all my colleagues know, I could be teaching my classes that runs across the plate before the long fly is caught actually do count.

Mar. 3.  I really like talking to students about writing one-to-one.  Of all the teacher things, that's my favorite and, by plan, I'm doing more of it this semester, but, if I'm enjoying myself, I figure there must be something wrong so I begin to worry: maybe I should lecture more.  Maybe I should create group activities.  Maybe I should make sure that the students at least know each other's names and talk to each other as well as to me! 

Mar. 3  I used the March 2 post on reading aloud to model ellipses for my students.  Ellipsis is very darn hard to teach, once you get past the three dots-sub-for-dropped-words-in-quotations rule.

To use the ellipsis to show irony, to undercut a word, to highlight a word, to create fadeaway effects--how the heck do you explain that?  Students don't need any punctuation except for commas and periods, but the fancy stuff is nice to have in the toolbox.

This morning one student was helplessly staring at the computer screen, so we looked in an essay I'd just handed back for spots where ellipsis might work.  Come to find out, that student had used it already!  Three times!  Each time very appropriately.  Without any teaching!

Yes, after just a few minutes of listening to me 'explain' (see how useful sneer quotes are?)(not to mention parentheses!), all self-confidence had been drained right out of this student.  Another triumph of the teacher's art....

Mar. 3  The Boss and I were talking about the new journalism course.  We were worried that teaching the journalistic technique of leading with the most important stuff, following with the less important, and ending with the least would screw people up for 101.  I said, "Teach them to write news and when they get to 101, we'll beat it out of them."

When I got to class a minute later, a student, who'd been passing the Boss and me in the hall and apparently overheard a bit of the conversation, said,  "So what is it you think you're going to beat out of us?"

A funny moment--and a chance for me to slip in a mini-lecture on the difference between a five-graf essay and a three-stage-rocket news story.

Everyone seemed reassured that no immediate beating was planned.

Mar. 2.  I can clearly remember being asked to read aloud in first grade. I knew other kids hated doing it, but I was a good reader and loved strutting my stuff and receiving praise from a teacher who usually doled it out sparingly.  Isn't that sick?  Sucking up to the teacher, showing off?  Thank heavens I've matured since 1950....

Or have I?  Truth is, one of the things I still love to do in class is read aloud.  I've done it as a teacher for 32 years now and have no intention of stopping.  Of course, it was one thing when I read to second graders in reading class or to junior high English classes, but reading aloud in a community college?

Sure, absolutely.  My surveys tell me students like it when I read their good stuff aloud, and when I'm teaching a five-graf essay, how much can I lecture?  Pretty quickly I want to be reading aloud some good samples.  I suppose I could assign them to be read out of class--but then the students wouldn't hear my commentary, my explanation of why a piece is both a corker and a keeper.  And I wouldn't have the chance to be a ham!

Yesterday in one class, I read two essays, one on anger and one on getting an OUI and when I was done, all the air had been sucked out of the room.  Every single person was thinking: Wow!  I said, "Well, jeez, don't get intimidated! Those're inspiring, but students wrote them, not gods!"   The class shook their heads, and, before I could run it by my censors, I said, "Well, I don't have any shortage of POS essays.  Whaddaya think?  I should come in and read you bad ones, then tell you they suck and you can do way better?"

People laughed, but didn't like hearing that I had no shortage of POS essays. They suspected it, but...just didn't want to be reminded.*

Speaking of reading aloud, today's BDN had a photo of US Supreme Court Justice Breyer reading Dr. Seuss aloud to a bunch of schoolkids.  Everyone seemed to have a cat-in-the-hat hat on, even the Supreme.  My question is why these photo ops ALWAYS have to show the kids sitting on the floor.  Can you imagine a VIP reading to a kid while sitting at a teacher's desk and the kids sitting at their desks?  No, of course not, because classrooms bring back bad memories to most people and a politician doesn't want to tap those.  God forbid he suggests to people he's anything like...a teacher! 

If you look closely in the background of the photo you will see enough supersized Windsor chairs to fit all the fannies of all the kids if they doubled up a little.  But no--we get an image of humble children sitting at the feel of a kindly adult, gratefully drinking in all the adult's wisdom.  That's certainly not a realistic picture of a day in school, but it does tap our sense of appropriate hierarchy: adults unique, children a faceless mass; adults higher than children in every important way.

* Working with a student, I would never call an essay bad, much less a POS.  All I ever say is it isn't ready and needs work.  So, it may have come as a surprise to my students that I have a harsh and judgmental side.  Or maybe it would come as a surprise to them that I think I successfully disguise that side of me!

Feb. 29.  Talking to a Talkative and a Less Talkative Colleague after work Friday about the mindless busy-work and paper-pushing and checklist-punching so important to administrators, some of which, of course, rolls downhill so that we teachers see it more and more.  How else can we be held accountable, we are told,  unless there exists a piece of paper in a file somewhere saying that we did this and filled in that on such and such a date?

My beef is that eventually people stop worrying about being good at their jobs and start worrying about being good at filling out the paperwork that says they are good at their jobs.

And I get depressed with the stupidity and infuriated with the wasted time and the amount of cynicism generated and goodwill blown.

The Talkative Colleague said it, whatever it was, was just APOP, a piece of paper: Fill it out, hand it in, forget it; don't give it more than a second of your time!  But I can't do that.  People I respect, or used to respect, tell me something is important.  I want to believe it is important because I don't want them to be wasting their or my time, so when it turns out to be nonsense--well, the idea of working in a place where everyone agrees that a certain amount of the work is nonsense we just do to grease the wheels is disturbing.

Feb.29.  Over the past 16.75 years of teaching at EMCC, I've been confronted by a few parents angry at things I did do or didn't do (or they imagined I did or didn't do) to their EM adult student offspring. 

Letting one's children grow and go--out to find their own way and their own successes and mistakes is hard.  But, even if the parent is unable to let go, nowadays both school policy and professional ethics make it impossible for me to talk to parents without the student's permission.  This ain't high school.

Some parents take my refusal to speak to them without permission as disrespectful--'who the heck does he think he is not talking to me about my own kid who he's doing X and Y to.  I'm the parent, I'm gonna defend my kid, and no darn English teacher is going to brush me off.'

Here's the thing: this isn't about disrespect and it's not something to get angry about.  It's a good thing!  Students can count on the fact that their business is just that: theirs, unless they specifically tell me otherwise.

My silence guarantees the student's privacy and dignity.  It is a Good Thing.