In the Beginning

I was thinking this morning what I might want to say on tape to be archived in the Digital Literacy Narrative file at Ohio State. Here is what I came up with, although I suspect I will be much briefer on tape.

Certainly, literacy is multi-faceted, so when I start a literacy narrative, I could go plenty of ways with it – reading, writing, computers, blogs, video. The list might extend very far. But I think the place I keep coming back to is reading, maybe the most traditional “literacy.”In so many ways, reading started it all for me.

I grew up in a family of readers. After supper at night, the television certainly came on, but mom was more often than not on the couch reading one of her many magazines and dad was across the room with a book – either a spy novel or a western, usually. Sis would be in her room, reading and listening to music. (Another type of literacy?) I was often the only one watching the TV when I was younger. To be sure,  I had learned to read with Dick and Jane in first grade. Kindergarten was all private where I grew up and we couldn’t afford it, so first grade was, well, first for everything. I enjoyed reading, and for those first few years “Reading” was my favorite subject in school. I even enjoyed the “Think and Do” workbooks. I was always in the highest reading group, but I remember doing very little reading outside of class. I had a library card, and I loved going to the imposing old Carnegie Library downtown – so mysterious! I took part in the summer reading programs, too, logging those books I read. But I don’t remember reading as a passion.

All that changed for me in fourth grade. The 1963-64 school year. Momentous. Kennedy assassination. New best friend – who would remain so until he moved away years later. Braces. The tornado. And “The Book.” There was one book that year, a new one in our school library, that became such a hot item there was a waiting list to check it out. I waited weeks to get it, and once I did, I remember being so captivated by it that I devoured it. I think I read it again that year, and I know full well I checked it out every year from fourth until eighth grade to read it again.

From that point onward, I remember being a reader. In the summer, I would spend all day in my room, window wide open, fan on (because we didn’t have central air, so shutting my bedroom door meant not getting the benefits of the huge window-unit AC ), radio tuned to the local Top 40 station. I would read until late in the afternoon when it cooled off enough for all the kids to come out and play until long after dark. Next day the same.

I have remained a passionate reader since. When I finally convinced myself I could write – which came much later, in college – I switched my major to English and never looked back. I believe all the myriad literacies I could list stem from that one conscious-altering encounter.

And the book that launched my reading career? Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time.

How I Spend Summer Vacation

What is Summer Vacation?

I am well aware that most of the world looks at teaching as a cushy job. After all, you work only nine months out of the year, you have weekends off, you get two weeks around Christmas and often one in the Spring. What’s not to love about a job like that?

The longer I teach, the more you would think I would have things down pat, be prepared to step in next Fall and repeat what I have done the past few years with nothing more than a bit of tweaking here or a minor adjustment there. I wish it were so. While I do tend now, after three years of having the Subfreshmen, to do many things the same, I find myself constantly assessing what I am doing and why, what I could do differently, how to work in some new concept or material or technology into my curriculum. I am not static, my class is not static, and I pray that I never become so wedded to a unit that I can’t constantly alter my approach to make it more effective and engaging.

That is where Summer Vacation comes in. While the rest of the world sees teachers as having two plus months with nothing to do, I see having two plus months that have even more to do. Now is the time I need to read a different book, think through a new unit, figure out how to pull more students into the lesson, decide what is important and what can float. Now is the time I have to spend time reading research that will support my idea, scan articles for new concepts, build the better mousetrap. In some ways, I have to cram nine months of work into two plus months. Not an easy task.

But that’s not all. Summer Vacation is the time my family expects me to be focused on them, not my grading. Summer is the time when all the projects at home that back up over the nine months of school have to be done. The porch, left last summer, needs to be stripped and repainted. The doors, too. The basement wants a major clean again, and there is the library project up in the attic – left last Fall when school really kicked into gear, books scattered around waiting to be sent to a new home or placed properly on the dwindling shelf space.

And what of a true “vacation”? The family somewhat expects that we will take off and spend some time away from home. As the kids have gotten older, that has not been as much of an issue since they are doing more on their own – the Hab ride, for instance, counts as their vacation in much the same way it did for their Mom all those years. But that still leaves me and my spouse. Working in time away becomes something of a stress, but it is a stress I readily take on because, for one thing, I need to get away. More importantly, though, I value that time with my wife, especially now that we can go off somewhere without the kids in tow.

Would I change positions with anyone? Not really. As much as I work for as little pay as I get, I still love what I do. I value being able to dwell in my vocation and still be paid for it. And despite what this little piece may seem to be saying, I do not resent the common perception of teachers and their “time off.” I would not trade it for a job that stopped at 5 every evening and offered me two or more weeks paid leave when I could easily leave the office behind. No, teaching’s the world for me, I can think of none better.

Still, sometimes I have to confront these issues and dream that I could teach the rest of society the truth of a teacher’s “summer vacation.”

The Technology of Death

In August of 1977, I had just moved to Paris, TN to start a teaching job. I was living in a trailer in a large trailer court. Rental units were hard to come by in the small town of Paris, county seat of Henry County and home to Henry County High School. I had bought a new component stereo when I signed the contract to teach — my first full-time job — and was quite proud of the sound I got from my two large Advent speakers. I came home one day in that first week of school, turned on the radio — my primary source of entertainment and information then — and soon heard from the announcer the big news: Elvis was dead.

I had never been a huge Elvis fan, although my sister had some of his records and my cousin was an Elvis fanatic. When the news “hour” arrived, I turned on the television news on one of the three stations I could receive with my outdoor antenna, and saw some of the reaction in Memphis as people slowly began to gather around Graceland. Word of Elvis’ death traveled slowly.

Later that night, at around 1:30 a.m., my phone began to ring. I crawled out of bed and stumbled out to the living room where my only phone — a land line — was. The caller was my college friend Ginger, the one responsible for telling me about the teaching job I now had. She immediately apologized for calling so late, but it was the first time all evening she could get a long-distance line out of Memphis. Things in her hometown were nuts, she claimed, and contrary to the growing influx of people into town, she was looking for a way out. Could she come spend the weekend with me? Ginger showed up the next afternoon, and we spent our weekend watching news reports on the local NBC affiliate about the crowds gathered in Memphis.

I was reminded of that scenario last week as I watched the reports and the reactions of people to the news of Michael Jackson’s death. Numerous reports showed people in Times Square who, having seen the news glide across the screen there, pulled out their cell phones to call friends or check their Twitter account to relay or verify the news. Cameras were on the scene before the ambulance ever left the house, and soon “raw footage” could be seen on the Internet. Word spread almost instantly — Twitter, 24-hour news cable channels, e-mail updates — and the crowd grew with the speed at which the news was being spread.

What amazes me most is not the reaction of fans, but the way the news spread so quickly and so surely. We no longer have to wait for a news bulletin to interrupt our AM radio or delay while footage is flown to one of the three major news networks. Now the most recent news, if not sent to our Twitter account, scrolls across the screen on one of the multiple 24-hour all-news channels. We verify the news by Googling Michael Jackson’s name into our computer. We know as soon as anyone — even before family unless they happen to be in the room.

Much is being put out there about the singer and his place. Comparisons to Elvis arose almost immediately. What strikes me in that comparison, though, is not losing an artist at a young age, but how we heard about the loss.

Is there any doubt we need to be working with our students in this new technology? It defines how they deal with their world. The media, far from usurping the old standards of writing we value, demand that our students not only be able to express their thoughts clearly and correctly, but also express them clearly and correctly and almost instantly. Only through practice, then, through assigning even more writing and rewriting and editing and rewriting, can we hope for them to have the fluency the current technologies demand.

Writing is dead. Long live writing.

We’ve Only Just Begun

I think it strange that after being Institutionalized with the same people for a month now, I will not be spending all day with them anymore. I readily admit that the time had its struggles and I was, at first, none too excited about finally being out of school but suddenly being back “in session,” as it were. But as the first University of Illinois Writing Project Summer Institute comes to an end, I am once more overwhelmed, this time with the desire to keep at what we have been doing.

Hence the title, one intended to appeal to digital immigrants like me. Rather than simply a reference to a pop song from the seventies, though, I see it as a call to action. All those wonderful ideas that were shared, all those new challenges that were raised, all those literacies that need to be explored are not over but, instead, just beginning. Now we take this start and go with it. I, for one, am excited. I came into this hoping to make my teaching of writing better, and I leave thinking I just may have a start to doing that. But I have only just begun.

Also just beginning is the UIWP. For a maiden voyage it was a helluva run. I hope those in charge take a well-deserved rest then start looking at ways to make next year’s Institute even more effective. If I have a regret, it may be that I won’t be eligible to take the Institute again. I now realize how much more I have to learn.

So my heartfelt thanks to all those who participated. I learned immeasurably from you all. I want to insert some pithy quotation now, some classic closing. You know, like Gatsby and compare us to boats against the stream or something like that. But I think I prefer something from a middle of Jonson — “the best is yet to be.”

And by the way, I left the Institute, walked home, and made my reservation for San Antonio.

Cyber Aliens

My wife informs me, as I struggle to process all that I am being exposed to in the UIWP Summer Institute, that I am not really a cyber immigrant, I am a cyber alien. I feel that way sometime. I often think I am not assimilating to a new culture, I am simply hiding in it, trying to appear normal and a part of the crowd. Reading Lankshear and Knobel’s New Literacies at least providing me with the terminology I need to describe my plight. Try as I might, willing though I may be, I am not sure that I can change my mindset to the new literacies. I constantly question whether I am thinking in the right “new” way or simply thinking in a new “old” way. 

I shall keep at it in hopes  my cyber green card will show up.

Fear of Writing

So they implied yesterday, when we were visiting the NWP main web site, that at the end of this crucible, we will emerge as writing experts, ready to sell our wares in any marketplace. (Am I mixing too many metaphors there?) Picking up on the Erica Jong allusion, I would be the zipperless expert, I fear. Unless something drastic happens in the next two weeks, I see myself coming out of this knowing how much there is out there that I don’t know, that I haven’t tried. Heck, that I haven’t heard of!  So I could go make a presentation on one of the wonderful ideas I have heard here or some theory I have found in my reading, and I could pass myself off as somewhat accomplished, but it would be essentially meaningless, I fear. Without substance. Without attachment. Zipperless.

 What I could do with some modicum of honesty is tell them all that is out there. I could point to plenty of ideas that I have met but don’t yet know well. I could encourage them to think outside the box, to look at all the different ways, to forsake the status quo. I could list plenty of books and articles, not all of which I have even read yet, that they could investigate. I could offer camaraderie, encourage them to take the plunge knowing there are at least sixteen of us out there also swimming in relatively unknown waters. Or, of course, I could say no when asked to present.

I take some comfort, though, in the idea that even if I am feeling overwhelmed right now (I should keep the water metaphor from the last paragraph and refer to “Not Waving But Drowning” by Stevie Smith), I will find some bearing once I have a chance to pause and sift through all these wonderful ideas. More importantly, once I have had a semester or two — or three or four or ten — to practice some of these things, I will have a firmer footing. So — keeping the metaphor — if I can tread water for now, later I can at least dog paddle closer to shore.

And lest this sound too despairing, let me say that I am very glad to at least be in the water. (Or, to end with the metaphor I started with, to be on the plane and in the air.)

Ravings from a Neo-Luddite

OK, in the spirit of new literacies, I have left behind my pen and paper pad in its nifty portfolio jacket and am writing all my notes and responses and such on the laptop. I readily note there is not much to impress about that since I do most all correspondence at work on a computer. Still, there have been times in the stress of the last week plus when I have felt the tug to return to those comfortable literacies of my youth.

And here I am writing in a blog. How with it is that! I also have my second web site started — if not quite on line yet. That has been a struggle. But maybe I am learning to deal with this seamonkey on my back. OH! There is the youtube account, too, and a posting! I made and edited a fledgling video, and although I am well aware my students would scoff, I also know they are kind enough to indulge this old fart English teacher and encourage him to keep on trying.

So what am I raving about? Here we are well into the University of Illinois National Writing Project Summer Seminar and the new stuff we are about is all electronic. VIDEOS. Ok, I know I have encouraged students to do creative things with videos in the past, but the idea that this is something I need to be able to teach as a form of composition scares the blazes out of me. This is not necessarily startling information, but I find it disconcerting nonetheless. We seem to be giving such short shrift to traditional composition. I know that all the current literature touts new genres and literacies, but apart from my own hesitancy and fear for my classroom technique, I worry how I am going to introduce these things into a classroom at Uni? I can see parents having herds of cows over this. If I say I am asking the students to compose videos rather than write a traditional five-page essay on a piece of literature, I will be stampeded. Uni contains the term “Laboratory” in the title, but most of the parents don’t believe it. They will be willing to let me experiment — AFTER their student has been accepted into Big Name College of their choice.

I suppose the final line is this: Do I have the courage to be in the vanguard?

Everything Old Ain’t New Again

I have often wished I kept things from my youth. In spite of what some of my students in the 80s thought, bell bottoms did come back and straight-leg jeans were no longer cool. What I am reading in the UIWP Summer Institute,  Strategic Writing by Deborah Dean, offers up what may be a new way of looking at old ideas, but I am not even sure of that.

 

To be sure, Dean offers some good ideas. Even if they are not necessarily innovative, they are good to hear again. And like all good teachers, she is offering workable ideas from her classroom that sound viable and fun. I will certainly steal many ideas for my practices. But the basic idea, that “strategies” are important, is not, I think, anything new, they are simply parts of the “Process” orientation so prevalent over the past few decades repackaged under different names. What I see her talking about is “invention,” for example. She just breaks the concept down into smaller possibilities. The idea that you have to teach most students how to think about invention by feeding them ways of going about it is nothing particularly startling. If they already knoew how to do these things, they wouldn’t be in school. Dean talks about using models. When I was a grad student at Ohio U back in the late 70s, the entire English 150 — the remedial class students had to take if they scored too low on the assessment test — was based on models.

Again, I appreciate having these ideas brought back into the fore-mind, and I will certainly steal some of the techniques she shares, but this is, I think, the same product wrapped in a new cover with “New and Improved” stamped on it.

Learning my way around

Here I am on day 2 of the Blog. I am feeling increasingly overwhelmed by UIWP. So much to digest and so little time to do it. Nonetheless, I am very excited. I have already come across so many ideas, so much to steal from others. I want, though, to take time to think through some of those ideas more thoroughly now. My biggest fear is that when all of this is over, I will have forgotten so much of what I wanted to use. To try to circumvent that, I have started to take more notes as I go along. Of course, come July 4 I will be spending my time sifting through all those notes, all the remembrances I have jotted down, and trying to use them in the coming school year. 

 

My family wonders when vacation will start for me!

Maiden Voyage

Now, as part of the University of Illinois Writing Project Summer Institute, I have a blog. Hurrah!