Love feeds love

On Monday I discussed Trevor Nunn's version of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and how love, when bestowed, opens people up. Love has the startling power to draw people out of themselves, out of their woes and worries, out of their hang-ups. It is a wonder.

As Spring begins to burn hot, as the school year begins to wind down, as anticipation of graduation swells in hopeful chests, I still see many students with downcast or anxious eyes. Sure, some of the problem is apathy or the so-called "senioritis" (as I've discussed over the last couple of weeks); but much of what is going on in my students and in myself is a growing sense of urgency--for whatever reason. Many here at school are walking the halls, wrestling our way through classes and days and homework (when they do it) , trying to just make it by. All the students are racing toward summer. The seniors are racing toward their mini-consumation--GRADUATION. Their all racing in the same direction, toward similar goals... and yet... there's somehow a hollowness in the midst of all the anticipation.

I don't know the direct cause of the blank or wandering, focus-less gazes I see. I DO know that many of these floundering students need encouragement. Reminders. A gentle push.

Love.
~~~*~~~

At the end of this day and all the struggles these teenagers feel--that I feel as a teacher and parent--all of us need feeding and the food we need is love. I know this may sound like a spectacularly obvious assessment, but I see so many of us who call ourselves educators, parents, friends miss this point. Rather than seeking to feed this need for love (and all that love carries along with it), we sometimes have that tendency to withdraw from the students or worse, we follow them into their hazy, hungry state and neglect to be fed ourselves so that we might, in turn, be feeders.

Love feeds love. We need to be fed with love and support--from colleagues, friends, family, students, speakers, authors, etc.--so that we can feed.

It's spring. Go find invigoration, go find, learning, go find love. You might have to try hard to do this, especially if you're weary with the work set before us. DO IT! It's worth the labor, for you and for those in your charge.

Don't join the hollow stare. Fill it.

"Love feeds love and I believe that
love bleeds when it doesn't get enough." ~Wayne Kirkpatrick

Who cares... and about what?

When I was in tenth grade, my biology teacher, Ms. Jacobi, came into the classroom one day with a distressed look on her face. She told us to get out our notes and proceeded to turn on the overhead projector, as was her custom.

Then she flipped the light of the projector off and looked out at us. The distressed look had not abated in the least. She walked over to the board and started writing. We couldn't see what it was because she was blocking the view; there would be none of that business that happens when a teacher writes something on the board and the students guess what's coming before the teacher even finishes writing.

Even if we could have seen the word, it wouldn't have mattered. Ms. Jacobi stepped away, revealing the word, and looked out at us again. Then she asked a question.

"Does anyone know what this word means?"

I assume most of the class could read the word--pronounce it--but no one raised his or her hand to answer the question. We just looked back at her, waiting for her to continue.

After a few moments of no sound but the crickets (and maybe some breathing), the teacher said, "Apathy? Does anyone know what 'apathy' means?"

We shook our heads. I think this discouraged her further, but she continued her questioning until a few of us stumbled into the periphery of the definition. Finally, she said, "It means 'not caring.' It's when you don't care. Do any of you care about anything?"

~~~*~~~
I can't remember how we answered or how long we discussed the topic. I do remember that she was bothered by the lack of concern--the apathy--that she had been seeing in the student at our high school. She was animated and nigh impassioned. What I remember (or imagine I remember) is that she wanted so badly for us to care about something--anything--amidst the people around us that didn't seem to give a rip about anything.

This is one of the most enduring memories or impressions that I carry with me from high school, from a teacher. Today, I find myself in Ms. Jacobi's position, wondering about some of my students, wondering if they care about anything, wondering what that "anything" might be. Wondering how I might appeal to them.

I'm still in this questioning mode, which I think is good. God help me--and my students--if I slip into that place in which I don't care. Teacher... parent... we're to be about the business of caring. It's part of who we are and what we do. We fight apathy in ourselves and we work to stave it off in our students and/or children. We fight to enliven and open up eyes and imaginations. We work toward wonder... in ourselves and in those in our charge.

~~~*~~~
I'm grateful to Ms. Jacobi for her distress or concern (or whatever it was that she felt exactly) that day all those years ago. She didn't surrender to apathy. Today I see how important it is that I don't surrender either, for the sake of myself and for the sake of my students and children.

Who cares? I do. And that's a start.

What about you? What do you care about? What do the students around you care about?

Who cares... and about what?

When I was in tenth grade, my biology teacher, Ms. Jacobi, came into the classroom one day with a distressed look on her face. She told us to get out our notes and proceeded to turn on the overhead projector, as was her custom.

Then she flipped the light of the projector off and looked out at us. The distressed look had not abated in the least. She walked over to the board and started writing. We couldn't see what it was because she was blocking the view; there would be none of that business that happens when a teacher writes something on the board and the students guess what's coming before the teacher even finishes writing.

Even if we could have seen the word, it wouldn't have mattered. Ms. Jacobi stepped away, revealing the word, and looked out at us again. Then she asked a question.

"Does anyone know what this word means?"

I assume most of the class could read the word--pronounce it--but no one raised his or her hand to answer the question. We just looked back at her, waiting for her to continue.

After a few moments of no sound but the crickets (and maybe some breathing), the teacher said, "Apathy? Does anyone know what 'apathy' means?"

We shook our heads. I think this discouraged her further, but she continued her questioning until a few of us stumbled into the periphery of the definition. Finally, she said, "It means 'not caring.' It's when you don't care. Do any of you care about anything?"

~~~*~~~
I can't remember how we answered or how long we discussed the topic. I do remember that she was bothered by the lack of concern--the apathy--that she had been seeing in the student at our high school. She was animated and nigh impassioned. What I remember (or imagine I remember) is that she wanted so badly for us to care about something--anything--amidst the people around us that didn't seem to give a rip about anything.

This is one of the most enduring memories or impressions that I carry with me from high school, from a teacher. Today, I find myself in Ms. Jacobi's position, wondering about some of my students, wondering if they care about anything, wondering what that "anything" might be. Wondering how I might appeal to them.

I'm still in this questioning mode, which I think is good. God help me--and my students--if I slip into that place in which I don't care. Teacher... parent... we're to be about the business of caring. It's part of who we are and what we do. We fight apathy in ourselves and we work to stave it off in our students and/or children. We fight to enliven and open up eyes and imaginations. We work toward wonder... in ourselves and in those in our charge.

~~~*~~~
I'm grateful to Ms. Jacobi for her distress or concern (or whatever it was that she felt exactly) that day all those years ago. She didn't surrender to apathy. Today I see how important it is that I don't surrender either, for the sake of myself and for the sake of my students and children.

Senioritis. Seriously?

Monday I began a discussion about words and how sometimes our sayings or jargon can take on meanings quite divergent from their original intent. 

"Senioritis" is one of these words. I'm sure the word was a joke at first. I remember laughing the first time I heard it: "Yeah! That's what you've 'got'! You're plagued!" But it was STILL just a joke, and we all knew this (I think).

But today, while talking to one of my students about how we never got around to having a conversation we needed to have (because of senioritis?!), I found myself staring at a believer. He stood there, hair dishevelled, top button undone, tie sliding down on its zipper (yeah... it was a zipper tie), shirt tail creeping up. His eyes were not quite hollow, but they were not focused. And then he made his proclamation: "I have senioritis... baaaad." He wasn't kidding. At all. "Not only do I not want to do this work, but I don't care any more either," he continued.

He really believed that he had this so-called "senioritis" thing. And I almost slipped into taking it seriously! "Maybe you can take X for it, do Y, try Z." Okay. I didn't do this. But I'll be honest: some sort of prognosis wasn't too far from my thinking. This young man was acting as if he had come down with something; I was tempted to go along with it.

But here's the clean truth we all need to admit, lest we lose meaning in yet another "term" we have a tendency to use lightly: "senioritis" doesn't exist. Oh, I'm sure some teachers or parents out there are thinking, "Oh, yes it does. I've seen it time after time." This just proves my point about how words can take on strange new meanings.

I get it. "Senioritis" is a metaphoric way of describing how seniors start to act and think toward the end of their high school careers. But, despite the fact that we've made a (perhaps clever) diagnosis-sounding word (like bronchitis or laryngitis), we're NOT talking about a medical condition. It's not like seniors somehow "catch" this -itis and come down with a condition only curable by walking a stage while wearing a funny looking hat.

Yes, seniors fizzle out, get tired, want to be through, want to be finished, want to be FREE! But they don't get this odd illness that they can't shake.

What they get is a reality check. They get what some people call "the don'ts" or the "don't wannas," as in "I DON'T want to do this." What they get is an introduction to themselves, to who they really are when that desire to check out comes upon them, that desire to coast, that desire to quit. 

The senior who feels this way--and gives into it--should just call this spade a spade. They don't have "senioritis." They have a struggle with laziness and his sister, apathy. They can give into this sloth (one of the seven deadly sins, right?), and call it by some euphemistic term like "senioritis," but at the end of the day? They're just lazy or surrendering to laziness.

~~~*~~~

Senior year is a tough time for students. The academics can be tough, the extra-academic/extra-curricular activities overwhelming. Weariness, boredom, anticipation, stress--you name it--can swallow a person up. But we're not talking about disease here. Let's have our jokes about "senioritis," but let's leave it at that... a joke. Our children and students don't need us playing along with the idea that they're coming down with some bug or disease. They need our encouragement, our experience, our coaching, our cheering, and maybe our carrying. Let's assist them in fighting this "virus" that chokes out will, energy, and reason. 

SPARC

It's that time of year again at Brook Hill (the school where I teach) when we take a week off from typical courses and all dive into "alternative" courses. We call it SPARC, which stands for Spring Potential and Reality Courses.

The premise is that each teacher comes up with a class they'd like to teach for a solid week and advertises it to the student body. Then, students sign up for what interests them. This year there were courses that ranged from educational trips to Washington DC, NYC, London, south Texas, and California, to courses on campus ranging from digital scrap booking, coaching, photography, film making, military tactics, gun safety, and cooking (well, GRILLING!).

The past two years I have taken a bicycle trip around East Texas, but this year I wanted to offer something on campus that was inexpensive and open to middle schoolers. I thought through all my interests and decided to create a course on comics. I thought, "I DO read a lot of graphic novels. I could turn that into a class of some sort." So I came up with Understanding and Creating Comics.

And ten people actually signed up.

I was pretty thrilled about it, because I was thinking it would be a bust. So this week with my handful of students we've been
1. Discussing the basic art/theory/philosophy that goes into comics.
2. Discussing (and watching videos) that explain the general process of scripting, penciling, inking, lettering comics.
3. Reading graphic novels and writing brief journal entries about our discoveries and thoughts of our selected books.
4. Working on our own original stories.

After three days of this, I see that much of what I planned had less to do with me instructing about comics and to do with the students exploring and discovering what comics really are and what they like or dislike about them. I'm not sure of what the students exactly think about what we're doing this week; however, I DO see that the ideas they're coming up with and the stories they're actually producing are varied, fun, creative, and, quite honestly, impressive. By week's end, each student will have something to show for their time in the class--something that shows the results of their learning (I hope), but also of their creativity and efforts.

Be on the look out: I'll post the stories here as we have them completed.

Why would anyone read POETRY?!

Last year around this time, I put out a book called You Want Me to Read What?!It's a short book (coming in at a mere 81 pages, including exercises and glossary), meant to be an introduction to reading--and hopefully enjoying--poetry. The book peculated for years before I actually put it down in this "finished" form, but it is mainly comprised of lessons about poetry I have taught my classes over the years.

But, as most people know, poetry isn't exactly blowing off the shelves or into e-readers. It's not like people are dying for the next Billy Collins book to be released (well, there may be a few... if you even know who he is). In fact, many people don't even see a point or a place for poetry. A few years ago I came across an article in Newsweek entitled "Poetry Is Dead. Does Anybody Really Care?"by Bruce Wexler (Newsweek, May 5, 2003). He states the case--or at least most people's view of the case--well in his one page piece. The caption on the picture on the article is telling and perhaps sums up Wexler's (the world's?) perspective well: "I can't remember the last book of poetry that created a dying mosquito's worth of hum."

~~~*~~~

So then, why should people read poetry? Why would I, a teacher, require my students to read and be able to discuss poetry with some sort of working vocabulary? Why would I spend time writing a book about how to read it?

These are good questions. I can tell you that I don't teach it simply because it's required, although it is. And, I can tell you that I didn't write a book about reading poetry to make money. (I assure you, I've possibly made back what I put into the project... little more.)

Here my succinct answer: I teach poetry because there is wisdom to be gained from it.

From poetry we as readers gain experience and wisdom, via the experience and words of the poets. No, they don't speak as loudly or to as wide an audience as they once did, but the poets do (and did) see and they do speak. As human beings, we'd do well to listen and try to glean what we can from their observations and expressions of those observations.

This concept of gaining wisdom from poetry is one of the primary things I want my students to understand when we wrap up our poetry unit. What follows is an excerpt from my book about the wisdom we gain from poetry. 

Wisdom? What wisdom could poetry possibly impart? Good question. After all, we don’t learn to add or subtract, fix an engine or repair a toilet, run a computer or change a baby diaper by studying poetry. What practical wisdom is there to be had, then? Well, probably the most important wisdom that poetry produces is that of experience. When we read poetry, we are shocked into being alive. Okay, that’s likely overstating the case, but somewhere in the words on the page we can find the realization of humanity and reality. Poetry is a portal into reality and experience beyond our own limited reality and experience. A poem can capture a glimpse of what is not quite expressible in our world. It can glimpse it and give it form. Therein we find problems and fears, hopes and expectations articulated. Therein our own experience is broadened, deepened, sharpened. 

But a poem doesn’t simply tell about experience; it is the experience and the vehicle into further experience. Through a poem we are allowed a little deeper into our own world—into our memories, our feelings, our hopes and longings; into friends, strangers, enemies; into questions, concerns, and quandaries; sometimes, into answers. A poem allows us to know about people and to see into their eyes, to see through their eyes. This comes back full circle, for when we see the world at angles and perspectives other than our own, we understand our own angle and perspective better. 

Yes, there is more to say about the topic (as always). For now, I encourage you to find a poem and seek to find the experience it offers, whether it is ideas or just sounds.

And, just for kicks and if you're so inclined, leave a comment about your experiences reading poetry.

Haiku... a gateway into teaching and learning poetry?

Haiku! Haiku!

Anyone got a tissue?

This is what I came up with--an original American haiku (which doesn't necessarily follow typical Japanese haiku form)--back in 1999 when I first looked at a little book by Gary Hotham called Breathmarks: Haiku to Read in the Dark. It was my first year teaching, and though I still had that wide-eyed eagerness of a new teacher, I was also somewhat of a, um, snot-nosed punk. Arrogant. Cocky. I wasn't aware of this at the time, but looking back on it, I see that's what I was.

Hence, when my friend and headmaster handed me this little book (measuring in at 4" x 6", and a little over 1/4" thick), I chuckled aloud and thought "What a waste" on the inside. Through snickers and scoffing--my own and the students'--I read some of the 80+ haiku to the class. We all had a great laugh at this silly little book.

But later that day (or that night or that week--I don't really remember), I read all of the haiku. I came to the end and I read one of two little essays Hotham included in the collection, called "Why haiku?" Great question, right? In this five page essay (probably only 500 words at most), I came across such things as

"All his art is to recapture a moment and seize upon particulars and fasten down a contingency" (a quote by historian Herbert Butterfield about historians)

"So the historian and the haiku writer are after the same things" (Hotham's interpretation of the above quote)

"the essence of a moment keenly perceived" (part of the Haiku Society of America's definition of haiku)

"There is a lot of emotional energy, excitement, and depth in the small events, the brief moments of life. And why not--they are all part of the sweep of history. They are all part of what is significant and important in our lives as God's creatures. The haiku is a great form of poetry with its pinpoint focus for capturing those brief moments in time and recreating the associated states of being" (Hotham again)

I don't know about you, but I'd never thought of poetry or haiku in this way. When I thought of haiku, I thought of three line "poems" of seventeen syllables, five in the first line, seven in the second, five in the third. I thought of nature. I thought of little kids doing sorry imitations of sorry, stupid little poems in a stiff form. Hotham got me thinking--and seeing--in a new way. 

Capture an instant in time. Capture a flash of insight. I can get on board with these concepts. And Hotham doesn't limit his own haiku to the traditional Japanese pattern. He uses one, two, three, or four lines. His view is, the more words you have, the more ideas creep into the poem; the sharp edges of the moment get dulled.

Another thing I noticed from Hotham's own haiku was that his few words really do create an image in my head. Not all the time and not each poem, but some of them really do. They just resonate and I have an entire scene or a moment in a scene flashed into my head from his very few words. Take this one for example:

through

tall grass taller weeds

her feet wet

her legs wet  

When I read this (or hear it read aloud), I picture a young girl coming up from the beach, through the tall brush grass that grows on the outskirts. And, even as I write about what I think of, the image is changing, and I'm picturing a young girl wearing a sun dress, running through grass and weeds that are so high she has to do that awkward high-knew running to get through. Oh, and she's laughing or grinning at--me!

Crazy, right? And my descriptions can go on. But Hotham said little about any of this. So what is going on? I think what we're getting into here is how literature works, and how poetry works to a heightened degree. Somehow the few words of a lyric poem tap into our consciousness, our imagination, our perception. The few words trigger something in us that allow for an image to form in our minds, often a very detailed one.

I don't want to get into why this is, partially because I don't exactly know how to explain it and partially because this isn't my point here. What I do want to suggest is, try haiku. Teachers, students, children, adults--everyone reading this--try haiku. Read some. Write some. Follow the traditional Japanese form, don't follow the traditional form. But DO try to see the capture moment or flash of insight in the haiku you read, DO try to capture your own.

I think you'll see that haiku is a good gateway into seeing the value and importance of poetry, and the splendor of the human imagination.

How about this: Write a haiku and leave it in the comments below. I'll not judge. 

Here's one I wrote:

Thunder rumbles closer;

Sleeping little one

          Breathing in my ear.

Go in through the "back door"

When teaching something to my kids or students, I tend to only see the direct, head-on approach. I see error, skewed thinking, ignorance, and I go right at it. This doesn't mean I attack necessarily, just that I am clear in addressing what I think is the educational need of the circumstance.

This works most of the time, but I've seen lately that I need to work on an alternate, more subtle approaches for some lessons. For example, last night my wife called the family to dinner. I was changing clothes, so I finished quickly and went through the house making sure my kids had heard her. As I passed my eldest daughter's room I asked if she had heard her mother. She said yes, so I assumed she would be heading to the dining room. After calling in my youngest kids from the backyard and then checking the table to see if my wife needed any last minute help, I went back to my eldest daughter's room to see why she hadn't come. She wasn't in her room. She was across the hall in the bathroom. I was agitated by this. She didn't make any effort to obey her mother's request (command) to come to the table. She had paid no heed to my reminder that her mother had called her.

So what did I do? I proceeded to give her the lesson she needed--right there through the bathroom door. I couldn't understand why she dawdled and then thought it would be alright to take even longer by stopping by the bathroom before going to table to eat with the family. I wasn't seeing red, but I was perturbed. Her disobedience and disrespect were inexcusable.

Now, this is how I handled it, namely, in my typical head-on manner. Because I went at it so directly and swiftly, I think I probably missed the real issue or at least the issue that needed to be addressed. Yes, a child needs to respond to and obey his or her parents without delay or excuse. Yes, my daughter should have come when called. Yes, her delay and the excuses (which she gave through the bathroom door) needed to be addressed. But what she also needs to learn is how to manage her time and how to prioritize what she has to do, needs to do, and wants to do.

In the case last night, she was probably in the middle of something when my wife called. She felt she needed to finish it first. I can understand and accept this, as long is this "finishing" is done swiftly, or as long as she obeys first and then requests more time to finish whatever she's doing. As for going to the bathroom, this is also understandable, but the principle of obeying swiftly still stands. She should have responded in obedience first and then asked for permission to go to the bathroom. 

The way she handled the situation made it look like she had complete disregard for my wife. Her actions demonstrated this, but I'm not entirely sure her heart did. In other words, she didn't obey immediately (her actions), but I don't think she was sitting in the bathroom thinking, "I'm going to disobey my mother" (her heart). I know that what she HAS to do is obey, what she NEEDED to do was go to the bathroom, and what she WANTED to do was finish whatever she had been working on when called. But I'm not sure there was any distinction between these three things in her mind. Do doubt my daughter did need a reminder about obeying, but she also needed a lesson on prioritizing her HAVE-TO, her, NEED TO, and her WANT TO.  

But here's the thing: I didn't see all this last night either, not until after I had corrected my daughter head-on before she even got out of the bathroom. What would have been more effective in this particular instance was a more patient, subtle address of the situation. I think my daughter generally wants to do what's right--she wants to obey. But her inadequate prioritizing (tinged with a bit of selfishness as well), kept her from obeying well. To clarify: missing the mark in one area led her to miss the mark in another. 

~~~*~~~

When we teach, we need to see these cause-and-effect relationships and we need to learn the best way to address them. In the classroom, we won't normally have circumstances--or even issues--like the ones I needed to teach to and into last night; still, we need to find the real lesson that needs to be taught and then we need to deliver the lesson. And sometimes the best way to do this is to NOT address the apparent problem at all. Instead of dealing with the symptom of the issue (the effect), we need to go right to the cause. 

Look at how Jesus handles such an instance in Mark Mark 9:33-37:

And they came to Capernaum. And when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you discussing on the way?” ³⁴ But they kept silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. ³⁵ And he sat down and called the twelve. And he said to them, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” ³⁶ And he took a child and put him in the midst of them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them, ³⁷ “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.”

The disciples had been talking about who was greatest. Jesus knows what they were talking about, but he doesn't get after them for being petty or selfish or arrogant--all of which may have been true. Instead, he explains the new reality of life in the kingdom of God: The first shall be last; the first shall be servants; the first shall even pay attention to the lowly, like children. Jesus shows the disciples the error in their thinking and perspective, not by pointing right at their committed error but by pointing at the root of it. He thus teaches without yelling, rebuking, or directly calling out names or sins, because these things aren't needed in this instance. He uses a more subtle approach that clearly and powerfully speaks to the heart of the matter and not the symptom of it. 

~~~*~~~
I encourage parents and teachers to first be aware of this technique, and second, to learn to apply it. Last night my daughter would have been better served and instructed had I gone in through the "back door," behind the exhibited behavior, and shown her the real problem without colliding head-on with the symptoms.  

Teaching is Confrontational

I'm a teacher. It's what God has made me and it's what I'm growing into by effort and practice. You could say, I'm geared or wired to teach. I know this, not necessarily because I'm good at it or because I've chose to define myself this way or because people call me "teacher." I know it because I tend to approach all aspects from of life from a teaching and learning perspective. If teaching opportunities don't arise, I practically go looking for them.

Here's another thing that I am: A people pleaser. I've written on this topic numerous times, so I won't go into it here. However, I will say that the combination of "teacher" and "people pleaser" is an odd marriage.

Why? Because the nature of teaching is to be confrontational and the nature of people pleasing is (generally) to avoid confrontation.

I think most of us get the idea that pleasing people entails avoiding conflict and confrontation; at the very least, we all know it means handling conflict and confrontation with tact and care. We may not all get the idea of teaching being confrontational... but it is on so many levels.

Each day teachers (or parents or friends or colleagues or anyone else put in a position to teach) walk through the door of their classrooms and begin the task of direct, frontal confrontation. Period. Two students may be picking on or razzing another; a teacher confronts the situation and stops the behavior. A student may come to the desk and ask a question about the previous night's homework; the teacher confronts the difficulty or misunderstanding the student is having, and helps her understand. The kid in the back row--the one that sleeps, never has his homework, and always has his shirt untucked--is called upon by his teacher to sleep at night, to do his homework, to adjust his clothes; sloth, laziness, or even family issues are confronted head on.

Teen-age drama?

A weak imagination?

Ignorance?

Pride?

Rebellion?

Hostility?

Unbelief?

All these and more are confronted on a daily basis by any teacher with gumption, concern, compassion, and love for his or her students. One could argue that to take up the role of teacher is to take on the challenge of facing confrontation after confrontation after confrontation.

~~~*~~~

So where does this leave those of us who are called to teach, yet have an issue with trying to please each and every student? I'm not sure there's any one answer to this question. I do know that I primarily handle it by seeking to maintain the standards that govern my classroom. When the day is done, I have to live with my actions, words, and thoughts--and all the effects these may have had on my students. Thus, I am a standard. But more than this, there are the standards the school sets for how we do education in and out of the classroom. Above these two standards, there is God's standard. I handle this tricky business of the teacher's requirement to engage in confrontation and my proclivity to be a people pleaser by being governed by the standards.

There are other things I do. I apologize when I make mistakes. I admit when I'm wrong. I try to treat my students with dignity and respect. I keep learning myself. I pray for help and guidance and wisdom... and forgiveness. As a teacher, we have to constantly be learning ourselves.

As we learn, as we become more confident in who we are and what we do, we will be much more effective at this role of teacher and thus confronter.

It's in the style

This morning my headmaster called me into his office for an impromptu two minute meeting.

"Kent, I was at a small conference this weekend. Michael Lindsay--have you heard of him? He's the president of Gordon College."

"Really?" I took note because two of my former students attend Gordon... but it wasn't related to that. "No, I haven't heard of him."

"Okay. Well, he was speaking and someone asked him what bothered teachers most about today's college students. You know what he said?"

"What'd he say?"

"He didn't say the problem was morality (or lack of it), it wasn't that the students can't think and work together, it wasn't that they are lazy or just don't care. You know what he said?" At this point, my headmaster paused for a second, trying to prepare me for the shock that he experienced himself. It worked.

He continued. "Dr. Lindsay said the biggest issue is grammar and punctuation."

"Really?"

"Yeah. He said that in countless faculty meetings--across all disciplines--the teachers say over and over that the students really struggle with their grammar and punctuation."

~~~*~~~

I don't want to go off into speculations or diatribes on why this is so. I've heard time and again people blaming texting and/or using the phone to post on Twitter or Facebook, and there's probably some merit to this. Probably it has more to do with teachers not requiring students to do that age-old, some-what painful practice of learning and re-learning grammar, of writing and revising.

Regardless of the cause, I think what we ought to focus on is what we can do about this. The answer is quite simple: If we want our students to be able to write their thoughts and arguements out in sound, well punctuated and styled sentences and paragraphs, we need to be sure we are giving them a solid foundation in the fundamentals of writing. Starting early in a student's education, we must lay out the basics and demand that our students master them. We need to keep reinforcing these fundamentals as the students progress through elementary, middle and upper school. We need to give them opportunity to work exercises. To write. To read. To revise.

See? It's that simple. Fundamentals first and build from there... and keep building and rebuilding as necessary.

As with the transforming initiatives in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount (i.e., love your enemies, be a peacemaker, don't pay back evil with evil, etc.), the concept is very simple to understand. Our problem as educators--and parents!--is that the work required to execute this simple concept is vigorous and constant. So, no, I'm not saying this is easy to do. Because it's not. It's as painful for teachers and parents as it is for students (though students would probably argue otherwise).

So I'm starting with me, an English teacher at The Brook Hill School. Although my students are seniors and have spent years in the grammar and punctuation trenches, I will continue to demand excellence in my students' style, their grammar and punctuation. Sure, style is each student's unique voice and touch in their communication. But if they don't know the fundamentals of style (the nuts and bolts of grammar and punctuation), they won't be able to find their voice and their touch and communication won't even happen.