Story! Not Plod: Don't Be Thorough. Be Deep!

"Plot is a primitive vulgarity in literature"
~Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged.

           To paraphrase or summarize a piece of literature is to attempt to carry the burden of the whole of its mass into an essay.  It’s pure drudgery, trudgery, pain in the, as it were, lower back to write.  It’s boring and a pain in the upper back (and neck) for readers to read.  Paraphrasing and summarizing have been two of the forms of punishment—along with dunce caps, raps on the knuckles, beatings with paddles and switches, and cages—with which teachers have abused students (if only metaphorically). And if teachers are bored reading the results, then, well, it (de)serves them right.

            Early on as a teacher, I vowed to be honest with myself and with my students. I don’t assign boring tasks that result in boring reading.  Paraphrases and summaries are boring.  If they are improvements on the literature, then why have the literature?

            But, but, but, I hear a reader sputtering, We have to know what it’s about. Yes, it surely helps to know that Hamlet’s uncle poisoned Hamlet’s father, and that the play Hamlet is a journey through how Hamlet does or doesn’t cope.  That’s the story of Hamlet.  But we don’t have to know (and here I’m leaving out a two-page summary of the play) every first-this-happens-then-this-happens-then-this-happens-then… detail to cut to Hamlet’s To be, or not to be soliloquy.  We don’t have to eat the whole wedding cake to savor our one (or two) slices.  If we do attempt to eat the whole wedding cake, that sack on the boy’s back becomes a big sack of a belly—we end up not being able to stomach the literature.  We get sluggish, vomitatious, sleepy. (But enough of this extended metaphor.)

            Let’s distinguish story from plot—or what I am fond of calling “plod.”  The story is the two-sentence blurb we read when surfing through Netflix for a new film to watch.  It’s what we tell a fellow student who corners you before a class and asks you (as she hasn’t done the assigned reading) “What’s the story about?”  The process of distilling the story enables you to choose your focus and to read more deeply.

            The plod is the breakfast-to-bed details of first-this-happens-then-this-happens-then-this-happens-then…  It fills up the required number of pages; you can do it while multi-devicing, eating, and (forfend!) driving; and you don’t have to learn or change your mind in any way.  It’s substituting a false sense of thoroughness for depth and originality of thought.

            It’s no wonder that the children’s story character, Mr. Plod, is a policeman.  Assigning plod—woops—plot paraphrase/summary—is to police students: Are you following the teacher’s laws?  Are you thinking what the teacher’s thinking?  Summary sites were created to level the possibility of students actually learning how the mind works, how it might work. They pander to our addictions to games and social media—get this school assignment over-with, so I can get back to my phone.

            Other forms of plod include writing (1) Annotations.  In this exercise, students might quote a sonnet line by line, offering a few remarks—notations—after each.  (2) Breakfast-to-bed. Usually used in not-so-creative first-draft story writing, the student starts by detailing image after dutiful image of what it means for a character to wake up. Unless you’re having your character wake up as a huge insect, as Kafka does in “Metamorphosis,” a startling, and engaging premise, breakfast often leads to another form of plod, (3) Close links. First you wake up, then you brush your teeth, then you… (4) On and On. Attempting to cite every instance of a theme or pattern than you discern in your subject matter. (5+) Other variations include Monday thru Sunday, 1 to 10, and, well, I don’t want to plod through all the plodding possibilities here.  Burdensome to write, plod writing is burdensome to read. Whatever creates a feeling of “oh-no,” Do-I-have-to-plod-through-all-this-one-robotic-step-at-a-time? disappointment in you, as the writer, will create it in the reader.  As soon as I get a whiff of that in a student paper, we’re back to the revision board.

Don’t be thorough—be deep. As viewers might say about a film, “get to the chase.”  For our literary purposes, it’s “get to the story.”

                     

Works Cited:

End Art: https://ransom.church/phill/whats-your-story-2/

Because I Can Teach Resources:

A Monarch Shmoops…https://becauseicanteach.blogspot.com/2014/03/in-other-wordsthe-prison-and-misprision.html

One Paper Clip: https://becauseicanteach.blogspot.com/2018/05/one-paper-clip-detail-design-
depth.html

Thank you, Brianna Oddo, for alerting me to Ayn Rand's quote!

Why Write?: Knowing When and How

In a previous blog, Pyramid of Needs, we considered Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of why we do as we do in our lives. According to Maslow, these are our priorities: (1) Survival, (2) Security, (3) Power, (4) Love, (5) Communication, (6) Self-Esteem, (7) Self-fulfillment.  If our first priorities are not satisfied, even minimally, then we can’t get to the higher levels of self-esteem and self-fulfillment.  Where we are on the pyramid shows up right away when we are challenged, as for example when we read or write for a class.

In my textbook, The Flexible Writer, I discuss  three main purposes for writing, which I adapted from James Britton’s insights in “Notes on a Working Hypothesis about Writing”: Self-expressive, Interpersonal, Aesthetic.  A given piece of writing may serve some or all of these.  Practicing writers know how to gauge what is appropriate and don’t, for example, write a mostly self-expressive piece when an interpersonal one might be more effective.

Self-expressive

Self-expressive writing satisfies the need for asserting our survival and security needs.  It satisfies the need to be heard and recognized as an individual, despite social pressures.  Through it, we might vent our anger, complain, grieve; exalt, dream, wonder.  This purpose is often fulfilled by the very act of writing, itself, whether or not someone else reads what we’ve written.  Self-expressive writing often takes the form of first-draft diary entries, letters, autobiographies, lyric poems, songs—rants on Facebook, dashed off Tweets and GIFs. Here is a self-expressive draft written by student Samantha Renner:

I am terrified of the idea of war.  All I can think of are those films of houses gutted by bombs, children lying half-naked and dead in the streets, and blood everywhere.  Sometimes at night, I wake up to the sirens from the fire station down the block, and I panic: What if they are not signaling for a fire? What if, somehow, there are planes coming to bomb our town?  This must be just a little of what people must feel who are actually in a war zone.  It’s terrible.

In this paragraph, Samantha expresses her feelings about war.  The self-expressive purpose is fulfilled by the very act of writing. Samantha doesn’t anticipate a reader, and no one has to have read what she has written or respond to it.

            If you find yourself resenting, defending against, or arguing with others when they respond to your writing, it may be because your intention was only self-expressive.  Know when to show your writing to others.  Read the blog post Writer's Wrodeo: Whoas and Wonders to help you to discern where you are with a particular piece of writing.

            Interpersonal

            Interpersonal writing satisfies not only the needs for survival and security, but also those of power, love, and communication.  Through interpersonal writing, we connect, break, or negotiate with a reader, an audience (a word that literally means “those who listen”).  Our anticipated audience may be as far away as a reader in another country or century, whom we may never meet; or as close as ourselves.  Our anticipated audience may be as specific as an instructor or as general as a U.S. citizen.  Our task is to determine our primary audience and how to reach it.

            In interpersonal writing, we try to convince someone else to recognize us, to do something for or with us, to agree with us, or to change her or his ways.  It may take the form of letters, proposals, editorials, business and legal memos, recipes, instructions—or chat threads.  Submissions to teachers are meant to embody what you have learned and to earn a grade. (We will consider specific educational purposes for writing in an upcoming post.)

            The following is an excerpt from an essay Samantha wrote with a predominantly interpersonal purpose: to persuade her audience of her position.

            Before our country declares war on another country, I believe several things should take place:

     (1) There should be an open debate on media between those who are for and those who are against the war.  Debaters should include the parents of draftable people, military personnel, lawmakers, conscientious objectors, and ambassadors from those on whom we might declare the war.

     (2) There should be films of war played on television, the internet, and social media showing the ravages of war, especially on non-military persons.

     (3) There should be a vote taken from the general population.

     (4) There should be an active campaign to ensure that at least 50% of the population votes.

            Samantha’s interpersonal writing invites debate, action, and results.  She uses rhetorical devices (persuasion techniques) such as bulleted points and clear appeals to emotions (as in her evocation of war images).  In a workshop, fellow writers can help her anticipate how others might disagree with her, so that she can head readers off before they can.

            Aesthetic

            At its best, aesthetic writing satisfies the highest levels of needs that Maslow identifies: self-esteem and self-fulfillment.  It assumes that self-expressive and interpersonal needs have been met and attention can be turned toward writing for the sake of elegance, compression, beauty, overall memorability.  If only aesthetics are managed in a particular piece of writing, then it can be superficially entertaining, but it will lack depth. When, for example, your instructor insists on grammatical correctness, but ignores the self-expressive and interpersonal aspects of writing, writing might be more like a Styrofoam cup instead of one made of fine porcelain.

            Aesthetic writing has action, imagery, and dialog.  The diction (choice of words) is compelling.  Aesthetic writing is based in imagery—to reach deeply into the reader’s consciousness.  It is specific.  It is something new. It incorporates the poetic and lyrical techniques, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. does in his “I have a Dream” speech, or William Shakespeare does in Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy.

            Here’s is Samantha’s poem, focused with aesthetic strategies:

            When will We Awaken?

     The sirens shriek,

     3:30 in the morning, again.

     Somewhere nearby there is a fire.

     This one will be cooled by ready water.

     The children will be carried

     by people in wet rubber coats.

     What of the shrieking in another place

     where no one will carry the children to safety—

     away from bombs bursting in air

     giving proof through the night    

     that a flag may wave?

     Not only has Samantha expressed her outrage at war, but, in focusing on specific imagery and strategically invoking the “National Anthem,” she’s argued against war.  She fulfills all three major modes of writing: Self-expressive, Interpersonal, and Aesthetic.

            Combinations

            Samantha successfully combined all three modes of writing to satisfy a hierarchy of needs.  Sometimes, it can be hard to separate the aesthetic from the self-expressive and the interpersonal in some work.  And that is devoutly to be wished for—to have all three integrated.

            Ask yourself when you are writing, what need or needs you are predominantly satisfying.  And when it comes to writing workshop, be honest with yourself:

If your purpose is mainly self-expressive, then you will not want anything but approval.  Your purpose will be mainly focused on your own experience.  Ask your readers to refrain from suggestions for revision.

If your purpose is interpersonal, writing workshop will provide you an opportunity to test-run your ideas and to strengthen your chances at better results. Be open, listen, thank your readers for their support and commitment to your writing.

If your purpose is predominantly aesthetic, you might, again, only want approval. You might welcome readers to offer their appreciation for different aspects of your writing style as they manifest in your work.

But if you can combine all three purposes, you will afford yourself a lively and supportive atmosphere for becoming the liveliest writer you can be. 

Works Cited

Cover Art: http://thewriteconversation.blogspot.com/2016/06/why-write.html

“Pyramid of Needs.” becauseicanteach.blogspot.com http://becauseicanteach.blogspot.com/2018/03/

“Writer’s Wrodeo: Whoas and Wonders” http://becauseicanteach.blogspot.com/2019/03/writers-wrodeo-workshop-woes-and-wonders.html

Britton, James. “Notes on a Working Hypothesis about Writing.” Prospect and Retrospect: Selected

Essays of James Britton.  Ed. Gordon M. Pradl.  Montclair: Boynton/Cook, 1982.)

https://www.albany.edu/cela/publication/article/writing.htm

Rich, Susanna. The Flexible Writer. Fourth edition. Boston: Allyn/Bacon, 2003.

Writers' Wrodeo: Workshop Whoas and Wonders

 

I know what it’s like to be the bronco.  I was four years old. The child of Hungarian immigrants.  Poor. My parents were separated. I was unable to speak or understand English.  Lonely. Unbelonging.  Helpless.  Defended.

            The kindergarten nun—I didn’t have a way of remembering an English name—had handed out flash cards for us to identify pictures with a word.  Of course, I didn’t, at the time, follow what this game was.  I had just come from being wrestled out of the protection of my coat.  I was hungry.  Why was I being subjected to this?

            All the other children were happily calling out words.  When it came my turn, I crossed my arms over my chest.  Pouted.  And shoved the flashcard away with the back of my hand.  I burst into tears.

            What happened next, I don’t know.  But I learned to speak, write, and read in English.  I have been teaching English, now, for over 40 years. My Hungarian father often bragged that a Hungarian girl was teaching the English English. But I feel helplessness and frustration in some students when I introduce new writing strategies in workshops.  The first round is always the toughest: “It’s my writing!” a student will often say, implying that I am violating her privacy.  “That’s the way I like it,” another will say (implying “hands-off!”).  Or, “You just want me to write the way you want me to write.”  The worst part of that is the implication that I’m being just as arbitrary as teachers who insist on the five-paragraph essay, or simply regurgitations of teacher’s opinions.

            In other blog posts, among them, “Reasons for Writing” and “Damning with Praise,” I offer ways in which to understand workshop dynamics. But the most difficult experience is the defensiveness and ego-attachment we are considering here.  And it often comes from experiences that have little to do with writing, per se, and everything to do with the vulnerabilities that come from the kinds of childhood trauma I described above.  If you are peripheralized in any way, especially because of things that you cannot help—nationality, gender, race, age, sexual-orientation, family, ability, or class—any suggestion that you can grow as a writer might feel like just another personal rejection—“Don’t be you. Be like me.”  If, in addition, you have only had single opportunities to hand in papers for a grade—which would make anyone feel anxious and helpless—then any recommendation for redrafting will raise a feeling of despair.

            I regularly meet now with my own colleagues to workshop my own writing—this post, too, has been vetted by my husband, for example. I’ve made many changes from my first draft, calling on the voices of my fellow writers in my head. My editors offer me suggestions, which  almost always help me to make significant breakthroughs in my work. But in the past, in the hands of workshop leaders that were writers but not teachers, I have walked away in tears.  Especially corrosive are those men who use workshops to court women.  (But that’s for another post.)  Then there are workshops where the leader assumes and maintains power by how she metes out attention and praise.  Cliques form. And we’re right back to feeling like the child who doesn’t belong.

So, if you feel, as I did, like pushing away from the desk and sulking, ask yourself these questions.  Is my teacher a writer? Is my teacher a teacher (as opposed to a writer who needs a job)?  Does this teacher have experience and writers’ skills to offer me? Do I want to learn them? Do I feel like I can grow as a writer?  Do I want to reach more readers?  Or is this about my feeling bad about myself, for other reasons?

If I didn’t watch others around me walk, I might have crawled all my life.  If I didn’t have those tall people holding my hands as I stood for the first time, I wouldn’t have walked.  If I didn’t have other dancers show me the steps and model for me how to make the moves—I wouldn’t be the dancer I am.  So, too, with writing.

And if you can’t learn from what is said directly about your work, learn from what is said about others’ writing.  Learn from the insights that arise in you and that you share.  Trust the process. Always express gratitude for others' care and attention. 

Your ego and fears and anger will be like that bronco bucking, kicking, struggling.  But stay with it.  In time, you will tame your fears and recover from the real insults to your integrity that come from xenophobia (fear of strangers) and prejudice.  And then, oh the places your writing will ride you!

How’s your bronco-bustin’ going?

Works cited:

Cover art: http://www.distinctlymontana.com/rodeo-women

End art: http://worldartsme.com/happy-trails-clipart.html#gal_post_64416_happy-trails-clipart-1.jpg

Evaluating Teachers: What's Important

                           


                               Theorems: If it can be assessed, it's not important.

             If it's important, it can't be assessed.

When I think back on my own teachers, it’s rarely their words and never their tests that I value—it’s who they were as human beings—how they treated us and how passionate they were with their subjects. If the teacher was cruel—like Sister Whatever in eighth grade—making us put our hands on our shoulders until our elbows felt like they were going to explode—well, that’s what I remember—not her name, or subject, or her teachings.  If the teacher was inspiring, like Mrs. Catanzaro, I still carry in me her enthusiasm for reading plays, for hearing what we had to say, for her love of words. I still remember her name and hunted her down to Friend on Facebook.  It’s no surprise that I have made a career of teaching, writing, and performing literature.

But when did it become clear to me that what’s important can’t be assessed or quantified?  As a new appointee to the Kean College English Department, I wrote and taught a course on College Writing: Theory and Research—attended by the then and former chairs, and a number of senior faculty. I asked them at the end of the semester what they most valued.  I was fishing, of course, for praise, vulnerable as I felt as untenured faculty.  I had hoped they would mention my Punctuation routine (see posts…); or how I used Composition research to launch my dissertation; or the writing workshops strategies we successfully explored together. But, over and over, the response was that they remembered best my enthusiasm for teaching and writing.  Years later, one of my chairs told me how much her own writing transformed because of our class together. Well then.  That taught me what my responsibilities as a teacher are.  And they are neither recordable or tabulatable in current Student Evaluation of Teachers forms.

Students learn how I am and do, not what I say—just as children learn more by do-as-I-do than do-what-I-say. If I find a reading assignment burdensome and boring, I can be certain that students will find it even more burdensome and boring. They learn this, Ipso facto: avoid these odious materials, and anything like them. I only assign those pieces of writing that excite me.  To this end, I’m constantly changing which Shakespeare works we read together in our required survey course.  And I do NOT overprepare, so that I can model what it means to encounter a challenging passage, be curious about it, look up words in the college dictionary I tote to every class, apply various critical approaches.  And the students are all part of the process.  Excitement and the application of skills can’t be feigned.  If I overprepare, I will be modeling control and they, in turn, will resist.  I do not want them to learn, Ipso facto, that literature=something to resist.  Most importantly, as I hope this blog shows, I am devoted to living and teaching as authentically as I can, and to being honest with myself and my students.

As universities become mere businesses—crunching retention numbers and low-balling faculty degrees and salaries—they levy digital student evaluations on teachers that are filled with leading questions meant to police teachers rather than to provide opportunities for support and improvement. And there is no space provided for comments and elaborations. Furthermore, these evaluations are forced on students during final grading time, and not during the next semester, year, or decade, when the lasting benefits of a class are most likely to emerge.  Don’t get me wrong, my digitalized evaluations consistently yield high scores.  But they are a distraction, source of stress, and waste of everyone’s time.  They don't give due credit and they mislead students.

To that end, here are proposed questions for a real (e)valuation, following, let’s say, a Shakespeare Survey class that asks how a teacher was, not the what they did or said—these would be distributed a year and then ten years after said class:

1)     Have I had a Shakespeare quote tattooed on my body?

2)     Have I become an attorney because I was so inspired by Portia in The Merchant of Venice?

3)     Do I attend performances of Shakespeare’s plays?

4)     Do I post Shakespeare quotes where they might inspire or comfort me?

5)     Do I daily Facebook chat with my teacher about teaching?

6)     Am I more proactive in my life, so I don’t get stuck like Hamlet?

7)     Do I reread passages of Shakespeare’s plays we discussed in class?

8)     Am I still in touch with classmates I worked with in my Shakespeare class?

9)     Do I write my own poetry, songs, plays, or essays because of our class?

10) Do I share Shakespeare quotes on social media?

11) Do I own/display Shakespeare tee shirts, mugs, or other souvenirs?

12) Do I teach Shakespeare?

13) What was my Shakespeare teacher’s name?

14) Has my passion for reading, in general, blossomed because of our class?

15) How else has my life been transformed because of Shakespeare class?

Add some more real-world questions that embody your take-away from a teacher you valued. Be creative and personal.

Works Cited:

Cover Art: https://patch.com/new-york/bed-stuy/teacher-evaluations-who-s-business-is-it-anyway

Martha and Mary in the Classroom: House vs. Home

                      

            As Luke tells the Biblical story, Martha invited Jesus Christ into her house; but while she was “distracted with much serving”—bustling to serve food and drink to their visitor, Martha’s sister, Mary, “sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching.”  This rankled Martha—she had invited Christ and was doing the hard work of being his hostess—but Mary was the one who could glow in his company.  Jealous of Mary, she went to Christ to complain: “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone?  Tell her then to help me.”  Clearly, Martha was not getting “it.”  Patiently, Christ answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful.  Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her” (Luke: 10:38-42).

            I was Martha on the night I invited a dear friend to speak to my Emily Dickinson class.  On the desk, I placed a vase full of white flowers as a gift to her, and as a way to brighten our classroom for her visit. For half an hour before she started her presentation, I distributed and coached my students through filling out 10-page sheaves of university release forms for a tour of Amherst on which I was hoping to take us. On collecting those, I distributed copies of former students’ Dickinson papers to inspire their own. Told them we would workshop next time and when their papers were due. I resented the bureaucrazies I had to orchestrate and having to play the disciplinarian mother.  My friend waited patiently.  At last she was able to start a presentation. 

            She was, as always, luminous.  Without a teacher’s agenda, she was able to share her personal connection to Dickinson and to open the discussion to whatever direction it wanted to take.  I loved her presentation—her passion, range of feeling, wisdom, and her own poetry.  I loved how freely the students engaged with her and with each other. And yes, I know that my being Mary with them most of the time, eased the way. But I am most grateful for her presentation because this time she inspired me to reflect on how administrative structures—pitched to assessment, filling out forms, student retention, and what I address as “the litterbox theory of education: coverage and control”—how these pressure me into being more of a Martha than I care to be.

            In my posts, I am fierce for helping students recover their love of reading, their innate capacities for original thought, their freedom from draconian educational practices.  I am devoted to teaching students, not subject—to focusing on awakening, not the stupor of the conventional pedagogical grind. But focused on them, I was not paying sufficient attention to what I have lost, in over 40 years of teaching in institutions. To liberate myself, I know, is to model that to students—the most potent do-as-I-do way of teaching.

            In my next class, a Shakespeare Survey the following morning, I went Mary—enjoying “the good portion.”  We chatted—not discussed—the school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which we had all seen.  I did not steer how the conversation went, but occasionally participated in it.  I could feel the Martha coming up in me—remind them of Fallon’s aspects of staging; make sure to reference the text for changes in language…and stopped myself.  This was not about me. I also avoided responding to every comment a student made—the having the last word that co-opts most student comments in classes—stealing their proverbial thunder. I let myself enjoy their pleasure in the performances and in how well they remembered details and amplified each other’s insights.  I let them have themselves.

            Martha is about housekeeping.  If we riff on Velázquez’s painting “Christ in the House of Martha and Mary,” we can see that Martha, in the foreground, is literally grinding away at chores.  In front of her are fish and eggs—symbolic of the sperm and ova that represent conception and child-bearing. An old woman hovers over her, pointing a judgmental finger of gender.  Like the garlic and hot pepper, Martha’s life stinks and bites right now—and she’s scowling.  Her hair is covered, and her brows furrowed.  In a world that prefers right dominance, she is thrown to the left side of the canvas.

            The only exit from this prison is the pass-through (for it isn’t even a door through which Martha might walk).  We can see Mary, in the distance, her hair symbolically down.  She’s enjoying the presence of the treasured guest, who is not only paying attention to her, but blessing her. She is swaddled in a golden shawl. She is, literally, in the right.

            I’m rethinking the assignments for all my classes. Time to give Martha a break—enough housekeeping, coverage, and control.  I’m naming the Martha teacher game, first—vigilant moves such as scolding of any kind, micromanaging checklists for discussions and group work, quizzes, spoon-feeding students, emphasizing being right, having to have students agree—all those things that speak of STOP.

            I want to be in the living room to enjoy the good portion—to be homies, the favorite aunt who can spoil her nieces and nephews, instead. I’m kick-starting the assignments for my courses to foreground what matters—the less assessible the assignment, the better.  The less about testing whether students remember what they’re supposed to remember—the more about what they do find memorable.  Toss out the rubrics, bring in light and air—meaningful engagement with literature and writing. To riff on an adage—“Let go and let Good.”

            In The Nag Hammadi Library, the gospels that didn’t make the cut into the synoptic Bible, Christ says in “The Gospel of Thomas”: “Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate” (6). Try being a part of an institution and live by that! Eek! But that’s a blog for another day.

            Just saying: We are fortunate that Dickinson left school before her Martha could take over.

            I had originally ended this post asking "How are your teachers more Martha than Mary?"  But Sara Faulkner, in her reply below, cogently argued that it was a leading question~very Martha, indeed.  So I am rephrasing the question, as Sara suggests, to this: Are your teachers Martha or Mary? (Make that an inclusive "or," which means that they can be both Martha and Mary.) In what specific ways? What’s the balance of Martha and Mary in you?  How do we recover?

Works Cited

Cover Art: Velázquez, Diego. “Kitchen scene with Christ in the house of Martha and

Mary,” 1618.

Luke: 10:38-42

“The Gospel of Thomas.” The Nag Hammadi Library. New York: Harper, 1978.