The longer I teach, the more difficult it is to justify reading to my students. They find so many other things more interesting, things I generally consider passive and boring. But then, when I was a kid, I used to occasionally be told to put down a book and go outside. I was a little too passive for my very active family. However, I suspect if you're reading this, you have a bit of the native reader in you, too. You know everything I'm about to say.
Here's what I try to convey to my students when they ask why they have to read:
Reading takes us anywhere we want to go. I've been all over the world through the magic transporter of the written word. I'm not lucky enough to have traveled Europe yet, but I know the pace of the cities, the pastoral countrysides, the desolation of the third world. Even pedestrian places can become familiar; Anne Tyler's books have shown me almost a whole suburb of Baltimorians through the last 20 years.
No age or time in history is a stranger to a reader. People of all generations wish for some other time and place to experience. Those of us who long for Jane Eyre's England can live it through her over and over again. How many men have craved even a glimpse of the old American West and satisfied their craving with Louis L'Amour or Zane Grey? The last few years' burgeoning crop of novels about monarchs real and imagined shows that we never lose our desire to see into another time and place, perhaps as an escape, or even as a lesson in history.
The lessons themselves that we learn are essential to understanding literature and why it's important to us. As early as the first nursery rhymes, we are taught about right and wrong. Aesop's Fables trades entirely on teaching morals. How many lessons are there from Frankenstein? Mary Shelley wasn't just writing a horror story; it was an ethical lesson on man's frailties and hubris.
Vicarious experience is one the primary reasons I love to read. One of the first "grown-up" books I remember reading was The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, which Mom got for me about the time the miniseries came out. I don't know how much previous knowledge I had of the struggles African-Americans had faced, but that book laid it all out for me, from Civil War to Civil Rights---only ten years after Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act. To say it shaped my understanding of the world would be a gross understatement. I read Larry McMurtry's novels, the ones in modern-day settings, because the people he writes about are both vaguely familiar and really strange, often quite funny, and completely heartbreaking in many cases. But I always want the experience of knowing his characters. Through books, we can know (or become) different people having experiences we might never have a chance to otherwise.
Through reading we learn history, inform our minds, and expand our understanding. We use our imaginations and build new brain synapses. We find cheap entertainment in books, but more importantly, we find something of ourselves that is priceless when we are moved by a passage. The right book can be a friend, an advisor, a teacher, an inspiration. Books feed our minds, hearts, and spirits in a way few other things can.
Here's to good reading for us all.
Saturday, July 27, 2013
Saturday, July 20, 2013
Many Lessons, One Mentor
The stories I heard, though they were only scattered, bordered on legendary. He was a yeller. He made obtuse statements that left people scratching their heads. He didn't suffer fools gladly and had made people cry publicly on a few occasions. One or two people even insinuated that he enjoyed pushing people to that extreme. I was not a kid, but at 20, I was still very insecure and shy; to cry in public would be a horror. Yet this was not something I could walk away from. I would have to pass this test, pass several of them, in fact.
No one in the mid-80's could get an English Ed degree from Northeastern without taking Dr. Robert McQuitty's Advanced Comp for Teachers course. I had not only heard the stories; I had seen him around, too. He was a tall, intense fellow, striding purposefully wherever he went. I didn't doubt that the stories were true, so I decided that I'd play offense: I would take him for an elective before I had to take Advanced Comp. I signed up for a short story course and went to the first class with as much calm presence as I could muster. Precisely at class time, he sailed into the room with his briefcase, placed it on the table next to the lectern, shuffled a few papers, and began what I can only describe as one of the most animated shows I've ever seen. There was the same intensity, directed around the room at each of us in turn. There was an amazing flinging about of arms as he made his points. When he really wanted to emphasize a statement, he leaned on the table, his double-jointed elbows popping forward, with his eyebrows doing something not unlike a Groucho Marx routine as he spoke. And yes, there was yelling---though not at anyone in particular. I started snickering quietly not more than a minute or two into this routine because it was so patently obvious that it WAS a routine. He was acting, and it was funny. I looked around the room and saw that some of my classmates were also into it, although a few timid people were looking sideways at him as though he were an odd exhibit at the zoo.
That was the day that Dr. McQuitty taught me that teaching is showmanship, that you have to get their attention from the start. If you're outrageous, that's fine. If you're funny, that works, too. But get your audience right away and you'll be ready for the next step.
One day when I was in Advanced Comp, we got back a test we had taken. I made a 99 on it, which I was very happy about. I didn't struggle a lot with the grammar and usage part of the course, and that's what the test was on. I looked it over and saw that I had lost a point for a comma that I either had used and he had taken out, or I hadn't used it, and he had added it. As everyone was filing out after class, I went up front and said, "Dr. McQuitty, I have a question about my test. You've taken off a point for this comma. But isn't it optional?"
"Why, yes, it is," he replied. I just stood there for a moment waiting to see if there was a trick to this I was missing. Finally, he looked at me and said, "Nobody's ever made a perfect score on this test and no one is going to now!" Maybe I said, "Oh," or maybe I wandered out, still trying to figure out what that was all about. It took me a while to put that into perspective.
That was the day that Dr. McQuitty taught me that language and the usage of it can never be finite. There is always, always some other way to look at the content of what we write, how we style it, how we phrase our message not just with words but with punctuation and presentation. I look back to this day as the reason I chose him for my advisor for my graduate program.
My first semester of grad school in the spring of 1986, I was working full-time at McDonald's from 5 a.m. to 2 p.m., going to classes from 5-11 p.m., and then partying half the night. I'd get a couple hours sleep at night and a couple in the afternoons. I burned myself out in six months time. That summer, I walked out of work one day and left town to stay with friends in OKC for a couple of weeks and regroup. When I came home, I pulled a piece of mail out of the over-stuffed mailbox inviting me to be a graduate assistant the next year, to teach remedial courses under the supervision of Dr. McQuitty. That offer and my succeeding experiences in the classroom changed my life in so many ways I couldn't write them all tonight, but for my purpose here, it made my career.
That was the day that Dr. McQuitty helped me put my life back on course. I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that job saved me and made me the teacher I didn't know I could be. It wasn't until that first day teaching as a grad assistant that I really knew I was born to do it, not just choosing a default career.
There was the summer American novel course he arranged for me because I needed another English elective credit. I read a different novel each week and then went to Dr. McQuitty's office and discussed it with him for an hour on Friday. I felt woefully inadequate going in each week, knowing that I had nothing new to add to any discussion of the novels we talked about, but he never let me leave feeling that way. He taught me to ferret out meaning for myself as well as for readers in general of a piece of fiction.
There was the single most joyous moment of my academic career, when Dr. McQuitty gave me back my master's paper that he proofread, and told me I didn't need to make any corrections.
And there came a time when I myself was asked to teach Advanced Comp for Teachers, as well as Traditional Grammar, my favorite course I've taught at college level. Who wrote the traditional grammar text? Dr. McQuitty, of course. I told him I couldn't do it, that I wasn't smart enough. In that boisterous voice, he told me, "Of course you are!" So I did it, because he said I could. It was the hardest and most rewarding class I have taught or will ever teach.
Today I had the pleasure of helping celebrate his 80th birthday with some of his students from early in his career, when he taught at Nurnberg American High School in Germany. No one would ever guess his age. He's still as vibrant as he always was---laughing happily and easily at everyone's stories and cards and the antics of his grandson. He took care to introduce me to everyone and make me feel welcome and answer my questions about German food and the politics of teaching there so soon after World War II. When he said, "CJ was my student, and then she was my colleague," I scoffed, for who could look at such a mentor and ever feel equal to what he has done, and done for me? We might have been celebrating his birthday, but I felt as though I got the best honor of the day with his introduction. Today, then, was the day that Dr. McQuitty taught me the power of grace.
No one in the mid-80's could get an English Ed degree from Northeastern without taking Dr. Robert McQuitty's Advanced Comp for Teachers course. I had not only heard the stories; I had seen him around, too. He was a tall, intense fellow, striding purposefully wherever he went. I didn't doubt that the stories were true, so I decided that I'd play offense: I would take him for an elective before I had to take Advanced Comp. I signed up for a short story course and went to the first class with as much calm presence as I could muster. Precisely at class time, he sailed into the room with his briefcase, placed it on the table next to the lectern, shuffled a few papers, and began what I can only describe as one of the most animated shows I've ever seen. There was the same intensity, directed around the room at each of us in turn. There was an amazing flinging about of arms as he made his points. When he really wanted to emphasize a statement, he leaned on the table, his double-jointed elbows popping forward, with his eyebrows doing something not unlike a Groucho Marx routine as he spoke. And yes, there was yelling---though not at anyone in particular. I started snickering quietly not more than a minute or two into this routine because it was so patently obvious that it WAS a routine. He was acting, and it was funny. I looked around the room and saw that some of my classmates were also into it, although a few timid people were looking sideways at him as though he were an odd exhibit at the zoo.
That was the day that Dr. McQuitty taught me that teaching is showmanship, that you have to get their attention from the start. If you're outrageous, that's fine. If you're funny, that works, too. But get your audience right away and you'll be ready for the next step.
One day when I was in Advanced Comp, we got back a test we had taken. I made a 99 on it, which I was very happy about. I didn't struggle a lot with the grammar and usage part of the course, and that's what the test was on. I looked it over and saw that I had lost a point for a comma that I either had used and he had taken out, or I hadn't used it, and he had added it. As everyone was filing out after class, I went up front and said, "Dr. McQuitty, I have a question about my test. You've taken off a point for this comma. But isn't it optional?"
"Why, yes, it is," he replied. I just stood there for a moment waiting to see if there was a trick to this I was missing. Finally, he looked at me and said, "Nobody's ever made a perfect score on this test and no one is going to now!" Maybe I said, "Oh," or maybe I wandered out, still trying to figure out what that was all about. It took me a while to put that into perspective.
That was the day that Dr. McQuitty taught me that language and the usage of it can never be finite. There is always, always some other way to look at the content of what we write, how we style it, how we phrase our message not just with words but with punctuation and presentation. I look back to this day as the reason I chose him for my advisor for my graduate program.
My first semester of grad school in the spring of 1986, I was working full-time at McDonald's from 5 a.m. to 2 p.m., going to classes from 5-11 p.m., and then partying half the night. I'd get a couple hours sleep at night and a couple in the afternoons. I burned myself out in six months time. That summer, I walked out of work one day and left town to stay with friends in OKC for a couple of weeks and regroup. When I came home, I pulled a piece of mail out of the over-stuffed mailbox inviting me to be a graduate assistant the next year, to teach remedial courses under the supervision of Dr. McQuitty. That offer and my succeeding experiences in the classroom changed my life in so many ways I couldn't write them all tonight, but for my purpose here, it made my career.
That was the day that Dr. McQuitty helped me put my life back on course. I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that job saved me and made me the teacher I didn't know I could be. It wasn't until that first day teaching as a grad assistant that I really knew I was born to do it, not just choosing a default career.
There was the summer American novel course he arranged for me because I needed another English elective credit. I read a different novel each week and then went to Dr. McQuitty's office and discussed it with him for an hour on Friday. I felt woefully inadequate going in each week, knowing that I had nothing new to add to any discussion of the novels we talked about, but he never let me leave feeling that way. He taught me to ferret out meaning for myself as well as for readers in general of a piece of fiction.
There was the single most joyous moment of my academic career, when Dr. McQuitty gave me back my master's paper that he proofread, and told me I didn't need to make any corrections.
And there came a time when I myself was asked to teach Advanced Comp for Teachers, as well as Traditional Grammar, my favorite course I've taught at college level. Who wrote the traditional grammar text? Dr. McQuitty, of course. I told him I couldn't do it, that I wasn't smart enough. In that boisterous voice, he told me, "Of course you are!" So I did it, because he said I could. It was the hardest and most rewarding class I have taught or will ever teach.
Today I had the pleasure of helping celebrate his 80th birthday with some of his students from early in his career, when he taught at Nurnberg American High School in Germany. No one would ever guess his age. He's still as vibrant as he always was---laughing happily and easily at everyone's stories and cards and the antics of his grandson. He took care to introduce me to everyone and make me feel welcome and answer my questions about German food and the politics of teaching there so soon after World War II. When he said, "CJ was my student, and then she was my colleague," I scoffed, for who could look at such a mentor and ever feel equal to what he has done, and done for me? We might have been celebrating his birthday, but I felt as though I got the best honor of the day with his introduction. Today, then, was the day that Dr. McQuitty taught me the power of grace.
Saturday, July 13, 2013
Blog Cheat (Poem #2)
I've been contemplating gratitude a lot lately, and particularly today. Somehow I linked back to this tiny poem written in my 30's. It doesn't matter what inspired it originally; I can think of at least half a dozen of my life experiences that I could apply it to.
(Untitled)
How can I make account for these, your gifts?
The bill would be past mere reckoning,
Requiring celestial algebra and
A thousand Einsteins cursing and sweating
Beyond infinite measure, beyond time.
Better to let the mathematicians rest
And wonder at the fact
No price has ever been asked
For the wheeling stars
Resurrected to me.
(1996)
(Untitled)
How can I make account for these, your gifts?
The bill would be past mere reckoning,
Requiring celestial algebra and
A thousand Einsteins cursing and sweating
Beyond infinite measure, beyond time.
Better to let the mathematicians rest
And wonder at the fact
No price has ever been asked
For the wheeling stars
Resurrected to me.
(1996)
Saturday, July 6, 2013
Girl Power
It's been a full year of blogs as of this week, and I'm glad to know that I still have it in me to be disciplined enough to follow through on a commitment I make to myself. However, I never really doubted that I would be able to do it, since I did a similar project in 2000, writing an essay every week. I had no public forum for that project, so to hold myself to the letter, I mailed those essays to a college friend and fellow English teacher. Throwing myself into the blogosphere was a bit daunting; I think I play things pretty close to the vest in everyday life with the majority of people, but I try to write from a more open and spiritual place.
For the most part, I've been met with kind, positive reactions to what I have to say. Only a very few times did I bring down a hail of brimstone for being too....well, for not agreeing with everyone in my world. Twenty-five or 30 years ago, that would have not only hurt me but also made me feel that there was something wrong with my way of thinking. Somehow, I suspected, everyone else was smarter than I was. In a way, that only increased as I got my college degrees, because as we all know, the more you learn, the more you realize there is to learn, that the world is chock-a-block with places to explore and books to read and philosophies to puzzle out. There is infinitely more than any one person can absorb in a short human lifespan---the main reason why I don't understand how anyone can ever be bored.
Anyway, my insecurities: I know where most of them came from, and if you've been reading my blogs semi-regularly, you probably do, too. What I've been thinking about for this entry, the one-year mark, for quite a while has been when exactly so many of those insecurities fell away and left me, yes, more able to expose myself to criticism, but better able to deal with it, even welcoming it when it was in the cause of expanding my (or someone else's) knowledge, ideas, or experience.
I bet you just guessed the answer to that little riddle.. In truth, it's pretty obvious: teaching made me tough, confident, and committed to having more faith in myself than I ever thought possible.
But this blog isn't really supposed to be about me, I find. Stay with me here, because I think we have a crisis on our hands that you and I, every one of us, have a crucial part to play in solving.
Twice this year, I had female students that said things to me that made me fear that young women are not only NOT in a better place now than when I was growing up, but that they are sometimes in a much worse setting for exploring their hearts and minds without fear of reprisal in many forms. I posted one of those conversations on Facebook the day that it happened, kind of making fun of myself for what the young lady had said:
For the most part, I've been met with kind, positive reactions to what I have to say. Only a very few times did I bring down a hail of brimstone for being too....well, for not agreeing with everyone in my world. Twenty-five or 30 years ago, that would have not only hurt me but also made me feel that there was something wrong with my way of thinking. Somehow, I suspected, everyone else was smarter than I was. In a way, that only increased as I got my college degrees, because as we all know, the more you learn, the more you realize there is to learn, that the world is chock-a-block with places to explore and books to read and philosophies to puzzle out. There is infinitely more than any one person can absorb in a short human lifespan---the main reason why I don't understand how anyone can ever be bored.
Anyway, my insecurities: I know where most of them came from, and if you've been reading my blogs semi-regularly, you probably do, too. What I've been thinking about for this entry, the one-year mark, for quite a while has been when exactly so many of those insecurities fell away and left me, yes, more able to expose myself to criticism, but better able to deal with it, even welcoming it when it was in the cause of expanding my (or someone else's) knowledge, ideas, or experience.
I bet you just guessed the answer to that little riddle.. In truth, it's pretty obvious: teaching made me tough, confident, and committed to having more faith in myself than I ever thought possible.
But this blog isn't really supposed to be about me, I find. Stay with me here, because I think we have a crisis on our hands that you and I, every one of us, have a crucial part to play in solving.
Twice this year, I had female students that said things to me that made me fear that young women are not only NOT in a better place now than when I was growing up, but that they are sometimes in a much worse setting for exploring their hearts and minds without fear of reprisal in many forms. I posted one of those conversations on Facebook the day that it happened, kind of making fun of myself for what the young lady had said:
Best school conversation this week....
Girl: Ms. Welker, I bet you have game, don't you?
Welker: Wha??
Girl: I mean, you're so self-confident that you just have game. I know it.
Welker: *chuckles quietly*
Girl: See? That laugh? You have mad game.
Girl: Ms. Welker, I bet you have game, don't you?
Welker: Wha??
Girl: I mean, you're so self-confident that you just have game. I know it.
Welker: *chuckles quietly*
Girl: See? That laugh? You have mad game.
What I left out is the way that student looked at me. She was joking, and yet she wasn't. Here was a beautiful, athletically gifted girl, well-liked by her peers, but she was looking at me with a kind of admiration that I just don't understand from a young person with those attributes, beauty and athleticism being the only worthy qualities for so many high school kids. She's not a vain girl at all, but I still was shocked to find myself the subject of her awe. It made me laugh, of course, but as time went by, and as we had several personal conversations over the course of the year, I began to feel a little angry at the world that had made this exotically pretty girl feel it was so hard to have "game." It left me wondering how much harder it was to be a teenager today than I had realized.... and the teenage world is something that I should by all rights be paying incredibly close attention to. Frankly, it frightened me a little.
Then, at the end of the year, I received one of the most moving thank-you cards I've ever gotten from a student. She was a graduating senior with a very bright future, many scholarships to see her off to college, a girl with poise, manners, and grace that put the lie to her difficult background. The card was one left blank for "your message," and she had filled up both sides with details of our years in the classroom. She ended with, "After getting to know you, I have come to discover that I don't have to wait on other people to help make me happy. Through you I have learned that I write my own destiny and I can make my own decisions." I was running out the door as she gave it to me, and I didn't get a chance to read it until I got home that evening. I opened it sitting in my car in the garage, and my eyes welled up with tears, for the sweet words she had written, of course, and also for seeing once more that no matter how smart, pretty, talented, and determined our girls are, they are still held hostage to a climate that tells them they are "less." What she wrote warmed, then broke, my too-often stilled heart.
These two incidents have coalesced and fermented in my mind since May. I find myself wondering how after all the years and talk of equality that girls are still left wanting in the confidence department. In my more cynical moments, I rail at the establishment for the lack of parity in wages, legislative attacks on women, and unrealistic ideals for the female body. I could go on for days about the media presentation of what a girl/woman should be. And we know that teenage culture itself is and in reality will probably always be a brutal competition of survival of the fittest, or at least the most conformist.
But here is the call to arms I want to issue: We, you and I, parents or not, no matter what age---we have the responsibility to change the reality for these girls before we send them out into the world. I count myself blessed beyond measure that my complete lack of confidence did not land me in any major life crises at all, but many of these girls are not so lucky. Just today I read an article on the epidemic of suicide in girls who have been "shamed" through social network bullying after being victims of sexual assault. What kind of world IS this when victims are "shamed" to death?! There is no way that our youth are getting the proper guidance about how to treat others when incidents like this continue to happen; whether parents are teaching their children properly or not, it's our job to give the lesson at every turn, because we can't afford to let those lessons be missed. Through everything we say and do, we much teach young people that everyone has merit, contributions and talents that are as important as the next person's, regardless of sex. We also have a responsibility to see that all legislation enacted in this country shows parity to both sexes, a responsibility we carry out at the voting booth. And we have to be role models at the best and the worst of times, trying always to be even-handed in our dealings with others.
I am, at best, a moderate success at what I ask of us all here. But I want "our" girls to come to high school confident of their place in the world, that it will be a better place because they lived, and that they don't have to wait for someone to tell them they are good or pretty or smart. I want them to know it because they live it, every day. I want them to know it, because it's true.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)