No Snow in Memphis

frozen white stuff falling from the sky!

Today, I came home from my internship to grab a quick lunch. I was taking off my boots, one at a time, trying to stay balanced as I stood by the front door. As I set my one un-booted foot down on the floor to start yanking off the other, I yelled out "Dammit!" With my stocking foot, I had just stepped into a clod of snow that I had tracked into the house. Cold, wet, right on the sensitive part of my arch.

None of this unpleasantness in Memphis! No snow there!

But I will miss the way it coats the tree branches.

From the Seat of a Student

a couple observations from my own classes

One of my professors this semester is a lot like that teacher I observed at the high school. He is a dynamic and excitable lecturer, never monotone. His style is effective in that it obliges attention, since he moves so quickly that students really must lean forward and listen; it would be pretty disastrous to fade-in and fade-out while he steams ahead, regardless of the cues his audience is sending. He just doesn't invite questions (because in his fluid speech, there seem to be no appropriate moments for interruption); he doesn't permit commentary or contributions (which dampens the initial eagerness to engage ideas); and he certainly doesn't seem to want to slow down (so convinced he is of the import of his ideas and the clarity that his vigorous speed and volume provide).
For the moment, I am still consciously learning in his class. I do enjoy listening to him, but I am waiting for the moment when my obligatory passivity boils into frustration. The time will come when I am tired of being a recipient; the time will come when I want to make contributions and check my assumptions in an active way. I don't know how his style would accommodate that.
I am writing this for my own record - I want to be able to look back on this and remind myself of what the student experience can be, especially when constrained by a teacher who's style is passionate but oppressive.

In another one of my classes, my fellow students and I sit through many extended silences after the professor asks questions. My first suspicion was that too few of us had done the reading. But, after paying more careful attention to the questions, I realized that the silence was the result of poorly-phrased questions! When my professor asks a question, it always sounds as though there is one - and only one - correct answer, and if you don't phrase it correctly, then it isn't right. I haven't figured out if it is the tone of her inquiries or her long pauses after someone gives a response. Whatever it is, there is something in her method of teaching that makes it feel risky to answer her questions.
This reminds me of a passage from Holt's How Children Fail: "They cling stubbornly to the idea that the only good answer is a yes answer. This, of course, is the result of the miseducation in which the "right" answers are the only ones that pay off." Even though Holt was writing about elementary education, this same phenomenon can persist in college courses! My professor perpetuates it without examination, to which Holt has another great prescription: "There is a very simple question that hardly anyone seems to have asked. Of the things we teachers do, which help learning and which prevent it?"

Southern Accents

reflections on a couple phone calls as I worked at my internship

Today, I had the pleasure of making a couple routine phone calls to some places in the south. One went to a hospital in North Carolina, another to the front desk of a business in Mississippi. Each time, the phone was answered by a woman with a pleasurable Southern drawl. Each time, I imagined I was speaking with a woman plump, but satisfyingly so (not sloppily so), who had settled herself comfortably into a rolling desk chair. This chair would be the kind that you’d buy for about $50 at Office Depot, and you’d buy it without expecting it to be a long-lasting investment. But, in my mind, the way these women rest themselves in their chairs make those chairs seem like padded plastic-and-cloth homes for their bodies. Every space they inhabit must have been transformed into a home. By the tone of their voices, I’d swear that neither had experienced a bad day in their whole life – or at least, nothing that could get them down for long. Depression is anathema to them; rain is a weather pattern, not a mood-maker. Each woman answered the phone like she had just been waiting for me to call and wanted nothing but to make sure I was having a pleasant day. Actually, speaking with them both did put me in a more agreeable mood. Plus, there was none of that insipid receptionist tone in their voice – just honest, unadorned invitation: “Tell me how things’ve been for you, honey.” How is it that Southern accent makes every word inviting, comfortable? These women spoke and instantly, I felt at home.

I am looking forward to that in Memphis. The Southern accent wraps me up, envelops me, and makes everything sound tolerable, survivable: even if the message is censure it is never rebuke. That Southern accent might be the thing that gets me through the rough patches. Rough stretches, I mean. That Southern accent could be life-sustaining for me next year.

It's Not All in the Delivery

a trip down to Denver to observe an few hours in the lives of real Corps members

Visiting North High today made me a little nervous. Can I offer these kids what they need and deserve? Am I even in the position to be calling them “kids”?! Aren’t I only 21 years old anyway?! One class in particular made me worried. I spoke with the teacher for few minutes before her class started to trickle in. The teacher had a lot of vigor and spoke like she was compelling her immediate thoughts into quick language, injecting her comments into our conversation without hesitation. Yet, she was also the conversationalist who is so eager to put a thought into words that the listener is unconvinced that her meaning has as much resilience as the tone would suggest. She was just exporting ideas, not conveying them. I worry that I converse like this teacher. I want to provide big, discernible handles on my contributions so they are easy to grasp and hold; however, this means I can stray from my message for the sake of facilitating the interaction. I tend to speak to serve the conversation rather than converse to serve the idea.

I watched this communication tendency play out in the classroom. It played poorly. That means it could play poorly for me too. She was empathic and loud; her pitch was moderately varied and her pace brisk. Yet with all that, she still wasn’t invigorating. For all the force and oomph in her style, she lacked the discernible substance. She was all trappings, no message. She was just accessorized language. So, naturally, she failed to hold her students’ attention. They didn't sense a message or lesson behind the words. They wandered between the tables, talked incessantly, and cracked jokes that must have been hysterical, given their boisterous, overblown laughter.

She relied blindly on what she had probably been told her whole life were her good public speaking skills. Teaching must be much more than public speaking. To teach a lesson is not to give a presentation. My time in her class today told me that words alone don't transport a lesson. A teacher must use all sorts of vehicles. No amount of oratorical wizardry is going to make a lecture stick. I will have to learn to get beyond the lecture (even though I feel most capable in that format) and teach. I will have to teach.

How do I do that?