Lazyteacher

…finding a time for writing.

I had ambitious ideas to get a novel off of the ground, write a daily blog post, and work out.  Results?  Bad back finally getting better. 30 pages of a novel (not all bad). And an intermittent blog read by me mostly.

Still, it’s a start, Sysiphus.

I want to add to that by noting that I want to start adding to the Shorewood Teacher Resource (aka Shorewiki) and at least set up the bones so that other teachers can contribute. The question is whether anyone would be willing to devote time to something with all of the craziness that school can stir up.

Any great teacher resource wikis already out there?

I recently read Style: An Anti-Textbook by Richard Lanham and was impressed. It doesn’t have a load of useful or immediately effective info in it, but what it does have is a clear, well-argued claim that the best way to teach writing is to instill a love of words and what they can do. Lantham indulges in a lot of snarky and very fun scalpelling of “The Books”–the traditional composition textbooks– as well as of the common bureaucratic-speak and academia fog machine prose. But he kept coming around to the idea that Style is not so much a love of clarity in the sense of limpid mountain pools but in the expressive sense of a style that attends to the purpose of the writing. In this way, even crazy, pull out your armhair and stab yourself with a #2 pencil postmodern speak has a purpose: to proclaim the writer a member of the secret Illuminati of semioticians.

What does this mean for next year?

One thing I want to work on is finding ways to introduce a sense of playfulness in language. Sometimes that can be accomplished by showing models of this (such as this review of the Hulk and this one of The Happening or even this one of the book How to Talk about Books you Haven’t Read). This I’ve done. The other is to try to play games. For instance:

• Will Shortz word games
• Scrabble
• Writing captions for the New Yorker cartoon contest
• Rewriting lyrics to songs
• Neologisms or slang dictionaries
• Online Word Games

The Watchmen

The Watchmen is where it all started; it’s the hulking gorilla doppelgänger to Art Spiegelman’s Maus. Both graphic novels took the form into places where adult themes and complexity were welcome. Still, where Maus was personal and rooted in memoir, The Watchmen is a superhero comic in which all of the conventions of the genre have bent, twisted, and spindled to the point of unrecognizability. Nominally, the main story follows the search for a killer of “masked avengers.” Someone, somehow has broken into the Comedian’s (a sort of anti-hero hero who enjoys death, destruction, and furthering US Department of Defense war aims) apartment and thrown him out the window. As other attempts on costumed heroes continue, Rorshach–a bitterly misanthropic vigilante with an ever shifting mask–attempts to find who is behind the killings and why.

The story careens down an ever shifting landscape of betrayal and human weakness. Events of our own time are altered to react to a what-if world of masked, betighted superheroes who fight crime. The US wins the Vietnam War. Richard Nixon escapes Watergate and rewrites the Constitution to re-elect himself several times. Interestingly, only one of the heroes actually has a superpower. Dr. Manhattan has the ability to bend matter to his will after being obliterated by an atomic test and gradually figuring out how to recreate himself into a semblance of his original form. Unfortunately for Dr. Manhattan, with great power has come overwhelming ennui and disinterest in humanity.

Alan Moore is a clever, complex writer who delights in paranoia and a sense of impending collapse. He mixes perspective, time, genre, and theme nimbly and finds ever more ingenious ways to combine storylines. Sections of the main story are layered with selections from memoir excerpts, magazine articles, pirate comics, academic journals, police reports, and magazine interview profiles. The sense that the magazine occupies an entire alternate universe is painstakingly constructed throughout.

However, just as in Huck Finn, students might have a hard time recognizing that the thoughts of the characters don’t necessarily represent the ideas of the writer. For instance, Rorschach has the bulk of the voice overs and he is constantly obsessing over the moral decay of society–to the point that he comes off as racist, sexist, and any other ist you might think of. There is even a copy of the right wing periodical The New Frontiersman which gives a taste of the xenophobic ramblings he obsesses over (”I’ve had it up to hear with those coked-out commie cowards…”).Teachers would need to directly remind students that the opinions of the characters might not be opinions the writer is advocating. Still, this technique neatly subverts traditional comic conventions as none of the heroes occupy the moral high ground, but neither do they lack at least some measure of sympathy.

Art Review

The art has a classic comic book style with 3-panel formats predominating. Gibbons mixes perspectives and angles well in telling the story, but there isn’t the innovative, impressionistic style that came later in graphic novels such as The Killing Joke or The Dark Knight. For students, the style’s clarity and simplicity helps tell the story and create a sense of paranoia without adding extra difficulties in comprehension.

Recommendation

Highly Recommended with Reservations. This is clearly a book for high schoolers and perhaps upperclassmen as well. Undoubtedly, The Watchmen is a classic of the form and excellent in its sophisticated exploration of power, authority, history, and the human condition. However, it’s also filled with graphic violence, sexual themes, controversial politics, homosexuality, and unreliable narrators. A teacher would need to be careful to explain the use of irony and to allow students to question Moore’s perspective on American history and politics. Parents should probably be asked to sign off on using it in a classroom setting.

So, in my continuing quest to control the world, I’ve been reading two books about persuasion and influence: Influencer: The Power to Change Anything by Jerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, and Ron McMillan  and Nudge by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein. Together, surely, no one will be able to resist me. My Persuasion Ray is almost complete!

Influencer feels like an updated How to Win Friends and Influence People and is clearly attempting to use the very techniques it espouses in the copy of the book itself. This is a helpful look at the advantages and disadvantages of the techniques it suggests. The prose is breathless. Take a look at the title. There is much talk of Influence Mavens (or Poobahs or Gurus or Wizards) who vaguely control vast swaths of territory or who count thousands of souls under their control.  Usually, they’re stopping AIDS or meteors from crashing into Earth.  It’s when you get to the fine print you realize the suggestions break down into: 1) Show that what you want people to do is both possible and worth it 2) Look closely to see what one small change will have a big effect.  And…that’s pretty much it. It is from a set of writers who focus on business issues.

Nudge is both more humble and more useful. It comes from two academics (they blog here).  They espouse something they call libertarian paternalism–governments and other institutions using persuasion techniques to help people do things they want to do anyway.  For instance in a cafeteria, putting salads and healthy food at eye level and the desserts in a corner under a heavy blanket. This is a much more believable set of ideas but they tend to congregate in the How to convince people to save more for their retirement end of the spectrum rather than How to convince people to learn better. Still, it has a much more enjoyable prose style with just the right level of humor and irony to leaven the ideas.

What can we take from all of this? Teachers are always going to be persuaders; our power to use institutional persuasive tools (grades) is never strong enough to achieve our goals (student learning). We have to learn how to leverage persuasion and influence to convince students that hard work is worth it. Not only that writing that paper will give us an A that will get us into Harvard, but that learning itself is a pleasure and a practice that has dividends in all aspects of our lives.

Of course, it’s easier to convince someone of something if it’s actually true.  Influence reminds me that students need to be shown that it is entirely possible to do what I’m asking them to do and that the result of doing it is better than not doing it.  But that needs to be true to work. Nudge reminds me that I need to set up a classroom where the choices they face make it easier to do what will be helpful in learning rather that what will be more fun.

Both books are good choices for a class in rhetoric to analyze and explore.  Otjhers might be:

• Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath
• Influence by Robert Cialdini
• 150 Ways to Influence Intrinsic Motivation in Children by James Raffini

Junot Diaz is a hero to me. Not that he is much like me. He is a writer who was born in the Domenican Republic and then moved to New Jersey. Somehow he created a writer’s voice which finds a way of combining a hip hop machismo with a literary fiction Jonathan Frantzen-y insight gently marinated in a sci-fi vinaigrette.

His novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao followed his short story series by 11 years. So, I figured he has writer’s block; he has Ralph Ellison disease. Actually, no. Watch the video above and you realize Dude doesn’t really like to write that much. He says he writes for a few hours in the morning and then basically reads all day. This is basically my idea of heaven. When school starts up again, that will disappear, but summers for me are these idylls of reading in which I’ve now introduced two twin serpents of discord: writing on this blog and for my little novel (page 30, sigh).

But Junot did it. It took 11 years. He also had gigs at MIT and such but he did it. And here’s the other trick. He has high standards. He mentions that he would write a page and the other pages would tell that page, “Hey youc an’t hang with us.” But see, I can write something bad and then say, “It’s ok. Be bad. I don’t mind. I still love you.” Of course, I won’t win a Pulitzer, but it does give me hope to keep writing.

The other gem from the interview? Diaz’s next book is about werewolves (or vampires or something supernatural)? You can see the 1st few paragraphs here. Now, if he could just add Dr. Horrible into it, perfectness would result.

have been slightly toasted in olive oil of euphoria and tossed with blanched almonds of joy.

One of the real pleasures of Minister Faust’s From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain is his obvious and over-the-top love of language. All of the characters seem to spew tortured extended metaphors any chance they get. The narrator of the book is a psychiatrist who cobbles together strained psycho-babble like:

One of life’s greatest paradoxes is that only when we see ourselves at our most naked, weak, foolish, ugly, disappointing, cowardly, broken, repulsive, selfish, and stupid, can we really appreciate just how special we are. For Wally to fill up the tank of personal reintegration, he was going to have to pull into the filling station of exhaustive self-assessment. And so will you.

The book is about superheroes–specifically a world in which the superheroes have defeated most of their enemies in a the recent Götterdamerung and now don’t have a whole lot to do. The premise is that 6 of the most important superheroes have been forced into a Group Therapy session mandate by the JLA equivalent in order to resolve their differences. There are some similarities to Soon I Will be Invincible but that novel was more of a Thirtysomething meets Marvel approach while Dr. Brain feels more Die Traumdeutung meets Fight Club.

Many twists and revelations of the Luke-I-am-your-Father ensue and there is an anarchic quality to the narrative which feels loose and unstrained. Some of the targets of satire (psychology, superhero conventions) seem too easy, but others (race, gender, capitalism) are surprising and welcome. Of the 6 main characters, two are black and there is a running subplot about how superheroes have become complicit in racist and corporate crimes against minorities.

Also, in order to separate the 6 characters, Faust gives each an accent (Omnipotent man is a redneck, Iron Lass is a Norwegian Goddess, BrotherFly is a mix between a bug and 50 Cent) complete with dialect spelling–but they really don’t talk that differently. They all have the same sense of humor as Faust–sardonic, surreal, hyperbolic.

This is a good book to have in a classroom. It taps into (primarily) boy energy about superheroes but it is also infused with intelligence, satire, and an undercurrent of resistance to racial and sexual hypocrisy. Plus, the use of inspired language and intellectual allusion offer up a model for kids about how to see the world. See an excerpt here.

Image Credit: Coverbrowser.com

So, I indulged in a tripartite sin of multitasking yesterday morning. I was listening to Will Richardson interview Clay Shirky on uStream while paying attention to the accompanying chat while helping my daughter figure out what she wanted to do outside.  Of course, I did all three badly. Shirky said something something about people learning stuff differently. My daughter was not encouraged by my absent-minded suggestions that she “bike it off.” And I engaged in a short uChat back and foth with Clay Burrell about face to face communication. I think at one point I used the word Burgermeister.

I always like reading Beyond School–not because I agree with his ideas (I usually don’t) but his ideas are ones I want to believe in. He is of the semi-anarchist anti-coercicion school of teaching which I find very appealing. I’ve always had dreams of an utopia wherin all grades were banished, students were there because they wanted to be, and we learned what we wanted based on what interested us. Kindof like I learn now. Although I thihnk my Utopia had me traveling with my students across Europe as well.

Burrell suggested that we don’t need buildings and when I asked him about face to face communication, he responded that “We get together f2f when we want, where we want. “flash ed-mobs.” And again, logically, that’s crazy talk. We’ll have 100s of thousands of students wandering around with their iPhones looking for an eduMob to drop into. Can you imagine anything else more designed to strike terror in the hearts of adults (although that may be a vote in the positive column for the idea).

Still, doesn’t it sound fun? You could just go to the library and text out “All y’all up for a little creative writing come on down” and then scores of hirsute teens would or wouldn’t show up. Kids would get points for every mob they attended (or not! too much like grades…maybe any certification we’d be interested in would be solely attached to actual work they created. A portfolio).  The teacher might get paid according to his/her draw and the evaluation of his customers.

Sometimes drawing lines outside of the box creates ideas that are more helpful than being logical. What if I had 2 weeks in my essay fundamentals class where we didn’t meet at all.  We all wrote wherever, whenever and met up or didn’t by checking in on a chat or other social network.  Still impossible…but closer. Would the absence of coercion make up drive more learning or would it allow more slacking?  That’s always the question, no?

Maybe it’s a Gen X thing. Maybe it’s a need to feel superior thing. Maybe it’s an English teacher sensibility run amok thing, but I love irony. I love teaching irony as well, but here is where I get stuck.

When I was a kid, when we never ever loitered on the lawns elderly, cheap verbal irony (aka sarcasm) was one of the best only ways to show superiority over everyone. It was so easy to use! Chuh! I’d love to take out the garbage. It’d be, like, the highlight of my life Mom! This made me fun to be around. Wait! Did he mean what he said…or was he being ironic!

As I grew older and consequently more vulnerable to what other people thought of me, I could use irony to shield myself from ridicule while discussing cultural products that I might possibly find non idiotic. The trick was to discuss my interests in a world weary tone and to pitch my voice at just the right timber wherein it would be impossible to know when I said, I think Bon Jovi is one of the most underrated geniuses of the fauxmetal era. (Insert irony mark) whether I was serious…or ironic!

Now that I’m a teacher, I use irony in class all the time but mostly as a tool of attention. Believe me when I say, this sentence diagramming exercise will change your live and blow your mind. Honestly. Of course, it’s all still pretty much cheap irony. It mostly involves larger vocabulary words attached to my preteen sarcasm. Bad teacher!

But I love teaching irony! Take Alanis Morissette’s Ironic. A cottage Internet industry has sprung up to dissect the song (see here, here, here). Most takes suggest that Morissette was sleeping during that class in LA10 (It’s like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife), but a highly influential conunterintuitive contingent has defended her, suggesting either that a) the song is ironic because it is called Ironic and yet has little irony in it or b) it is an example of cosmic irony. Still, all is forgiven because of the awesome My Humps cover.

I’ve always been a B man myself even if Alanis disagrees with me. The song seems to suggest that all of these bad things are happening to her because the Gods or the Fates have it in for her. Kind of the flip side of the common “Everything happens for a reason” (in this case, because the Gods hate my guts).

However, definitions of irony are almost universally useless. See Bartleby’s definition:

1a. The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning. b. An expression or utterance marked by a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning. c. A literary style employing such contrasts for humorous or rhetorical effect. See synonyms at wit¹. 2a. Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs: “Hyde noted the irony of Ireland’s copying the nation she most hated” (Richard Kain). b. An occurrence, result, or circumstance notable for such incongruity.

A) Is crazy. If I say “That shirt is black” when it’s white, it ain’t ironic. B) Is crazier. What’s the difference between apparent and intended meaning? C) Is better but misses other uses of irony, including philosophical or eschatological. 2) gets into situational irony (the Firehouse that’s on fire, Richard Simmons is fat, etc.). None of them get at the traditional Greek idea that the Gods like to build up people only to destroy them later (Oedipus, Croesus).

While teaching irony in writing though, I’ve always wanted to impart to my students the power of a writer who can play with the intention behind his or her words. We expect people to be more or less earnest when writing to us or to be clearly ironic (i.e. Swift’s A Modest Proposal). But one of the innovations of modern writing is the ability to shield or make ambiguous the author’s intentions in writing a piece. This is especially effective in personal narratives or memoirs (see Eggers A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius or the short stories of David Sedaris). I like to have students take a sentence in their essays and reshape it to either hyperbole or understatement. Or to say the opposite of what they mean to say.

Irony can be the ultimate expression of self-satisfied condescension or it can be an intricate expression of humility and self-criticism. It’s a testament to the power of language to communicate and conceal…all at the same time.

Image Credit: Abbyladybug CreativeCommons license

Reading is sometimes an ingenious device of avoiding thought. Sir Richard Helps

While I was away at lovely Cama beach with my kids and LOML, I read two books about ineffectual men obsessed by woman: All about Lulu by Jonathan Evison and All the Sad Literary Men by Keith Gessen. Both of them had something going for them, but I’m not going to finish either.

Lulu is about a boy named Will growing up frustrated and vegetarian in a house full of carnivorous bodybuilders–his Dad Big Bill who constantly falls short of Mr. Olympia and two meathead twins Doug and Ross–until his Dad remarries and Lulu enters the house. Will falls not smitten but unhealthily obsessed.  The writing has a great undercurrent of humor and absurdity, but I wasn’t able to care about Will and whether or not he would capture the heart of his stepsister.  The character was venal and sarcastic but without enough of a wit to make it better. This may be my fault as I’ve always had a hard time following and caring about sad sack characters.

Literary Men is completely different. This is a series of connected short stories that revolve around hyper-educated Harvard twentysomethings canoodling on the Right Coast.  I had a hard time telling them apart except based on what major work they were writing or failing to write: Mark wrote about Mensheviks, Sam Zionists, and Keith liberal political essays.  Strangely, even though I  didn’t enjoy these stories–they felt self-absorbed and  cramped–I read them quickly and kept on reading. I think the fact that the characters are similar to me attracted me despite the lack of other qualities. Jonathan Yardley liked it better than I did.

I’m glad I read what I did, but I’m not going to finish them.

That used to be a big deal. I remember being 14 and reading Camus’s The Myth of Sysiphus and not understanding word one, but still reading the whole thing because, you know, that’s what you do.  I’m not sure if I got the irony of that.  My students too are surprised when I tell them they don’t have to finish a book.  We get so locked into the idea that the books we assign are to read in full so that we can have a multiple choice test on them that we forget that the books serve us and not the other way around.  We have the power to put them down and find another one, one who will treat us better.

Maybe there are a few books in a classroom where we’ll want the students to read it all so we can talk as a community about the entire enchilada and have everyone munching along the whole way.  But reading doesn’t have to be a Bataan Death March.  We/I should remind ourselves that when we stop reading a book we’re making a decision to take our limited reading time and filling it with the best we pages we can find.

What if we let kids apply the Nancy Pearl-ian Rule of 50 in their own writing? Lots of readers/bloggers struggle with this a bit, but I think it would be healthier if we admitted that we’re not always ready for even the greatest books?  How can we make the classroom flexible enough to accommodate this?