Results of Ruminations

Screen capture from here . This word describes Shakespeare's work, and in no other case is that more apparent than  Hamlet  (and, as is so often the case, Hamlet). Despite my parenthetical aside, I'm again struck by how the meanings and depths that Hamlet  plumbs are...you guessed it, indefatigable. I have read, seen, or taught Hamlet  countless times--not countless because I can't count that high, but because I can't remember how many I've seen or read or taught. The safe guess is that I've gone through that play, in one form or another (not counting The Lion King , my favorite of the Disney Renaissance films of my childhood) at least fifty times. I always get something out of it, I always realize something new, I always feel there's more to explore. Hamlet  is a well from which I can never overdraw, as it is like Juliet's love: Infinite ( Romeo and Juliet 2.2). How did Shakespeare pull this off? Part of it is that he allowed himself to luxuriat...

In terms of pedagogy, I follow Socrates in weird ways. If you've heard of the chap, you know Socrates is known for asking questions. We always think of Socrates and his method as being question-based. While that isn't necessarily wrong, it's important to note how Socrates uses questions. Think of the beginning of  Book IV of Plato's The Republic . There, we see Socrates being asked a question by Adeimantus, but most of the first major section of text is Socrates' answer (after having asked a clarifying question of his interlocutor). He doesn't necessarily spend a lot of time asking questions and listening to others.* In fact, he often posits his own ideas at great length, occasionally asking for input from the others. It's important to note that he sets up his arguments with large, important questions. Book I of The Republic  starts off with this question: "Is life harder toward the end, or what report do you give of it?" (11). That launches th...

When a youth from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints decides to volunteer for an eighteen- to twenty-four month mission, said youth agrees to abstain from a lot of things that generally comprise the majority of a kid's living experience: No dating, no popular/secular music, no contact with home save emails once a week and a couple of calls, and no watching movies, especially not in the theater. This list of Don't Commandments is designed to strip away the distractions of normal life so that the limited time as a missionary can be focused on the purpose of dedicated missionary life: Preaching the gospel. So it makes sense within the internal logic of the Church's system and it is, for the most part, an effective maneuver that does help keep missionaries honed in on their purpose. The fascinating thing about this forced fast of films is that there's an unspoken but fairly well understood cultural expectation on the other end of the service. Young women (a...

I'm teaching a new Shakespeare class this year. I've yet to really teach the same one: When I first began, it was a co-taught class with a BYU professor who was only there every other day. Yet I learned a lot about teaching writing and showing students how to improve via revisions (so totally my strong point, don't you know) and hard work on their writing. The next two years I worked with another teacher, but he was in class even less frequently than the BYU professor. Each time was a refining of what had come before, and there was always a shift in the texts. (With Shakespeare, there's a massive crop to explore, which is exciting and a little intimidating.) Last year, Shakespeare was also fine arts: Shax on the stage and the page was our idea, with different terms focusing on one part or the other of the Bard's oeuvre. I learned a lot about the actor (and acting), which was fun for me, if a little stressful. I haven't taught a drama class before, and I don...

It is confusing that, despite being decades away from an agrarian America, we still use our agrarian calendar for schooling. It's easy to see how we got this way: The system that pushed us through the Industrial Revolution, and was retooled for the post-war baby boom has a momentum to it. As childhood increased in value, nostalgia for one's own childhood drives desires to keep the traditions enjoyed from the idyllic portion of one's life in the bloodstream of the next generation. "We always did this when I was a kid," is one of the reasons that twenty-first century children are hauled off to visit national parks, camp in the forest, or any number of other options. Entire industries build themselves off of this tendency. We're crushed by the weight of that history and tradition. We've codified the laws to ensure that there are a certain number of days on the school calendar (though, and I'm not advocating this, if we dropped all the breaks from the sc...

I'm starting my tenth year as a teacher--all at the same school--which feels arbitrarily momentous. I mean, being a base 10 culture means that something like a decade "means something" and the thing that it means is that we've decided that it means something. There isn't anything inherently powerful, wonderful, or noteworthy about ten consecutive years, but it does feel like I ought to mark it. Thinking back to what I was doing that first teacher training week in 2008 makes me smile. I was so enthusiastic and ungainly, like an evangelizing foal. I mean, I love my job--and I've loved it since the beginning--but I was a pretty lousy teacher back when I started. I cringe at the mistakes I made, the assumptions I had, the poor teaching choices I selected. One of the things that I remember about that year was when I had to take charge of a break-out session for the students. Back then, we gathered the two hundred or so students for a welcome assembly, then sent...

I recognize that a teacher writing an essay about hard work whilst on summer vacation is potentially fraught with some hypocrisy, but there are a couple of counterpoints to consider: 1) The nature of the job is nine months in the classroom, three months out; but that doesn't mean I'm not working; 2) While this essay was written during the summer break, it can be read at any time, so its point can be derived without worrying about inconsistency. Work is Hard Peeking behind the curtain, here's what goes into a lesson when I'm at the helm: Choosing the material to be discussed Deriving a conversation about the topic Creating an activity (sometimes) about the material Finding additional resources to explain the topic Ensuring there's enough stuff to fill 100 minutes of class Build enough in the class to feel like we've made progress, yet leave enough on the table to pick up the next day If it sounds vague, it's because it has to be. There's en...

Being an abashed Twitter-(over)user, I was delighted when I saw this tweet : I love homework! Not only is Doug Robertson a great resource for connected educators (you can check out his blog right here ; it's entirely education centered, rather than the hodgepodge of stuff that mine features) and a funny guy, he also throws out a lot of ideas online that have helped me think differently about my profession. He let me guest blog on one of his other sites, too, and that's pretty spiffy. But what got me excited about the tweet was not that it was Doug (sorry, Doug), but that it was talking about Revisionist History . I already geeked out about finding Malcolm Gladwell's podcast (another find that occurred because of Twitter, as it so happens), so this shouldn't come as a surprise. What was exciting was that the second season is being released. Eagerly, I listened to the first two episodes, taking extra time to do my chores so that I had an excuse to keep listenin...

What's the point of questions? This is asked not as an accusation, nor as a subversion of itself, but as an inescapably ironic process of inquiry. Questions are powerful. Very powerful. World changing. Yet their ubiquity seems to also enervate them. Can we question questions? And if the point of a question is to ask the question, can we come to an answer about questions that doesn't open up for more questions? But first, a story: I was sitting in a Sunday School class a year or so back, doing my best not to nurse my professional grudge against most (though certainly not all) Sunday School teachers*. It never is a personal grudge, but, having not only gone to college specifically to learn about different methodologies, studies, and theories of teaching, I have also completed nearly a decade of teaching. Students seem to appreciate my class, insomuch that I dare say that I'm probably a fairly good teacher, and one thing that I have practiced for that time is carrying on a c...

Approximately two times a year (at the beginning and ending of the school year), I get the opportunity to sit down with my coworkers and have real conversations. This isn't because I don't get to sit down and talk with them during the year, but there's always "something else" that we have to talk about. It's usually (read: almost always) about students--how we can help one or another, what we can do to ensure the continued functions of the school, what teachers are doing that may need correcting of the course to aid the kids--so it's always worthwhile. I mean, I'm not complaining about the fact that I have to talk shop with other teachers about the students we're teaching. But during our trainings both before and after the school year, that pressure isn't there. I don't have assigned students, there aren't parent emails to consider, there aren't snatches of conversation to wedge between the bells. I can work in my classroom doing ...

The way I take notes in my faculty meetings is via Twitter. It's a very 21st century style way of documenting one's thoughts, I admit, and whether or not it has any permanent value is open to debate and research, but despite its trendy way of recording information, I find it useful. One is that I write faster on the computer than I do by hand. Additionally, my coworkers who are on the hashtag can explore ideas quietly with each other while the rest of the conversation shifts to different ideas. Normally, I'd say it'd be better for us to speak aloud so that others can hear what we have to say, but there are two reasons why I prefer it this way: One, they can see it by looking up the hashtag  themselves, thereby learning what we talked about; and two, we have a vociferous faculty. Meetings always go long because we love to talk, share ideas, and enthuse about our common vocation. If I were to say aloud everything I tweet, we'd never be done. Today, we had a large, l...

Today I stepped down from being department head at my school. It's a normal thing; every three or four years, they cycle the leadership, particularly of large departments (like mine, which is the biggest there). I enjoyed the time, and now I get to have a little more free time, since I have fewer responsibilities for me to ignore, and that's always a nice change. I'll miss being "in the know" with some of the big choices in the department and school, but I have a pretty poor batting average on wise decisions for large scale things, so I'm sure that it's the right step. One thing, though, that I always wanted to do for a department meeting but never got around to was to pose this question to my teachers and see, not only what we came up with, but why we made the choices that we did. The thought experiment is easy enough: What would you do if you could build a school? The details: There's essentially no budget (but it needs to be within practical rea...

Why do I feel like I'm dying? The end of any school year is difficult. There are grades to turn in (late), awards to hand out, yearbooks to sign. And, of course, commencement. I enjoy commencement exercises. I sometimes listen to commencement speeches online. I'm not even graduating, I just like the inspirational thoughts that the speaker drops on a very inattentive (or, if you're Mike Pence , non-attending) audience. I've been in school, in one form or another, for approximately twenty-six years. It's my career and my passion, and I learn in order to teach better. So learning from the wisdom of the speakers--gaining motivation and inspiration from them--is a natural part of not only the end of the year, but of how I try to become better. So why do I feel like I'm dying? At our school, we have an annual tradition in which the faculty challenges the students' quidditch team. I coach the team all year long so that we're ready for this finale. (For ...

I think I'm approaching my mid-life crisis. I'm not likely to want to buy a Corvette or get a divorce so that I can date someone significantly younger than I am, and I certainly hope that I'm not at the actual  mid-point of my life (I'd rather live beyond 68, thank you very much), but I'm feeling a certain level of panic when I think about how much I still have to read and write before I die. Is that weird? While I know it isn't a competition, I feel like I'm losing to...well, most everyone when it comes to knocking down titles. There is so much  to take in: volumes and tomes and treatises and film and music and video games and...and...and... I feel a bit like Veruca Salt when it comes to intellectually ingesting as much as I possibly can. I don't care how: I want it now. This is the only version of the story, aside from the book, that I accept. ( Source ) The direct corollary to this has to be my job. Over the last nine years, I've been le...

To whom it may concern, I am, officially, a lord. There is a micronation called Sealand  that's located a handful of miles off the eastern coast of the UK where a small family has declared sovereignty. Though there are some legal quibbles--enough to make it "depends on how you look at it" whether or not it's a real micronation--it manages to keep itself afloat (pun!) on its abandoned WWII-era, water-based fortress by selling off titles of nobility, pieces of land, and even jerseys for their football team.* Yes, I want a jersey of the Principality of Sealand. I'm a lord of Sealand, after all. I ought to support my team. (I don't know if I have the $60 to buy the jersey, though. I'm not a rich lord.) Anyway, being the anglophile that I am, I confessed to one of my classes a while ago (I can't even remember when...probably during the unit on Pride and Prejudice ) that I wanted to be a sir or a lord, and that Sealand was basically my only chance. O...

At the school where I teach, we have an annual tradition, spanning five years now, in which we have the senior class write a "Last Lecture" about their time at the school. Because I teach at a charter school that serves kids from 7th through 12th grade, some of the students who speak have spent a third of their lives in those hallways. They've accumulated a lot of experiences, taken a lot of classes, and heard me a lot, bellowing about uniform violations in those selfsame hallways. The lecture gives them a chance to reflect not only on those times, but the other tendons, fibers, and connective tissues that have built them into the young men and women they are on the cusp of becoming. This time of year is always enjoyable for me. While it can be stressful to finish all of the administrivia of being a teacher (which, I am quick to point out, is not so much as the administration has to do), this is one of my favorite times of the year. Emotionally, I've put my most imp...

Not too long ago, I wrote about my frustration with teaching World War I . I had finished my teaching of the unit, in which I spent two weeks talking about strategies, conditions, battles, causes, and consequences of the First World War. Some of the days--particularly when we talk about shell shock/PTSD and the Armenian genocide--are heavy, dark, and depressing. One of my primary purposes is to shock the students out of complacency that "World War I was bad, I guess, but it was nothing  compared to World War II, which is so much better ." That sense of comparison frustrates me, which means I take it as a personal challenge to help my students understand that it's not a matter of which was worse, but instead a recognition of the tragedy that both were. And since they know comparatively little about the First World War, I take it upon myself to drive home the point. Word Choice As I've said before , I'm not a big swearing guy. I try to be really conscientious of ...