Report Cards...

Perhaps you don't realize it, but we teachers are also subject to grueling deadlines, never more so than when report cards loom over us. It takes HOURS to compose articulate snippets that convey the essence of a student, and sometimes we wonder how much time and thought you all put into reading and processing them. Do you focus more on the actual letter grade and ignore our description? What about your parents? Would you prefer to receive just a letter grade? How would you feel about just receiving a narrative without the grade? What are your thoughts on this entire process of grading and evaluating?

It's a Big World Out There

Whether or not you agree with American soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq and all the other places they go, the very fact they go in support of American ideals is a beautiful thing--because what our country represents is indeed beautiful. I have no qualms about saying the United States is among the most noble of countries, if not the most noble.

And think about those soldiers who willingly leave behind their families, their homes, their comfort in the name of freedom. How hard it must be to sustain faith at such a distance.

So take a moment and click on the link below and say a little thank you!

http://www.letssaythanks.com/Home1024.html

Smellin' the Petrichor

Now that we've had our first real rain of the year, we can all breathe in the glory of the petrichor. For those of you unfortunate enough not to know the meaning of this truly remarkable word, allow me to enlighten you. Petrichor is the smell of the earth after it rains. How cool is that! If there's one thing your English teacher likes, it's a super specific word.

What are the most delectably specific words you adore?

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Gastronomical Musings on Food and Font

http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/26/back-to-the-land/?8dpc

So I saw this photo essay in the New York Times this day after Thanksgiving morn, having just recovered from my 6 hours preparing a feast for my mister and Henny, and it struck me in several ways.

First, despite my yearning for French fries and the autonomic response I have to dessert and various fast foods, I do believe Michael Pollan's creed: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly produce. In one of his books he also says to be wary of foods with more than five ingredients... Something I always weigh internally as my eager little fingers grasp Ben and Jerry's Coffee Heath Bar Crunch ice cream.

I also love the simplicity of the imagery and the way the font--both upper and lower case--complement the essay. Think about it. Remove the photos and you've just got a discussion on how we all eat. Make the font all Times New Roman and standardize the spacing, and you've made it even more generic. Still well written and informative, but not alive.

While in some instances a picture is worth a thousand words, here, it is the combination that elevates both into a higher realm.

I know most of you have little control over the comestibles placed in front of you, but how much do you think about the food you consume--how it's prepared, how the animals who make up that food live (or lived...), how it arrives at your table (and I'm not just talking about the trip from supermarket to home here!)

http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/26/back-to-the-land/?8dpc

(Mis) Adventures in Samsonland

I'm traipsing around the block with Lucy and Woodster and Memphis when I actually see the weird old woman who lives at the end of the block. She left town for some four months at the beginning of summer, leaving behind one bag of cat food and a vague request to one of her neighbors to feed her cat. Before that, we would only see her spying on people in the neighborhood from the safety of her car. Literally. For hours, she would sit in the car, the dashboard lights on, watching people. Weird, yes?

So anyway, my motley crew and I are making our way around the block when I see her. She's trimming some vines (why, I wonder? why those vines, considering her entire yard is a combination of dry dirt and overgrown foliage and piles of odd things) and leaving them in a messy heap in the middle of the sidewalk (where they remain, withering and prickly, several days later).

Hi, I say.

Hello, she responds. Followed by, Did you put two cats in my yard while I was gone this summer? When I left there was only one cat, but now there are three. I want to know who put them there.

I explain that while I was one of the many people who fed her cat (did she acknowledge this? say thank you? even nod her head the slightest bit? that would be a big fat no), neither I nor any of the other people who tended to her cat deposited the newcomers in her yard. Most likely they entered of their own volition, being homeless and in need of a safe place and regular food, I offer as explanation.

Well, I don't want them there. They need to go.

I offer to trap them for her to have them spayed/neutered, but tell her they must be returned to her property as that is the policy of the organization that helps with this.

No--trap them and take them to the pound.

I explain that they will be killed at the pound because they are feral.

Some back and forth--until she finally agrees that since she doesn't want to trap them and this is what I am willing to do for her, they can return.

As I prepare to depart, she says she wants a German shepherd.

To mask my shock at the inappropriateness of this (how can a woman in her seventies handle a dog that size? what about the feral cats in her backyard? what a miserable life that dog would have!), I simply say that's a big dog and take off.

I just don't get it! How can people be so out of touch! And on SO many levels! First--accusing me of dumping cats in her yard when I, along with so many of her neighbors fed her cat out of our pockets for months! And this was not convenient, either! Never saying thank you! Leaving her yard dumpings in the middle of the sidewalk! Announcing her desire for a large, rambunctious dog that would need major training and exercise! And let's not forget the spying from the front seat of her car...

What do you DO with people like that?

Truman Capote once said, “Writing stopped being fun when I discovered the difference between good writing and bad and, even more terrifying, the difference between it and true art.”

Each year I hear students say something to the effect that, because they don’t receive that coveted A on an English paper, they are not good writers. Each year concerned parents wonder if their children lack what it takes to write quality papers, and, in large part, they ask because they witness the often excruciating struggle between their children and the topic at hand. Sometimes they read their children’s papers and are struck by the plethora of awkward sentences. Perhaps they think, because it all comes at such a price, that something is wrong--that some skill can be taught to ease the ordeal.

While yes, some students possess innate fluency, most labor. Even those students for whom writing is not a chore find themselves deliberating over words, debating how to structure the sentence, confronting doubt at many turns. The best of them don’t just throw words on the page; they slug out a phrase or two, look to see how it flows from the preceding thought, return back to an earlier passage--the revision is incessant. Quality writing rarely springs forth untrammeled.

As I trawled through the dictionary of quotations, seeking out pithy axioms to better express these thoughts, the most frequent metaphor for this situation was that of giving birth--hardly an endeavor characterized by confidence or ease.

Even this, which is no more than a mere half page single spaced, was a distinctly less than pleasant experience. In order to adequately express these thoughts--and do note the word adequate because even yet my dissatisfaction with the end result suffuses each touch of fingertip to key, and were it not for the pile of papers bearing down on me, I might still rewrite--I found it necessary to delay the entry for several weeks, bake a coffee cake in between the first and second paragraph, jump around the entire passage multiple times, ensconce my cold feet in fresh warm socks, check my email and rebraid my hair.

And now, because it is ever so much more appealing to end with someone else’s words than my own, I shall quote a writer whose magnum opus I’ve never been able to read: “Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives” (James Joyce).

How do you feel about writing?

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