"For God's sake, where is God?" (Wiesel 65)

When a young boy is hanged in front of hundreds of camp prisoners in Bena, someone mutters "For God's sake, where is God?" (65) and one has to ask themselves the same question when spending more than a single moment reflecting on that dark period of history in the 20th Century.

Elie Wiesel's Night depicts only a single experience of the Holocaust out of six million souls whose suffering is, to this day, unimaginable.  A young boy who experienced such loss notes, at the beginning of his journey was told that, "Man comes closer to God through the questions he asks Him....Man asks and God replies.  But we don't understand His replies.  We cannot understand them.  Because they dwell in the depths of our souls and remain there until we dies.  The real answers... you will find only within yourself."(5)

After reading the story of Eliezer, one can only wonder what those answers will be for each of us.  What answers will adequately address the horrors of so many people, those who lived through them, those who did not live and those who allowed this great tragedy to occur.

While sitting in class for only a single day, watching a fraction of the injustices that these people suffered through, it was interesting to see how easily history could repeat itself.  One might say "Well, the teacher TOLD us to separate ourselves.  She TOLD us to segregate according to some random qualifications.  She TOLD us to take work that wasn't ours and claim it for our own.  Our grades were on the line.  What choice did we have?"

Might those be the same kinds of justifications the Germans and Poles and Italians, and French made about their situations as they watched an entire collection of people stripped of their belongings, their homes, their families, and their lives?

Write a response to this blog, integrating quote support from the book, and address your reflections on the class this past Friday.  Relate, directly, how you think the Holocaust was able to exist and how it could happen again in spite of everything we know about the past and its history.  Explore the Essential Question at the top of this blog, keeping in mind that every one of us has their own interpretation of who and what God or a Higher Power is in our lives.  Be sure to keep your response courteous and mindful of others' belief systems while you honor your own take on things.

A Separate Peace

“Peace had deserted Devon”(72).

Gone was the pink shirt, the twinkling eyes of mischief, the unregulated flow of fun

Just like the “flow of simple, unregulated friendliness between [people], and such flows were one of Finny’s reasons for living”(22).

“I was not the same quality as he”(59).

Finny knew how to live in the moment, like watching water flow down a mountain

after a spring thaw, full of life and vitality, untamed, unavoidable, unstoppable. 

Finny would never lie about his height, his poor grades or his circumstances,

Until he had to, until he couldn’t bear to think of anything, the war or otherwise, 

continuing on without him.

“I was not the same quality as he”(59).

Finny would never accuse another, a friend, a roommate, of offending or hurting

Because he didn’t understand that kind of rivalry, that kind of ignorance 

in the human heart that only he seemed to escape.

“He probably thought anything you were good at came without effort.  

He didn’t know yet that he was unique”(58), unique at loving without envy.

“I was not the same quality as he”(59).

It was silly for me to ask for his forgiveness, for it had already been given, 

the err had already been erased, that darkness which exists inside of us,

“Phineas alone had escaped this. 

He possessed an extra vigor, a heightened confidence in himself, 

a serene capacity for affection which saved him”(203)

“I was not the same quality as he”(59).

I knew then, at his funeral, what I had known all along,

Next to his side at the Headmaster’s tea

As we tackled him in Blitzball, a ridiculous game of his own design,

And standing there, first at the base of the limb

Then again at the top of those terrible, hard, marble stairs.

That “I was not the same quality as he”(59).

When Gene says “I did not cry then or ever about Finny….I could not escape a feeling that this was my own funeral, and you do not cry in that case”(194), is it because he knows he is responsible for the death of his best friend? Or was it simply a "burst of animosity, lasting only a second...something which came before I could recognize it and was gone before I knew it had possessed me"(188), a mere accident that ended in an unfortunate death? Post below with your reflections.

Shift "U"

So the other day at school, I was typing an email.  To whom, I couldn't tell you, but I can tell you what stopped me in my tracks.  I went to type a response and start a sentence with "You." But I didn't type "you." I shifted and typed "U." Yes, I actually shifted, as to be grammatically correct when starting a sentence with a capital letter...except, the letter I started with was a "u" not a "y" and my blood froze.  Good God! I was going to start my sentence with the commonly used shorthand that we all have come to use in our abbreviated text language!

It occurred to me that, if I, a well-versed, dual-degreed individual, who is extremely fluent in the written word, slipped into text writing, then what chance do our students have of really mastering the English language, with all its syntactical issues and exceptions-to-every-rule grammatical structure?!

I can tell you one thing for sure.  This mis-type was BAD news for my English students.  I rose from my desk and walked around, with only one goal in my mind: they would write, more than ever before.  More quick-writes, more timed writings, more essays and short answer responses.  After all, what other defense do I have, as an English teacher, to the barrage of text conversations that occur daily in these young students' lives?

Another thought occurred to me, as well.  The other known defense to poor writing is....yes, that's it, folks! READING!  And lots of it!  The more we see correct language in textual context, the higher the chance we have of incorporating it into our own writing.

But it gave way to an even more disparaging thought:  At what point are we, as a society, going to simply give up and give in to the "easier" way in which we have come to communicate with one another?  We already know that there are many standard methods used to correct misspellings and other grammar programs that check for spelling and mechanical errors.  Yet, at what point are we, as a society, going to give into the easier, softer way of "writing" if we know that so much of our communication, written or otherwise, is no longer dependent on rules?

Can you imagine The Great Gatsby or Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter written in abbreviated text?  William Shakespeare, or whoever wrote those amazing plays, would be turning over in his proverbial grave if he knew of my sacriledge!  Ah, but maybe there is an assignment in that....what if I had my students do just that?  Take a paragraph from a classic novel and put it into text format and then look at what is missing...the nuances that we would leave out if ALL of the words were written incorrectly or at half-mast.  Hmmm.  Maybe there is something to my mistake that I can find some silver lining in and use as a lesson.

What do you think? Is texting going to be the death of the beauty of our written word? Something to think about...or write about:)

Our light

1.	Yolo
	Abbreviation for: you only live once The dumba--'s excuse for something stupid that they did Also one of the most annoying abbreviations ever.... Carpe diem is a phrase from a Latin poem by Horace (see "Source" section below) that has become an aphorism. It is popularly translated as "seize the day". Carpe is the second-person singular present active imperative of the Latin verb carpō, which literally means "I pick, pluck, pluck off, cull, crop, gather, to eat food, to serve, to want", but Ovid used the word in the sense of, "enjoy, seize, use, make use of".[1] Yes, I started with the definitions of these two similar yet entirely different catch phrases for a very specific reason: they do NOT mean the same thing, nor do they imply the same outcomes, and they certainly do not carry the same connotation with them as parallel ideas. When I asked a friend of mine, in his 40's mind you, if he had heard of the expression "YOLO" he had no idea what I was talking about. It was one of the first times I saw so clearly the generational divide in language: teenagers have done a remarkable job of continuing to make up their own language to keep adults "out" of it...out of their lives, out of their going-ons and out of the loop. But we are pretty savvy, we adults, and though we are slow learners sometimes, we are figuring out the importance of paying attention to the next generation. As Ben Zimmer notes in his article for the Boston Globe "One elder who has taken notice is David McCullough Jr., an English teacher at Wellesley High School (and son of the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian). “Now, before you dash off and get your YOLO tattoo,” he said in his caustic commencement address for the school in June, “let me point out the illogic of that trendy little expression—because you can and should live not merely once, but every day of your life. Rather than You Only Live Once, it should be You Live Only Once...but because YOLO doesn’t have the same ring, we shrug and decide it doesn’t matter.” An important distinction worth making, I think, to not only teens but adults as well. In a society that seems to value the disposable, including those "disposable" acts that have consequences which are farther reaching than many of us would like admit and take accountability for, we all could benefit from understanding Horace's plea to "make use of" our lives not just "use" them. With all due respect to those wily and lost teens who know "You Only Live Once" I have to put a grand number of teenagers "on blast" (to use another one of their expressions) and call Mr. McCullough Jr's bluff. These teenagers I am speaking of have NO intention of running off to get any kind of tattoo or body piercings, or if they do, it is inconsequential compared to what else they are "dashing" off to accomplish. These teenagers I am speaking of are the thousands of young people who are dedicated to changing their lives through an extended formal education, namely college, and are the formative part of the next generation. And I have proof of this, living proof. Just check out Bookmarked: Teen Essays on Life and Literature, from Tolkien to Twilight. You can see for yourself:)

Monday, November 12, 2012

Our light

When a woman suffrage speaker noted that "Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility. Nothing adds such dignity to character as the recognition of one's self-sovereignty; the right to an equal place, every where conceded; a place earned by personal merit, not an artificial attainment, by inheritance, wealth, family, and position. Seeing, then that the responsibilities of life rests equally on man and woman, that their destiny is the same," she changed the world as we would know it, forever.

On this birthday of the beloved Elizabeth Cady Stanton, I think to myself "Wow, what kind of woman must she have been and what kind of dedication to her work must she have had to make such an impact on society? What did her life consist of in order to have dozens of books written just about her and her life's endeavors? Well, the answer on the surface is quite obvious: She was one of the handful of women who permanently changed the trajectory of women's lives in America by helping us earn the right to vote. Hmmm...I guess that kind of work is worth a few books and biographies, huh?

But then, it comes back to me, this ever-present issue that seems to be my "lesson" this lifetime around. That all-encompassing and consuming concept of Self and the seemingly innate lack of "enough" that has persisted within me throughout my youth and adulthood. When I think of women like Ms. Stanton, though I stand back in awe and gratefulness, I still can't help but shudder and think "What the heck do I have to show for my time? My life?" And I have to re-adjust and re-center, again and again so as not to feel like I have fallen short and am simply, not enough.

Marianne Williamson, a brilliant author and healer, once wrote that "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond imagination. It is our light more than our darkness that scares us....While we allow our light to shine, we unconsciously give permission for others to do the same. When we liberate ourselves from our own fears, simply our presence may liberate others." If this is a true statement, then it calls each and everyone to ask ourselves,
"What is our light? what is our individual responsibility in this lifetime?"

And so, it lends the question directly to me: What is my light to shine? After all, if I become a fully self-actualized person, connected with the Universe and my highest self, living in the moment purely, day to day, with love in my heart and all my actions, isn't that as much of a light as Ms. Stanton's contribution to woman's suffrage? Or is my light to become the very best English teacher I can be? or the very best mother to my two girls that I can muster? or the best friend, or the best lover, or the best writer, or the....

So you see...it can be a daunting question to a single human being, if we let it become that way. I allow myself to float back to the early 1900's and wonder if Ms. Stanton had any of these such thoughts, or if she was simply moved into action from a life that constrained her beyond tolerance. Perhaps she simply acted because there was no other choice for her, just like I get out of bed in the morning and get my girls ready because that's what I do, as a mother, every day. Maybe her version of being a light was leading a political movement that would change the face of our Congress as it appears today, in 2012, but she did it without knowing anything but her immediate actions. I don't know what she was thinking...I can only know what my version of my light will look like, as I do it, as I allow it to be done with the calling that is within me.

Enough to think about...at least, for now.

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Because I said so...

“Because I said so…”

That’s what my mother used to say to me.

And that was that.

Or was it?

You see, I didn’t know that expressions and idioms come in layers.

“Because I said so”

Can mean so many different things….

Because I said so

Meant “Because I am the boss of you.”

Because I said so

Started to mean “I am too tired to give you any kind of explanation.”

But then,

Because I said so

Grew to mean “Because I want you to make good choices but I am afraid you won’t,

So I will make them for you."

And after awhile, my mom stopped using that expression so much,

She seemed to put it down and then walked away from it.

It seemed so forlorn, lying there, unused.

So I picked it up for my own inner monologue

And I started saying

“Because I said so”

Not because I really meant it, but more

Because I really didn’t know what else to say

Because I said so

Started to mean

“Because I don’t have a better option”

Because I said so

Grew to mean

“Because I don’t think I am a better option.”

And so…

I started to agree to things that made me silently scream inside,

But,

Because I had said so,

I felt

Obligated

Committed

Stuck

Trapped

And Life went on for a long time like that

A long time,

Because I said so

And then, one day,

I realized, that, just because

I said so,

I could have a completely different experience.

I could say “yes” and “no” and “I will think about that for awhile” and then,

I did.

I said “yes” and “no” and “I will think about that” and so much more!

I said “I don’t think that’s right for me any longer.”

I said “I’d really like to go in this direction.”

I said “Thank you, but this is a better option for me…I am a better option for me.”

I said “This, this is the life I want.”

And then,

One day,

After saying that, aloud, enough times,

I started living the life I had imagined, had worked for and had waited so long to live.

Just because…

I said so.

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Perspective

Jodi Picoult writes "Change your point of view, and the perspective is completely different," and how right she is about that. I have seen my perspective as well as so many of my students' perspective change over the years as they have sat in my class and then gone on to the next level of education or further on down their paths.

What always amazes me is the wisdom young people carry with them, and how easily adults discount this wisdom. Not that adults are without wisdom, for certainly, we all continue to grow and learn along the way. But it is startling what we "know" as young people and then seem to "forget" as we venture out into the world.

I am so grateful I have been able to see the process through so many of their eyes. But doubt, self-doubt, can be a powerful thing. It is as if a shift, a turn in the tide, can change everything. It works both ways, I know that, but there are so many aspects of life that can make a person reel into a downward spiral. How odd that is, to experience the actual turn in the tide, but then have no idea what to do with the space in-between.

There are videos on YouTube, too many of them, addressing teen-suicide, kids who get overwhelmed with what is going on in their lives, things that seem out of their control. Sometimes, it starts with poor judgment, trusting someone with an intimate picture of themselves; sometimes, though, it is just another person's own self-doubt that makes them strike out at an innocent. This is the worst of the offenders, I think, the person who can't handle their own perspective on life and focuses on another's insecurities.

My mother always repeated a mantra that has stayed with me: "This too shall pass" and it seems like keen advice, almost an obvious truth that life holds for each and every one of us. But what do we do with the moments that are in-between the "this" and the "pass"? How are we teaching our students to learn to deal with the discomfort and pain of those in-between moments?

I, for one, was never taught that "how-to" though my mother gave me the wisdom that whatever circumstances existed would move and change as life moved on and changed. Sports gave me the discipline, I think, to just keep pushing through pain and discomfort, but no one ever had any solid lesson for dealing with the moments where life seemed unbearable.

Maybe that's why I continue to turn back to books. When I immerse myself in someone else's life, their circumstances, their pain, their story, it gives relief to my own circumstances, pain and story. I find a momentary peace and reprieve from my own life and give into someone else's story. It seems that it is just enough time to take a breath of air, that space between the "this" and the "pass" and allows me to regain some footing on my own life. It is also a gentle reminder that I am not alone in this life of choices and circumstances.

Often times, I come out of the reprieve to see that all is not as bad as I had imagined it to be....that feelings are just that: feelings. And that circumstances are apt to movement and change. Maybe this is the singular tool I have to give to my students to help them deal with the in-between moments of their own stories. I certainly hope so, for any other "solution" like drugs or alcohol, sex or shopping, can only lead into a deeper path of darkness. Books seem to be the safest solace I know of to get through that in-between time we all experience as we walk forward on this journey.

Maybe I am over-simplifying the solution, but so far, it has worked. It comes as a much better solution than any other I have found. It seems worth a try for anyone out there struggling with their own "in-between." A change in one's perspective is really the biggest difference between pain and peace, I think. Just food for thought.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Courage

An amazing person recently told me that "navigating through this life is all about the process" of figuring out how we interact with the world...to become who we really are. It reminded me of a favorite poet of mine, e.e. cummings, when he wrote "It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are."

I tell my students that being "mature" is when your outsides finally match your insides; when our situations might change, but we remain true to who we are in those situations. And that can be a difficult thing when we all play such different roles in our lives.

Carl Jung created archetypes of our personas, four different categories of who we all might fall into from time to time. Our family of origin often affects these personas, because we take on roles that are not necessarily those of choice. In my family, plagued with alcoholism, I often took on two roles: that of the hero and of the scapegoat, sometimes all within hours of each other. I either wanted to save my family from their despair and dysfunction of what the dis-ease created in our home, while at other times, I just wanted to distract my parents and sister from the chaos. Neither of those roles really served any of us. It only perpetuated the circumstances of what was going on in the family...the lack of truth in our communication with one another, the lack of authenticity in dealing with my father's drinking and acting out, and the anger and resentment that ensued from our behavior in all of this.

Today, I spend hours in my classroom and it is as if I have gotten a second chance to re-create my family of origin, only this time by choice. Today, as the adult, I get to set the atmosphere, one of compassion, structure and clear communication between authority and students. When I ask my kids "to take out a piece of paper," they do. When I ask them to work together in a collaborative setting, reading or dissecting a text, they do. When I ask them to complete a quick write and share back with their peers, they do. Why? Because I think that when a safe space is created, people become willing to participate in a manner that is true to their best and highest selves. And it's an amazing thing to watch as well as participate in and grow and learn from.

But it wasn't always this easy or even this possible. I was reminded of this when I had a new student-teacher come and observe my class today. She commented on how she'd like to set up her own class someday and the goals she had for herself and her students. She asked me how I did it. How did I set up a literature class to encompass the pacing guide while keeping true to my own goals of current events, connecting the real world to the canon of reading we were required to comb through over a semester or over the year? And thinking back on the "how" question, I know one thing for sure. I had help. I had veteran teachers open their file cabinets of lesson plans and activities and share their wisdom with me. I had colleagues in adjacent rooms who would listen patiently as I vented about student failures and misbehavior, as well as celebrate with me when a lesson was pulled off smoothly. I had friends who would let me process while I told them of an idea I was developing to approach a particular novel or play. I did not do any of my teaching in a bubble, which in and of itself, is an accomplishment. As teachers, we spend so much time alone in our classroom, and we must remember the essential quality we stress so much in teaching. Learning is a collaborative process. Learning to become who we are is a collaborative process. It cannot be done alone, at least not successfully.

And today, after sharing some of my newly-learned strategies with other teachers, I am also reminded of another essential quality that must exist in the learning process: humility. We must admit what we don't know in order to learn what we want to know. We must have the courage to stretch ourselves out of our comfort zone and be a grown up, imperfectly, even if that means being ourselves in an uncomfortable new setting or situation. I am grateful that my profession mirrors my personal path with such an authentic parallel. I get to "grow up" in the classroom all the while I am growing up outside of my classroom, to become the person I am today.

Monday, September 10, 2012

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” -Andre Gide

That's a seemingly easy request until one is asked to do it. Then, it might be possible that for some of us, it's just too much. Too much to stretch ourselves out of the familiar comfort zone of what we know, because after all, knowing something often seems at least better than the unknown.

I ask my students to stretch themselves daily, but in smallish increments. Then, it almost doesn't seem like the work is being done, when in fact, it is.

Summer reading tests are always a concern for Honors students, and this week, objective tests and essay tests take up the bulk of the week. Those who "read" the book, and I put the word "read" in quotes because sitting down and perusing through a book with the help of Spark Notes or the No Fear version isn't always the ideal manner in which to approach a book. After all, the intent of any author, I think, is to view their words, each and every one, from a new perspective of the individual reader.

But in light of knowing this, as an AVID teacher as well as an Honors Literature teacher, I have come across an interesting and sad fact: most of our kids do not know how to read. Really read. Read with a clear and fresh mind; read with the skills necessary to break down a text and critically analyze the language, tone and intent of the author's work. It has come to my attention that I need to do more than teach literature; I also need to teach students how to read literature.

I am about to embark on a new journey with this, and have to be honest. I have some real misgivings about my ability to teach reading. After all, this is not where my true training lies...not that most of us were really taught how to teach anything. We all spent time in a classroom, during our student-teaching internships, watching and following the lead of our master teachers, but few of us had any kind of step-by-step breakdown of how to tackle a text or novel, how to show students how to set up an expository outline and essay, and certainly, if we were weak students, how to call on our own prior knowledge of how we did all of these things successfully enough to get a college degree in our field of choice.

The AVID Summer Institute has provided me with master teachers who have been willing to share their experiences and skills to forge a path for many of us with this difficult endeavor. Jonathan LeMaster, of LiteracyTA.com and an AVID teacher at El Cahon High School down in San Diego, has been one such guide for me. He has taken the painstakingly arduous and slow task of mapping out a way to tackle this kind of critical reading all of our students would benefit from and I highly recommend investigating his methods. More importantly, for those of you who are facing yet another change in curriculum standards with the onset of the Common Core Standards, I can tell you this: the unknown is a scary place, but exciting as well. When you become willing to fail, willing to try something new in your class to help your students better grasp any text in front of them, willing to stretch yourself as you ask your students to do daily, you will begin to feel yourself soar. If you are willing to let go of the shoreline of following a pacing guide and stretch out a bit, using new techniques and exploring new ways of bringing literacy into your students' lives, you will be one of those who discovers a new ocean of knowledge.

It's a challenge. Yes. But well worth the sojourn and with incredible views!

 

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Which face?

This week, my attention turns to the junior summer reading assignment, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, a beautifully complex story about the transparent lines between love and hate. Its multiple layers of plot development entwine themes of romantic love as well as self-love and heed an important warning. Hawthorne tells his readers that "No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true." What in the world does that mean? my kids are surely asking themselves.

In their writing prompt, my students were asked to choose a character defect or attribute that they found to be a dominant trait in their own character development. Though I suggested they choose a defect, some preferred to focus on an attribute, and it will be interesting to see what they discover about the process of unveiling it to the class after the "interviews." I say interview, because they were then asked to bring this prevailing trait to those both close to them as well to as distant acquaintances and ask "What do you think about this defect or attribute as it relates to my character and my life?"

We are multi-layered creatures, all of us, aren't we? So, for Hawthorne to pose this presupposition, is well, a double-edged sword, really, because how could we not show a multitude of faces as we move through our days in this ever-changing and multi-layered world?

So what am I looking for in their writing responses, as I ask them to tell me which "face" they show to the world? What would be the correct answer here? Are they going to come back to me, to their writing, and concur that their singular focus on the chosen defect or attribute is indeed the face they show the world? Or is the face a more general picture of one's spirit? Perhaps they see the complexity in the prompt because of its deceptive nature...that almost no one can bare themselves in the real world completely.

I can remember, in 8th grade, when my best friend and I were falling in love with discovering the "deeper meaning" of life and thinking we had really hit upon something when we found this statement: "Your eyes are the windows to your soul." As if that explained everything! I smile, now, thinking about how naive we were and what a tremendous impact those words had on us, the discovery that people on the outside could peer into the inner-workings of another from their face, specifically, into and through their eyes. But maybe, just maybe, we were wiser than I thought.

For it just might be that a deeper insight is what pulled me into those words, the key or magic spell that pulls us into any hidden doorway to another's soul. It's their vulnerability. It is the chance to connect and to see another for who they really are, the beauty and the ugly. It is a chance to confirm our own defects and attributes and know we are not alone in this process of being human. With all due respect to the great American writer, I think Hawthorne might have been more accurate if he had written "No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself without sharing it with another to bare witness to his whole self." That, that right there, might have saved the minister...and Hester...and perhaps, is a way for us to be saved as well.