by Fitz | Nov 17, 2013 | Essays, Journal, Teaching
Sometimes, like right now, I long for a pile of papers on my lap that I could speed through, grade with a series of checks and circles, a few scribbled lines of praise or condemnation, and drop into a shoebox on my desk and say, “Here are your essays!”
But I don’t have a desk. I have the cool classroom with a wide screen TV and a drop down screen, a seminar table and plenty of comfortable chairs, big new iMacs and even a recording studio. I haven’t used paper in years. I post my assignments, grades, flipped classroom videos and the literature we study online. I send out assignments via text, email, and online calendar. I let parents into the loop in an open and ongoing way. It is a really cool way to do things. Really… I get few complaints from kids or parents; I work pretty hard at what I do, and I get an incredible amount of support from bosses at school.
Lucky guy, me.
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by Fitz | Nov 16, 2013 | Essays, Journal
The day grew warm today, as did my mood. I did a couple of shows at my school’s diversity day. It was good to see girls there and the obvious racial differences. It was comforting to see a sea of color with a smattering of white instead of the other way around. My “workshop” centered around Irish music, but I barely touched on the Irish part of the music. Instead I had a blast talking music, shared experiences, and the bonding power of music to make sense of and make palatable the ups and downs of life. They seemed to go away happy. I certainly did, even though I dragged myself there in a curmudgeonly crawl because I was missing a precious Saturday at home.
On my way home I returned a little Fishman Loudbox to Hatrack that I borrowed for the show. He was painting a floor and getting ready for the big couch his girlfriend Laurie and Erin went out and bought. He bitched and moaned about the size of the couch and the color of the paint, but it couldn’t hide the joy I sensed in his life. Hatrack has been playing with me for years and is probably the most unaffected and giving person I know— all without sanctimony or even an awareness that he is a good guy. Life has thrown him more than few curveballs that hit him pretty hard, so I was just damn happy for his happiness today. If anyone deserves it, it is him!
Kaleigh came home a bit ago and brought her music with her. I can hear the kids inside playing and singing some Hank Williams’ “Lovesick Blues” and “I Will Wait” by the band whose name escapes me, but who seem to be loved and hated in equal degrees. Some of my purist folksinger friends think them annoying and cliche. I rather like them, especially considering the what my kids could be listening to and playing [Mumford and Sons. I just figured it out]. Now a Beatle’s song, “All My Loving.” Pretty cool. It makes me think we did something right by them.
Finally, my brother Tom and sister Eileen and their families will be here soon for a pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving, which just completes the circle of the day. I know we’ll have a blast and laugh and tell stories like we have for the fifty plus years I’ve had here on this old orb of an ecosystem. Even the moon is rising full and beckoning. My life is full of good people.
If there is someone near you, pull them closer. It works.
by Fitz | Nov 15, 2013 | Essays, Journal
I see the clock ticking towards 7:00. The kids are deep in their weekday world of homework, juggling soccer balls around the house, watching TV, but I am in my “got to rally” and get to the inn mode that happens very Thursday. Tonight I am tired. I’ll admit it, but tomorrow is Friday, and as I’ve said almost every Thursday night: “You can always get through a Friday,” and I will. I even got a rare nap in this afternoon after school. It is a bummer that I am missing Emma’s talent show performance on the ukelele singing the song (don’t know the name) she has been practicing for weeks. Time to rally the boys to help bring my sound equipment to the car…
… I’ll write later after the show. This feels so…dull…
and later…
But redemptive moments do come. Even after I got to the Inn last night, the energy was not there. The room was a disparate mix of groups intent on their conversations, not on the folksinger in front of them. I satisfied myself by singing some old songs that I knew would work in the background, and I didn’t even try to engage the crowd with any portion of my bag of tricks, stories, jokes, or cleverness. I just let it be, though I wished it were different.
Then Denise walked in with Emma and Margaret, and Emma had her new ukelele with her fresh from her talent show performance. I asked if she would come up and sing her song, and she did—and I have to say I was a proud papa, but no because of her playing or singing, but more because of how relaxed and friendly and good she was with the crowd—who of course now were all ears and hearts.
All it took was that little switch. From that point on, people listened, laughed, and another night at the inn went by, and I came home happy, refreshed, and thankful. Maroghini even came down and sang the best version of “Redemption” I have ever heard.
by Fitz | Nov 13, 2013 | Essays, Journal, Teaching
As a teacher, I am tired of the word blog, probably because the word “blogging” is incredibly limiting and myopic, especially for someone whose teaching is centered around an online curriculum with blogs front and center on my academic table. I sat through a department meeting this afternoon where we discussed (or rather didn’t discuss) what is the best platform to use for blogging in our classrooms. The neither here nor there of the discussion drifted, as it often does, towards the “concept” of blogging as a pedagogical tool and whether or not there was any compelling reason to blog—as if blogging is a unique and singular form of writing, some lesser cousin to real and polished prose. And that is the great lie and misconception because blogging in the classroom is what you ask it to be and, just as important, what you let it be. If senseless babble is what you want and what you allow, then senseless babble might be what you get, but I doubt it. Ten years of blogging in my English classes is proof enough that ownership and pride trumps all because most kids simply want to have a good blog that other kids want to visit, read, and comment upon. Blogging is about connection and community—not defiance and inanity. What artist, what writer, what person is not energized by the notion of a community—however big/small/wide/narrow you define community? Our DNA is one big chunk of mysterious code that seeks to connect in real and meaningful ways with real and meaningful people. A collective community of writers is greater than the sum of its parts—and a blogging community is just that: a community, not a lone wolf howling in a desert landscape and surely not a rampaging anarchist upending sound curriculums and thriving educational ecosystems.
I know it is offensive when I wonder why as teachers we ask a student to bust his or her ass on a project, paper, or assignment that lives and dies like a Mayfly in a day; a hard-wrought work that we judge, grade, and praise or condemn and return as almost a shared secret between collaborators. I get why we do this. This was once a practical and sustainable model for a teacher and a student—and it is not that difficult to make the case that it still is, but in the best cases, it was a mentor and the mentored striving for perfection together—the master and apprentice plying and learning the same trade; however, in the worst cases there was no mentoring and no master, and in the average case it was (and often still is) somewhat legible—but often not—indictments, corrections, and critiques scribbled in blue books and between double spaced passages, but no real lasting passion or response on either side of the aisle. When so much is wrong there is little room for praise—not praise for the sake of praise but praise as recognition of an honest day’s work. Honest praise, healthy criticism, and good role models are in the marrow of any outstanding kid and student. And this is what a connected community of writers provides to each other. Not one voice speaking to one voice, but many voices, each offering a singular harmony to the whole; moreover, you, as the teacher, command the symphony. This is what you set up. These are the students you guide, and this is the orchestra you conduct. It can honestly be your finest hour.
If you let it.
One hundred and fifty years ago Thoreau wrote, “Old ways for the old, and new ways for the new.” Though I am sure he would be aghast at most of what the internet hawks and how it barters away precious time, I am also sure he would sense the opportunity at hand to be so close at hand to the best the world has to offer. Like an imperfect tool in the hands of a true craftsman, we can shape the web any way we want or need because it is, as the the old saw goes, “…a poor craftsman who blames his tools.” As teachers, we need to retool ourselves and remake our classrooms as shops and teach in new ways because there are new ways that are better than the old ways.
There. It’s been said. There are new ways that are better than the old ways.
I hear hemming and hawing and screeching because the old ways still work, and I know they work—and some of you (us) have spent decades perfecting better modes and methods in the classroom and no freaking iPad, chrome book, malcontent, or chiming phone is going to change what you know and feel and believe is best for your students.You won’t change because you really do give a damn about the kids—not because you are a lazy, ill-informed pedantic, paper-pushing artifact as the tech savvy might have people believe. But if this is you; if you are the one with a visceral reaction that has you girding your heels in the sands of change, open the door just a little and let some change into your life. As much as we might despise the messenger, change is coming, and that change is really not as radical as you believe. It is, in fact, mostly common sense and a wise use of time, resources, and sound educational psychology. As teachers we need to relearn and rethink our approach or we risk irrelevancy in the classroom and, worse, in the minds of our students who are, after all, the ones entering into this brave, new and screwed up world that we have left for them.
I have a friend over at MIT who has spent the better part of his professional life developing a radar that sees beyond the horizon. Would we had this same radar for what is emerging over the horizon in education! Imagine the fads and trends and standards we could have avoided. That little blip—that first blog—on the screen ten years ago now looms with a larger permanence, resilience and relevance that any of us foresaw happening. But even blogs—my precious blogs—are only one component of what is now possible. With a bit of guidance, direction, and support, those same kids with a funky little blog can now have a funky and incredible website, one which includes an embedded blog—but much, much more, too. This “site” can showcase an entire portfolio of the possibilities of writing and multi-media: essays, stories, journaling, research papers, podcasts, videos, poetry, reviews, travelogues, presentations, slideshows, polls, interviews, editorials—really “anything” that can be presented in digitized form is possible—and it is equally possible to share what you want to share, and not share what you do not want to share. This site is the beginning of each student’s unique and empowering digital footprint that they leave on and for this world. Who of us doesn’t sift through the shoebox full of old family pictures? Who doesn’t like to find that tattered letter from an old friend or lover? And who doesn’t put that box away carefully and almost tenderly, cognizant as we are of its special and eternal value.
Why deny any student the opportunity to collect their life and their works in a way that they can keep, and share, and curate—and remember? Why not encourage it?
To me, it’s that simple.
by Fitz | Nov 11, 2013 | Essays, Journal
There are thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one striking at the root.
~Henry David Thoreau
I just spent a long day deconstructing our backyard. EJ sold his alpacas, and so our fenced in pasture and barn can now return to its suburban origins as a shed and a yard. The good fence posts and wire we saved to give to another kid’s dreams or another man or woman’s backyard farm. Some friends stopped by and said I could probably get “good money” for those posts and wire, but I gather I’d get a better bargain giving them away and practice a poor man’s philanthropy. Maybe someone will etch my name in a cedar fencepost like they might a school lobby or a hospital wing, and someday those posts will get thrown in some early spring fire and a warm soul might think, “Who the hell is John Fitz?” and maybe someone will remember the backyard farmer in Maynard who gave away a few fence posts and a couple hundred feet of livestock fencing.
I guess you go to give what you got and not make a big deal of it. The other day I drove up to New Hampshire to move our old bus out of the camp. I didn’t quite trust it to make the 100 mile trip back home, so I planned to store it at a campground up the road and deal with it in the spring. I wasn’t eager though to pay the three hundred dollar storage fee. As I pulled out of the tote road and on to the main road, a local logger, Pat Hines, stopped and asked me what was up. After I told him, he barely hesitated and said, “Hell, don’t pay three hundred. Park it at my place and spend the three hundred a better way.” So I eased the 1978 Wanderlodge into his side yard about thirty seconds down the road. He smiled and said, “Looks good to me. See you in the spring.”
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Sometimes, like right now, I long for a pile of papers on my lap that I could speed through, grade with a series of checks and circles, a few scribbled lines of praise or condemnation, and drop into a shoebox on my desk and say, “Here are your essays!”
