Who Cares?
Whenever a student reminds me that I haven't posted a blog in a long time, as Laura has done repeatedly over the past couple weeks, I feel ambivalent. Part of me wants to fall helplessly before the student, tears streaming from my eyes, and beg forgiveness: "I know I should be setting a better example! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" Another part of me wants to sneer, "Don't you have something better to do than check up on me?" The former is a product of the genuine guilt I feel at not making this writing a priority. The latter is a defensive reaction brought on by said guilt. But deep down, I actually feel flattered. I'm flattered that someone not only looks at my writing but also that s/he cares enough to ask for more. And that brings me to the question of the day: Who cares?
For me, writing is often an opportunity to express frustration in a productive way. (It's more productive to reflect on how a problem student, for example, might be helped rather than beat him to death with my shoe.) I often express the little frustrations in a teacher's life in this blog, and I sometimes find that the things about "honors" students that frustrate me are subtleties not found in the average, run-o'-the-mill kid: Who but an honors student would write an essay-length response to a discussion board question about the superiority of cheese and crackers? Who but an honors student would keep checking back on that blog to see if the old man has posted any new nuggets of wisdom? Who but an honors student would care?
One of my most successful honors students, about whom I had the honor of writing a blog at the end of last year, was someone who quietly went about her business without making too much fuss...but I could tell she cared. I see that quality in many of you as well. You care about doing your best, even if the assignment doesn't really call for it. You care about things outside yourselves. You want things to be as they should be, and you will accept the challenge to make them so. You care! Ironically, this is not only the reason I keep teaching the class, but also the reason you often drive me crazy! Because you care, I have to care too! It keeps me on my toes reading all the blogs and discussion boards. I try to make the class at once challenging and supportive. If you need help I want it to be there, but I don't want it done for you. I want you to struggle with Dickens but still understand him. It's a fine balance, and I am finding that the tightrope walk is keeping me from writing as much as I'd like to.
After all this hullaballoo about caring, you're probably wondering how I got on this topic. It's simple. Something occurred to me recently that bugged me. This thought, as though etched in flame across the ceiling of my mind, has been haunting me for the past few days: Do you know how many people in the world DON'T care? I'm not just talking about my students, many of whom will proudly announce that that they don't care one bit about keeping their classroom journals up to date or learning to love (or at least tolerate) "classic" literature. I'm talking about people in general. Adults especially! They're busy folks, and they don't think they have time to care about whether or not they eat dinner with their families or read to their kids at bedtime. We live in a culture that keeps us hopping so fast that we often don't care about the people and things that should be closest to us, but we're so occupied by technology and caught up in the sway of pop culture that we don't have to face our own lack of concern. In other words, we don't care that we don't care. It's tragic...but who cares, right?
Before this descends into opaque philosophy, I guess I should tell you some of the things I care about that have been preventing me from blogging as often as I would like. First, there's this persuasive paper I've assigned my students to write. As I type these words, I am looking at a stack of about 175 of them that are waiting to be graded. It's a prodigious pile! And there it sits, staring back at me unread, unscored...and with midterm right around the corner! Because I really want my students to be good persuasive writers (or, worst case scenario, at least be able to recognize the pattern of the essay that they will have to write for both the direct writing assessment in two weeks and for the state high school graduation test next fall), I have tried to make the process as see-through and accessible as possible. Each step was specific. All the information is available on the web site. That took some time, too. While many people believe that teachers just keep reusing the same material every year and they never have to come up with anything new, it's actually not that simple. While I do reuse some of the materials, I never actually teach anything the same way twice. Every year I try to improve the process in some way, make it a little clearer than it was before. And every year the students are different, the culture is changed, the examples that worked last year no longer apply. To keep it "real," I have to keep updating...and then, as previously noted, when the projects are done I have to score them.
This brings me to another time consuming aspect of teaching: grading. Of course it is important to carefully grade the term projects, but I also spend hours scoring little things that most teachers would probably just stamp and return--things like the weekly vocabulary sentences that I have recently been assigning my students to write and the character values grid I made them fill in on a novel we just finished. I figure that if the students have taken the time to write something, even if it is just a bunch of vaguely related sentences, I owe it to them to give them a realistic response to their work. If they aren't taking it seriously enough, I need to tell them that. If they miss the point, I need to tell them what it is. And if they have made a special effort to entertain me, I should enjoy it. (Sometimes I even read the classroom journals when I score them even though I tell the students that I don't. It's like a sickness; I can't resist.) While I sometimes fall back on the old "checkmark for completion," I usually try to read and evaluate at least some of every assignment. It occured to me recently that I don't read as many books as I'd like to, but I still do plenty of reading: blogs, discussion boards, assignments, e-mails, web pages, tests, and a professional magazine now and then. All this reading takes me away from the writing I once did so often in this blog.
When I go too long without writing, I get antsy. Things lose their clarity. The world doesn't seem to make quite as much sense. Also, long stretches of time without some significant written outlet makes it that much harder to get back into the habit. What do I say? Where do I begin? Does anyone really care? Wouldn't it be easier to just watch TV and make the time pass painlessly? Do I really have to think about everything so much? That's why I make the honors class write 500 words a week: it's healthy and educational, and you need to practice often. As William Zinser said, "We learn to write by writing." And this, friends and neighbors, is the link between the two disparate ideas that I've been circling as I stretch these cold and long-unused writing muscles: to write well is to care.
To write well is to care. When I read the persuasive papers and the blogs, it's not hard to tell who cares. And I'm not just talking about looking to see who has bothered to spell-check (although that is one indication). A person who cares writes with a genuine voice about things that matter to him/her. It's more than preaching or mindless repetition of other people's ideas. It's a kind of reaching out to all the possible readers. It's a risk. I admire those who care enough to take that risk, and I know that those who practice often will become more competent and more confident writers.
To those who care enough to read this and those who care enough to take the risk themselves:
thank you! It's good to be back! I look forward to seeing what you have to say this week in your own blogs, and I'll make it a point to get back to this one more often than I have been lately.
For me, writing is often an opportunity to express frustration in a productive way. (It's more productive to reflect on how a problem student, for example, might be helped rather than beat him to death with my shoe.) I often express the little frustrations in a teacher's life in this blog, and I sometimes find that the things about "honors" students that frustrate me are subtleties not found in the average, run-o'-the-mill kid: Who but an honors student would write an essay-length response to a discussion board question about the superiority of cheese and crackers? Who but an honors student would keep checking back on that blog to see if the old man has posted any new nuggets of wisdom? Who but an honors student would care?
One of my most successful honors students, about whom I had the honor of writing a blog at the end of last year, was someone who quietly went about her business without making too much fuss...but I could tell she cared. I see that quality in many of you as well. You care about doing your best, even if the assignment doesn't really call for it. You care about things outside yourselves. You want things to be as they should be, and you will accept the challenge to make them so. You care! Ironically, this is not only the reason I keep teaching the class, but also the reason you often drive me crazy! Because you care, I have to care too! It keeps me on my toes reading all the blogs and discussion boards. I try to make the class at once challenging and supportive. If you need help I want it to be there, but I don't want it done for you. I want you to struggle with Dickens but still understand him. It's a fine balance, and I am finding that the tightrope walk is keeping me from writing as much as I'd like to.
After all this hullaballoo about caring, you're probably wondering how I got on this topic. It's simple. Something occurred to me recently that bugged me. This thought, as though etched in flame across the ceiling of my mind, has been haunting me for the past few days: Do you know how many people in the world DON'T care? I'm not just talking about my students, many of whom will proudly announce that that they don't care one bit about keeping their classroom journals up to date or learning to love (or at least tolerate) "classic" literature. I'm talking about people in general. Adults especially! They're busy folks, and they don't think they have time to care about whether or not they eat dinner with their families or read to their kids at bedtime. We live in a culture that keeps us hopping so fast that we often don't care about the people and things that should be closest to us, but we're so occupied by technology and caught up in the sway of pop culture that we don't have to face our own lack of concern. In other words, we don't care that we don't care. It's tragic...but who cares, right?
Before this descends into opaque philosophy, I guess I should tell you some of the things I care about that have been preventing me from blogging as often as I would like. First, there's this persuasive paper I've assigned my students to write. As I type these words, I am looking at a stack of about 175 of them that are waiting to be graded. It's a prodigious pile! And there it sits, staring back at me unread, unscored...and with midterm right around the corner! Because I really want my students to be good persuasive writers (or, worst case scenario, at least be able to recognize the pattern of the essay that they will have to write for both the direct writing assessment in two weeks and for the state high school graduation test next fall), I have tried to make the process as see-through and accessible as possible. Each step was specific. All the information is available on the web site. That took some time, too. While many people believe that teachers just keep reusing the same material every year and they never have to come up with anything new, it's actually not that simple. While I do reuse some of the materials, I never actually teach anything the same way twice. Every year I try to improve the process in some way, make it a little clearer than it was before. And every year the students are different, the culture is changed, the examples that worked last year no longer apply. To keep it "real," I have to keep updating...and then, as previously noted, when the projects are done I have to score them.
This brings me to another time consuming aspect of teaching: grading. Of course it is important to carefully grade the term projects, but I also spend hours scoring little things that most teachers would probably just stamp and return--things like the weekly vocabulary sentences that I have recently been assigning my students to write and the character values grid I made them fill in on a novel we just finished. I figure that if the students have taken the time to write something, even if it is just a bunch of vaguely related sentences, I owe it to them to give them a realistic response to their work. If they aren't taking it seriously enough, I need to tell them that. If they miss the point, I need to tell them what it is. And if they have made a special effort to entertain me, I should enjoy it. (Sometimes I even read the classroom journals when I score them even though I tell the students that I don't. It's like a sickness; I can't resist.) While I sometimes fall back on the old "checkmark for completion," I usually try to read and evaluate at least some of every assignment. It occured to me recently that I don't read as many books as I'd like to, but I still do plenty of reading: blogs, discussion boards, assignments, e-mails, web pages, tests, and a professional magazine now and then. All this reading takes me away from the writing I once did so often in this blog.
When I go too long without writing, I get antsy. Things lose their clarity. The world doesn't seem to make quite as much sense. Also, long stretches of time without some significant written outlet makes it that much harder to get back into the habit. What do I say? Where do I begin? Does anyone really care? Wouldn't it be easier to just watch TV and make the time pass painlessly? Do I really have to think about everything so much? That's why I make the honors class write 500 words a week: it's healthy and educational, and you need to practice often. As William Zinser said, "We learn to write by writing." And this, friends and neighbors, is the link between the two disparate ideas that I've been circling as I stretch these cold and long-unused writing muscles: to write well is to care.
To write well is to care. When I read the persuasive papers and the blogs, it's not hard to tell who cares. And I'm not just talking about looking to see who has bothered to spell-check (although that is one indication). A person who cares writes with a genuine voice about things that matter to him/her. It's more than preaching or mindless repetition of other people's ideas. It's a kind of reaching out to all the possible readers. It's a risk. I admire those who care enough to take that risk, and I know that those who practice often will become more competent and more confident writers.
To those who care enough to read this and those who care enough to take the risk themselves:
thank you! It's good to be back! I look forward to seeing what you have to say this week in your own blogs, and I'll make it a point to get back to this one more often than I have been lately.
posted by MRT at 11:53 AM
4 Comments:
Though I'm not writing in my blog as consistently as I once thought I would, I still try to read up on everyone else's. (Though for the last little while it's been more of nosing around to see if anyone has written anything. But I shouldn't really be talking . . . *shakes disapproving finger towards downcast head*) However, I would like to say more, more, more! I like reading your blog. It's different than what students write, both in writing maturity (obviously) and perspective, and it gives me something to aim for in my own writing. (This being strong vocabulary, the will to write and let that will be known, and at least a semblance of looking like I know what grammar is.) Though I doubt you need any much encouragement to get you to writing, unlike me lately. I've been finding it easier to beat my problems bloody with a hefty book I seem to always have on hand instead of taking the time to thoroughly think my grief's through.
And it is scary to think of the millions of people around the world who truly don't care. It makes me want to know what happened (or didn't happen) in their lives to give them such a lack of interest in anything not immediately to their enjoyment and satisfaction. What gives?
I care. I can relate when you say that sometimes life gets busy, homework piles up (especially at the end of the term) extra-curricular obligations must be attended, earning a little money here and there, trying to have a social life despite the other million things on your to-do list, it really builds up and makes you stressed.
For a whole month I didn't read anything (fyi, it was the charles dickens month, I couldn't stand to read great expectations and felt obligated to read it first before reading something else, so I chose not to read at all) I got lazy, tired, felt that my life was slowing down and my vision getting hazy. I finally realized that it was because I hadn't been reading. I forced myself to finish the book, and then read a book of my choice. The foggy way of life is clearing up now!
With writing it's the same, although writing the blogs gets tough sometimes (like when a topic to write about seems to elude our grasp) I enjoy writing in my blog.
As a final thought, I agree with Sequoia. Your blogs are really good Thompson, so keep up as much as you can!
Well, I am far from perfect with writing consistently, but as of late, I have really become to enjoy reading. (Over spring break I finished two of the books I needed to read for this class!) I have found how much it can help me look at everyday situations in a new way, with a new perspective. I really like reading your blogs because they help me to look at several different things differently, and realize how much I need to improve in an area.
This blog sort of reminded me of Fahrenheit 451. We need to show we care. "And he saw himself in her eyes".(I don't think that is exactly the right wording.) Clarisse really cared. You really can tell when someone doesn't care.
Although you wrote this blog quite a long time ago, before I was even an honors student, I for some reason chose to read it today. To be honest I think lately I have been falling behind in my caring but lately this blog descirbes exactly what I have wanted to say. People don't care as much as they used to. It seems the older you get, the less you care. I can see that pattern in myself as well, and now I guess is the time to fix it. Its good for students to know the teachers perspective on subjects like this. Honestly I really appreciate the writing of this blog and it reminds me that I need to get back up on my toes instead of just writing the non-thinking filler writing that I have mostly done all year. I would like to see some more of your blogs though. :)
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