A Little of What's Been on My Mind Lately

Don’t worry, I’m not going to preach to you today, but this post is somewhat philosophical. But it does have videos and links, so get your finger off that back button. Be ye warned, however, that I ramble.

In honor of one of the biggest flops on my blog—I point you to my endeavor of imparting vocabulary knowledge in December of December 2014—I’d like to start by defining a word:

ekphrasis: (noun) a literary commentary or description or reaction to a visual work of art

Mrs. Nielsen loves to have her students write ekphrastic poems after they have meandered through the art museum.

Despite purists who might debate my laxness in my expansion of this definition, I say that an ekphrastic work merely uses another’s medium as an influence, or a starting point, if you will. It can be the same medium, or it can be derived from a different type of art. And I am going to do just that. I’ve had bits and pieces of a few thoughts percolating in my head since April when I was reading Jennifer A. Nielsen’s concluding volume of her Ascendance Trilogy: The Shadow Throne.

See, Mumford and Sons had released a new single from their latest album Wilder Mind: “Believe” (March 2015), and it had started gaining airplay on Pandora and local radio stations quite rapidly. Its catchy, repetitive chorus hooked me, but as I soaked in the lyrics, I saw how they permeated everything I was reading with Jaron in The Shadow Throne. Not to divulge many spoilers, but the events of his young, tortured life—lost love, lost country, betrayal, broken promises—came to life for me as the lyrics cracked through my car speakers:

“I had the strangest feeling

Your world's not all it seems.

So tired of misconceiving,

What else this could've been?

“I don't even know if I believe [x3]

Everything you're trying to say to me.

“So open up my eyes.

Tell me I'm alive.

This is never gonna go our way

If I'm gonna have to guess what's on your mind.”

These lyrics and Jaron’s thoughts (and actions) became one resounding message about life: intentional and unintentional misdirection and deception may create many marvelous plot twists in this story, as they do throughout the series (See also Megan Whalen Turner’s Attolia [The Queen's Thief] series), but they really screw up real life. Miscommunication creates questions of loyalty, love, life, self-doubt, self-awareness, and the (un)fairness of life. So much turmoil and strife and uncertainty could be simplified with veritable communication. Why is it so hard to be honest? To speak truth? I wish I had tangible answers to share.

The music video for this song actually reminds me of a time when I was 15 and wandered aimlessly around London with some friends. Looking back, I wasn’t really sure where I fit into the grand scheme of life, or what I even stood for. It brought me back to that confusing, crazy, introspective time in my life—my own Bildungsroman, if you will. I was looking for truth. 

I could go on about the changes in tempo and volume and other symbolism about driving and maturing and such, but I’ll refrain from geeking out too much here.

After I finished that book, I picked up Walter Dean Myers’s Invasion, a story of a U.S. soldier about to land on Omaha Beach on D-Day. If you’ve read some of Myers’s other war stories, i.e., Fallen Angels or Sunrise over Fallujah, etc., you see similar coming-of-age themes. Josiah starts to question basic tenets of his life: his relationship with his family, a girl back home, and his platoon. The value of life and death, racism, and even the purpose behind the war itself begin to blur as the troops storm the beaches, cross mine fields, and encounter enemy resistance. Just like Mumford (and Sons), he doesn’t know if he believes everything people have tried to say to him in the past, in the present. The book weighs heavy with some of the aforementioned themes and places them on the same playing field as the inner turmoil Josiah has about the need to swear and act “like a man.”

Internal conflict, the essence of good, relatable characters (at least, for me) in fiction and in real life, helps define who we are. One of my all-time favorite novels, ChoosingUp Sides by John H. Ritter pits a preacher’s son against the beliefs his father preaches, his uncle’s life philosophies, what the star athlete and the cutest girl in school have said, and what he feels in his heart about good and evil, right and wrong, baseball, and life. This conflict is good, if we can deal with it, move on, and grow from the struggle as we redefine ourselves and our beliefs.

Sometime in May, the song came on the radio—it had hit the airplay saturation point by this time—and my innocent eight-year-old growled out loud (and punched the car door, much to her chagrin). “Rrrrrrrrrrggggh! I hate this song! I mean, how can you not know what you believe?”

Her frustrations have a point…if you have never stopped to question what you believe. I assert that each soul that dwells on this earth needs to come to know what he or she believes, and then live it. However, there comes a point when too much questioning hinders instead of refines one’s thoughts. Not to share any sensitive details, lets just say that I’ve seen too many associates (close and otherwise) lose their faith, their jobs, their families over vacillating too long over minutia attached to philosophies, practices, or doctrines. Dieter F. Uchtdorf, a wise ecclesiastical leader, recently pleaded, borrowing from F.F. Bosworth’s Christ the Healer, “Please, first doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith.”

To missionaries who are about to leave their families for two years to proselytize and share the gospel of Jesus Christ, I advise them to lose themselves in the work but to never lose themselves. Sometimes, though, we need to stop and step outside ourselves in order to find who we really are. Questioning what we really believe, or have been brought up to believe, helps to understand if we really believe and have the faith enough to do something about it.

Introspection and self-analysis are good common practice, as long as you wind up in a better place in the end. Recently, I attended an educational conference with a team from my school. The first keynote speaker was Diane Ravitch, an educator who had worked in Washington and promoted standardized testing and the like, but realized that what she believed about educational practices and what was working for students wasn’t true; she immediately went to work on the other side of the issue, saying that the evidence didn’t really turn out how she and several other experts predicted. Yong Zhao, another presenter, also presented the need for a major change in the way we look at education and the needs of students and society need to be reexamined. After listening to these two, I spent the next breakout session in a semi-comfortable overstuffed lobby chair making lists of my educational beliefs and what I needed to do to change my practice to fit my philosophies.

Needless to say, I also bought both their books. No, I haven’t finished them or become zealous disciples of their ways—I’m not ready to join the commune—but I found what they have to say intriguing. A big push in schools is for students to engage in critical thinking. I also deem it necessary for society to do the same when it comes to educational reform. There are many opinions and ideas floating out there—some more solidly grounded than others. And the more informed you are, the better decision you can make. Sometimes, it’s not a bad idea for teachers and administrators (and everyone) to reexamine their professional practices. I come back to the adage that you can teach for twenty-five years, or you can teach one year twenty-five times. Blech! I can’t do that. I get bored teaching the same thing a handful of times the same day. I change what I teach and how I teach depending on the needs of my current students.

I have always had different philosophies about testing and standards and what is best for students than what seems to be trending in the district or the nation. People who will remain nameless stopped inviting me to certain meetings after they found out where I stood and how I run my classroom. I also never drink the Kool-Aid. I don’t think that what I am doing is rebellious, impetuous, or crooked in any way. I just haven’t followed the sheep; I have stayed my own course—true to what I believe.

Even though our personalities and mannerisms are fairly different, I find myself in the same thought camp as Kelly Gallagher, who said (paraphrased, with my added slant) at a presentation he made a few years ago at BYU, that if you can take a student, and accept her with her abilities wherever they are when she walks in your classroom, and you give her the strategies and opportunities to read well, think well, and write well, she will do fine on standardized tests, or anything else that may arise from the legislature. Where some of my colleagues across the country bang their heads on black, metal filing cabinets or artificial wooden teacher desktops about testing scores, I do absolutely zero direct test prep and consistently have students who score at or above the average scores of the school, the district, and the state.

And so what started as an ekphrastic commentary about how Mumford and Sons connected with what I had been reading led me to question my own teaching philosophies and practices. As I stand on a precipice between two educational worlds: the public schools and upper academia, I also question what I believe. My doctoral work has forced me to look at myself through different theoretical frameworks as I approach my own research. Maybe I’ll share some of those findings one day (if anyone cares).

If you want a fun exercise for thought clarification, try NPR’s “This I Believe” segment. It can work with any age group and helps to clarify your beliefs about a particular subject. Maybe I’ll give it a try in the near future. But knowing me, I’ll probably write about my beliefs regarding bacon, haiku, or something obnoxious that nobody else cares about.

I don’t do things quite like I’m supposed to. That’s why I’ve moved on to X Ambassadors’ “Renegades.” 

Yeah, right.