Celebrating Poem in Your Pocket 2023!

This has been a year of stress--apparently so much that my blood pressure has gone up. Never had that before. Oh, well. One things that I always try to do when things get a little crazy is to take the advice of one of my favorite Transcendentalists, Henry David Thoreau: "Simplify! Simplify! Simplify! (See also Walden.)

Under that vein, I was delighted to read Billy Collins's new collection of short poems Table Music. And that is where I discovered my #PocketPoem for this year:

"The Student"

She made asterisks

next to passages she liked,

little stars that kept shining

after she closed the book.

If you want to celebrate the small things in life, please do. Share here. Share with real people. Share everywhere. (It gets really interesting when you share with strangers in public places.) Here's how to play:

1. Find a copy of your favorite poem...or one that tickles you fancy today...or one that actually fits in your pocket. Finding in on your phone is okay, but it's always more human if you have transcribed it yourself and fold it up and put it in your pocket.

2. Carry your chosen poem around all day, and share it with people. Don't forget to share with me!

3. Soak in the awesomeness that is poetry!

4. Check my Instagram (@joeaveragewriter), Twitter (@joeavgwriter), or Facebook for the video of this year's poem!

If you want even more fun, check out the poem in your pocket label on the right-hand side of this blog. Who knows? You might find something else of worth.

Clear Instructions?

One of the first university classes I took after my two-year mission to Spain was a course about the American novel. A great way to kick things off for an English major, right? Kind of.

About halfway through the class, the professor decided he wanted us to “be more creative” with our assignments. Apparently, he felt our first handful of literary analyses were devoid of life. And so I attempted to rise to the challenge.

I don’t remember which novel we should have read for this particular section of the course—maybe Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury­—but it was something I did not enjoy. Whatever it was, the discussion turned to point of view and its significance in unfolding the plot. I suppose the written assignment connected to this novel was something academic regarding the differences that would occur if the narration changed to a different point of view.

Instead of writing academic, I placed more value on the “be creative” mandate from earlier. I took a piece of short fiction (a minute story I wrote in high school called “Duncan”), and I rewrote it twice from different points of view. It was originally written in first person. The second rewrite was also a first-person telling but from a different character’s perspective. The third was a third-person omniscient description of the scene. I felt it was quite clever. 

How mistaken I was!

Evidently, I misinterpreted what he wanted. Big time. I got a zero. So I asked to meet with my professor. When he asked me about the assignment, I actually showed him some ambiguous wording in his written task. In our discussion, I also claimed that writing from different points of view gave me a better appreciation for telling the exact story I wanted to tell. It also helped me refine the story. He actually acquiesced and gave me my points for the assignment.

At the start of the next class period, however, he proceeded to make sure that any written instructions were thoroughly explained (and limited). A week later we received a revised syllabus, too. No one else was able to argue their way around his instructions.

P.S. I also tried to pull something else like this when we analyzed stream-of-conscious writing with Virginia Woolf’s Top the Lighthouse. It didn’t go over well. Now I use this experience when I teach the importance of clear instructions in my assessment class for pre-service teachers.

P.P.S. If you don't want students (at any level), colleagues, or friends swarming around, pestering,  asking for clarification, make sure that you give precise instructions.

 

I Hate Strawberries!

Yesterday my wife and I went to retrieve a few groceries to round out our dinner plans. A prominent store display proclaimed earlier it was National Strawberry Day. Naturally, we purchased two pounds of juicy red goodness, along with miniature angel food cakes and (Zero Sugar, Keto Friendly) Reddi Wip. Yes, Mister Spellcheck, that is how you spell it (but that’s a gripe for another day). 

As the kids devoured their shortcakes after dinner, one of them asked if strawberries were my favorite fruit. I paused for maybe half a second and replied, “No.” I know, I know, most people love strawberries. Honestly, though, strawberries are okay, and I will eat them when offered, but they are nowhere close to being my fruit of choice, and I believe they are probably only my 6^th favorite berry (after raspberries, cherries, blackberries, boysenberries, and huckleberries. Whichever of my offspring asked the question apparently lost interest in me and went away, but I started pondering my history with strawberries.

Now, I have always liked strawberry-flavored things like Skittles, Jolly Ranchers, Twizzlers, Slurpees, etc., so I had to dig deep to remember why I didn’t like eating strawberries. It took a while, so after hurting my brain and consuming more than my fair share of the berries, I uncovered an incident from my childhood that apparently took many years to overcome.

I believe I was about five years old—I remember that we lived in Sherwood, Arkansas, and that I had gone with my dad in his beat up blue pick-up truck. We had gone to visit a family for some reason. I seem to recall that Dad did some kind of manual labor, while I remained in the truck. I think I was scared of a dog—my mind recollects an ornery Doberman—and this was shortly after a dog gnawed on my ankles in a friend’s back yard, but I digress.

I remember that the window was rolled down, the sun was setting, and I was browsing through my 1980 Empire Strikes Back collectible cards from Burger King. Someone called to me and asked if I was hungry. Of course I was. The wife of the family brought me a beige Tupperware bowl with some strawberries fresh from their garden and left me to enjoy them. Soon my fingers were stained red, and my belly sloshed.

I’m not sure how it actually happened, but somehow one of those teeny strawberry seeds got stuck under my left thumbnail. No one else noticed, but it caused some real pain. I started to cry. (Those of you who know my high threshold for pain, think about that.) Being five, I decided I needed to be a man and take care of the injury myself. I set down the berry bowl on the bench seat, moved over to the open window, leaned the forearm connected to my injured hand across the window sill and I began to operate.

Like a perfectly rational kindergartner, I first pounded my fist on the side of the truck to try and knock the seed out, but the infernal thing stayed put. I then attempted to dig it out with the nails on my other hand, but no matter which fingernail I tried, I couldn’t extract the seed. I needed to be smarter about this surgery. In desperation I looked around the truck cab for some tool. Paper? No. Key? No. And then it hit me. Ever so delicately, with the corner of my 1980 Snowswept Chewbacca Burger King card, I tried to work out the seed from under the nail. Like my other attempts, though, I only succeeded in creating more suffering.

Frustrated, I threw the card. To my astonishment, it fluttered for a few seconds before sliding down the window well into the abyss of the passenger door. I scrabbled for it in vain, but even my small hands were too big to retrieve Chewy. He was gone forever. That was the last straw. I began to wail. 

Everyone came running to see what happened. Embarrassed about my carelessness with the card (I knew we couldn’t afford to go back to Burger King to get another), I told my dad through my sobs about the seed. He examined my thumb for a minute or three and found nothing. When he announced that nothing was lodged under my nail, I realized that it actually didn’t hurt any more. My pain at that point was only for the loss of my card! Irrationally, though, I declared to everyone there and to my mother back at home, that from that point in my life, I hated strawberries.

Obviously, I am over it; however, for perhaps over a decade, I never purposely consumed another strawberry. Strawberry-flavored candies or beverages? Absolutely. Actual strawberries, heck no. And on a related topic, I also have banana issues, but I’ll share those another time.

I think my point here, if there is one, is that sometimes, especially as children, we have experiences that in the moment are traumatic. And even though the connections might not be rational, they are still real. So…whenever you are dealing with human beings, specially of the smaller variety, remember to be patient. You never know if someone’s pain and hatred is caused by a strawberry or a missing Wookie.

 

What Happened After I Left Sixth Grade and Mrs. Saiki

 

A little over a year ago I met part of a family new to our church congregation. After some small talk, we made a connection having both lived in Japan. After I mentioned that my dad had been stationed at Yokota Air Force Base, her jaw dropped, and said, “I have to ask if you had a certain teacher…Mrs. Saiki?”

                At the mention of my 6^th grade social studies and reading teacher, Sylvia Saiki, my eyes involuntarily brimmed with happiness. If you have read any of my previous posts about her, you will know how much this woman influenced me. She piqued my curiosity to discover the unknown (especially regarding Egyptology and geography and different peoples and cultures). She sharpened and honed and my love for learning, my curiosity for the mysterious, and my passion for reading. Her requirement to only read Newbery and Caldecott winners stretched me to read genres I normally wouldn’t have as an eleven-year-old nonfiction nut. Looking back on that year, outside of her classes, where I felt like a minor rock star, I only recall a few things. I lost a computer programming contest because I didn’t save my work, and there was a power glitch ten minutes before the end of the timed programming portion. I lost a nomination to represent Mr. Iwanski’s class in the trivia bowl to a popular kid who was about as sharp as the leading edge of a bowling ball. In the gifted and talented class, my paper mâché puppet collapsed on itself and dried funny, so I had to improvise a new character (B.U.M.—Beat Up Man), which truthfully looked hideous. There are other stories that didn’t really do much for my young self-esteem, but those tales are for another day. 

                My newfound acquaintance soon put in contact with my former teacher, and on a nice fall morning, I had a pleasant half-hour phone conversation with Mrs. Saiki. To me, her voice was the same—loving yet firm. While conversing, I felt that same assurance that I had so many years ago sitting in her class—she knew me and accepted me for who I was; she treated me with respect and believed in me. It felt that after so many years, she still knew me, and in that moment I wished that I could be the half teacher she was.

At the end of our talk, Mrs. Saiki asked me for a favor—one that I have started many times but have failed to deliver. She wanted a brief history of what I did from the time I left 6^th grade until the present. Much has happened in 35 years, and the task seemed daunting; however, here it finally is. The summary of my life from 6^th grade until now.

                I started 7^th grade at Yokota High School (7-12) and hated almost every minute of it. I had most of my classes with upper classmen, and my few friends all had different lunch periods than I did. I became even more of a loner.

Halfway through the year, I moved across the globe when my dad was reassigned to RAF Mildenhall, England. I viewed this move as a fresh start and soon made the most of it. I made friends—a few at first, mostly through church, but then I became emboldened by some of the acquaintances I had made in band and NJHS. At Lakenheath High School, I decided to run for student government and run on the track. So I did. I became involved. I played the trumpet. I ran long distances. I played baseball. I started writing! I started to improve my self image.

After my sophomore year, my family returned to the US, to Scott AFB, east of the St. Louis metro area. I attended Belleville east Township High School my junior year, but refused to become just a number in the 2500 or so students there. When we moved into base housing the next year, I moved schools again, spending my senior year at Mascoutah Community High School. And to be honest, back in 1994, I had no idea where I wanted to go to school, so I followed the recommendations of a couple of close friends from church to attend Ricks College in Rexburg, Idaho.

I declared my major at the junior college to be English, and kept up my pursuits of the humanities: writing, reading, art, music, theatre. I rushed through my Associate’s degree in under two years, and felt pretty accomplished, but I knew there were miles to go before I slept.

My religious convictions, as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints influenced my desire to now serve a two-year proselyting mission. I submitted my papers, and was assignment to serve in southern Spain. Over those two years, I learned to love the people and to love the Lord. I learned more about who I was and how I fit into God’s plan for me. Oh, yes, I also acquired a propensity for good food and how to cook it for myself. In short, I learned how to live.

When I returned home in January of 1998 (My parents moved to Utah while I was away.), I knew I had to become more serious about an occupation. So I examined myself and determined what I did well…or at least what I felt I did well. I decided to become an English teacher. I enrolled at nearby Brigham Young University. Shortly thereafter I reconnected with a beautiful young woman I had met at the beginning of my missionary service, Amy Walker; and for brevity’s sake, we were married that July. She was an English teaching major as well, and so we worked together to finally graduate in 2000. Our last semester while I completed my student teaching and Amy completed her year-long teaching internship, we lived on half a teacher’s salary and whatever I scraped together working at a restaurant on the weekends. We were poor but happy.

In February of 2001 Sariah was born with many complications. Zac was born at the end of 2002. Then Ally in 2005, Brooklyn in 2007, and Sam in 2010. All the while I taught English (and a few other things) at Spanish Fork Junior High. After two years of teaching middle school, Amy stayed home to raise the kiddos (and continues to do an amazing job).

While all the teaching happened, I kept busy with professional development, church assignments, and community involvement (to be read “city league coaching”). I earned my M.Ed. in Secondary Education with an emphasis in reading. I picked up a second (almost) full-time job teaching an independent study high school course. After earning my PhD. In Curriculum and Instruction (emphasis in educational leadership), I adjuncted composition courses for Utah Valley University.

Over my 18+ years as a public educator, I worked with 13 student teachers and mentored several other newer educators. While doing this, I realized that even though I loved influencing my students on a daily basis, I might be able to make a bigger difference in the world of education if I shifted careers and became a teacher educator at the university level.

I have now been doing that at Bellevue University since 2018. The kids are older: Sariah is working; Zac is now a missionary; Ally is about to graduate; Brooklyn and Sam won’t stop growing. Amy is now student teaching for her M.A.T. in Elementary Ed in a class of 6^th graders. Life is still good and it keeps getting better.

Some of you know part of this history; some of you played integral part in it. If you read this, you'll know that I love stories, especially personal ones. Among my goals this year, is a pledge to get back to writing snippets of my history--at least one each month. For better or for worse, my stories are going to be shared. If you have any suggestions about holes I need to fill in or adventures that should see the light of day, please leave a comment, and I'll think about it.