In the Dark

I need to start by saying that I have amazing colleagues. I learn from them every day, and once in a while, they allow me to share with them, too. That said, here is a short social media post I stole from my friend (and colleague) Rillene:

“Last Friday the power went out before school. Imagine a junior high full of 1200 hormonally charged pubescent "darlings" cruising the dark halls of school. Excitement doesn't even begin to cover it.

(Borrowed from Rillene's post)

“I was preparing for class AND for an administrator evaluation--in the dark. But was I deterred, distraught, or disturbed? Well--yes, of course I was. It was DARK! PITCH BLACK in my classroom. Then I dug out a little battery powered lantern I had in my cupboard. I grabbed myself by the shirt-front and said, ‘Remember Rillene--the pioneers held school in freezing one-room shacks with light coming in through maybe one puny window. You can do this!’

“So I turned on the lantern and began writing the lesson on the white board. We would play pioneer school and the students would copy the assignment from the board. To my surprised delight, when student started entering my room they seemed pretty excited to play.

“Well, about three minutes before 8, the power comes back on. My students are sooooo disappointed! Whining commences. "Why can't we have class with the lights out?!" they cry.

“So we did. They were so engaged!! We went through our lesson on sentence combining and introductory prepositional phrases by lantern light. They copied everything from the board. No goofing or messing around--just learning. Happy, happy learning.

“We did turn on the lights during our second hour together when the principal came in for evaluation--the kids understood. The real kicker was when my next bunch of sevies came in for their two period class, the first thing they said was, ‘Did Pod 1 really get to have class in the dark? Why can't we?’

“So we did. And today, after the weekend break, Pods 2 & 4 wanted to have their lesson ‘the pioneer way’ too.

“Maybe I should write an article--Teaching in the Dark Leads to Student Engagement.”

Another colleague (and friend), Jaimie, posted her musings as well: “Starting the school day in the dark... #nowindowsinmyclassroom #creepy #whatdoIdonow #Icouldhavesleptin”

(Stolen from Jaimie)

At the time of the power outage, I didn’t really worry too much about what was going to happen during class because I currently have a good student teacher (Thanks, Georgina!), and I had been working on finishing my dissertation (all 150 pages). My main duty that crazy morning was to check on everyone and make sure they had lanterns or flashlights and to deter any idiotic behavior in the hallways. It wasn’t too hard—only a few morons being obnoxious—not really any mischief to speak of.

            However, several less-experienced teachers stopped me and asked what to do with their classes. Many had prepared technology-based lessons, pouring their hearts and souls into yet another PowerPoint, placing their faith in a montage of YouTube clips. I reflected and shared with them some of my experiences when my students were literally left in the dark.

The worst power outage I navigated occurred several years ago when a car collided with a power transformer a few blocks away and took out the lights from 2^nd period through 4^th periods, and the administration decided that the students should just stay in the same class until everything was sorted out.

Yes, chaos ensued in some parts of the school. However, I took a different tack. I had an extremely large class of 37 squirrely seventh graders, including two of the most challenging students I have ever had in my seventeen years. I also grabbed a few knuckleheads who had been haunting the shadowy halls and screaming or moaning randomly, pretending to be the spirits of previous students who hadn’t endured the torture of junior high. Their pre-pubescent giggles were a dead giveaway. No one was fooled, and I hauled the wannabe hooligans into my room so they wouldn’t add to the mayhem.

I quickly scratched a sign by light of cell phone to hang outside my room warning others that we were busy learning, and I closed the door. The dimness that emanated from the emergency lights in the hall was completely blotted out.

Cue seventh grade scream.

It was hard to tell if the boys or girls were pitched higher, but the noise died immediately when I clicked the switch of my flashlight. I perched on my stool at the front of the room, the light hovering directly under my face. In a ghostly whisper I directed everyone to a seat. Students flicked their eyes back and forth at each other, wondering what was happening.

Without another word, I opening a ponderous tome of not-so-forgotten lore and began reading:

“TRUE! --nervous --very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses --not destroyed --not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily --how calmly I can tell you the whole story.

By the time I finished the first paragraph of Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the crowd was captivated. Now, I pride myself on being an engaging oral reader, but this was an all-time best. Not a student stirred. Not a sound came from within the four walls of my domain. Muffled din came from the hallway, but my audience was hooked.

(Lifted from https://www.tes.com/lessons/qvmo-UKUj
5McYA/tell-tale-heart-by-edgar-allen-poe)

            When I finished about twenty minutes later, we had a discussion about mood—an element we had discussed earlier in the year—and identified elements that made a difference in the telling of the story: the dark, the skills of the reader, the attention of the listener. We discussed Poe’s craft: his sentence structure, his vocabulary, his tone.

            When that discussion ended, I asked them what they wanted to do next. Unanimously, they begged me to read more to them. I don’t remember what we moved on to, but I think we did some more Poe and maybe another short story or two. I do remember a couple students ask if we could read something that wasn’t so creepy. Then just before the decision for the cafeteria to begin preparing cold lunches was announced, the lights came back on, and the day went forward as normally as possible.

            Opportunities like this are rare, but they need not be a total waste of time as Rillene demonstrated. Every day presents an opportunity for learning. Students sit metaphorically in the dark all the time. However, the light a teacher can provide only lasts so long. Eventually those batteries need to be changed or a new wick needs to be lit. Taking every opportunity to spark a student’s own interest in learning is where the real light of education happens.

            During the power outage, I could have wasted time, but I created an experience, one that never happened again, one that the students will always remember. About a month ago I ran into a former student from that class at a restaurant. She asked if I remembered the day I read “The Tell-Tale Heart” in the dark. Of course I did. It became a shared bond between the 40 or so of us who were in that classroom. It was a jumping-off point for other learning to happen. When we talked about author craft, I used it as a model, as many of my students wanted to write about characters going insane. I illustrated how as a junior in high school, I meticulously poured over Poe’s narration and how it served as a mentor text for me when I wrote “The Ultimate Sin” during Mr. Bainter’s history class (not a bad story for a sixteen-year-old), showing them how I purposely shortened my sentences as the narrator lost his mind, similar to Poe’s protagonist.

Sharing that experience sparked more interest in writing and publishing. I think “The Ultimate Sin” was the only short story I ever got paid for ($20) including it in a student-run literary magazine. After the class decided to approach “The Cask of Amontillado,” we revisited writing creepy settings and using symbolism—topics students usually try to avoid more than back-stabbing friends. By the end of the year, thematic discussions about perfect crimes and guilt always came back to “The Tell-Tale Heart.” I even had a few advanced students asking if they could borrow my copy of Crime and Punishment. None ever finished the Dostoyevsky, but the point is that it created a spark. They wanted to know more. Was it on the lesson plan that day? Absolutely not. Most of the best learning deviates from the plan a little. It happens when students become intrigued by a side note, or their interest is piqued by one of the non-required readings, or an anecdote told during work time tickles their inquisitive bone. Rillene, Jaimie, and most of my teaching colleagues around the world know this and exploit this teaching tactic on a regular basis.

(Taken from http://karlsprague.com/strangers-
sparks-stecchino-bistro/)

Students construct their own learning (APA-style Constructivist citations deliberately left out today), but it is up to the teacher to create an environment where sparks can fly. Some students choose to remain in the dark, and we can loan them a little light, but it can only last for so long. Getting to know students and where their interests lie provides a little tinder. Helping them make meaningful connection scrapes the flint against the steel. And pretty soon the flames shine brightly, and you pray that no one or nothing (like a standardized test or something like that) douses the flame of curiosity, leaving them in the dark once again. However, rest assured that once a student has tasted that spark, has seen the light, felt the glow, or whatever other heat analogy you want to throw in here, she will always remember what it felt like, and will hunger after it. Most of the time, you just need a little fuel and the right conditions. And I repeat, it’s up to the teacher to cultivate prime conditions to burn.

  

Poem in Your Pocket 2016: How I Discovered Poetry

For Poem in Your Pocket Day 2016, I decided to cart around Marilyn Nelson’s “How I Discovered Poetry.” I had read it before, most recently in the collection Poetry Speaks Who I Am, edited by Elise Paschen, and had even dog-eared it.

“How I Discovered Poetry”

It was like soul-kissing, the way the words 

filled my mouth as Mrs. Purdy read from her desk. 

All the other kids zoned an hour ahead to 3:15, 

but Mrs. Purdy and I wandered lonely as clouds borne 

by a breeze off Mount Parnassus. She must have seen 

the darkest eyes in the room brim: The next day 

she gave me a poem she’d chosen especially for me 

to read to the all except for me white class. 

She smiled when she told me to read it, smiled harder, 

said oh yes I could. She smiled harder and harder 

until I stood and opened my mouth to banjo playing 

darkies, pickaninnies, disses and dats. When I finished 

my classmates stared at the floor. We walked silent 

to the buses, awed by the power of words.

When I picked it up again yesterday, it sent me spinning back into the recesses of my disorganized mind to ascertain when I first discovered poetry.

I remembered copying cheesy four-to-eight line poems from the board in Mrs. Latch’s 1^st grade classroom, stapling them into a crude Crayola-illustrated compilation of handwriting paper to give to my mother. I have no idea what they were or where they went—probably a landfill somewhere in Arkansas for all I know.

I remembered that throughout elementary school I thought poems were easy to read, but not much more than that.

I remembered cracking up (out loud) when Ms. Ortiz read “The Cremation of Sam McGee” in 7^th grade, not because of the content, although it was a bit funny despite the darkness of the material, but because I began to relish the language…and I knew what made it such a great poem. Owl-eyed Ms. Ortiz was not amused, as she was trying to establish the setting, front-loading for us reading Call of the Wild.

            I unsuccessfully tried my hand at writing song lyrics—mostly ballads—in 9^th grade but became fascinated by rap lyrics and rhythms, although I never tried writing any of those until 11^th grade.

I think it might have been in 10^th grade, though, in Mr. Albert’s class that maybe I really discovered poetry. He's the one who had us listen to Vincent Price perform Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" (on vinyl) with the lights off.

I remember having to explicate a simple poem about a dog. I believe it was simply called “The Dog,” but I am not quite sure. I’ve tried looking for it since then, but my searches have been fruitless. I remembering it having four short, simple quatrains, and the dog was coming toward the speaker, but that’s all I can recall. If anyone out there can help, I’d appreciate it. I don’t think it was a super-impressive piece of literature—maybe even contrived for a clueless high school student to practice with; I’m not sure. But I do know that once I saw the multiple layers that went into the simplicity of the poem—the language, the complexity of the meaning, and how it impacted the people around me, I was hooked. Then again, I had always loved language and words; they were magic from the time I started identifying letters. And when I found out how summary, emotional connections, symbolism, form, figurative language, repetition, theme, and all the other nuances of Meaning blended together on the playground of human experience, of course I wanted to play with poetry, too.

We started writing poetry: acrostics, haiku, cinquain, limericks, and many other vomitus forms that drive me bonkers today—pieces I have sworn I would never compel students to write, although it seems that most of their poetry exposure consists strictly of these and other fill-in-the-cheesy blank poems and Shel Silverstein. But I digress. I found that I was good at writing poetry, especially using this thing called free verse. However, I thought that great poetry had to fit rhyme and meter, and so I dabbled in that, and I ended up forcing rhymes, slanting others worse than bad puns. It wasn’t until I learned to let go that anything amazing happened, though. One of my poems that I wrote for Mr. Albert’s class was published in a British literary magazine (and, no I don’t remember the title of the periodical either). The poem was “Subway,” which I later published in the school newspaper as a junior.

For a time, if you looked at my earlier attempts at poetic drivel, you can interpret my life and its ups and downs, kind of like a teenage journal: rollercoastering mood swings, school misery, confusing relationships of all kinds, and flat, pretentious blather masquerading in philosophical sheep’s clothing. My vocabulary needed a definite smack down, or at least refined pruning. I remember writing a poem in 12^th grade because I learned the word ostentatious. I did another with gregarious. (I still like mixing my metaphors, though; it’s fun.)

Since that semi-angsty time in my life, I am happy to report that I think I have improved. Browse this blog; find the poetry label on the right-hand side bar to get started, and see if I have. Some of my earliest posts reveal some of the dross from the past. So, with this ramble about how I found poetry, enjoy the rest of Poem in Your Pocket Day! I’d love for you to share yours.

Lugubrious

lugubrious:(adjective) exaggeratedly or affectedly mournful; dismal

                Traversing Nevada’s lugubrious landscape tends to lull me to sleep.

                As a senior at Mascoutah Community High School I took five semesters of English: AP Literature (2 semesters), Advanced Communications, Creative Writing, and Detective Fiction. When I registered for school that summer, the counselor had wanted to place me in honors physics and calculus (based on my past course work), but my math ACT score guaranteed that I didn’t need any more arithmetic training, and science and I didn’t get along very well, so I told her where to put those classes since I already knew what I wanted to do with my life. Granted, she wasn’t very helpful with finding scholarships after that.

                Needless to say, that year I read multifarious literature, and a disproportionate amount was dark and brooding—some by choice, others (like Ethan Frome) not. The first mystery we read in Detective Fiction was “The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841)” by Edgar Allan Poe, considered by some to be the first true detective story. I’m not sure if it was in that story, or one of the other stories involving brilliant investigators and their involvement in the lugubrious details of the dregs of criminality, but I came across the word lugubrious in context and instantly became enamored. It triggered something deep down in my writing self and began a lugubrious period of my writing. Heart of Darkness—now that’s lugubrious! I worked the new word into a several poems (that I no longer have) and into conversations until my communications teacher told me I was overusing it. She didn’t like me anyway. (I have witnesses to back me up.)

from http://imgkid.com/flying-raven-drawing.shtml

Yeah, I was kind of experimenting with writing darker, deadlier drama, when, introspectively, my life was neither difficult nor dreary. Ms. Wessel, the creative writing teacher said I started to sound like Joseph Conrad in my descriptions.

                And that isn’t cool enough, in Disney’s Hercules, the henchmen Pain and Panic refer to their lord Hades as “Your Most Lugubriousness.” Who wouldn't want a title like that? Don’t all raise your hands at once. And don’t worry; I’m not as lugubriously-minded as I thought I was as a senior.

The Epitome of Humility

            I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging, but I figure that I’m a pretty intelligent guy, especially when it comes to words.  Honestly, with my wife and I as English teachers, not too many people like to play board games that involve words with us.  Pity.  (Not-so-subtle hint: It’s been so long since we’ve really played that we’re a bit rusty.)

            My favorite book as a two-year-old was a picture dictionary (that I still have).  It’s falling apart, but it was loved to death.  I read voraciously as a child and I do now.  There was a little anomaly called junior high, where my reading habits slowed, but only in public.  My vocabulary can switch from academic to hick to junior high to jock to computer geek and back again with ease.

            But all this does not mean that I am perfect.  I am human and do make language mistakes, as this anecdote will testify.

            AP English. Senior year at Mascoutah Community High School.  Mr. Manwaring had been out for radiation treatments.  Ms. Stereotyped Spinster Librarian Lady was the long-term sub.  She hated me because I despised Emily Dickinson and ridiculed the characters of Ethan Frome. Oh, wait. That’s a different story.  I digress.

            Rewind (not delete) back to the setting: same year and place.  This story occurred around Halloween.  We had immersed ourselves in the occult-ness that is Edgar Allan Poe.  Having read many of his works before, I was a mini-expert among my peers for this unit.  I touched up my short story that I had written the year before, “The Ultimate Sin,” as part of a creative assignment where we were supposed to imitate Poe’s macabre style.  I received high praise from Mr. M: he came in one day, excited, and turned off the lights, and read it aloud by flashlight.  Definitely cool.  I became a writing celebrity (as far as that goes in high school).  And I’ll admit that it’s not the best story in the world, but I thought I was all that and two bags of chips and a Coke.

            And then one day, feeling high and mighty, and wanting to flaunt my literary wisdom and ostentatious vocabulary, I committed a gaffe that would take me down a couple of notches.

            Still discussing Poe, hubris in full effect, I volunteered my opinion that dismally tragic Edgar was the epitome of a writer who went crazy, threw what remained of his life away, indulged in substances, died, and became famous.  I did so and felt pretty smug.

            Later that period, I was reading from another text, and I came across the word epitome again.  However, up to that point in my life, I had never encountered the word in writing.  I knew what it meant in conversation.  Heck, I had just used the word myself.  As I read, I figured out what it meant by the context.  But when it came time to say it, I stumbled, and using my superior decoding unfamiliar word skills, I pronounced it ep-ih-toam—three syllables, first one stressed, last one with a long o.

            “What did you just say?” Mr. M. chuckled.

            The whole class, who hadn’t been paying close attention because they were reading ahead, like the good, little book nerds we were, stopped and looked up.

            Mr. M. started shaking his head and full-on belly laughed.  I was ridiculed for the rest of the semester.  My vanity damaged, I didn’t speak in class for many weeks.

            Bringing this tale full circle, let me rephrase my earlier analogy about dropping a few notches: after mispronouncing epitome, my lofty, prideful branches were hewn down and cast into the fire.  As my students today would say, I got burnt. Roasted.

            I now use this example of my linguistic faux pas with my students as an attempt to get my students to care about their overall vocabulary skills and how they present themselves when they speak.  Some of them are too proud to care about how moronic they sound, though, and refuse to abandon their purposeful mispronunciations and ignorance.