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.

  

And Here's More Evidence

Yesterday I wrote, or rather, rambled for a while regarding learning how to write one skill at a time, and how I am really a conglomeration of all the lessons I've learned before. Not two minutes after I had posted and reposted 27 times because the formatting was off (I'm still not happy about it), I picked up my newly-acquired Horoscopes for the Dead by Billy Collins and read "Memorizing 'The Sun Rising' by John Donne."

“Memorizing ‘The Sun Rising’ by John Donne” by Billy Collins

Every reader loves the way he tells off

the sun, shouting buy old fool

into the English skies even though they

were likely cloudy on that seventeenth-century morning.

And it’s a pleasure to spend this sunny day

pacing the carpet and repeating the words,

feeling the syllables lock into rows

until I can stand and declare,

the book held close by my side,

that hours days, and months are but the rags of time.

But after a few steps into stanza number two,

wherein the sun is blinded by his mistress’s eyes,

I can feel the first one begin to fade

like sky-written letters on a windy day.

And by the time I have taken in the third,

the second is likewise gone, a blown-out candle now,

a wavering line of acrid smoke.

So it’s not until I leave the house

and walk three times around this hidden lake

that the poem begins to show

any interest in walking by my side.

Then, after my circling,

better than the courteous dominion

of her being all states and him all princes,

better than love’s power to shrink

the wide world to the size of a bedchamber,

and better even than the compression

of all that into the rooms of these three stanzas

is how, after hours stepping up down the poem,

testing the plank of every line,

it goes with me now, contracted into a little spot within.

Instant validation.

I think now about how horrible I am about memorizing bits and pieces, especially extended texts, and how usually once I have something down, another chunk of knowledge gives my mind the slip.

Most of the time, memorizing facts or formulas or French verb conjugations is like a Boy Scout learning his knots. He repeat over and over again, "drilling and killing," but despite his best efforts, the information still does not hold fast. The synapses fire long enough to pass off the requirement or the quiz, but then the skill disappears, forever into the dark void between his ears, or so it appears. Hope is not lost, my friends; not for you, not for the scout. At least, not yet. If you internalize the knowledge, be it stanza or sheepshank, grammar rule or game design, and actually use it, that tidbit of knowledge becomes a part of you, ready to creep to the surface in a contemplative stroll across the field, or it may pop out when you desperately have to secure your tent during a downpour. Eventually, it has the potential to become wisdom through experience.

It's not automatic, of course; you must work at retrieval of stored knowledge. It takes practice listening to that inner self. And you must practice! introspect.

You never know how or when the miscellanea lodged in your gray matter will be of use (or distraction). How often do song lyrics come to the forefront of your thoughts when you are alone, or psyching yourself up for the interview, or whatever? What do you do with them? Dance? Ponder life, the universe, and everything? Ignore that buzzing sound in your skull and grunt like a Neanderthal? Recognize it as a part of who you are?

So, I guess what I'm saying is that we, as human beings, need to cram as much learning into our brains as we can. And then we need to wedge in some more, even if it seems like we might lose other dear memories and ideas. They're still there; you just have to mine for them sometimes.

Again, let me assuage your fears, those who fear attracting zombies with those overstuffed brains. Don't worry. You have nothing to fear. In the moment, something that you supposedly learned back in Boy Scouts will help you survive.