matching tracksuits

Prayers and Candles

Monday 01 November 2010

Today is All Saints' Day -- one of the best times to be in a Catholic country like Poland. This morning, every single cemetery in Poland had something like this going on.

Every year I write the same things and probably show some of the same pictures. Since we haven't experienced All Saints' Day in Poland since 2004 (has it really been that long?), I've only a very limited stock of photos, and an even more limited stock of stories: I can only tell the same stories so many times before even I get tired of them.

That's something of the appeal of it: the repeating ritual of the Catholic liturgical calendar means we're always coming back to the same place. It makes life less of a straight line and more of a spiral.

One of the most calming and consoling times in that spiral is the evening of All Saints' Day, when all the cemeteries flicker with the light of thousands of candles, and the hissing, crackling, and popping of the candles punctuate the prayers of the faithful.

I would visit the cemetery at least twice: once when the priests were leading prayers and a second time when no one else was there. Both were calming in very different ways.

Surrounded by Poles who had intimate connections to the cemetery -- here lies a brother, a mother, an uncle, a great-grandmother -- I felt the peace of the community, even though I was an outsider. Catholicism is very communal and intimate, and prayers in a candle-light cemetery are the epitome of that intimacy and community spirit.

Yet it was when I was alone that I felt more calm than I've ever felt in my life. Surrounded by death, I felt more alive than any other time of the year.

Halloween, in comparison, is so distinctly American: commercial, whimsical, with just enough evil to make us worry but not enough to make us act.

I prefer the Polish Catholic version, and I would imagine I always will.

Signs

Sunday 31 October 2010

Some signs of autumn:

The heating comes on intermittently. It’s a relief: we’re always worried about the heating in This Old House every fall: we’ve had enough worries about it.
I wear jeans and flannel around the house. The mornings are chilly, as are the evenings: nothing is cozier than flannel.
There’s always hot coffee or a cup of tea at my side.
Saturday mornings are inside mornings.

Some more signs:

Birthday picnics continue into the darkness and include sweaters and oysters:.

I ask the Girl if she’d like to try one. The shells have her undivided attention; the goodies inside, less so.

“You want to try?” I ask.

She touches the freshly-steamed oyster, licks her finger, then says, “No! It’s gushy!”

More signs: Sunday night trick-or-treat.

Magdalena Kozena

Tuesday 26 October 2010

I’ve been listening Magdalena Kozena singing Bach for close to two weeks now (since I purchased my first but certainly not last CD of hers).

Who knew she had such a sense of humor?

There’s a Doctor in Our House

Monday 25 October 2010

We took L to the doctor today: a lingering, stubborn cough that has persisted through a round of antibiotics, Benadryl, and Musinex. A quick check and another round of antibiotics.

But suddenly we have a doctor in the house. K and I have both received several checkups. It's obvious L was paying close attention to what the doctor was doing: L runs her makeshift thermometer over our forehead and down one cheek. She puts her stethoscope on our chest then on our back and asks us to breathe deeply. Warning, "This might hurt," then whispering the instructions to cry afterward, she plunges a syringe into our arm and clamps a plastic bandage on it.

"You'll be alright," she soothes.

Alright! Break Over!

Sunday 24 October 2010

What happens when you take a break from the online scrapbook of your family's life? You get backed up with photos, among other things, and you want to post everything, in one shot. Which is unrealistic.

You want to post some pictures from the pumpkin patch.

And from the apple picking -- which wasn't much of an apple picking. The hordes arrived early for Pink Ladies, and the trees were bare.

And you'd want to share pictures from the walk about the yard for leaves as your daughter pulls a leaf from each

and every

plant and tree she can find

regardless of the leaf's size, color, or condition.

You'd want to post all these with great descriptions and compelling observations about Life, the Universe, and Everything. With a soon-to-be four-year-old, three courses as a student, full time work as a teacher with extra-large classes, a wife (remember?), and an ongoing yard project, you probably wouldn't have Â much time or inclination for posting.

The Girl with Nana

Wednesday 20 October 2010

Sunday Morning

Sunday 10 October 2010

Watering

Saturday 09 October 2010

With new grass everywhere -- "baby grass" as L calls it -- we do a lot of watering these days.

It's enough to make me think we should have installed an irrigation system.

But then we wouldn't get sights like these.

Tour Guide

Wednesday 06 October 2010

When I start a favorite book with a class, I recall the weeks I was a tour guide for my folks and best friend from high school, all of whom flew to Poland for K’s and my wedding.

I knew, for instance, as we rounded the bend and the Oravski castle (where Nosferatu was filmed; watch from 20:00-22:00 and 25:35-27:00 for the castle’s main scenes) came into view that everyone’s jaw would drop. Perched on the top of a rocky hill, the castle tends to have that effect on people.

Later, in Krakow, I knew what the reaction would be as we entered the Basilica of St. Mary on the market square. The high Gothic walls draw all gazes upward, and all mouths fall open.

So, too, with books. As we approach the shocking moments, the truly moving scenes, I anticipate students’ reactions. When Samneric tell Ralph that Roger has “sharpened a stick at both ends,” students ask, “Does that mean what I think that means?” When they meet Anne Frank in the pages of her diary, the knowledge of her fate shakes them.

Yet I’ve never seen a student react so emotionally to a novel as I did recently, as we read Nightjohn. It’s the story of a young slave girl who surreptitiously learns to read with from John, a slave who escaped north but returned to lead other slaves to literacy. There are some brutal depictions of violence against slaves, including the story of Alice, young girl who is whipped and then attempts escape. The pursuing slave owner finds her and lets his dogs attack. She survives, only barely.

“My heart hurts,” said a young African American girl who sits toward the back of the room. By the time the bell rang, a few tears were rolling. As she was leaving, I spoke to her, a little concerned.

“Are you going to be alright?”

“No,” she cried. She walked out of the class and completely broke down. As she sobbed, friends — who hadn’t been in class with her — crowded around her compassionately.

It was bittersweet, in the truest sense of the word. That someone was that moved by a book was both a source of hope and empathy.

The Battle of the Front Yard, Redux

Monday 04 October 2010

Last year, we overseeded our front yard. It looked fantastic.

"We have the best grass on the block!" K and I would congratulate each other. It was thick, lushly dark, and totally carpeted our entire front yard.

Over this summer, it all died.

All of it.

We looked at our wretched front yard and looked at what it used to be like, and a sort of "why do we even try?" depression would set in.

But we don't give up. Not we. We continue to dump money into projects that probably should be left alone. So last week, we rented semi-heavyÂ machinery,

and started all over.

Technically, it was called "dethatching." Practically, it was called "pulling up all the grass, most of which had long-since died."

We were left with rows of rubbish -- weeds, dead grass, almost-dead grass -- that had died for mysterious reasons. Bugs? Disease? (Certainly not fungus: it was too dry this summer for any fungus to survive more than a few moments.)

Whatever it was, we didn't want it. So ten bags of it went out to the curb.

What a waste, really. It got me thinking -- if our lawn survives this coming summer -- whether or not I could simply run our mulching mower over the dethatched refuse and let the yard self-feed.

After applying top soil, mulch, seed, fertilizer, and straw, the rain came. After many dry weeks, we had thirty-six hours of continual rain, followed by sporadic showers through the following week.

I couldn't have planned it better if I'd tried.

A week later:

Potential

Monday 27 September 2010

My English 1 Honors class is about to start the Odyssey. For their weekly short essay assignment, I asked about heroes and heroism. Commenting on the usual association of "hero" with super powers, one student wrote the following:

In fact in the real world having superpowers would make you a villain sooner than it would a hero because though the idea of superheroes saving the world on a regular basis is nice and all, name one superpower and there are probably more than ten different ways to exploit it for personal gain and in a world where “look out for number one” is a personal motto for most of the world it is no long shot that with real superpowers there would be more villains than heroes in the world.

Getting these kinds of results is a real boost: such potential in this kid's writing. The problems are purely cosmetic: nothing a few mini-lessons on sentence variation, punctuation, and voice can't buff out.

Riots and Revolts

Wednesday 22 September 2010

Expectations and Challenges

Friday 17 September 2010

"Teacher Appreciation" featured phot... — Image via Wikipedia

Bonnie Davis writes in How to Teach Students Who Don't Look Like You,

In searching for the causes of the achievement gap, [Haycock] and her research colleagues ask adults why there is a gap. They hear comments from educators that the children are too poor, the parents don't care, and they come to school hungry. The reasons, she adds, are always about the children and their families. Yet, when she talks to the students, she hears different reasons. Students talk about teachers who do not know their subject matter, counselors who underestimate their potential and misplace them, administrators who dismiss their concerns, and a curriculum and expectations that are so low level that students are bored.

I'm curious about the methods of this study. Were teachers simply asked to share their assumptions, with researchers later collating and categorizing them? Or was there a questionnaire? Either way, there is an element of interpretation necessitated by such research that might make it far from objective.

I'm particularly curious about the claim that students find the curriculum so low-level that they're bored. I don't doubt their claim to be bored, but I'm skeptical about the cause of that boredom.

In my own classroom experience, I've found the state-mandated curriculum to be too challenging for many of the students placed in on-level classes (students who, generally, actually read two to three grade levels lower than their actual grade). I often feel my expectations are too high.

But is this why children are bored in the classroom? Is there a societal element? I believe there is. Contemporary entertainment media -- games, television, the Internet -- have taught students to expect short, entertaining bites of information.

The question is obvious: are we competing with the new media?

We might be in competition for students' attention, but to that I'm tempted to say, "Well, that's at least equally the students', parents' and teachers' fault." I agree that teachers should be interesting and engaging, but the point of the classroom is not entertainment, and the defining criterion of an effective twenty-first century teacher should not be their ability to entertain students.

Literacy, On the Fly

Monday 13 September 2010

We began a new unit on Nightjohn and literacy in the English Studies class today. Just as the students were starting the kick-off, which was to answer the essential question, "How does literacy change lives?", I had remembered William Meredith's "The Illiterate." It's always been one of my favorites, a sonnet that takes all the rules about sonnets and bends them slightly. Cursing (internally only), I was frustrated that I hadn't thought of it earlier. It was one of those moments where the teaching-as-an-art kicked in. I thought about it for a moment, Googled the title, and, finding it available online, decided to improvise.

I thought I'd try a technique I'd learned at the South Carolina Middle School conference at Myrtle Beach last year, but not having printed copies, I had to improvise.

I projected the poem on the whiteboard and read it aloud to the students.

The Illiterate

By William Meredith

Touching your goodness, I am like a man
Who turns a letter over in his hand
And you might think that this was because the hand
Was unfamiliar but, truth is, the man
Has never had a letter from anyone;
And now he is both afraid of what it means
And ashamed because he has no other means
To find out what it says than to ask someone.

His uncle could have left the farm to him,
Or his parents died before he sent them word,
Or the dark girl changed and want him for beloved.
Afraid and letter-proud, he keeps it with him.
What would you call his feeling for the words
that keep him rich and orphaned and beloved?

"Turn to a partner," I said when I finished, "and select the five to eight most important words in the poem." As they finished up, we went though the poem line by line, and I circled important words students called out from behind me. In the end, with a few suggestions from me, it looked something like this:

Touching your goodness, I am like a man
Who turns a letter over in his hand
And you might think that this was because the hand
Was unfamiliar but, truth is, the man
Has never had a letter from anyone;
And now he is both afraid of what it means
And ashamed because he has no other means
To find out what it says than to ask someone.

His uncle could have left the farm to him,
Or his parents died before he sent them word,
Or the dark girl changed and want him for beloved.
Afraid and letter-proud, he keeps it with him.
What would you call his feeling for the words
that keep him rich and orphaned and beloved?

"That's more than five to eight words," one student pointed out.

"True, but this was what I was aiming for in the long run, so it worked out well."

I read the poem again, and then we talked about its meaning based on the highlighted words. They quickly saw that the letter contains three options: riches, sadness, and love. We jumped to the last line and reread it.

"Turn back to your partner and come up with three words that might describe his "feeling for the words that keep him rich and orphaned and beloved." The responses were varied, as I'd hoped:

concerned
worried
mysterious
curious

We went back to the poem once more, and I led them to see that the Â majority of the poem is an extended simile to explain the poets feeling when touching the unnamed subject's goodness.

Turning it back to the essential question, I had students write in their journal how literacy would change the narrator's life. We shared a few, then moved on to the next portion of the anticipatory lesson forÂ Nightjohn.

As I write this, though, it occurs to me that I missed a significant portion of the potential power of the improvised activity. The narrator is not illiterate in the literal sense of the word (pun not intended). He is, however, illiterate. It might have been worthwhile to see if the kids could pick up on the emotional illiteracy that the poem is expressing.

Still, not bad for ninety seconds of planning and another sixty seconds of preparation.

Photograph from September 11

Saturday 11 September 2010

By Wisława Szymborska

They jumped from the burning floors–
one, two, a few more,
higher, lower.

The photograph halted them in life,
and now keeps them
above the earth toward the earth.

Each is still complete,
with a particular face
and blood well hidden.

There’s enough time
for hair to come loose,
for keys and coins
to fall from pockets.

They’re still within the air’s reach,
within the compass of places
that have just now opened.

I can only do two things for them–
describe this flight
and not add a last line.

Skoczyli z płonących pięter w dół
– jeden, dwóch, jeszcze kilku
wyżej, niżej.

Fotografia powstrzymała ich przy życiu,
a teraz przechowuje
nad ziemią ku ziemi.

Każdy to jeszcze całość
z osobistą twarzą
i krwią dobrze ukrytą.

Jest dosyć czasu,
żeby rozwiały się włosy,
a z kieszeni wypadły
klucze, drobne pieniądze.

Są ciągle jeszcze w zasięgu powietrza,
w obrębie miejsc,
które się właśnie otwarły.

Tylko dwie rzeczy mogę dla nich zrobić
– opisać ten lot
i nie dodawać ostatniego zdania.

Translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Baranczak.

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