Monday, May 26, 2014
Friday, May 23, 2014
Reads
So I've been looking for new textbooks for my English 112 class. I want my students to read something longish that's an example of good writing and strong, curiosity-based research. If my students can see an author write about something he cares about enough to research, perhaps they will see the value in researching something they care about. That's the idea anyway.
So for the last two semesters, my students have chosen between Chasing Che by Patrick Symmes, Girl Sleuth by Melanie Rehak, and The Island of Lost Maps by Miles Harvey. I love each of these books - they're excellent examples of one person using really comprehensive research and quality writing to pursue some quirky, personal question.
How did his motorcycle journey across South and Central America as a young man change the guerrilla fighter and revolutionary Che Guevara?
Who invented Nancy Drew and why has she been around for so long?
What would compel someone to steal 2.5 million dollars worth of antique maps from university libraries?
I found each of these books completely fascinating. My students, however, generally think they are stinky suck-holes of boredom. Alas. So far, I have found a few things to be true: men choose Chasing Che and women choose Girl Sleuth. Nobody chooses The Island of Lost Maps. Everyone complains about how boring the books are, about how confusing it is that the story goes back and forth in time between the past and the present, For the most part, they slog through, joylessly, and we get to the end of the semester with a palpable sense of relief.
On the one hand, I recognize that part of the problem lies with my students. I take an informal poll at the beginning of each term and what I've found so far is that 60-70% of my students say they made it through high school reading less than 50% of what was assigned. Part of why students struggle with what I give them to read is that they're bad at reading. They're bad at it because they have very little practice. So when they tell me they're having a tough time following what's happening in the book, it's like my four year old telling me she's having a tough time pedaling her bike. No, she's not good at it - but she'll get better at it the more she does it. So it is with my students.
On the other hand, I recognize that my tastes are perhaps more weird and eclectic than they need to be. Not everybody finds recreations of fifty year old motorcycle trips taken by Argentine revolutionaries interesting. It might be just me.
On the other, other hand, it's college and not everything should be a pleasure-filled dance through the posies. It's okay if the readings are challenging. In fact, they probably should be challenging. Students not liking what they're reading is probably more of a good sign than a bad one.
Anyway, I'm looking for new books, partly for my students but partly to keep my interest too.
So right now, I'm reading Detroit: An American Autopsy by Charlie LeDuff. I figured a book about something closer to home might be of greater interest than Argentina or university rare book rooms. LeDuff was a reporter for the New York Times who eventually decided to return to his hometown and write for the Detroit News. As I am reading this book, I find that he was there, writing for the paper and writing this book, at exactly the same time I was in the D, teaching at Young Detroit Builders. He covered all the Kwame Kilpatrick and Monica Conyers business. He met with them, interviewed them and their mouthpieces.
He writes about that right along with the race and class clashes, corruption and graft, decay and depression that come with living and/or working in Detroit. It rings so totally true to me. I have glossed over and valorized my years in Detroit since I was there, but this book brings back with great clarity how debilitating and sad it was to be there. It reminds me of how crazy eager I was to get the heck out of Dodge. So often that place, the overwhelming hopelessness of it, was excruciating. It was really hard.
LeDuff is a heck of a writer - terse, macho, and profane, a Hemingway from the dirty mitten. He handles significant concrete details like a champ, tossing them in at just the right moment in just the right amounts. I'm down to the last couple of chapters and I've decided this book is one of my students' future options for sure. LeDuff does tv for the local Fox affiliate now - a fact I will try to forgive in light of how good his book is.
I have an idea for a second book choice, but I'll have to write about it later. It's late here and tomorrow is a busy day. If you're looking for a book that effectively transports you to downtown Detroit ca. 2009, An American Autopsy will do the trick nicely.
So for the last two semesters, my students have chosen between Chasing Che by Patrick Symmes, Girl Sleuth by Melanie Rehak, and The Island of Lost Maps by Miles Harvey. I love each of these books - they're excellent examples of one person using really comprehensive research and quality writing to pursue some quirky, personal question.
How did his motorcycle journey across South and Central America as a young man change the guerrilla fighter and revolutionary Che Guevara?
Who invented Nancy Drew and why has she been around for so long?
What would compel someone to steal 2.5 million dollars worth of antique maps from university libraries?
I found each of these books completely fascinating. My students, however, generally think they are stinky suck-holes of boredom. Alas. So far, I have found a few things to be true: men choose Chasing Che and women choose Girl Sleuth. Nobody chooses The Island of Lost Maps. Everyone complains about how boring the books are, about how confusing it is that the story goes back and forth in time between the past and the present, For the most part, they slog through, joylessly, and we get to the end of the semester with a palpable sense of relief.
On the one hand, I recognize that part of the problem lies with my students. I take an informal poll at the beginning of each term and what I've found so far is that 60-70% of my students say they made it through high school reading less than 50% of what was assigned. Part of why students struggle with what I give them to read is that they're bad at reading. They're bad at it because they have very little practice. So when they tell me they're having a tough time following what's happening in the book, it's like my four year old telling me she's having a tough time pedaling her bike. No, she's not good at it - but she'll get better at it the more she does it. So it is with my students.
On the other hand, I recognize that my tastes are perhaps more weird and eclectic than they need to be. Not everybody finds recreations of fifty year old motorcycle trips taken by Argentine revolutionaries interesting. It might be just me.
On the other, other hand, it's college and not everything should be a pleasure-filled dance through the posies. It's okay if the readings are challenging. In fact, they probably should be challenging. Students not liking what they're reading is probably more of a good sign than a bad one.
Anyway, I'm looking for new books, partly for my students but partly to keep my interest too.
So right now, I'm reading Detroit: An American Autopsy by Charlie LeDuff. I figured a book about something closer to home might be of greater interest than Argentina or university rare book rooms. LeDuff was a reporter for the New York Times who eventually decided to return to his hometown and write for the Detroit News. As I am reading this book, I find that he was there, writing for the paper and writing this book, at exactly the same time I was in the D, teaching at Young Detroit Builders. He covered all the Kwame Kilpatrick and Monica Conyers business. He met with them, interviewed them and their mouthpieces.
He writes about that right along with the race and class clashes, corruption and graft, decay and depression that come with living and/or working in Detroit. It rings so totally true to me. I have glossed over and valorized my years in Detroit since I was there, but this book brings back with great clarity how debilitating and sad it was to be there. It reminds me of how crazy eager I was to get the heck out of Dodge. So often that place, the overwhelming hopelessness of it, was excruciating. It was really hard.
LeDuff is a heck of a writer - terse, macho, and profane, a Hemingway from the dirty mitten. He handles significant concrete details like a champ, tossing them in at just the right moment in just the right amounts. I'm down to the last couple of chapters and I've decided this book is one of my students' future options for sure. LeDuff does tv for the local Fox affiliate now - a fact I will try to forgive in light of how good his book is.
I have an idea for a second book choice, but I'll have to write about it later. It's late here and tomorrow is a busy day. If you're looking for a book that effectively transports you to downtown Detroit ca. 2009, An American Autopsy will do the trick nicely.
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
A Seasonal Poem
Spring
Just as we lose hope
she ambles in,
a late guest
dragging her hem
of wildflowers,
her torn
veil of mist,
of light rain,
blowing
her dandelion
breath
in our ears;
and we forgive her,
turning from
chilly winter
ways,
we throw off
our faithful
sweaters
and open
our arms.
"Spring" by Linda Pastan from Heroes in Disguise. © Norton, 1991.
Friday, May 9, 2014
Batchin' It
It's a muggy, overcast Friday morning here. The older two are at school, Parker is watching My Neighbor Totoro on DVD, and I have spent the last hour or so paying bills. In a bit, P and I will go grocery shopping, stop at the bank to deposit a check, and buy a new tube and possibly tires for my bike. Exciting times here in Midland, Michigan.
Suzy is out of town at the Tri-Annual Super Sister Pamper-a-Thon Bonanza. (That name is trademaked, by the way. I get a dime for every time someone uses it.) She's in Breckenridge, Colorado with her three sisters and SIL Amy getting massages, eating good food, making each other laugh really hard, and generally living the carefree single life. They only get together like this every three years or so, so I think it's important that they live it up and enjoy.
Things here have been pretty chill. Yesterday Parker and I took a picnic to the park and she played for an hour and a half. It was our first day above 80 degrees, and it did indeed feel positively summery for sure.
While she played, I pecked out a tribute to Scott Samuelson, one of my former professors from Ricks College. I took a couple of classes from him back in the day. Suzy was even in one of them. Somewhere along the line, Scott and I became friends rather than just teacher and student. He was the one who first introduced me to the National Undergraduate Literature Conference at Weber State in Ogden which was a tremendously formative experience for me as a student and later a teacher. Scott gave me my first real teaching gig after my mission when I needed some internship credits at Idaho State and he let me be his assistant teacher for a poetry class at Ricks. He and I have traded poems, handmade books, meals, and stories for over twenty years now. He is literally one of the best men I've ever met, and now he's retiring from BYUI after 32 years of teaching. His daughter reached out to all of his Facebook friends asking them to write a note or a memory or something that they could put into a book and give him as a gift. This is what I wrote:
"In my basement, I have a box of papers from my freshman and sophomore years at Ricks College. Even though they were a little pretentious and shoddy in places, they are covered with thoughtful, rigorous, compassionate feedback from Scott Samuelson in his looping script.
Suzy is out of town at the Tri-Annual Super Sister Pamper-a-Thon Bonanza. (That name is trademaked, by the way. I get a dime for every time someone uses it.) She's in Breckenridge, Colorado with her three sisters and SIL Amy getting massages, eating good food, making each other laugh really hard, and generally living the carefree single life. They only get together like this every three years or so, so I think it's important that they live it up and enjoy.
Things here have been pretty chill. Yesterday Parker and I took a picnic to the park and she played for an hour and a half. It was our first day above 80 degrees, and it did indeed feel positively summery for sure.
While she played, I pecked out a tribute to Scott Samuelson, one of my former professors from Ricks College. I took a couple of classes from him back in the day. Suzy was even in one of them. Somewhere along the line, Scott and I became friends rather than just teacher and student. He was the one who first introduced me to the National Undergraduate Literature Conference at Weber State in Ogden which was a tremendously formative experience for me as a student and later a teacher. Scott gave me my first real teaching gig after my mission when I needed some internship credits at Idaho State and he let me be his assistant teacher for a poetry class at Ricks. He and I have traded poems, handmade books, meals, and stories for over twenty years now. He is literally one of the best men I've ever met, and now he's retiring from BYUI after 32 years of teaching. His daughter reached out to all of his Facebook friends asking them to write a note or a memory or something that they could put into a book and give him as a gift. This is what I wrote:
"In my basement, I have a box of papers from my freshman and sophomore years at Ricks College. Even though they were a little pretentious and shoddy in places, they are covered with thoughtful, rigorous, compassionate feedback from Scott Samuelson in his looping script.
On a shelf in my living room, I
have an elegant ceramic pitcher colored like Idaho desert, all tans, cream, and
speckled brown. Scott gave it to us as a wedding present because my wife and I
were talking, flirting, and working on projects together in his class years
before we ever knew we would marry.
On my office wall at Delta College,
I have a large, two-by-three framed print of a crane taking flight. The paper
is handmade, the crane image is from a hand carved block, and the poem at the
bottom of the image was letterpressed – a painstaking process of setting type
letter by letter. Scott gave it to me as a gift when we happened to run into
each other on one of the worst, most catastrophic days of my life. He explained
that the crane was a symbol of rebirth, of shedding the old and lifting off
into the air, clean and free.
In short, I have spent the last two
decades of my life receiving gifts from Scott Samuelson. He gave me the gift of
his respect and serious attention as a student and writer at a time when I
really didn’t warrant it. He has given me prints, handmade books, paintings, poems
and other art that have made my world a more lovely, more uplifting place. He
gave me his example as a busy full-time teacher and full-time father who
managed go back to grad school after a long absence and finish his PhD, showing
me all these years later that it can be done and done well. He gave me the
example of an involved, invested teacher who, even after decades of expert
teaching in the classroom, continued to seek out new methods, new texts, new
interests, and new ways of reaching both the class as a whole and the student
as an individual. He has given me friendship, compassion, a listening ear, and one
of the best examples of what it is to be a good teacher, father, husband,
scholar, and man.
Largely because of Scott, I became
a college English instructor. I’ve worked full-time for fifteen years now and
have taught approximately four thousand students in that time. Any student of
mine who has ever been moved or uplifted, usefully instructed or inspired owes
a portion of it to Scott. I simply would not be the teacher or person that I am
without his influence and friendship. I know I am just one of the many, many
students changed and bettered by Scott Samuelson. But for me, there’s only one
of him, and I will be grateful forever that he has been and continues to be my
teacher and friend.
Mark Brown
Ricks College, 1992-1994, 1996-1997"
Ricks College, 1992-1994, 1996-1997"
Scott's meant a lot to me, obviously. He may be retiring, but I know that he's going to keep teaching, painting, writing, and working until he literally just can't any more. It's the kind of guy he is.
On another, entirely less sentimental note, I recently discovered Jill Sobule's song "Jet Pack." It's like a perfect combination for me: Jill's smart, smart-allecky lyrics and wise little girl voice singing a song about one my favorite nerd things of all time, jet packs. Plus, it's kind of a love song, which is great. Enjoy:
Parker's movie is over, so we need to get ready for the day. Groceries to buy, popped tires to replace, you know? I should probably shower and try not to look like a homeless guy. My natural tendency when Suzy is gone is to go into sweatpants mode (you know what I'm talking about), but I'm trying to not look like I've totally given up this time. Just because my reason for living is in another state doesn't mean I should stop bathing.
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