Unnatural Selection: Choosing Texts to Teach

Remember libraries? With books? How did you pick yours?

I was always a stacks-wanderer, and then a follower of particular authors and topics. I'd slip between stacks and look at colors, words, even the numbers of the spines, pulling out any that grabbed my attention.

I know, I know: don't judge a book by its cover. But, I did. It wasn't all about pretty pictures, but it definitely took something visual to pull me in, at least that first time. Once I'd had a good experience with an author or a topic, I'd be ready to look past covers and prepare for the good stuff inside, but the first time was all about hitting on the pretty one at the dance.

And I was, and am, a "book person." Yet, my choices were made in exactly the way we caution people not to do it. They were superficial, visual, and sometimes even instinctual or reflexive.

At bookstores, it had more to do with price. I didn't take risks, the way that I would at a library. I chose authors I knew I'd enjoy, and bought them at the lowest possible price (if at all). I didn't have much money, I moved a lot, and books were both an investment and a thing likely to be lost in the continual reshuffle of transience.

The reason I bring this up is that it factors into how I choose texts to teach. I think about my students and their financial woes and relative disinterest in reading. I think about their avowed disinterest in anything that smacks of authority, formal schooling outside of a career track, or the distant past (anything before Clinton). I don't acquiesce to it by rote, but I am very aware of the limitations. I consider it part of my job to get them interested in thinking about texts, but not necessarily about texts themselves. I try to get them to see that they are already immersed in texts. Sometimes, that opens the door to books. Other times, it just gets them to see what's really going on in the icky global and sexual politics of the Iron Man series.

So, in choosing texts, I have a few simple criteria I use to help me find something workable.

1. Curriculum requirements: naturally, it needs to fit the needs of the class, the system, and the state boards. Also, for a lot of classes, it needs to be on an approved list of some kind, or I have to go about getting approvals.
2. Cost: less is more. So many books, and so many of them can be gotten cheaply. I avoid the needlessly steep sticker-prices where I can. As a result, I use a lot of texts which have hit the public domain, been through many editions with minimal change, or which are available online.
3. Bite Sizes: I often have classes of 50 minutes to 1.5 hours, and that means we don't have a lot of time to run a long discussion. In order to make real sense of a text, we need to be able to break it into smallish pieces and discuss it in chunks over a number of days or weeks. Longer texts, then, need to have clear breaks in chapters and/or action. Films need to have discrete themes and clear plotlines. Television shows need to work when viewed without narrative continuity. We don't have the time for extensive recapping.
4. Thematic content:  What makes it relatable is what makes it work, I think. That boils down to themes and how available they are for parsing. A good Bildungsroman is often good, because youth and growing up are relatable to everyone, but particularly to traditional college students. I also like to use texts which consider themes of power and corruption, authority and resistance, sexual mores, ethical responsibilities and dilemmas, and mistakes. These help to reach a wider range of students, including resistant or alienated folks. Also, they provoke passionate discussion, wide disagreement, and keep me interested. 
5. Informational content: for composition classes, the needs are pretty clear. But, I've also taught sociology, psychology and anthropology-based courses, where the needs were more diverse. In those cases, I've often chosen texts which offered a variety of essays on a topic, or which gave a discussion-friendly overview of a topic.

I don't think there's a magic formula for this. I have to be interested enough to cheerlead for their interest and participation. They need to "get" it, and be willing to talk about it. Everybody needs to able to obtain and afford it. The rest is up to interpretation.

Some books I have taught which worked well: The Reader; The Good Brother; One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; I Never Promised You a Rose Garden; Coyote Blue; Tallgrass; Welcome to the Monkey House; Like Water for Chocolate; How We Eat: Appetite, Culture, and the Psychology of Food; Bodies in the Making: Transgressions and Transformations.

Some of the films: Fight Club; Dr. Strangelove; Scream; Hard Candy; Tape; Freeway; The Curve; The Truman Show; But I'm a Cheerleader

TV shows: Firefly, Scrubs; Parks and Recreation; The Boondocks; South Park; Archer

My next textual experiment will be some pairings. The ones I have on deck at present are Dante's Inferno and the comic-book film Constantine as well as Romeo and Juliet and the zombie film Warm Bodies. And that's the thing I've had to keep learning: evolution. It gets too easy to rely on what I've already done. So, I try to change up my texts at least every 2 years, so that I'm getting to look at something with relatively fresh eyes as well. 

How do you choose texts to teach? What tends to work? What doesn't? Has your process changed over the years?

School is not an App: Resisting the Gamification of the Classroom

Warning: Long argument, with lots of imbedded evidence links, ahead.

I warn you about this because I know that very few of us have the concentration to finish reading a 1500-word blog article. Fewer still follow up on linked evidence, even if the topic interests us. And that should tell us plenty about how technology is affecting our ability to think.

~~~

My students live for, and through, their phones, tablets, and laptops. They come in with earbuds in place which they are reluctant to remove. They have deep feelings about their phone carrier, their video games of choice, and their streaming services. They weep, inconsolably, if a smartphone is lost, stolen or broken. They identify themselves by the consumer-driven binaries of Mac/PC, console/computer,  and Android/IPhone.

The few who resist the consumer-electronic branding of their generation by huge corporations face teasing or stony silence should they mention their abstention. One of the points of critical thought is to interrogate and challenge our assumptions, so I start there: I have them put their phones in their pockets or face-down on the table. Then, they will check them--sometimes unconsciously. What they find there is usually meaningless, and often doesn't even exist. It is just the urge which drives their action. It is their boss. They are slaves to the machine.

That machine is full of pictures, text messages from friends and family, YouTube videos of things they found fun or were assigned as educational, creative content illegally downloaded for free, and a window to the infinite variety of the internet. But, ask them to find something online and they are lost if it cannot be put into the form of a question, as though Google (and all algorithmic search engines) are Alex Trebek. Despite being the digital generation, they have little idea how to engage meaningfully with the resources available to them online.

It is not a coincidence that during the same time that job security, academic funding, and content-based teaching have all been undermined or eliminated we have also turned, ever more, toward technology as a solution for all the problems of our seriously adrift and ever-lower-performing educational system. We increase class size but think that computers will make that workable. We undermine educational advancement possibilities and funding for state schools, but suppose that giant online education factories will fill the gaps, at a profit. This is just...wrong. Technology is not a solution. It is, at best, a tool which can enhance an already-functioning classroom environment. Technology will not stand in for competent and knowledgeable teachers, meaningfully considered pedagogy, ethical resource allocation, the opportunity to discuss ideas with peers and subject-matter experts, and the dissemination of actual information. It just will not.

Now, I'm not an idiot: I know the internet is here to stay, and technology drives the economy and therefore will continue to grow and change much more quickly than our biological or social understanding of its ramifications. So, I accept its presence. I try to teach my students to make better use of the resources available to them online. I teach them how to manipulate Boolean search strings, how to find content for free without stealing from artists, how to evaluate online information for accuracy, relevance and scope. I bring in digital content and we unpack YouTube videos and stream movies or television shows to discuss. We connect over this week's super-cute llama videos, or last week's blue dress/white dress controversy. I answer emails and rely on Blackboard. Technology is part of the class.

But, I draw boundaries.

I do not allow cellphone use in the classroom. To take a call, send a text, or go online, they must leave the room. If we need a spot-answer during discussion, I turn on the projector for the class computer and we search together, so they can see what I did online to arrive at and validate the information needed. They do not pull out their phones and start Googling without guidance.

I do not use social media in the classroom and I don't engage with students over social media away from class. (That's a slippery slope I want no part of. At all.) Personally, and just for me, I don't think it's helpful to bring social media into the classroom. I am trying to engage them in a millenia-old conversation. I don't think that conversation is particularly helped by the introduction of more abstraction or more distancing, both of which technological intervention brings. Also, I am trying to help them learn how to engage deeply and in a continuous fashion with ideas and concerns, and I believe that is actively undermined by technology.

I'm not alone in this. Even some advocates of technology have turned against its use--and especially social media use--in the classroom. And yet, I seem to encounter ever more proponents of its use, many of whom I know to be engaged educators actively seeking classroom success and student improvement. So, what gives?

Some people who advocate tech in the classroom, especially "social learning" models, suggest that by embracing social media (et al), we are just embracing the world students actually inhabit and helping them to navigate it. That's a problem, to me. Since when is it our job, as educators, to accept the world's problems and limitations and just teach students to live within them, rather than to understand and challenge the world? Also, even if it were the mission to teach students to operate within the limitations of their era and resources, it would still require that they first learn. That requires sustained focus and deep engagement, neither of which is at all stimulated by technological intervention.  

The other big argument is something along the lines of "It's fun" or "It keeps me young." This actually does square with the research, but the message is not an entirely positive one. We do it because we enjoy it, not because it works. I've been searching, and I've yet to find one peer-reviewed study suggesting that multi-tasking improves outcomes or experience, other than it being entertaining. Are we privileging that metric?

I've heard the arguments in favor of a high level of tech use in the classroom, and the associated distraction, but I do not embrace or accept them. We are not teaching them to multi-task. There is no evidence that we are actually good multi-taskers, as individuals or as a species. The few who are have not been taught to be so, either. There is little to no evidence that smartphone use creates any meaningful knowledge or substantially improves classroom outcomes (at least, in the developed world). The few studies which promote technology in the classroom are not only backed by education-tech money, (looking at you, Brookings) but riddled with internal contradictions and false equivalencies. (Seriously, read that Brookings study. It's a primer in logical fallacies.)

In fact, all of the evidence--both epidemiological and cognitively longitudinal--suggests that reliance on technology creates distraction, undermines productivity, delays the development of interpersonal communication skills, and even causes physical problems like thumb-based carpal tunnel syndrome and neck strain from craning one's head downward to stare at the mini-screen all day. That says nothing of eye strain, or even the ability to make eye contact.

So, I use technology to enhance what we're already doing. I use it to show visual media, sometimes to bring in a relevant clip to discuss, and to streamline our communications. I use SafeAssign to help throw a roadblock in front of cheaters, and I take homework by email when a student cannot make it to class on deadline day. I also use it to distribute handouts, now that the lack of funding for education--and lack of prioritization of the classroom within school budgets--has made it ridiculously difficult even to get copies made. (Just take it to this building, six blocks away, between the hours of 3:17 and 3:42 a.m. Don't forget your sixteen digit access code, proof of citizenship, and to bring your own paper.)

Technology isn't educational. It's entertainment, It's problematically anti-ecological consumption. It's a good way to avoid work. It's a great way to figure out where you will meet your friends for pizza. It's an additional expense (or more) in everyone's month, which shows no signs of getting less expensive, despite market saturation. It's a source and stimulus for change, which can be good, bad or something else. Conversation is educational. And that's the one thing everyone's smart phone seems not to help at all: engagement with a conversation.

So for now, I'm going to ask them to put the phones down and close the laptops. I'll ask them questions and look them in the eye while they answer. I'll write things on the board and ask them to write them down, in their own hand. I'll do it the slow way. Somehow, we all still manage to arrive, even without the little birdie in our pockets chirping at us which way to go.

TL;DR: 1) Technology will not make anyone who already has access to it smarter or better educated, and 2) your inability to read this whole blog entry illustrates why that is true.

Happiness, Honesty & Humor: Staying Positive

This week's prompt was to elaborate on how we stay positive. Most times I have read blogs on a similar theme, the result tends to be about keeping a cheerful disposition, avoiding bad moods, or circumventing the willingness to experience negative emotions like anger, sadness, or fear.

I think we need a more complicated view than the whole positive/negative binary. That's why I chose the picture at left. This was the morning I ran a marathon, in January 2014. In the picture, taken around 12 miles in, I look blissful, and I am. I am also in mild pain, and fighting to maintain bodily control and pace.

I have never felt more positive, more optimistic and powerful and full of life. But it would be wrong to say that it was all ease and happiness. I also felt scared that I wouldn't last the distance, or that the pain would become too much to continue, and irritated that no member of my blood family had--or probably would ever--attended a race in which I ran. These were not mutually exclusive experiences, but deeply interwoven ones. I am not sure we need to stay positive, so much as we need to maintain a balance of light and dark.

So, I'd say the first part of restoring balance, for me, is: STOP FAKING IT

When I am happy, I share it. When I am not, I try to keep it relatively quiet, but I also don't lie about it. I moderate the range of my moods and experiences for the sake of others, but I have long since stopped trying to show people the face I think they want to see. I am just guessing anyway, and in trying to be what other people want, it's easy to lose sight of what matters.

Then again, all those things that matter can pile up and create an avalanche of stresses and feelings and obstacles to accomplishment and positivity. The weight of the world, and all of that. So, I let myself have my feelings in the moment, but I try not to dwell in negative ones. I use outside stimulus to break bad moods, and it often takes very little time or distraction to do so.

Second strategy: HAVE A LAUGH, or at least a real smile

I could pretend I'm a super-altruist and say that it's often charity work* or some other lovely human pursuit that makes the world's pain manageable again, but more often it's something silly, largely meaningless and transitory; a stand-up comedian's rant watched on Netflix; compilations of cute animals on YouTube; a nice sugar-free raspberry latte; something ridiculous my dog does.

It's simple, but entirely effective. Laughter breaks negative moods, and makes it easier to get out of the self-absorption that really creates (at least my) bad feelings and negativity.

As Sloan says to Cameron in Ferris Bueller's Day Off: sooner or later, everyone goes to the zoo.
It's going to be hard sometimes, and we all get overwhelmed. Maybe the darkness is in ourselves, or reaches a saturation in the world that permeates our consciousness for a while. Maybe a student has a terrible day or experience and it spreads over into our lives.  Other times, it's just been a long week. Whatever the reason, we all get to that place.

And right now, I'm about to demonstrate the third (because: rule of three) and final strategy for maintaining positive/negative balance: TAKE A BREAK

At the end of the day, we are all fighting highly specific versions of the same human battles. Sometimes, we just need to set down the shield and sword for a while and go for a walk in the sun. Lucky are we who can do so. Sometimes, the best thing we can do for ourselves is nothing. So here's to a happy holiday weekend, full of a lot of whatever brings a little light into everyone's individual darkness.






*Note: Charity work is great, and I have done some, and it does make everything feel a little better. It is, however, more of a mixed bag of feels, and not as readily accessible as a latte. Also, I am a terrible person.

Renewal Recipes & Danger Zones

This week's prompt asks us to think about renewal, and something that we intend to implement this semester. For me, the biggest change is that I'm going to start teaching some episodes of television as source text for critical analysis. 

As Archer would say: So, it's come to this.

(Actually, in the spirit of Archer, I've just always really liked that line.) 

It's funny, because I've been teaching composition and critical analysis for fifteen years now, and I don't think that I have taught an episode of television more than a handful of times. What's funny about this is that I have actually published more academic scholarship on television than on any other medium. Why haven't I been teaching it? Is my need for approval and ingrained impostor syndrome really that deep?

So, I'm finally getting brave. I have two sections of English 116 this section, for the first time in a few years. I usually teach a few films, and then some written texts--a mix of poetry and narrative. This semester, in keeping with the 50-minute sessions, I'm going to open with some television episodes, and then move on to Kurt Vonnegut short stories. 

I love television as a text. It's accessible, familiar and easy to talk about for students. It's also complex, driven by writers, frequently subversive of censors and cultural norms, and immediately reactive to and participating in narrating the events of the day. It's temporally specific and universal at once. Students have deeply formed opinions and emotions about it, which makes it a great road into the lessons of "get over yourself" that are such a part of critical analysis. 

We will watch an episode on Monday, talk about it on Wednesday, and write about it on Friday. I will step-ladder the analysis from basic evaluation of success, to structure, to layers of meaning, to interpretive message, and finally to critical evaluation of message. This should take about a month, or roughly five episodes.

So, that's my plan to keep it interesting, for me and for students. I'm swapping out film for TV, and will keep you all posted on how that analysis develops. I'm also collecting potential episodes, so I'll leave a list of episodes currently in contention, and if you have any suggestions, please share. If you have any thoughts about TV in the classroom, I'm very happy to hear them. I'm screening lots of things and narrowing it down still. I love this feeling--like new things are going to happen. It makes me excited about starting again, and from what the students have suggested, they are looking forward to it also.

Current contenders:

• Archer, "Diversity Hire" (satire of both structural inequity and bureaucratic amelioration efforts)
• Dollhouse, "Man on the Street" (urban legends in journalism, and ethical issues galore)
• South Park, "Cherokee Hair Tampons" (satire of eco-marketing, cultural appropriation, and the ironies of tribal/U.S. relations)
• Firefly, "Jaynestown" (examines the gap between myth and reality, and asks which matters more, and for what audiences)
• The Newsroom, "The Greater Fool" (what are the obligations of news media? How does one measure individual conscience against economic and social duty?)
• Scrubs, "My Own Personal Jesus" (faith/science in a hospital, personal crisis of faith, the perception of the miraculous)
• Parks and Recreation, "Sister City" (satire of condescending diplomatic delegations, awkward international PR stunts, and ideological enmity)
• Bones, "The Pain in the Heart" (argues that logic without morality leads to evil actions; raises ethical questions about justice, collusion, and legal culpability)

The Best/Worst End of Semester Stories

This will be a short post with no real accessories, as I am just trying to get one in before I get lapped by the final semester's post. The second week's prompt was the end-of-semester horror story.

Now, like everyone, I've got a cache full of awful stories. A quick bullet-point-list:

• There's the young man who left threatening messages on my car, physically blocked me into an office and indirectly threatened my life, while filling me in on his ongoing accessory-to-murder trial. 
• There's that young woman who called me a Nazi and stalked out of the final meeting.
• There was that strange man who reported to my superiors that he couldn't learn from me because I was "goth." This oddball claim was based on my fondness for black clothes. He reported it to my superiors who were, on that day, also all in black. 
• There have been all those who go missing at the halfway point, and then turn back up the final week, angry that they cannot drop and are not longer able to pass the class.
• There are all the many students who turn in half of a final paper, or less, and then complain that they didn't pass and it's all so terribly UNFAIR.

You know, the usual.

But, this semester, I think the worst of it has really been me. I've been having one of the most absurdly complex semesters I can imagine. At the start of the term, my best friend of several decades died at 40. In September, I delivered a project to the city government--a first for me, and one which ate up my energy and attention for weeks. In October, I was hit by a car while running my dog. A few weeks later, my sister eloped with a man none of us knew, and who we later learned has both cancer and two strikes. Then, my mother died. That was two weeks ago.

To say I've been distracted would be kind.

In this case, I think that the nightmare scenario is just having life go haywire, and trying to do my job. I want to be here for my students; I want to provide them with guidance, information, and a safe space in which to build their skills and find their voices.

I also just want a damn nap, and maybe a few margaritas. Finding balance is a struggle. 

I do not currently have the answers. I have never had the answer to the awful-student question, other than commiseration and frequent low-level ingestion of fermented grapes (or agave). But, in lieu of answer, I offer you one more worst-case-scenario:

Yesterday, one of my students informed me that they couldn't complete their final paper because they couldn't reach out to me or seek any assistance or do any work on it because they were...wait for it...too upset about my mother's death.

I think that one is my new horror story. It even beats the indirect death threat for "NO YOU DIDN'T" factor. 

Happy holidays, everyone. Maybe next year, we'll all be brilliant, our students will all be highly prepared and eagerly involved, and we'll get pay raises commensurate with what any of us could make as bartenders. I think I'll prepare for it by making some margaritas.

Paradise's Price: Making it to Break

This week's adventure in teaching: trying not to kill myself or others at the end of the term.

Wait, if you're not a teacher and so don't know just how true that really is (and, importantly, isn't) that sounds bad, and also like I might need to be followed around with a syringe full of Thorazine. Let me try again.

This week's blogging topic is strategies for avoiding the typical end-of-semester boredom, depression, stress, and decline in productivity. There, that's better. Sure, it still sounds awful (which it is), but at least it no longer sounds certifiable.

In short, I do not have a good answer to this problem. Or at least, I have not yet found a way to avoid a feeling of drag at the end of the semester. I feel it. My students feel it. The semester begins with fresh pages and faces, big ideas and plans, and boundless energy. The process of actual learning waxes and wanes over the weeks. We all enter the final lap with a collective groan and simultaneous burst of productivity bordering on frenzy.

Then it's over, and they leave, and I recharge. Then it starts again. In some ways, I appreciate the ebb and flow of energy and enthusiasm. I like that I can share it with my students, that we're experiencing the same natural cycle of the academic year. I have been in school on one side of the desk or another (and sometimes both) for all but six years of my life. The academic calendar and its patterns are my patterns. 

So, that's my first strategy: embrace the frenzy. For me, this means that I talk to my students about the end of semester crunch. We commiserate, and joke, and break the tension. I chat and complain with the other adjuncts in between grading sessions and panicky student drop-ins, and the sense of community and shared experience reminds me that the work will get done, as it always does. I stack the papers high and enjoy the feeling of peeling the next one off the stack. I pile my research up and use it as a footstool, just to show it who's boss. I get into it, as best I can, physically and mentally. 

All work and no play makes Renee a homicidal joy! Wait, no, that's not right. There are real limits to how long the crunch is fun and when it stops being fun, productivity and mood both plummet. Which leads to the next strategy: simplify everything. I create rubrics for grading the major assignments which include checklists bolstered by areas to add comments, simplifying the grading process for projects. In class, I cut down on new ideas, cycling back to ones that didn't reach everyone the first time and interjecting review of old material for the end. At home, I cook simpler meals, reduce hobby time, and set aside personal and professional development projects for a few weeks.

But, that can start to feel like a trap. When life is streamlined down to a cycle of work/food/hygiene/sleep/repeat, the sheer repetition can become crushing. So, I go for walks.  I have a dog, so I get to give myself points for being a good pet owner by giving him attention and exercise, which makes me feel productive even when I'm taking a bit of time for myself. More importantly, the walk itself provides a break while simultaneously offering tremendous benefit. 

I stretch my legs, work the kinks out of my back and hands, increase my metabolism and blood flow, and break up the monotony of grading. But, because I'm still thinking about the work when I start out, I mull over lesson plans, that day's classes, and course development ideas until my mind starts to drift. That's when I know I'm relaxing. And, when I get back, all that increased blood flow has usually cleared my head, opened my creativity, and restored my focus.

When, despite my best efforts and the support of my partner, friends, colleagues, and equally-beset students doesn't fully alleviate the anxiety I tend to fall back into the perennial fear of failure. More than the long hours and heavy work load that comes from being a seasonal (adjunct) employee in a seasonally-cyclic profession, it's this fear that can lead to my being a Negative Nee. 

For this, I have only two solutions that really help. The first is: do the work.  Procrastination is always a temptation, but the work will still have to be done. I try to remind myself of this. Sometimes I succeed. But, when it gets tight, I just put my head down and work. The hours pass, the papers get graded. Tomorrow comes.

The fall-back, final effort is this: walk away. I try to set manageable goals. When I meet them, I can be done for the day and feel good about my progress. Then I let myself be done. No matter how much must be done, sometimes I think we all hit the wall and it's just OVER. And, I've learned, that's fine. Sometimes, I reach the end of what I can do, not forever, but definitely for now. When that time comes, it's best to leave off and do something else. The work will be there again in an hour, or a day, when I find my mojo again. 

Until then, there's always Facebook...