When the hurly-burly’s done

Answers to three FAQs:

1) Yes, I’m on Facebook. *

2) No, I don’t “friend” my students. **

3) I’m really not sure what to make of this:

In the wake of scrutiny of the hot social network by Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, his New York state counterpart, Andrew M. Cuomo, has subpoenaed Facebook asking for information on how it handles complaints regarding the inappropriate solicitation of under-age users.

I have to think about this issue in two ways, which is the problem. On the one hand, I think the idea of going after Facebook because of what some of its users use it for is kind of ridiculous. Yes, the internet can be a dangerous place. Yes, there are sketchy people who want nothing more than to bother (and worse) teenagers and children. Yes, the internet makes it a little easier for them to do that. But at the same time, our students know far more about the internet than we do, and if we spend our time babying and coddling them while they’re in high school, there’s no way they’ll be able to fend for themselves later.

But then, I realize that as a teacher, I have to be concerned about what my students are getting themselves into that could harm them. One reason I don’t want my students to try and “friend” (when did that become a verb, anyway?) me is that when they do, they allow me to look at their profiles, and it’s so tempting for me to do so and make sure that they’re not doing anything stupid. And then we have to have the awkward conversation the following morning about Why It’s Not A Good Idea To Friend Your Teacher When Your Profile Picture Shows You Drinking Beer Right From The Pitcher.

So what’s the deal? Should Facebook do more to protect its users? Is there anything weird about “friending” your students? Is Facebook some sort of new paradigm, or is it going to fade out soon?

Added:  A couple of pieces worth reading about social networking as a sociological phenomenon:  “Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism”  and “Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace.”

* I joined a while ago, but didn’t really use it for much until I got back from SUISS this summer and found that most of my friends from over there were using it to communicate. Email is pretty much dead if you’re in your 20s or below. Since then, I’ve gotten hooked, I admit, on a couple of the external apps: Scrabulous and iLike (which I use to dedicate the worst songs I can think of to an old friend of mine who I rarely see in real life).

** So just stop trying, okay?

A short play, written by me:

Dramatis personae

2 STUDENTS, both in an Honors-level English class

 The students are working on an essay assignment, complete with an outline and rubric requiring such things as “topic sentence for each paragraph,” “three pieces of evidence for each point raised,” &c.  The outline must be filled in to get credit for the assignment.  The outline is three pages long.

STUDENT 1: What theme did you pick?

STUDENT 2: Striving for your goal.  It’s the easiest one.

STUDENT 1:  Friendship and loyalty.  It’s hard.  Hopefully she won’t collect this today.

They type.

I wish I’d made this up.  Here’s an Honors-level English class at a prominent high school, and here are students writing fill-in-the-blank essays about themes that they picked off a list.

In the comments to an earlier post, Damian and I went back and forth about the relative value of teaching essays with a preordained structure.  My thinking’s moved beyond that debate.  I wrote, in a comment, this:

What if I grant that and then move on to the position that essays themselves might not be worth teaching? Because who ever has to write an essay once they’re out of school? I wonder, sometimes, if we’re teaching the English/Social Studies equivalent of pinch pots.

And here’s some more stuff from the National Writing Project.  Trinh Nguyen, a first-year college student, wrote an advisory piece to students about to enter college, warning them about the kinds of writing to expect:

“Do not write a five paragraph essay. Not all paragraphs have to be the same size. Topic sentences don’t always have to be at the beginning of each paragraph.” These words from my professor, Gail Offen-Brown, completely shocked me on my first day of College Writing R1A. Her words contradicted everything I learned in high school: every essay required the traditional five paragraphs with six to eight sentences in each paragraph. Topic sentences needed to be at the beginning of the paragraphs—all of which were now thrown out the window. I struggled to adjust to this new form of unconventional writing.

And here’s something else, from Glenda Moss:

…I heard a freshman English teacher at Stephen F. Austin State University express concern that, since students have been “drilled” on the five-paragraph theme for the state test of academic skills, they were locked into only one way of writing an essay. I now remembered how, when students arrived in my seventh grade classroom, they had already had it ingrained in them that for the state test they were to write five paragraphs: an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Each body paragraph was to have an opening sentence and at least two details to support the opening sentence. Part of our job as seventh grade teachers was to make sure the students could write descriptive, instructive, comparative, and persuasive essays. Following instructional material provided to us, they wrote the essays that generally ended up as five-paragraph themes.  

“Our bad,” say middle and high school English and social studies teachers nationwide.  “We really messed that one up.”

So maybe it’s not that essays need to go entirely–there’s got to be merit in an exploratory essay a la Montagne or White.  But again, and I’m going to keep saying this until they find a nice quiet place for me, we need to rethink the way we “teach” “writing” so that we actually teach writing.

Oh, and the College Board isn’t necessarily opposed to this.  Results from the class of 2006’s SATs show something pretty interesting w/r/t the essay portion of the test:

Half the essays used the first-person voice. Score differences were slight, with first-person-voice essays averaging a score of 6.9, compared to 7.2 for those not using first-person voice. Only 8 percent of essays were identified as using the typical five-paragraph essay structure.

So only 8% used the five-paragraph essay structure, and students who used the fascistically banned first-person voice didn’t do much worse than those who didn’t?  Interesting.  Very interesting.  I wonder who grades these things and how many of them were trained to look for five paragraph-esque structure and 3rd person writing.

Where’s this all going?  I don’t know.  But there are a hell of a lot of myths about writing out there, and they need to be exploded, and quickly. 

Dana Huff has a piece on Karl Fisch’s piece on Terry Freedman’s piece about teachers who are proud of their technological ineptitude.  So at the risk of contributing to the echo chamber effect, here’re my thoughts.  They’ve been rattling around for a while, but I can’t guarantee that they’re anywhere near formed.

Anyway, let’s start with a quote from Dana, who I think is one of the more readable edbloggers out there:

In our society, dependent as it now is on technology, teachers who are incompetent with technology are jeopardizing their students’ success. I am not saying we all need to be at an expert level, but I’ll ask the same question Terry did. What message are teachers who can’t even create and edit a simple Word document sending their students?

Dana (and Karl and Terry) bemoans the seeming pride that many teachers display when they say things like, “Oh, I’m computer illiterate” when they’re asked to do things like create a Word document or check their email.  Since David and I led the blogging PLP last year, I can’t tell you how many teachers have come up to me to tell me how irrelevant computer stuff is to their practice.   As if, I suppose, I’m going to take offense and punch them in the nose for daring to insult Almighty Technology.  As if, I suppose, they’re challenging the Master Control Program directly.

Because here’s the thing: I’m now one of the school’s “tech guys”.  I represent the English department on TWIG (Technology Working Group, about which I really don’t want to say anything more right now).  I’ve been tasked with making our department website not awful anymore (which would be easier if FinalSite weren’t one of the clunkier WYSIWYG editors I’ve ever had to work with, which is saying a lot).  I had to deliver the Staff Development harangue about 21st Century Skills on the penultimate day of responsibility last June.

Y’know what?  I’m sick of it.  I’m sick of being one of the only people feel like they can go to about this stuff.  I’m flattered, I suppose, that people think my skills are somehow helpful, but I don’t understand why so many of my colleagues feel that they can’t learn how to do a lot of this stuff.  Wait–not afraid–uninterested.  It doesn’t take a tech mastermind to set your students up to keep a blog or a wiki–get them over to Learnerblogs and Wikispaces and let them go to town.   They’re probably doing that stuff already anyway.

At our Opening Rally this year, our superintendent told us some startling (heh) statistics about MySpace and Facebook.  To paraphrase, an awful lot of kids are doing an awful lot of stuff on Facebook, and the guy who invented it wants to turn it from a social network into a productivity platform.  Now, I doubt that’ll work (there are so many dumb apps on Facebook–Zombies?  Happy Hour?  C’mon–that I’m sure the backlash is just around the corner) but what struck me was the whispering going on in the row in front of me.

“I am shocked,” someone approximately said, “that people are willing to share information about themselves online.”

“Yes,” another kind of said.  “Why won’t kids just sit under trees and read books like we did when we were growing up?”

The kicker here is that neither of these individuals are over 30 years old.

Look.  Here’s the deal.  Hey you–yeah, you–you teachers:  I don’t care if you personally think Facebook is worthwhile, or that blogs are interesting to read.  Facebook’s probably a total waste of time, and the vast majority of blogs (this one included) are self-indulgent pap.  But this is the world we live in–not just our students.  If you don’t go home and spend hours online every evening, it doesn’t matter.  Your students do.  And who are we serving, anyway?  Get with the times or risk doing your students a disservice.

Terry Freedman nails it, by the way:

I’m sorry, but I don’t go for all this digital natives and immigrants stuff when it comes to this: I don’t know anything about the internal combustion engine, but I know it’s pretty dangerous to wander about on the road, so I’ve learnt to handle myself safely when I need to get from one side of the road to the other.

We can have the argument about whether students’ online lives are making them better or worse people another time.  We can lament the fact that people read fewer Great Books later (or earlier, since I addressed that in December).  Maybe I’ll throw in a zinger about tearing down the canon and injecting some democracy into the proceedings.  Right now, though, I don’t care.   Without getting rid of the pride in ignorance polluting our profession, there’s no point in having the other conversations.

Seriously.

I discovered this today, but I think it’s been around a while, and I’ve just been missing it.  Anyway, the New York Times runs a great blog called Papercuts, which is about literary news, personalities, new books, etc.

Exciting, but not terribly cool.

However, what is cool is that on Wednesdays, they ask “a writer or some other kind of book-world personage” for a playlist of their top songs of the moment, with explanations.  This week’s featured personage is Miranda July, who directed a film I loved (Me and You and Everyone We Know) and has a new (and awesomely-titled) book of short stories just now out (Nobody Belongs Here More Than You).

Anyway, I’m not really a book-world personage, unless you count the public library as part of the book-world.  But here’s my playlist.  Hopefully you’ll write your own playlist on your own blog (let’s say ten songs, shall we?) and drop the link in the comments box here, or initiate a trackback, or let me know in some way what’s on your playlist.  At the very least, it’ll be a nice diversion from dealing with the pros and cons (mostly cons) of five-paragraph essays and No Child Left Behind.

These aren’t in order of preference, by the way.  They’re in order of flow–I’ve made and listened to this playlist in preparation for this post.  That’s dedication.

1.  J-Live, “Nights Like This”:  When a suburban geek like me starts a playlist with a hip-hop track, your poseur radar should activate.  J-Live’s great–he’s a former NYC public school teacher and one of the most underrated MCs out there.  He dishes out internal rhymes as if he doesn’t even notice he’s doing it–”Nights like this I don’t whisper raindrops / No need to anticipate / My words hold enough weight to make it precipitate / The barren I fertilize, the crooked I set straight.”  Even better, though, is the way this track sounds.  There’s some kind of keyboard thing going on that captures that late-night mood J-Live is after.  A great instance of production enhancing the lyrics.

2.  Bloc Party, “I Still Remember”:  Bloc Party’s really good at angry, but I tend to like their sentimental songs better.  They have one called “This Modern Love” (off Silent Alarm) that’s the most wistful disco song since Bowie’s “Let’s Dance.”  “I Still Remember,” though, is even more intense.  Hearing Kele Okereke sing “And on that teacher’s training day / We wrote our names on every train / Laughed at the people off to work” over a driving beat is devastating.

3.  Built to Spill, “Car”:  It’s always best to follow up two emotional/maudlin songs with a catchy singalong.  “Car” is stealthy–it starts mellow and moody, then just hits you with a great fist-pumper of a chorus.  The peak, though, is the second verse.  I can’t even explain why.  Just listen to the song and tell me I’m right.

4.  The Hold Steady, “Stuck Between Stations”:  Yes.  Rock.  I could’ve picked any Hold Steady songs, but this one is good for an English teacher’s blog, what with the On the Road reference in the first line.  There’s been a lot of ink spilled about how the Hold Steady is the best American band out there at the moment, and I’m not going to try and disabuse anyone of that notion.  “She said, ‘You’re pretty good with words / But words won’t save your life,’ / And they didn’t, so he died.”  I bet Craig Finn was insufferable in his high school English classes.

5.  Gogol Bordello, “Illumination”:  Okay.  Eugene Hutz sounds a bit like Borat.  And this song is full of ridiculous yearbook quote-esque platitudes.  But I challenge you not to spend some time learning the words to this one, just so you can sing along at the top of your lungs when you think nobody can hear you.

6.  Roger Dean Young & the Tin Cup, “Stettler II”:  I have no idea what a “stettler” is.  In fact, I thought it was a typo for “settler” for months.  I do know, though, that Roger Dean Young is one of the best songwriters that nobody’s ever heard.  He sings like a Cormac McCarthy novel reads, and he’s got a rotating band (the Tin Cup) of what I imagine to be urban cowboy types who spend a lot of time drinking coffee and shopping for trumpet mutes.

7.  Lucinda Williams, “Pineola”:  This is what would’ve happened if Flannery O’Connor wrote vicious country songs instead of short stories.  A kid commits suicide and the narrator is stuck trying to deal with it.  The beauty of this song is that Williams’s narrator never attempts to make sense of the event.  She just has to get along.

8.  Marah, “My Heart is the Bums on the Street”:  I had to put on something to lighten the mood after “Pineola.”  I came up with this one, an ode to Philadelphia from a heartbroken kid who can’t do anything but catalog his memories over a Motown beat.  Also, it’s got the second Kerouac reference of the playlist, which might set a world record.

9.  Mike Doughty, “Looking at the World from the Bottom of a Well”:  Continuing the theme of depressing song titles matched with not-terribly-depressing songs, Doughty tries to make you cry but just gets you pumped up with the catchiest song you’ve heard since “Hey Ya.”  “Let’s get down to business now,” indeed.

10.  Wilco, “What Light”:  I didn’t know how to end this list, so I’ll pick my favorite new-ish song.  It’s the single off Wilco’s latest album.  If you like Wilco, you’ll like this one.  If you don’t like Wilco, this won’t convert you.  But they’ve been one of my favorite bands for years, and every time they release an album I listen to it until I can’t stand it anymore.  I’m not quite at that point yet.