Category: Teaching

His Guru Forever

12/9/2016

A WRITER'S WIT
Many questions can be answered “yes” or “no” only by a moron or a slave.
Dalton Trumbo
Born December 9, 1905

My Book World

I'VE MADE IT MY GOAL to read the entire oeuvre of late British-American author, Christopher Isherwood, over a twelve-month period. This profile constitutes the last in a series of twenty-four. The task has taken me a bit longer than a year, but the fruits of my labor have been many. To read all the works of an author like Isherwood is to know him, as much as anyone can know a writer. To read all his works—fiction, nonfiction, dramatic, travel, diary—is to know that writers can stretch. They are not saddled with the same genre, and each experience adds depth when they return to the genres they're more comfortable with. Most of all, writers can begin in their twenties and continue to write all their lives. RJ

Isherwood, Christopher. My Guru and
His Disciple. New York: Farrar, 1980.

In his final book Isherwood attempts to chronicle his struggle to be an adherent of the Hindu religion. Over the many decades of study he is not always successful, and yet there are times in which he attains a certain level of satisfaction—particularly concerning his relationship with Swami, his guru. Importantly, Isherwood seems never to stop struggling, and the last two paragraphs of his book capture his feelings:

“Meanwhile, my life is still beautiful to me—beautiful because of Don, because of the enduring, fascination of my efforts to describe my life experience in my writing, my fellow travelers on this journey. How I wish I were able to reassure them that all is ultimately well—particularly those who are quite certain that it isn’t; that life is meaningless and unjust! I can’t reassure them, because I can’t speak with the absolute authority of a knower.

All I can offer them is this book, which I have written about matters I only partially understand, in the hope that it my somehow, to some readers, reveal glimpses of inner truth which remain hidden from its author” (338).

NEXT TIME: New Yorker Fiction 2016

READ MY ‘BEHIND THE BOOK’ BLOG SERIES for My Long-Playing Records & Other Stories. In these posts I speak of the creative process I use to write each story. Buy a copy here!

At new prices. Paper: $10.75 | £7.75 | €8.50 Kindle: $2.99

Introduction to My Long-Playing Records
"My Long-Playing Records" — The Story
"A Certain Kind of Mischief"
"Ghost Riders"
"The Best Mud"
"Handy to Some"
"Blight"
"A Gambler's Debt"
"Tales of the Millerettes"
"Men at Sea"
"Basketball Is Not a Drug"
"Engineer"
"Snarked"
"Killing Lorenzo"
"The Age I Am Now"
"Bathed in Pink"

Listen to My Long-Playing Records Podcasts:
"A Certain Kind of Mischief"
"The Best Mud"
"Handy to Some"
"Tales of the Millerettes"
"Men at Sea"
"My Long-Playing Records"
"Basketball Is Not a Drug"
"Snarked"
"Killing Lorenzo"
"Bathed in Pink"
Also available on iTunes.

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My Book World

3/24/2014

A WRITER'S WIT
Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
Flannery O'Connor
Born March 25, 1925

Gray's Monumental Project

Gray, James. Teachers at the Center: A Memoir of the Early Years of the National Writing Project. Berkeley: National Writing Project, 2000.

James Gray, founder of the National Writing Project, writes of his many experiences with teachers who are also writers. The idea he develops is to send teacher/writers back to their classrooms to teach writing, not just English grammar. The earlier part of the book—filled with personal anecdotes about his own development as writer, anecdotes about teachers—seems more interesting than later sections about the political nuts and bolts of the organization’s formation.

Some nuggets from James Gray:

“I had thrived in Miss Popham’s class because she was in charge of her own curriculum. She had a wonderful idea and freedom to teach as she wished. I still think hers is the best way to organize a literature class in high school if the goal is to encourage wide reading and the love of books. My own best teaching in high school reflected my attempts to replicate the spirit of that 1943 class” (2).

“When teaching or learning new skills like reading Shakespeare or writing well, a teacher needs to keep at it. One way we learn to read and write is by reading and writing regularly and frequently” (15).

“This was a teachers-teaching-teachers idea, rare for its time [1961] and transparently sensible. Effective and experienced classroom teachers, rather than professors, did the job of teaching and supervising beginning student teachers. I accepted, and every year for the next fourteen years I taught fifteen beginning English teachers how to teach and visited them in their student teaching classes. Year after year, I had groups of gifted young teachers who, I always thought, could have chosen any career, but chose teaching because teaching is what they had always wanted to do” (25).

“I was thinking that I should have listened to my parents and gone to law school. The thought of facing thirty-four sixth-grade students on Monday without the slightest notion of what I was going to teach was terrifying. In frustration, I kicked at a rock partially buried in the mud. Out scurried several small green crabs. One half-dollar-size specimen picked the edge of my shoe as its next hiding place. I carefully kneeled down without moving my foot to take a better look. The obtuse angle of the setting sunlight caused the crab to light up. She was blowing phosphorescent bubbles from her gill slits. I crouched in the mud absolutely transfixed. Each cell of that animal was illuminated in flame. I momentarily lost my breath . . . as if I had been jolted to consciousness. I knew then that if I could share this type of feeling with my students, I would be teaching them something worthwhile” (74).

“During the summer institutes, BAWP [Bay Area Writing Project] works to maintain a balance between knowledge gained through practice and knowledge gleaned through research and literature in the field. As teachers prepare for their demonstrations, they are asked to describe not only what they do but why they do it” (95).

“From the outset, the writing project adopted a different take on inservice. We believed that if school reform was to be effective, inservice programs must be conducted by the folks on the ground. Classroom teachers are the linchpin of reform. School reform can’t happen just by passing laws, publishing mandates, requiring courses, or reading one more book. But real school reform can happen when teachers come together regularly throughout their careers to explore practices that effective teachers have already proven are successful in their classrooms. Inservice of this sort equals professional development, two terms that, alas, have not always been synonymous” (103).

I was heartened by this book even though I left teaching some time ago. Gray helps to reinforce the idea that I may have done a fairly good job of teaching. If nothing more, his book helps me to see that teaching composition was not a waste of time. Instead, it may be the most important thing that I did with my life, topping, in terms of consequence, anything that I’ve ever written.

WEDNESDAY: MORE PHOTOGRAPHY FROM YELLOW HOUSE CANYON

Honors and Readings

11/17/2013

Ken Dixon at the Museum of South Texas

Dixon's Order & Disorder: "Maze"

For several decades Ken Dixon, visual artist, has provided exhibitions for the Art Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi, Texas. On Saturday, November 9, the museum honored all the artists who have contributed work to its permanent collection, an exhibition entitled "Forty Works for Forty Years." For more details click on the museum link. Look below to view a slideshow of snapshots from the evening (all iPhone pics).

Nighthawks Reading

Sporting My "Burroughs" Look

For over five years I've been part of a writing group that meets at the local Unitarian church. For a modest annual fee, we meet monthly to critique and celebrate each others' writing. Our approach is positive, even when the piece under consideration may have some difficulties. As a result of this nurturing approach, we've all grown, and so has our confidence. New works are constantly finding their way into print because of our sensitive efforts to help one another grow.

On Thursday, November 14, we staged a reading of our recent works-in-progress. Barbara Brannon read a series of sonnets that trace the life of her adult daughter. Michelle Kraft shared a prose piece about how her childhood home in North Texas later became home to an Army Corps of Engineers lake. Marilyn Westfall, poet and leader of our group, read a number of linked poems, among others, about a recent trip to the Isle of Wight off the coast of England. Actor and playwright Juanice Myers organized a troupe of players to present her monologues limning characters—from an old woman regretting how her looks have faded to one that looks back at the fun times the alcoholics in her family provided. I read excerpts from the first chapter of my memoir concerning my twenty-seven years of public school teaching. Thanks to everyone who came, and to the Unitarian leadership for providing us with a place to present our work to the public. Below find photos documenting our efforts. Ken Dixon, photographer.

Falling for Fall

10/28/2012

Red Leaves Rare This Season

In early October Ken and I spent two weeks in New England, first in Northampton, Massachusetts—staying with a friend who teaches at nearby UMass. We then visited a college friend of mine who lives in nearby Hartford, Connecticut and works for UConn. Everything in New England is nearby, including the New York Catskills, where we revisited a site where a Hudson River artist had created a noted painting long ago. The changing of the leaves wasn’t as magnificent as in previous years (2003, our first autumn in the region, must have been a record year of reds, golds, and yellows), but the mystery, the gorgeous transition between life and death that each year affords us was still breathtaking—at least to us who live in a relatively treeless West Texas. See the slideshow below.

My Book World

While on our trip, I read a couple of titles. My writing group had challenged me to check out other teacher memoirs while I’m working on mine, and so I downloaded Tony Danza’s book on the Kindle app of my iPhone. I read it while in flight so I wouldn’t have to carry a book in my luggage. I'll cover the other book in next month's post.

I’d Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had by Tony Danza

I didn’t want to like this book. What could a TV actor learn from one short year in the classroom, when I’d spent nearly thirty there? What could he share with me that I didn’t already know? I first became aware of his book when Danza, actor and star of Taxi, appeared for a reading on C-SPAN’s Book-TV. He seemed a little cocky even as he spoke of how difficult the job of teaching English to tenth graders had been—and then as he continued, I learned that much of his motivation for undertaking the year was to make a reality show for the A&E Network! Danza didn’t even read from his pages but spoke extemporaneously of his nine-month stint. The producers later pulled the plug, and Danza taught the second semester without cameras in the room, a relief, he said. Maybe that was the trick, his willingness to remain in the classroom, that made me go on.

I was pleasantly surprised with Mr. Danza’s saga. He may have worked harder (at sixty) than I had my first year of teaching when I was but twenty-six. With a certain position of power and privilege, Danza seized the opportunity to let the public know—what the rest of us who did it for a career can’t necessarily do—how stupendously difficult it is to be a good teacher.

I want to list some nuggets of truth and/or wisdom he shares with the reader.

This one comes from a retired teacher at Tony’s school, Philadelphia’s Northeast High: “Seating chart. Make one up, use pencil. Do not rearrange chairs unless you are able to put them back neatly before the bell rings every day” (35). How right this sage is. I made up a new seating chart every six weeks period, breaking up cliques that had been formed in the junior highs feeding our school. The practice allowed me to learn pupils’ names, all 144 of them, rather quickly. And you must always put the chairs back in the rows where you had them. Why? So that the next group can perceive that you’re just as ready for them as you were the last class.

After Danza demonstrates his seriousness, Northeast teachers begin to open up. “Others are kinder. They offer advice and tell me what they believe it takes to be a good teacher. ‘You have to be prepared to play many roles,’ says an older woman who’s been teaching for decades. ‘You have to be a mother, father, sister, brother, social worker, counselor, friend, and anything else they need.’ They tell me some heart-wrenching stories about kids who’ve come to school hungry, or late because gunfire outside their bedroom kept them up all night, or who don’t talk in class because of abuse inside their bedroom. They tell me about teachers almost adopting their students to keep them from falling into the abyss of foster care or homelessness. ‘Adoption fantasy,’ one man says, ‘comes with the territory’” (48). I never knew that’s what that was called: all the years in which I could have adopted any number of kids if so allowed and if I’d had the resources to do so—the one(s) who captured my heart for no good reason at all except that I sensed a need.

“It’s beginning to dawn on me just how much work teachers are besieged with outside the classroom. This, I think, is another thing that politicians and the media rarely mention” (49). Aha. Forty hours working in the building. Another twenty at home grading essays until your eyes bleed.

“Another paradox of education in America. They want the experienced teachers to retire and make room for new teachers they can pay less. Talk about your penny-wise” (73). I’ll expand the paradox. Just when teachers are gaining all the wisdom, all the knowledge a lifetime can give them, when they could do the most good, like doctors or lawyers who’ve reached their stride—they finally have not the energy to continue. All the cogs and wheels of the public school machinery (it’s never really the students that tire you) finally wear this fine individual to a pulp, and when they offer you the bronze parachute of a pension, you take it. (Gold, are you kidding? That’s only for administrators and state legislators.)

I could go on and on, but suffice it to say that Mr. Danza really gives his all to the job at Northeast High. He weeps at the drop of a hat (both in and out of class)—something any teacher will tell you is true on those days when you feel like an absolute failure (or a depressive, which may be worse). He tries new methods when others don’t work. He learns from his mistakes (and he makes, like most of us, a lot of them). He organizes field trips for his Philly kids to see a show on Broadway in New York. He organizes a teacher talent show that really energizes the faculty. He’s one of those sparks that every teaching staff needs, and then suddenly the year is ended. He is both devastated and relieved. Yes, when you reach that point in the year, you are both. You can’t wait to stop hitting your finger with a hammer. At the same time, you’ve spent 183 days watching your pupils grow and change, something you’ve had a small part in, and a certain side of you doesn’t want it to be over.

Mr. Danza is asked over and over again by students and fellow teachers if he’s going to come back next year. And each time he says, “I don’t know.” What a luxury. I don’t know. At the same time, I can’t be too critical. There were many years that if someone had dumped a sack of money at my doorstep, I would have walked away. Never to return.

New England Autumn

Happy Valenersary Through the Years

2/17/2012

My lover ("life partner" in modern parlance) and I met on February 14, 1976. We've always celebrated that day as our anniversary and not the weekend four months later when we moved in together. There are two problems with this choice. One is trying to dine out the same evening that every other couple in town is. The other is what to get him. Everything either has hearts all over it or comes in the shape of a heart or is in some way very RED, making it more of a Valenersary present. No matter. For our 25th anniversary we threw our party in June so that we wouldn't have to compete with others trying to hire a caterer (and weather would not be an issue). Some years we traveled. For our 20th, we went to Hawaii. For our 30th we took Amtrak from Ft. Worth to NYC. This year we are planning an overnighter in Archer City, Texas. There we will stay in the Spur Hotel established in 1928. The next day we will peruse the shelves of Larry McMurtry's book store, Booked Up. Frankly, Larry prices his books based on their market value, not to move them. But in the past I have found some treasured first editions of authors whom I adore, and I treasure them to this day. If you can, stop in and browse the shelves of his four-building complex located on the same streets where McMurtry's 1971 The Last Picture Show was filmed. If you take a look at the Booked Up Web site, you may be tantalized by his list of New Arrivals. Be sure and allow plenty of time for your visit because if you leave before you've looked at it all, you may feel like you've left something behind!

Items That Won't Recycle

I’ve displayed some more examples of last month’s “skin of plastic that so often covers a recyclable plastic bottle.” Surely this skin, too, isn’t recyclable, nor the one covering the tissue box.

Other non-recyclable items: lids or caps found on just about every product packaged in plastic. Again, we might say, 'Why worry?' Well, sooner or later Mother Earth is going to get a belly fully and regurgitate all this stuff from her innards and scatter them at our feet. And what about Braun’s plastic container of alcohol (probably) made in Germany with NO recycle symbol on its surface or the plastic mailers we all receive when we purchase items through the mail?

Whatever happened to the term “bio-degradable” bandied about in Time and Newsweek articles in the 1970s? It seems that the problem anymore isn’t so much what recycles and what doesn’t (often a recycling process uses yet more energy than it is worth to make the substance useful again), but what will be digested by Mother Earth and what will give her gas. There exist small and pitiful moves among fast food vendors to utilize containers made of corn, but so far, not one of these magnates has signed on to do this in a big way.

Retirement Hobbies?

I never thought my friends and I would be spending our retirement fighting to keep our pensions at their current levels, but that very battle may be on the horizon if certain (Republican) Texas legislators get their way. Yes, these shysters would like to convert our pension from a “defined benefit plan” to a “defined contribution plan.” They would, in essence, like to privatize our pensions. I won’t go into the details because others more articulate than I already have written articles that explore the issues in full, but suffice it to say the former is a promise to deliver the same check month after month until the day a retiree dies, and the latter only promises to take one's money, making no commitment to see that a retiree receives anything.

Look for links at the end of the post for further reading.

I’m largely concerned with teacher/retiree response to this development. The entire time I taught from 1974 to 2002, teachers in Lubbock Independent School District and indeed from across the state belonged to four, count them, four organizations/unions. The state legislators might as well have invented the concept of divide and conquer; they had to have laughed each time four organizations approached them with similar but usually differing goals. When I first taught, many teachers’ incomes often were "gravy" for the household, the spouse (usually the husband) earning more than enough for the family. The little woman’s (or man’s) income was his/hers to do with as s/he pleased. What did s/he care if no raise was offered by the local board or by the state? As time passed, however, reflecting our society at large, more and more Texas teachers wound up being single parents attempting to provide for their own offspring by way of a paltry teacher's salary. And still teachers did not unite in one voice.

Moreover, Texas legislators and the public at large always seem to have acted as if a teacher is some sort of a missionary, that we should be happy to receive what we get, for, after all, we’ve assumed a calling of some sort. Pitooey. Working sixty hours a week without fair remuneration is not a calling. Skillfully raising test scores is not a calling. Inveigling students to learn how to read when they care not to is not a calling. Teaching is a skilled profession that requires at least one degree (which includes state certification) plus much devotion, and, even though districts seldom reward those with advanced degrees in terms of salary (I mean really reward), there are plenty of people who earn advanced degrees in hopes of becoming a better professional. The time has arrived for teachers/retirees to act differently. If local districts are to recruit bright, altruistic young people to teach, the profession must offer them more in the way of salary and benefits (one of which includes a decent pension to offset an average salary package and the lack of social security to boot).

There are over 800,000 Teacher Retirement System of Texas (TRS) members, made up of both active teachers and retirees. I contend that we 800,000 must act differently this time in the face of what the Texas legislators wish to do to our (and it is our) pension fund. We must be pro-active, to use a term we all heard a lot before we left teaching. We must read carefully about what these men (and they are mostly men) intend to do to our fund.

We must be united. Texas Retired Teachers Association (TRTA) works hard to keep us all informed. The organization lobbies without fail during the legislative seasons. But are their efforts enough? Without question we all should pay the yearly fee and join their ranks, but is TRTA adequate in a world where conditions can change in a second? I have in mind the young woman who brought Bank of America to its knees by petitioning them with 350,000 signatures protesting a proposed $5 month fee for using a bank ATM. How about the Egyptians, the Tunisians, who brought down corrupt governments through social networking Web sites? I have in mind the Occupy movement. Is our issue as big as theirs? You better believe it is, or we, too, may wind up getting the shaft like Wisconsin teachers with regard to collective bargaining (which, by the way, is not legal in Texas).

We must not allow anyone to divide teachers from retirees. Retirees must fight the legislators that wish to make current educators pay a higher contribution rate, and current teachers must support the plight of a retiree, who has been living on the same monthly check since 2001 (more than a 30% loss in spending power). We’re two sides of the same thin dime, and we must support one another without allowing the legislature to divide and conquer us.

And we have to figure out a way to bring this issue to the attention of the public, particularly in Texas. We have to bring state legislators to their knees (or at least their senses). Might we write a petition that people can sign online? Might we unite—old and young, people of all ethnic groups, gay and straight—by way of Facebook and Twitter? Might people, right or left, finally tire of the Machiavellian treatment we’ve been receiving for years from these high-handed people, who act without thinking about the larger consequences, who have God-knows-what kind of designs on our $110 billion fund?

The Texas legislators would tell you that the fund is failing. The $110 billion TRS fund is NOT failing; it is not in great need of tinkering. It is among the top six pension funds in the United States. It has a high international ranking, as well. It has taken some hits including the Enron debacle over a decade ago, or earlier, in the mid-1990s, when Texas legislators reduced their contribution to the fund down to a mandated 6%, where it has remained. These far right legislators claim that the fund is “failing,” but it is not. It is healthy, in spite of their efforts to neglect or destroy it over the years. It is well managed by professionals who know what they’re doing. The fund has even recovered from the hit it took in 2008. Instead of seeing how they can dismantle it, Texas legislators ought to be figuring out a way to fully fund the plan. They should not only bring their contribution back to mid-1990s levels, at the very least, but they should pay the fund back for all the money lost during that fifteen year + period. Texas is still a wealthy state. In our oil-rich economy, our legislators could figure out in a minute how to fund this plan if their feet got hot enough. We must hold their feet to a certain fire.

This is not an issue just for whiny teachers/retirees who somehow never appear to be grateful for what they’re given. This is an issue for parents and their children. It is an issue for anyone who lives in a neighborhood with children. If districts can’t recruit qualified teachers who can look forward, at least, to a fair retirement, then what hope is there for improving education? A district can have the newest equipment, the best in technology, but if there aren’t competent and caring teachers to employ the use of these things—and most studies show that teachers are the most important factor in providing a great education—then what hope is there? Please help. Get involved. Act.

FOR FURTHER READING:

Texas Retired Teachers Association

Teacher Retirement System of Texas

READING

I BELONG TO A WRITING GROUP THAT MEETS MONTHLY SO WE CAN ENCOURAGE ONE ANOTHER AND CRITIQUE EACH OTHERS' WRITING. AS AN OUTGROWTH OF OUR WORK, WE WILL BE READING FROM OUR MOST RECENT PIECES ON THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 7:30 P.M. @ THE UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST CHURCH, 2801 42ND STREET IN LUBBOCK, TEXAS. I WILL BE READING ALONG WITH MELISSA BREWER JONES, DENNIS FEHR, AND MARILYN WESTFALL. IF YOU LIVE IN LUBBOCK OR NEARBY, PLEASE JOIN US!

His Guru Forever

My Book World

My Book World

Gray's Monumental Project

Honors and Readings

Ken Dixon at the Museum of South Texas

Nighthawks Reading

Falling for Fall

My Book World

New England Autumn

Happy Valenersary Through the Years

Items That Won't Recycle

Retirement Hobbies?

READING

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