Excerpted from an email from a former student of the class of '07:
In case I have not said it before, thanks for being a great teacher. I know that your new students will enjoy your classes as much as I did!! :-)
7.24.2008
7.20.2008
Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be!
I love Barnes and Noble. When I go there, however, I become more and more overwhelmed. I have a fear of not reading everything I want to read before I die (and, paradoxically, a worse fear of reading everything I want to read before I die), and wandering through aisles and aisles of unread literature reminds me of this fear.
While I, a lowly English teacher, struggle to read (and process and remember) these volumes of text, there is one man who seems to have read and critiqued them all: Harold Bloom. On my bookshelf is a 745-page tome, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, in which Bloom examines each of the Bard's plays in depth, then draws conclusions about his work as a whole. Although this book could be considered a life's work, it was published a decade ago, leaving him ample time to compose thirty books, as well as lending his service as editor/author of introductions, forwards, and afterwards to dozens of books on a variety of literature...and still managing to regularly publish articles on the side. Bloom is an authority on the canon: in addition to these "smaller" works, he published The Western Canon, which is a survey of the greatest works of European literature.
I am in awe. I will be surprised if I am able to read in my lifetime all that this man has written.
And yet he seems modest about his brilliance: in Invention, he says, "...T.S. Eliot's observation [is] that all we can hope for is to be wrong about Shakespeare in a new way. I propose only that we cease to be wrong about him by stopping trying to be right. I have read and taught Shakespeare almost daily for these past twelve years, and am certain that I see him only darkly. His intellect is superior to mine: why should I not learn to interpret him by gauging that superiority..."
And so we mere mortals are humbled.
While I, a lowly English teacher, struggle to read (and process and remember) these volumes of text, there is one man who seems to have read and critiqued them all: Harold Bloom. On my bookshelf is a 745-page tome, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, in which Bloom examines each of the Bard's plays in depth, then draws conclusions about his work as a whole. Although this book could be considered a life's work, it was published a decade ago, leaving him ample time to compose thirty books, as well as lending his service as editor/author of introductions, forwards, and afterwards to dozens of books on a variety of literature...and still managing to regularly publish articles on the side. Bloom is an authority on the canon: in addition to these "smaller" works, he published The Western Canon, which is a survey of the greatest works of European literature.
I am in awe. I will be surprised if I am able to read in my lifetime all that this man has written.
And yet he seems modest about his brilliance: in Invention, he says, "...T.S. Eliot's observation [is] that all we can hope for is to be wrong about Shakespeare in a new way. I propose only that we cease to be wrong about him by stopping trying to be right. I have read and taught Shakespeare almost daily for these past twelve years, and am certain that I see him only darkly. His intellect is superior to mine: why should I not learn to interpret him by gauging that superiority..."
And so we mere mortals are humbled.
7.16.2008
Resignation
The Gatekeeper has resigned.
This week my husband accepted a two-year position in the New York Metro area, not far from where I grew up. The New York accent that has all but disappeared since I left the region eight years ago will probably be resurrected by Christmas.
So I resigned on the last possible day permitted by my contract; on Monday a friend will help me extract three years' worth of materials and decorations from my classroom.
As for next year, I have begun applying to teaching jobs in high school and local colleges, as well as to a variety of positions in publishing. For now, the Gatekeeper has no gate to tend.
This week my husband accepted a two-year position in the New York Metro area, not far from where I grew up. The New York accent that has all but disappeared since I left the region eight years ago will probably be resurrected by Christmas.
So I resigned on the last possible day permitted by my contract; on Monday a friend will help me extract three years' worth of materials and decorations from my classroom.
As for next year, I have begun applying to teaching jobs in high school and local colleges, as well as to a variety of positions in publishing. For now, the Gatekeeper has no gate to tend.
7.14.2008
Suit Up
I like suits. My husband has a number of suits as well as myriad shirts and ties for a staggering number of wardrobe combinations. He, like most men, looks good when dressed professionally. A well-dressed man commands respect with his starched shirts, supercreased flat-front slacks, and well-tailored jackets. Why is it then that women's suits are often atrocious?
I can think of a number of reasons to conclude why women's suits may be so horrid:
I can think of a number of reasons to conclude why women's suits may be so horrid:
- Suits were created for men's bodies, and thus do not look good on women if not properly adapted. (To that end, suits generally also do not look good on women—or men—who are overweight.)
- Suits, as I have already described, are a symbol of power, and most women do not carry themselves with the confidence it takes to assume that role of power.
- Despite our cultural reputation, many women do not possess the style sense to piece together an outfit that suits (ha! so punny!) their body type and personal colors. This is not to say that men have this innate ability; the professional fashion deficiency of women may stem from the fact that they are left to their own devices in department stores, whereas men have professional, trained associates to attend to their wardrobe.
- For our vast love of consumerism, Americans in general lack style. The women's suiting section of a department store will be froth with loud colors, patterns, and textures that ordinarily would be suitable for other types of apparel but are dreadful when applied to the masculine-based suit style. Just today I saw a woman wearing a green plaid suit—the type of plaid designed by a Scotsman with cataracts. I can hardly blame the style-deficient designer, as there was actually a consumer who bought and wore the product...and it's not even Halloween!
We can only hope that in our culture entranced by reality television shows, more programs such as What Not to Wear will reach more and more Americans and teach women how to dress for the workplace.
Merit Badge
There are some public schools in America who have—according to many educators and legislators—gone off the proverbial deep end by employing a system of merit pay. In these systems, teachers' salaries are individually determined by the educator's performance and by their students' performance on high-stakes testing (to meet the demands of No Child Left Behind...but that's for another blog).
As is, in our "average American" school district, teachers are paid based on their highest degree earned and by the number of years in the system. There is no reward for exceptional teaching, and thus many teachers have no incentive to apply themselves fully to the job. Although our principal continually refers to our staff as a "dream team," our mediocre roster is only a "dream" compared to the other abysmal schools in our region. There are some teachers, myself immodestly included, who consistently go above and beyond for our students, and we only do so out of personal pride in our work and out of a concern for our students' well being; we then return home to review online banking statements with too little in the deposit column.
An article in the July 10, 2008 edition of The Economist, however, suggests that something revolutionary is about to occur in DC Public schools. In our nation's capital "teachers are virtually unsackable and paid by seniority. Such incentives attract the lazy and mediocre and repel the talented or diligent." This all sounds familiar. It's clear that this "system needs fundamental reform"—and the new schools chancellor of DC public is lobbying to implement that very change.
Michelle Rhee, the chancellor, will begin the revolution by increasing teachers' starting salaries from $40K to (amazingly) $78K; top teachers would be eligible to earn up to $130K a year. These teachers, of course, would not be eligible for tenure and would be paid according to a combination of merit and students' performance.
Wow. $78K+ actually makes teaching in DC Public somewhat appealing.
Upon reading the article, my husband agreed that this was a step in the right direction—but it would never happen. Unions would never give up their bargaining power: teachers' salaries and job protection.
It saddens and angers me that unions, which are supposed to protect the rights of teachers (and thus indirectly the learning environment), are only interested in self-preservation. This year our school's union representative urged each of us to write to our congressman stating that we teachers were against merit pay. "What if I'm for merit pay?" I asked. Our rep, a thirty-something history teacher that believes watching movies such as Forrest Gump constitutes stellar instruction on American history, replied, "Then don't write at all."
The bottom line is that schools need to be reformed. It's difficult to say where the reform should begin—with teachers, administrators, unions, or parents?—but giving teachers an incentive to excel in their field is a major part of it. Let's see if the unions will allow this necessary reform, and what becomes of DC Public schools in the next few years.
As is, in our "average American" school district, teachers are paid based on their highest degree earned and by the number of years in the system. There is no reward for exceptional teaching, and thus many teachers have no incentive to apply themselves fully to the job. Although our principal continually refers to our staff as a "dream team," our mediocre roster is only a "dream" compared to the other abysmal schools in our region. There are some teachers, myself immodestly included, who consistently go above and beyond for our students, and we only do so out of personal pride in our work and out of a concern for our students' well being; we then return home to review online banking statements with too little in the deposit column.
An article in the July 10, 2008 edition of The Economist, however, suggests that something revolutionary is about to occur in DC Public schools. In our nation's capital "teachers are virtually unsackable and paid by seniority. Such incentives attract the lazy and mediocre and repel the talented or diligent." This all sounds familiar. It's clear that this "system needs fundamental reform"—and the new schools chancellor of DC public is lobbying to implement that very change.
Michelle Rhee, the chancellor, will begin the revolution by increasing teachers' starting salaries from $40K to (amazingly) $78K; top teachers would be eligible to earn up to $130K a year. These teachers, of course, would not be eligible for tenure and would be paid according to a combination of merit and students' performance.
Wow. $78K+ actually makes teaching in DC Public somewhat appealing.
Upon reading the article, my husband agreed that this was a step in the right direction—but it would never happen. Unions would never give up their bargaining power: teachers' salaries and job protection.
It saddens and angers me that unions, which are supposed to protect the rights of teachers (and thus indirectly the learning environment), are only interested in self-preservation. This year our school's union representative urged each of us to write to our congressman stating that we teachers were against merit pay. "What if I'm for merit pay?" I asked. Our rep, a thirty-something history teacher that believes watching movies such as Forrest Gump constitutes stellar instruction on American history, replied, "Then don't write at all."
The bottom line is that schools need to be reformed. It's difficult to say where the reform should begin—with teachers, administrators, unions, or parents?—but giving teachers an incentive to excel in their field is a major part of it. Let's see if the unions will allow this necessary reform, and what becomes of DC Public schools in the next few years.
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