Andrushka

I love new classes. Meeting them for the first time, getting to know each other, scaring them with new vocabulary and grammar on the first day. It's so much fun. Last night was an opportunity to meet my new class at Southeast Community College. On the first night, I like to have people talk to each other then introduce their partner (WWMBD - "What Would Mr. Blake Do?"). Incidentally, this is the first time I've ever taught Colombians (I collect student nationalities like some people collect commemorative flatware; I've had Poland, Ukraine, Georgia, Russia, Bosnia, Belarus, Vietnam, Japan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Sri Lanka, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Brazil, Sudan, Congo, South Africa, Ethiopia, Canada, the US, and now Columbia). After introductions, I like to jump in and talk about the vocabulary we need to know in order to learn a language: noun, verb, auxiliary, modal, infinitive, participle, adverb, adjective, pronoun, conjunction, etc. The students usually know the basic ones, but it still ends up being a bit overwhelming, just as the first day of class should be. At least I'm not as demanding as my Lesen und Aussprach teacher at Bogi, the dapper Herr Felix, who made us memorize the anatomy of the mouth auf Deutsch. By the time we're done discussing subjects, objects, and objects of prepositions, they're usually in desperate need of a break. Last night, our break happened to coincide with the break Elizabeth gave her level four students. These were my students from last semester, and I was secretly elated when they wanted to talk to me. It's not like I have control over their grades anymore, they just like me. It's a good feeling, this being liked. I love old classes. As I talked to Francisco from last semester, some of my new students kept glancing over, wondering who this person was who talked to the teacher like they're old friends. They just don't realize that in another three months, we'll be old friends too.

Posted by Scott at 3/30/2006 11:50:00 AM | Permalink | Comments

Perhaps it's not a problem with Cathode Ray Tube monitors, maybe it's just my laptop. The LCD screen on my laptop makes things look vibrant and beautiful. It's one reason I call her my Heila (It's a Saami word; look it up). The downside is that when I change the color scheme on my blog/myspace/etc, it looks gorgeous on Heila's beguiling screen but it may look hideous on other screens. In particular, the colors I choose yesterday looked really bad on my work computer. Now they look better on my work computer, but less compelling on Heila. Right now it's supposed to be a dark maroon background, ivory text box, and dark organge highlights. That might not be what you see. Tell me what you think. Lighter shades? Darker shades? Scrap it and start over?

Posted by Scott at 3/29/2006 12:37:00 PM | Permalink | Comments

For those of you living in Lincoln, I just have to tell you, Taco del Mar is a waste of time and money. It's not that the food is particularly bad, it's just not particularly good. On top of that, they're skimpy compared to their competitors. For the same price as a burrito at Oso or Chipotle, you get something 2/3rds the size and flavor. If you pay a little more, you can get five chips and a dab of salsa. It's on O Street downtown between Pita Pit and Oso Burrito, both of which are much better choices for a meal and have a very similar business models (namely, take a flat bread and let the customer choose what goes inside). Subway and Jimmy John's, across the street, change the formula by adding leavening to the bread and are still better options than Taco del Mar. If you've got a little energy, you could also walk to Bison Witches, Sher-E-Punjab or go to something more swanky like the Blue Orchid in Federal Place. The Blue Orchid, by the way, is very reasonably priced but it feels and tastes pricey.

Posted by Scott at 3/28/2006 07:14:00 PM | Permalink | Comments

To see photos of Ellen, Serhiy, an abominable snow woman, and myself frolicking in the snow, visit my gallery here. The pictures are terribly artistic, by which I mean the lens was fogged over most of the time. I tried to make Ellen happy by posting these on Flickr, but the effort only confirmed that the upload limit is unreasonable and I still loathe the interface, so Zoto it is.

Posted by Scott at 3/21/2006 02:27:00 PM | Permalink | Comments

No, it's not at all ironic that the first day of spring is the biggest snow of the year. OK, so maybe it is a little ironic. Last night when I looked up Union's weather closure webpage, I thought they were being a optimistic. Then this morning around 6:30, I looked it up again and they had decided to close for the day. I was so happy I actually got out of bed and did things. Serhiy was so happy with the news that he rolled over and slept until 12:30. I do believe his reaction was more in the spirit of the day than my own. Slightly distressing, however, is the cancellation of Southeast's classes. Today was supposed to be the final exam and, well, I suppose we'll have to do it on Wednesday. But they need their final scores to know if they can go on to the next level, which starts next Monday. Oh well. There's nothing I can do about it. Looking outside though, it doesn't seem the storm has held up to its end of the bargain. I'm sure driving is not too fun, but it hasn't exactly been a blizzard. In fact, most of the day has been hovering right around freezing which is warmer than I had hoped. If we have a snow day, I want it to be the snow day to end all snow days.

Posted by Scott at 3/20/2006 01:40:00 PM | Permalink | Comments

The exclamation point, that is. I have long detested exclamation marks. They are emblematic of weak writing, just like smilies. Both are used as crutches to convey emotion by writers who find they haven't got the vocabulary to communicate nuanced meanings. And yet, despite my disgust with this particular punctuation, I have started employing it with distressing frequency! The problem, you see, is grading. I don't think I'm alone in this regard. Many composition teachers try to stifle the exclamations in their student's work with comments like, "Avoid exclamation points!" or "Let the words lend their own emphasis!" Alright, so those examples are a bit over the top. Still, when I'm writing "show, don't tell" or "cite sources" for the fifteenth time in that sitting, exclamation points just sneak in there. And I'm not alone. Other teachers with much more experience than me have commented on the phenomenon. So why does it happen? Is exclamation frenzy a manifestation of the axiom, "By behold we become changed," like in my ESL class when I suddenly start speaking with poor grammar? Or is it just an indication of brewing frustration? Either way, I'm becoming an exclaimer and I need to cut it out!

Posted by Scott at 3/10/2006 07:26:00 PM | Permalink | Comments

I hope you've all had a happy Women's Day. That's right, Women's Day, 8 March, because the other 364 are men's days. At Union today, neither my students nor the few other people to whom I mentioned the holiday had ever heard of such a thing. Tonight in my ELL class, things were quite the opposite. I figured the women in the class would be missing the special treatment the day engenders (ha ha) at home, so I brought them roses. I thought I would have to explain myself to some of them, but no, it turned out that everyone in class knew about the significance of 8 March. I have students from Africa, the Middle East, Central America, and Eastern Europe. That's a wide variety of cultural and linguistic backgrounds, but they all celebrate Women's Day on the same day. Just like they all know about the first of May (Labor Day). This got me thinking, if the rest of the world celebrates this holiday, why not America? Apparently, like the real Labor Day, it grew out of the international Socialist movement. America, once the voice of liberalism in the world, had become rather stodgy and conservative politically and economically by the early 20th century when the Socialist movement began. So while the rest of the world embraced it to one degree or the other, Socialism has been unjustly smeared in the United States for a long time (usually with straw man or slippery slope arguments). Therefore, we reject the holidays that Socialism bestowed upon the world that even the United Nations advocates. You can read a little more about Women's Day here, it's fascinating. Perhaps it's symbolic that Monopoly was invented on the same day Socialists set aside to celebrate the contributions of women. Ladies, let me tell you a little about what you're missing. In Eastern Europe, Women's Day is like Valentine's Day here, except without all that awful romantic tension. It doesn't matter if you are dating or married to someone; that doesn't have to define your participation in this day like it does Valentine's Day. And unlike Mother's Day, you don't actually have to have given birth to anyone to be honored. Every guy you're close to, even if you're just friends or related, should give you flowers, candy, or other fun little gifts on this day and they will. Why? Because they don't have all that pressure of second guessing what message each little thing means. I can't think of a better way to feed women's voracious appetite for flowers, candy, and scented candles. And if the guys don't cough up, remember the good old days of 1917 when a Women's Day "Bread for Peace" strike helped topple the Russian government.

Posted by Scott at 3/08/2006 10:01:00 PM | Permalink | Comments

Today on my bus to Union, I sat watching as droplets traced their peculiar paths across the window, only to have their individual identities lost with a splash each time we plowed through a puddle. Two rows behind me, a man held a conversation with himself. At first I thought he was using a cellphone, but a collection of quick glances confirmed he was not. If he's not a paranoid schizophrenic, he sure does a good impression of one. He commiserated with an imaginary friend about the persistence of other voices. He's plagued by questions as part of a government plot to keep him from thinking straight, because, "That's what They want." Musical interludes accompanied his rants and occasional guffaws. He had a rather nice voice, but the do-do-dobeys he sang were largely tuneless. Up at the front, an obese woman talked to the bus driver about "negative people," complaining that one of the drivers never said anything positive the whole time he was driving this route. The irony of her complaint never donned on her. A third man sat, head leaned against the cold glass, with earphones constructing his own private world away from the rest of us. I like to think it was a forest of Grieg or Mozart meadow, but, most likely, it was less pastoral. Perhaps his music drowned in dark notes, as grey and damp as the day. As we turned onto Calvert Street, I wondered if there was a puddle so great the splash could unite us all.

Posted by Scott at 3/08/2006 09:31:00 AM | Permalink | Comments

I remember, back in the day, back when we were young and I was beautiful, back when I thought Latin was funny and just before I asked Buffy to the Celtic-themed banquet (which Angela so expertly orchestrated), Mr. Blake, the legend himself, assigned his creative writing class (of which I was a part), the task of writing bad leads for creative prose, an homage to the master of regrettable leads himself, Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, praise be unto him; I remember it with fond rememberance. Now I'll stop trying to write poorly. In all seriousness, this is what Bulwer-Lytton wrote that immortalized him in the world of wretched writing:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness (Paul Clifford, 1830).

Today I was reminded of the author and exercise when I found the website of the Bulwer-Lytton contest. They have been promulgating painful prose for the last 23 years with hilarious effect. In 2005, the contest winner was Dan McKay of North Dakota. He wrote:

As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire, highly functional yet pleasingly formed, perched prominently on top of the intake manifold, aching for experienced hands, the small knurled caps of the oil dampeners begging to be inspected and adjusted as described in chapter seven of the shop manual.

You can find these and many, many more hilariously bad leads here and here.

Posted by Scott at 3/06/2006 02:30:00 PM | Permalink | Comments

Before you read my post, you may want to visit Angie's blog. Always insightful, her most recent post incited this post. It started as a comment, but it soon became evident that it's a post of its own. We often say that "there's no accounting for taste," and yet experts on a given subject, people who immerse themselves in it and study it, usually agree on what constitutes the pinnacle of an art form. Only people without a grounding in the fundamentals and history of painting would say Da Vinci or Rothko or Rafael suck. Often, "it sucks" is synonymous with "I don't understand it." Perhaps we should recognize a difference between an educated opinion and an uneducated one. In the realm of TV, we can relate these to critical acclaim and ratings, respectively. And when we discover ourselves in disagreement with the educated opinion, we should view it as an opportunity to learn why people in the know appreciate what we do not. That doesn't mean we have to like it, but we should try to understand it. We might even be surprised; once we understand it, we may love it. "Taste" may be a dangerous cognitive linguistic metaphor, conflating our bodily reaction to food with our emotional and mental reactions to art. (Lackoff and Johnson list it as a subset of the Mind as Body metaphor. Here are a few interesting reads relating to cognitive linguistic metaphors.) On the other hand, it's the metaphor we've been working with, so let's run with it. With food, I don't have to like it, but I can understand what appeals to people about the edibles in question. For instance, I have an aversion to chocolate. However, reading about the chemical properties and effects of chocolate as well as listening to chocoholics describe their passion for it makes me able to appreciate the stuff even if I don't want to eat it myself. Likewise, I've never personally found Rothko terribly inspiring, but when I listen to people who do "get it," I appreciate his importance and beauty all the more. More to the point, when a knowledgeable person gives a well-founded reason for why they don't like something, it colors my opinion and begins the process of my own rejection of it. Acolytes to a field often have a sophomoric disdain for what others find beautiful. We try to position ourselves in opposition to those who have gone before us in order to carve out a niche and establish ourselves as having higher sensibilities than our peers and teachers. After all, it's much easier to rip something apart than build it up. I have not been using the first person plural we in vain. I catch myself doing this all the time, and I'm not proud of it. The underlying assumption of these attacks on educated taste is that we are playing a zero-sum game in which accolades for one person or support of their taste detracts from my/our standing in the field. Hogwash. As we have seen, experts sometimes disagree for various reasons, but more often than not, they share commonalities of taste because they know the history and craft of the field. If we can accept that the only real difference between them and us is their grounding in a discipline, then there is accounting for taste and the lack thereof.

Posted by Scott at 3/05/2006 12:09:00 PM | Permalink | Comments

When I included a research poem in my syllabus, the "other" in me (the voice of reason/society/normalcy/etc) was saying the whole time that it was a bad idea. Bad bad bad. I hate naysayers. The undying optimist tried to throttle Mr. "Other" and said, nah, it'll be fine, besides, who's making this syllabus, me or you? The answer, of course, was both of us. Anyway, after receiving treatment for my multiple personality disorder, I put it in the syllabus and made lesson plans to condense what I've learned about poetry in two graduate seminars into a couple class periods. The highlights of this lecture are my ten commandments of dominant mode poetry: 1. Show, don't tell. Let images make your argument for you. 2. Avoid gerunds, they're a copout. 3. Words like stuff, thing, and to be in its many forms are wasted opportunities. 4. Make the poem work on different levels of meaning. 5. Rhyme and meter are there to propel content, not the other way around. If they get in the way of meaning, drop them. 6. Don't assume your reader is an idiot. Allow them to find their own meaning and don't spell it all out for them in the envoy. 7. Formal verse (sonnet, haiku, sestina, etc) gives you limits to work with and can help in the creative process. 8. Pay attention to how the poem works on the page. White space can be employed to further your message. 9. The end of the line is the point of emphasis, so end on content words. Also, you can deemphasize the rhyme scheme by moving it to the interior of the line. 10. Create tension with line breaks. Enjambe! Ten is really an arbitrary number with cultural significance only, and I could think of more if pressed. However, I dare say if people took these to heart, the world would have less doggerel (which is not to say a bit of doggerel does not have its place). I realize that I cannot expect miracles, that these are just freshmen, that I was writing excrement at that stage of life, etc. Still, most of the literary achievements I received seemed to have been written by alien beings who had not listened to one word of my lecture, at least not the content words. It is very, very hard to give much feedback on an uninspiring poem. I tried to provide positive and constructive comments. But, when I read a few of my comments out loud to Ellen, she intimated that I am an unfeeling monster. I had been a bit harsh, despite my best attempts at gentleness. For a while, the naysayer I'd tried to suppress was coming back and I was going to keep poetry out of the freshmen comp. classroom. Then I got my glimmer of hope. I noticed that many of the students who regularly underachieve actually had the best poems. Now I have a defense for poetry in pedagogy (besides self indulgence). It may act as an equalizer, giving a different group of students a chance to shine. Of course, I'll have to test this theory, which means many more years of poetry assignments. Let's pretend this next story has nothing to do with the previous ramblings. On my way to work the other day, I was thinking about the stereotypical mean teachers. I thought of Zulfia's computer science teacher in Tajikistan that didn't let the kids program on computers until they demonstrated they could write code well by hand. I thought about the old-fashioned music teachers who don't let children touch a piano until they can demonstrate proficiency on a cardboard keyboard. With these brilliant pedagogies in mind, I decided that I shouldn't let students touch paper until they demonstrate to me orally that they can compose elegant and organized essays. Perhaps I'd allow them slates, but certainly nothing more permanent. I had a private laugh which I later shared with Ashley, then returned to the real world. Even if I regulated their paper supply, they'd just find it on the streets.

Posted by Scott at 3/02/2006 03:53:00 PM | Permalink | Comments