LitReviews

Begin with the Prologue and first chapter of the Tremmel text.

Mark's comparison with Tremmel: My route into an English Ed Ph.D and methods teaching is similar to Tremmel's in form but not in content. My first year was also one of survival, but with some student successes. At the end of two years I also was deeply dissatisfied with my teaching, but I spent the next five years of high school teaching trying to figure out how to do it better. By the time I left high school teaching the work had become very rewarding indeed.

I also fell into English teaching. That was a matter of great good luck and failure--failure to get into medical school, a failure I'm glad of.

I also have been told by teachers both practicing and prospective that I don't know shit about teaching English. I also have spent years doubting myself and my professional practice.

I also learned that to succeed in teaching I had to have a life, and that the two are interconnected. English teachers teach living. English methods teachers teach living the teacher's life.

I also lived in pain for eight years. My pain was finally resolved through physical treatment, though. I did practice Zen for many years, but not because of pain. Rather, I used it to reduce my mental noise.

I also struggled--and struggle--to live in the moment. I also applied the practice of Zen to the classroom, both in preparation and in the class hour itself. My preparation is to attempt to put myself in a receptive state of mind. My classroom technique is to try to pay attention.

And as well, here's the link to my ChapterFiveTriedAndTrue -- Jeff

Here's my link to ChapterSixZenAndThePractice

Mark again. Guess what, guys--I found my response to Chapter Two. I hereby include it for your enjoyment.

I've done all Smagorinsky-through-Tremmel's five approaches to methods classes and currently blend all five. I've also tried on all five theories of learning in English Education and currently bland all five. I am not bothered by contradictions among them. Rather, I look for ways to transcend those contradictions.

The old line is something like "when the student is ready the teacher will appear." That's not quoted properly, but the sense is there. When the student and teacher are on the same path the student is ready. In my own case, I've had methods students who have thought me wonderful, not because i am, but because they were ready for what I had to offer. I've also had students who were utterly convinced that I was brain dead about teaching, mostly because I wasn't talking about the same things they thought they already knew. (You could try reading [Role of Methods Teacher])

Branching off the last sentence leads me to Tremmel's statement about Basho that "he knows very well he does not have the answers. This is a very important point for all teachers to consider." He goes on to say that teachers treasure their own expertise and can be annoyed if that is questioned by students or others. I've been through many iterations of such questioning.

I've found in my career that I moved from some sense of authority about my subject accompanied by deep insecurity about my teaching to some sense of authority about both to a sense of certitude that I would never be authoritative about either. Currently I work with a sense of "this is the best I've worked out so far, but I'm surely no expert, and I hope to learn better." I'm intent on fulfilling my roles as best I understand them, but doing so with as much openness as possible.

This means I don't have the answers. I'm as much an expert as anybody, but I still don't have the answers about teaching. This leaves me with a curious confidence that no one else does either, which in turn leaves me with a certain sense of comfort when confronted by other who wish to impose their ideas about teaching upon me. I'll consider their ideas, but won't grant them authority simply because of their positions or their assertiveness.

One issue is how to remain fresh and open to the possibilities of the moment, every teaching day--even if the possibilities are being stated to me in an ugly tone by an irate parent or principal or fellow teacher. To accomplish that openness I try to stay in the moment while holding students' long term welfare in mind. That long term goal has gotten me through many a tense situation.

I also think about the truth that in any student's long term life, I am only a moment. My presence is not a large portion of a student's day, and is a tiny portion of a student's life. There is no sense in inflating my importance. On the other hand, there is every reason to make my moment meaningful.

OK, that's it for now. Anybody else reading Tremmel? Anybody reading my responses to Tremmel? If so, join in.

For Jeff's response to Tremmel's Chapter Two, click [here]

     I was just going to do that!  Thanks Doctor.  I thought I
     had blacked out.

Zen, Chapter Three. Aaron.

I'd like to preface my remarks by stating that I want to be a positive influence to life on this planet, and as a teacher I want to help young minds develop their thinking skills and be able to form their own opinions about the world and what is happening around them. That said, I will now talk about Tremmel's Chapter on the first pillar of teaching- survival.

Tremmel talks about schools like they are war zones, and he told stories of teachers who failed to survive. To me, this sets a negative tone for what school is, and I am reminded of the story published in the Star Tribune recently of the teacher and her problems and the stories shared by Dr. Christensen of the problems some teachers are currently having.

Life is short, and I enjoy life too much to work in a negative environment. I don't want my workplace to feel like a war zone. Why would students want to go to a school in this environment?

Tremmel gives good common sense suggestions about how to manage a classroom and deal with problem students. He states that teachers must be ready to take action. He says to be your own teacher, to be yourself and know yourself. He gives good advice that all teacher's can learn from.

However, schools need to get away from the war zone mentality that views kids as potential hostiles that must be kept in line. Teacher's should care about their students to the point that they don't worry about their own survival as a teacher, but they worry about the survival of their students and their freedom to develop their young minds in a positive environment.

Mark and Methods Class? I stumbled across this wiki, very interesting and exciting stuff here! I hope it is okay that I enter the dialogue here (if just for a moment).

I remember being in a state of rebellion during my own Method's class with Mark several years ago. I didn't want to talk about teaching anymore--I wanted to do teaching. For the first time in my life, I was pushing through the wall, that barrier between student and teacher. That desk that surrounded me ever since the first grade, was now beginning to deteriorate--left me vulnerable to a new and unknown role in my life--the teacher. Soon an ocean of fear swallowed me, how can I teach...anything? what do I have to say that matters? what will they think of me? where do I start? what will I do?

I struggled with this. It made me sick to my stomach.

I felt that I was holding-tightly to one of those spinning saucers you find at a playground. Every rotation brought me in and out of student, of teacher. Who was I? student or teacher? both? neither?

And it does come down to moments...very short moments, that opening for something good, something right, something better, to crawl through and stand up, to shake, to stretch. Moments that will write volumes, over-and-over in your mind, sometimes forgetting, but always refinding. Even one, can give you enough fuel, enough confidence, enough energy to take on the next day, the next week, the next year...wanting more and more.

Perpetual student, Jeff Eudeikis.

Glad to hear from Steve.

Here I (Mark) go again:

Unlike Tremmel, I did survive my high school teaching. The first year felt more like a matter of survival than did the later ones, but even the first year had many high points and satisfactions. I look on my high school career with affection, just as I do my current teaching. Still, survival as an issue lurks under my consciousness all the time. I'm not talking about fear of death or fear of dismissal or fear of rejection. My fear is always of myself.

As a high school teacher I feared my tendencies toward egg-headedness. I used vocabulary that students didn't grasp, until I caught on. I learned that if students were convinced I wasn't just trying to impress them, they'd ask what the word I'd used meant. I feared my slow speech, because students might get bored or sleepy before I could finish what I was saying. I learned that if I said something worth hearing, they would wait for me. I feared they would ignore the suggestions I made to improve their writing. I learned that if they believed me sincere in my desire to help, they would pay attention.

I learned that I would survive, but I also became aware that I would always have the fear that something I couldn't handle, couldn't anticipate, would come up and finally I'd be forced out of the classroom. That happens; I've seen it happen. The four examples Tremmel offers are all scenes I've seen acted out. I've also seen teachers forced out for reasons that had nothing to do with those teachers' behaviors.

So the resolution I've come to is also Tremmel's: "Know that teaching is what you want to do." This means I do it even though I carry the underlying, faint, but real, sense that my survival is not guaranteed. Instead, I work to make each day as rich as I can, freely acknowledging that the unexpected end is possible.

The part of teaching that most prospective teachers fear most is the matter of maintaining order and of dealing with confrontations--discipline, in other words. This is the one part of teaching that never bothered me and still doesn't. I learned in my childhood that physical beatings don't hurt all that much; I can endure them without caving and losing my self respect. That means students can't play on the immediacy of physical fear. I don't bully well. For matters of less drama, I am simply willing to confront, describe behaviors, state alternate expectations, follow through. That kind of survival is just not a big deal. I've learned that maintaining my sense of self is more important than any fear I might associate with confrontation.

One issue I do worry about for prospective teachers is the tendency to over work. I think people can often manage a first year of too much work, but if they don't ease off at least a little after that, many of the best will just burn themselves out. You can't do the good work if you are unemployed. That is why I spend so much time and effort in methods classes talking about teacher renewal. I talk about having a life that includes teaching, and I talk about renewal of the teaching life.

Mark again

Binary thinking is the thinking of a computer. Zeros and ones. This or that. Theory or practice. Teaching isn't binary. Teaching is activity, with many things going on simultaneously. The teacher living in the moment of that activity is conscious of many things. Teaching well is teaching in a receptive mindset--even when lecturing.

Teaching is absorbing students' body language, facial expressions, yawns, doodling, whispered asides, notes, and more while also starting trains of thought, receiving trains of thought, and thinking of new trains again. It is mindful and in the moment. When on a roll, my teaching is very similar to meditation or to engaged writing--nothing else is present. This means teaching best requires achieving a zone or a trance or a flow.

Before I class I repeat "Let me open" to myself. It's my mantra--my ohmmmmm. Let me open. Open to students' bodies, comments, writing, tones of voice, ideas. This is very hard to do. The classroom depends on me for beginning, yet the job requires that I also maintain a sense of "beginner's mind." I am a beginner in that I begin classes; I struggle to be a beginner in a sense of openness to whatever might come my way through students or administrators or other teachers or parents.

And Mark once again, this time in response to the third pillar--beginning

My dad was an English teacher. I had great respect for him, but I didn't want to do that, and he urged me not to. He said it took much out of people and I should stick to my dream of doing something easier: become a physician. That's what I intended to do. I failed. I'm sure that if I had been admitted to med school I would be a doctor now, practicing with great commitment. I might even be good at it. But I didn't get in.

That may be at least in part that I was only twenty when I graduated from college, so med school admissions people might have thought I could use a little maturing--I can console myself that both the schools I applied to urged me to re-apply the following year. Admissions people in English departments had no such qualms, so during that following year I went to grad school in English--just for fun. Almost immediately after I showed up to begin my studies the department chair asked me to teach a section of freshman comp. It meant a tuition waiver and a stipend.

I didn't want to teach, but the financial advantage was irresistible. I had only the vaguest idea of what it might be to teach freshman composition, since I had not taken it myself. So there I was without any teaching experience or training, teaching a course I had never taken, to students who ranged from two years younger than I was to one man who was my father's age. That man was a retired Air Force colonel. Who in the heck was I to be teaching a man who had served two tours in Nam while putting in his twenty years in the service--as many years as I had lived. Fear of failure focused my mind marvelously.

I dreamed class meetings. I absorbed each one and replayed mental tapes of them, seeing the room, the furniture, each student's position, expression, speech, body language. I heard myself. I imagined what a really great class might feel like, minute by minute. I was consumed.

Three weeks into the course the colonel told me he was really enjoying it. I stopped short, startled, when he said that. I thought about what he said and realized I was enjoying it too. That startled me even more. I told Dad and he shook his head in an amused way and said he had been afraid of that.

I didn't reapply to medical school. I wasn't even interested any more. Teaching, I realised, was real service. I did decide that I had better start learning how to be a good teacher, rather than only an obsessed one. The obsession carried me, but I didn't want just to get through; I wanted to make maximum use of my time in the classroom. That began my struggle to learn how to teach.

I'm still working on that.

I did a lot more schooling--a lot more--and lots more teaching and gradually reached a point of some competence. Curiously, it was still the obsession that seemed to be my greatest strength. It was obsession as joy. I relished the work, and that relish seemed still to be more effective than any technique I tried. Optimism, the realization that something good might happen in class that day, made me eager to go to school to find out what would happen. To find out what would happen, rather than to decide what would happen, became a central tenet in my work. I'd come prepared to do things, but I developed a willingness to vary from my plan if anything interesting started to develop. That meant I taught as watcher and responder as well as beginner.

I also noticed that my peers were commonly not getting the thrill out of the work that I was. That puzzled me. I went to conventions and found teachers--English teachers!--complaining about the work and the kids. That seemed so peculiar to me. What can be better than the work with the kids? That got me thinking about how teachers learn to be teachers. I was largely self taught--my experience with Education courses was routine and not helpful--but I knew that reflection on my own practice was affecting the quality of my work. The work and my competence grew as I paid attention. The rewards were renewing. My colleagues were mostly not renewing, which saddened me, because they were such good people. I decided my next project was to learn how to teach the methods classes I had not found helpful in my own training, in hopes of infecting prospective teachers with the senses of possibility, reward, and renewal I had found.

That began the next stage of my career.

Not quite so old timer is back with his response to Chapter Six & the Epilogue,

“Prepare to get better” (Tremmel, p. 153). I am about to be fifty. This morning an earnest young woman told me “you look pretty good for an old man.” I don’t feel old, and fifty is a good time to restart. But then every time is a good time to restart. The best teachers are restarting all the time; I want to be one of them.

Restarting in teaching is two-fold. One aspect is in the practice of daily flexibility. Teachers don’t direct classes as much as most people think; they start classes, and then they respond to individual students. That requires flexibility, taking unexpected routes prompted by the immediacy of this student in this place right now. The other aspect is more controllable or predictable. Teachers restart by deciding to learn new things and then following through. Teachers must be learners. Writing teachers must be writing. Literature teachers must be reading. All teachers must be students of something.

I am a student of my students. I watch Jamie’s expression to see how she is facing today and today’s conversation. I check Adam’s posture and note how far down he has pulled the brim of his cap. I take note of silent SueAnn? and lip-biting Loni, registering the feel of the room, the energy promise. I adapt my next beginning.

Then I think about my latest novel about the Rose, Rosicrucians, Masons, and the sacred feminine and how I will apply it to the thinking I’m doing for a lecture I will give on gender differences in the consciousness and expression of emotion. Studying that is exhilarating. I hope to bring that exhilaration into the classroom.

Then I go practice in the warren of vaguely soundproofed rooms on the third floor of the music building. I heard a new way to describe vocal technique in a master class last night and I want to try it out today. I’ll talk about it with my voice teacher during our next lesson. Being a choir student and a voice student brings greater variety of learning to my day.

I notice a book on my shelf. The title is weird and I suddenly remember I promised myself to come back to it. I open it and realize it has a passage in it about composing essays as finding an idea like a leaf hanging in the air and attaching it to branch and trunk and roots and common ground and I’m going to use that in my freshman composition class.

When I’m listening to my wife’s conversation about her day, I’ll think about how I might apply the things she says about the presentation she gave on interviewing skills to writing a persuasive essay. I’ll think about self presentation and audience awareness. I’ll notice that is a whole lot like teaching.

When I get up tomorrow morning, I’ll be thinking about tomorrow morning and the chances it brings for a really good class where everybody learns something. I probably won’t think about looking pretty good for an old man. I’ll be too busy.

It’s tomorrow and my methods class is today/tomorrow and I think about Sharon, who was in yesterday’s comp class and is sixty-one, and of Don, who is in today’s methods class and is fifty-nine. They are both restarting. They set good examples of renewal. I notice my eyes falling on a quote in that book I picked up yesterday and look at today: “When you get older, you do not necessarily get wiser, but you do get stories. I guess the trick of growing old gracefully is learning how not to bore people with them.” (Inchausti, Spitwad Sutras, p. 163) That from a teacher at age 70.

I wander some more through that book. I find a passage that describes me on those few days when I am really “on.” I decide to read it to the methods class coming up in ten minutes.

Jeff

I'll be late for class Tuesday, if I get ther at all...but here's my ThirdPaper — Old-Timer.

I've sorted neglected this page - oops. I'm not ready to post my third paper yet - I'm too self conscious about it still. I hate that! It's that same feeling I get when I am asked to read outloud in my classes. Especially in my writing classes when the stuff I write is all me - I created the world on the page with so much intent I just feel sick reading those papers to people out loud. I'll practice reading them outloud - they sound just like I want them to when I'm in my bedroom - but it never comes out like that in class. I have to pretend I'm an actress at this point - particularly the actresses from the cheap made-for-tv-movies. Maybe once I get some constructive criticism back on my third paper I'll post it to my Wiki. Hopefully, I get over this notion of I don't want to read my stuff out loud soon - tomorrow would be nice. I'll keep working on it and sucking it up though - it's all done in good spirits! Basically, you'll have to wait longer until I'm comfortable posting this last paper. AND I will start posting stuff here regularly.

Me Out Yo - Amy

It took me over a year to understand that I could not be the teacher I wanted to be unless I became the teacher that I was.

I remember my community college history professor giving a lecture during an evening class. I don't remember what he was talking about (something about history I imagine), but I do remember him drawing a long chalk line across the black board, stopping at the very edge, then continuing over the metal frame--across the faded yellow wall. He just wrote on the wall, I thought to myself. I stared at the thin chalk line that had now become graffiti on our classroom wall. Thought turned into revelation, he just wrote on the wall! I waited for Big Brother to crash through the windows, beat him down, and take him away...for good.

I wanted to write on the wall.

Teaching freshman composition, I eagerly waited for an opportunity to do the "chalk line-off-the-board" trick. I knew in my mind that it would have the same impact on my students as it did when I was in their desk. With careful planning, during class, I began writing on the board a continuum of sorts, letting my hand and chalk take over...beyond the boundaries of the chalk board...and on the wall.

My students seemed concerned--but disinterested. Didn't they understand what I was doing? And each semester after, I waited for that perfect moment to release the chalk line that went beyond the chalk board. And each time--the same result: concerned--but disinterested.

Today in class, though my track record suggested otherwise, I drew the line. But this time, it came on its own. I didn't plan it. It just seemed natural to keep drawing the line past the metal frame of the chalk board, across the faded yellow wall. Realizing what I just had done, I turned and looked for some response. Several students looked aghast, their expressions said, "What have you done!?" Jaws slighlty opened. Other students smiled wide, amused that I had just wrote on a wall that I would eventually have to clean.

Yet, some students, had an expression on their face that was neither shock nor amusement--but aware. They had seen something that wasn't there before--that space beyond the chalk board, a lack of boundary, something else. It was inquisitive and knowing at the same time. I knew what they were thinking. And I now knew what my history prof felt, when he saw me, staring at the line on the wall.

Well done, Old Timer.

Jeff