Topic: Teachers of Writing Should Write

10-second review: Why should English teachers write? “…that our own teaching will be richer, that our interest in, and knowledge about, writing may rub off on our students.”

Title: “The English Teacher as Writer.” FF Suderman. College composition and Communication (December 1977), 356-358. A publication of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).

Summary/Quote: “English teachers should write. They should write even when they have papers to correct, lesson plans to make, reading to do, committee meetings to attend, Anacin to buy for their headaches, TV programs to watch, spouses to love, meals to eat, a face to prepare to meet the faces they must meet. Yes, English teachers must write even if there is little time to write. Because writing is important, they must find time to write.” p. 357.

Teachers who write recognize the problems involved in writing.

Never assign a paper we have not attempted.

“The teacher [or student RayS. ]who has tried to write a sonnet can more easily appreciate Shakespeare’s mastery of the form.”

Comment: Empathy with our students is one good reason for English teachers to write. Writing for professional journals will take the teacher even further—empathy with rejection. RayS.

Topic: Comments by Teachers on Students' Compositions

10-second review: From a retiring teacher, the author was given 2,000 themes that the teacher had collected over his career, contributed by 50 instructors. The author had lots of fun going over the teachers’ comments on their students’ writing. Here’s what he found.

Title: “The Wacky World of Theme-Marking.” Gary Sloan. College Composition and Communication (December 1977), 370-373. A publication of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).

Summary:

1. [Mistake]. The teacher’s comment on the student’s “mistake” was just plain wrong. Substituted “whomever” when the student had correctly used “whoever” in an admittedly tricky sentence: “She would give advice to whoever she believed needed it.”

2. [Mistake Doubled]. The teachers made the same mistake in the comment on the student’s mistake. Example of the teacher’s comment: “One of the main weaknesses are verb tense and agreement.”

3. [Improved?] A third type of comment occurred when the teacher tried to “improve” the expression of the student’s sentence.

Student sentence: “We couldn’t decide if we wanted to do it or not.”

Teacher’s correction: “It was exceedingly difficult for us to reach a decision concerning the complex issue.”

4. [Purpose?] Teacher disagreed with the student’s idea—not with the expression of the idea, but with the idea itself. Teacher suggested readings in the margin that would contradict the student’s idea and support the teacher’s own point of view. [I teach writing. I don’t proselytize.RayS.]

5. [“Mistakes?”] Teacher pointed out “mistakes” that are used by very good writers in actual published work. For example, beginning sentences with “And…” or “But….”

The author concludes with this statement: “Taken as a whole, the two thousand odd themes bore out a conclusion I had previously drawn from my own experience with marking, which is that it’s an enterprise fraught with peril. There are more things done wrong than right. …. I estimated that most of the markings could have been omitted without loss to the students, that in fact many such omissions would have constituted a decided service.” p. 373.

Comment: “Physician, heal thyself.” RayS.

Topic: Proverbs

10-second review: All about proverbs—synonyms, form and use in the classroom.

Title: “Some Uses of Proverbs.” FJ D’Angelo. College Composition and Communication (December 1977), 365-369. A publication of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).

Summary: Although proverbs and their synonyms are often used interchangeably, they do have distinctions: proverb, saying, sententiae, maxim, aphorism, adage, motto and epigram.

Proverbs consist of folk wisdom. They are often uncritically accepted as truth. They often win arguments. Example: “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.”

Saying: Any wise or truthful statement that is repeated often.

Sententiae: Comes from learned person. Alexander Pope: “A little learning is a dangerous thing.”

Maxim: Derived from practical experience. “Judge not that you be not judged.”

Aphorism: Not intended as a guide for behavior: “He that cannot conceal his wisdom is a fool.”

Adage: Acceptable through long use. “When the cat’s away the mouse will play.”

Motto: Terse. Applies to a group of people. “In God we trust.”

Epigram: “Paradoxical or satirical. “The Only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”

The author makes it clear that these synonyms for “proverb” are used interchangeably in the real world of speaking and writing.

Form:

Alliteration: “Better bend than break.”

Rhyme: “Man proposes but God disposes.”

Metaphor and Simile: “Beauty fades like a flower.”

Repetition: “The best art conceals art.”

Ellipsis: “Generals pray for war and doctors for disease.”

Parallelism: “Life is short and time is swift.”

A good use for proverbs in the classroom? Teach paraphrase.

Proverb: “A Stitch in time saves nine.”

Author’s paraphrase: “Troubles will quickly multiply if you do not handle them at once.”

Comment: Great article from the past. Somewhere we need to stockpile these helpful articles form the past to make them available to teachers in the present. Maybe we should organize them by questions or problems. RayS.

Topic: Just for Laughs

10-second review: College Composition and Communication, a quarterly publication of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) used to have a column each issue entitled Jeu d’Esprit in which writers made fun of anything related to English teaching. This particular column, published in December of 1977, was on the subject of how to get yourself published if you are desperate not to perish. It’s a howl!

Title: "Ten Ways to Get an Article Published." Gary Sloan. College Composition and Communication (December 1977), 387-389.A publication of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).

Summary:

1. Posthumous Cover Letter to the editor in which you indicate that your friend (you) has died and this is his last publication.

2. Paper Deluge. Send one hundred copies of your article to the same journal, one a day. The editor should get tired of mailing off rejection letters.

3. By-passing the Middle Man. Send your manuscript directly to the printer. He’s likely t think it came from the editor.

4. The Gratuitous Loot Strategem. Attach a 100-dollar bill to the manuscript and say you found it in the teacher’s lounge and you thought it was his.

5. Reconnoitering the Editor. Find out from his colleagues what the editor’s tastes are. If he’s a womanizer, attach a picture of a gorgeous blond to your manuscript in case “he needs it for the biographical section.”

6. The Prospective College Ruse. Attach to the cover letter of your manuscript that you’re probably hired to be in the editor’s department. He won’t want any negative relationships in his department.

7. The Prospective Editorship Ruse. Attach a P.S. to the cover letter that you’re going to be the next editor of Harper’s or any other prestigious journal. The editor will want a shot at the big time.

8. The Telephonic Subterfuge. Hire an impressionist who can do David Letterman on the phone. Tell the editor that he’s got a good shot at being on his show and oh, by the way, he has this friend (you) who is submitting a manuscript.

9. The Direct Approach. In your best Humphrey Bogart clothes and hat stick your finger in the editor’s chest and snarl, “The boss says you should maybe publish this.”

10. The pseudonym. Sign your manuscript with a very famous name, like Noam Chomsky, etc. That’ll impress him.

Comment: College Composition and Communication has become very staid in recent years. The writers for the journal in the 1970s could really write and entertain at the same time. They used to write clearly, succinctly and to the point. But recent editors scrapped columns like Jeu d’Esprit and much of the fun went out of the journal. Now the writers seem to vie for the longest and most boring article prize in academia. RayS.

Topic: Literary Discussion (3)

10-second review: Using the student question approach with a poem, Karl Shapiro’s “Auto Wreck.” Taken from Teaching English, How To… Raymond Stopper, Xlibris, 2004.

With Karl Shapiro’s “Auto Wreck” as an example, I will explain how I taught and organized a discussion of a literary work.

Follow-up Reading: What Do We Know and What Don’t We Understand?

I read the poem aloud a second time and then invited the students to explain what the poem said. Students pretty well agreed that the poet was describing vividly the scene after an accident, expressing the impressions and the feelings of the workers and the onlookers, and that the poet’s purpose in writing the poem was to raise a question about why such things happen in life.

Now the students read to identify expressions they did not understand. Some examples of phrases that confused them follow:

wings in a heavy curve

The doors leap open, emptying light;

One hangs lanterns on the wrecks that cling, /Empty husks of locusts to iron poles.

Like convalescents intimate and gauche,/ We speak through sickly smiles and warn/ With the stubborn saw of common sense,/ The grim joke and the banal resolution.

But we remain, touching a wound/ That opens to our richest horror.

Already old, the question Who shall die?/ Becomes unspoken, Who is innocent?

Cancels our physics with a sneer

And spatters all we knew of dénouement/ Across the expedient and wicked stones.

We had plenty to discuss. When the students’ questions have been resolved, I might inject my own or the text book’s questions—but, in my experience the students usually anticipated those questions.

My role as the teacher, because I had used the poem with many other classes, was to draw as many students as possible into the discussion and to record their ideas on the board. Students’ experiences very much influenced their interpretations of the phrases and expressions The students’ experiences made the discussion interesting .

When the students looked to me to provide the answer, I either countered with a question to clarify the issue or remained on the sideline encouraging the students to reach their own conclusions. I had discovered long ago that a “discussion killer” was my imposing the “correct” interpretation on students.

After the students had resolved their questions, I either gave them some professional criticism against which they could compare their interpretations or I shared with them how other classes had agreed with or differed from their interpretations Students were always impressed by how closely their interpretations agreed with professional critics’ interpretations.

With poems and novels, the activities that lead to full participation in literary discussions are students’ speculating about the puzzling meanings of poems, previewing novels to raise questions and by asking the questions, “What do you know?” and “What don’t you understand?” RayS.

Topic: Literary Discussion (2)

10-second review: Using the student question approach with a poem, Karl Shapiro’s “Auto Wreck.” Taken from Teaching English, How To… Raymond Stopper, Xlibris, 2004.

With Karl Shapiro’s “Auto Wreck” as an example, I will explain how I taught and organized a discussion of a literary work.

First Reading: Impressions and Vocabulary

I read the poem for the first time aloud. Students reacted with their first impressions: “What does _____ mean?” “Pretty vivid”; “Lot of stuff I don’t understand”; “I think I like the newspaper account better. It’s plainer.” “Kinda sets the mood.” “Makes you think—especially if you’ve been in an accident.” etc.

Students re-read the poem silently, underlining words they didn’t know: “pulsing,” “beacons,” “deranged,” “gauche,” “husks,” “convalescents,” “saw of commonsense,” “banal resolution,” “occult,” “denouement,” “expedient.” When they looked up the words, I asked the students to try to limit the definition to one or two key words to make the meanings manageable and to help them remember the meanings.

pulsing: briefly on and off

beacons: signals

deranged: disturbed mentally

husks: shell

convalescents: return to health after illness

gauche: lack social polish; tactless

saw: familiar saying

banal: commonplace

occult: supernatural

dénouement (day-new -mah): resolution of plot

expedient: quick but not always wise fix

To be continued.

Topic: Literary Discussion (1)

10-second review: The student question approach with a poem, Karl Shapiro’s “Auto Wreck.” Taken from Teaching English, How To… Raymond Stopper, Xlibris, 2004.

With Karl Shapiro’s “Auto Wreck” as an example, I will explain how I taught and organized a discussion of a literary work.

Introducing the Poem.

The Poem, “Auto Wreck,” re-creates the aftermath of a terrible automobile accident.

As the teacher, I first needed to decide my reason for asking the students to read the poem. This poem, “Auto Wreck,” was the first poem in an introductory unit on poetry. I decided that my main reason for having the students read it was its “unpoetic” subject matter. This poem was not about love and hearts and flowers, but about the ugly experience of an auto accident. I wanted the students to understand that poems can be written about almost any human experience and that the poet uses the experience to raise questions about life. A second reason for reading the poem was to have the students explore how poetry differs from other types of writing—specifically, newspaper reports of automobile accidents.

I began by asking students to tell how they felt about poetry, whether they had any favorite poems and whether they enjoyed reading poetry. A good many of the students said, “I never can understand poems. The language is confusing. The meaning is not plain. And when teachers tell us what it means, I don’t see it. So, I don’t read poetry on my own.” I ask students to tell about poems they have liked. Students usually remember some poems, especially those they read in elementary school and a few from middle school or junior high.

I introduced “Auto Wreck” by telling the students of my personal experience with an auto accident, in which I fell asleep at the wheel, barely avoided a head-on collision with a brick building and severed a telephone pole—at a time when cars did not have seat belts. I especially remembered my trip to the hospital in the ambulance that seemed to float along (an experience suggested in Shapiro’s poem). Had any students been in accidents? Those students who had been in accidents and those who knew people who had been in accidents reflected on what the accidents had meant to them in their lives.

I gave the students a copy of a newspaper report of an automobile accident. We analyzed the style and the tone of the report and agreed that it was straight reporting of the facts of the accident, together with the comments by the investigating officers and witnesses as to how the accident happened. Now I introduced the poem “Auto Wreck” by Karl Shapiro.

To be continued.