July 28

Mothering at Mid-Career: Re-Entry #2

By Libby Gruner

It took the better part of a week, but I think I’m over the jet lag now. The laundry is done, the passports put away, the souvenirs displayed. My vacation is, clearly, over.

And if my vacation is over, so is my sabbatical. I’ve spent much of the past year on my own schedule, working from home on a variety of projects (including this one). I’ve written conference papers, read stacks of books, put the finishing touches on one article and written another one. Bits and pieces of chapters are scattered about my hard drive. In a year without teaching obligations I’ve refocused my energies on my research, spent more time with my kids, and scoped out free wifi all over town.

In less than a month, though, it comes to an end, and that means I’ve got to start thinking about teaching again. Or, perhaps better, start thinking about it more concretely. I actually spent a lot of last year thinking about teaching, both because one of my projects focused on education in children’s and young adult literature, and because my daughter spent last year reporting to me from the front lines of teaching, her senior year of high school. My project on education had me re-reading the Harry Potter novels; the reports from my daughter had me wishing I knew some magic.

For the first time since I began teaching, I had close contact with someone who could report to me directly from high school, and the report was someone depressing. For example, my students have always spent far more time than I thought necessary on formatting issues. “Do you want MLA style? Where does the title go?” When I say that as long as I can read the paper and the formatting is consistent, I’m not particular as to style, they reply: “But in high school our teachers said we’d fail if we didn’t use MLA style!” I was never sure I believed it, but in fact Mariah heard the same line from her teachers. When I lamented that my students cared more for formatting than content, she showed me the rubric from her paper that allocated, indeed, as many points for formatting as for content. Sigh.

I also know how many papers she wrote last year (hint: more for her history and music classes than for her English class), what kinds of questions her teachers asked her about the books she was reading (more focused on plot than interpretation), and how invested her fellow students were in their reading (not much). I began to realize that my reading of Rowling provided me a better insight into my students’ preparation than I’d known. When Harry and Ron have a paper to write, they measure it out in inches, just as my students want to know how many pages are required. They are more interested in quidditch than history of magic, just as my students—or my daughter and her friends — are sometimes more invested in America’s Next Top Model or the fate of the Redskins than in their assigned reading.

Perhaps most importantly, they — that is, Harry and his friends — read almost exclusively for information rather than to interpret, discuss, consider. If Hogwarts had google, they wouldn’t need their books at all. In this, too, Harry and Ron are like many of today’s high school and college students. In a recent article on online vs. print literacy in the New York Times, Motoko Rich writes about the internet reading habits of teens and young adults. In the piece she cites a University of Michigan study that suggests that novel-reading relates to higher academic performance — but, intriguingly, the fictional characters in the Harry Potter series read almost no fiction. (I’m not counting Rita Skeeter’s “journalism” as fiction here.) In this, too, they are much like my students and, again, my daughter’s friends — they read what they’re assigned, but often not much more. Is the problem that novels aren’t interesting, that TV and movies and the internet provide more entertainment? Is it that novels, as Rich’s article suggests, are too hard, or too long, for attention spans nurtured in the digital age? Is it that their classes are so demanding that they don’t have time to read anything else? Rich doesn’t answer these questions, and I’m not sure I can, either. But thinking about them helps prepare me for my return.

I’m looking forward to getting back in the classroom, don’t get me wrong. I’m hoping not to be Snape to my students, though I also hope they’re more Hermione than Ron. And I’m also hoping I can make novels interesting to students who don’t necessarily come into class excited about reading, ready to talk, and eager to devote themselves to my class. Without a magic wand to help me out, though, I may find myself turning back to my daughter for her insights — and, perhaps, to you, my readers, for your tips when I fall short.

Comments

I think a lot of it has to do with the instant gratification of the digital age, but the small mindedness or to put a nicer way, their small world view. They don’t read novels because they have grown up looking at screens. It takes remarkable , determined teachers and parents to “sell” reading a novel to students. Another villain is the small mindedness that characterizes our schools these days. The focus on getting scores for right answers in order to keep accreditation has made entire faculites into bean counters.I work all semester with my college freshmen to engage them in critical reading and Socratic discussions. Initially they get annoyed because they just want to get to “the point” or find out from me what the “right answers” are. A wonderful book by Matt Copeland Socratic Circles describes in detail how to break that habit. Michael Strong’s book Habit of Thought address Socartaic discussion as well and stresses the importance of teaching students the social skills necessary to participate in discourse. I keep trying to get them engaged in reading because I believe it is so valuable. While I enjoy some television and computer entertainment,I grew up with my nose in a book and I still find reading my best stress beater, escape, knowledge source, and method to keep my mind percolating. As for writing, how would we know what good writing looked like if we never read? The better readers are the better writers. I get discouraged too but I’m never getting down off my soapbox about the value of reading!

MaryBeth Drake, at 9:10 am EDT on July 29, 2008

High school—college disconnect

Libby,

One of the issues you raise is the lack of connection between high school and college teaching. As teachers we work with many of the same students, one summer removed, yet we rarely talk to each other. This is caused by many factors —one being the fact that we’ve been educated on different tracks, etc.

As a former Chair of English, I can’t say I’ve done much to strengthen the ties between our department and local high schools, but I did facilitate one such meeting and it was eye-opening for all of us.

As much as I’d like to forget high school exists (I hated it as a teenager), I think we need to work together more.

Aeron, at 11:40 am EDT on July 29, 2008

Thanks for the suggestions, MaryBeth; I’ll check them out. And, Aeron, you’re so right about high school to college connections. In some ways it’s hard for us as we don’t draw most of our students from a local pool—but we could at least work more closely with our admissions office, who are in touch with high schools every day.

Libby, at 1:55 pm EDT on July 29, 2008

critical thinking

Your observations and MaryBeth’s raise issues about reading and critical thinking that I’ve struggled with more in the past five years than in my previous fifteen years of teaching college freshmen. Increasingly, as MaryBeth observes, students just want me to tell them the “right” answer about what they’ve read. And then, if it’s a double potions class, they’d like me to tell them all the ingredients I put in the cauldron in order to get that “right” answer.

Jeanne, at 1:55 pm EDT on July 30, 2008

As a mid-career mother of a teenager and a 5-year old, I am absolutely delighted to come upon this blog, and Libby’s entry in particular. I am just beginning the sabbatical year that Libby is completing, and look forward to writing those articles and reading those stacks, perhaps blogging, certainly participating in conversations like this more, and spending more time with my kids.

As for the change in the last 5 years that Jeanne is identifying, I completely agree! I have thought about this shift in terms of a number of factors that I think highlight a generation that has been called “post 9/11″: this period coincides with “no child left behind” policies that have emphasized teaching for tests. It also coincides with “helicopter parenting” phenomena — I have literally had freshman students in advising sessions with me who have their parents on the cell phone in my office. In 16 years of teaching, that has never happened to me before. Critical thinking, visual literacy work, generaly enthusiastic engagement all seem to require much more groundwork than before this era. Maybe I am essentializing, but I certainly look forward to comments on these issues as Libby embarks on her re-entry. Thanks for creating this terrific blog!

Mitra, at 8:55 pm EDT on July 31, 2008

It’s not our high school...

I’ve just completed reading all the above postings, which have generated enough material for several weeks’ thought.

I’m on the tail end of having raised two high-school students (22, done; 17, entering junior year) and have gotten to know them and their friends quite well through the years.

Some thoughts:

1. Although we are supposedly living in the No Child Left Behind era, with our Education President at the helm, funding for public schools has severely diminished, with the attendant consequences of fewer personnel and shoddy material. Art, drama, and music education are present only if provided by the efforts of parents. Sometimes persons and organizations outside the school system offer education in these subjects out of concern for the community. Private schools offer these subjects, as do public schools in affluent areas.

Students, therefore, have had others choose to make their worlds smaller. Something has to fill the void, and digital culture is everywhere and available. For those not academically inclined, the fine arts might provide a pathway toward the “harder” subjects. Mostly, YouTube and Facebook do not.

2. On the high school level, at least where I live, there are many homes without an adult present after school. The best of students will be sorely tempted to ditch homework, even if only to read the book they want. Others are “hanging out” or roaming the streets, knowing that exhausted parents will not be asking too many questions when they get home. Some parents still hate high school, and will automatically take the student’s side.

3. Drugs are easy to get and, trust me, unstoppable. The impact on education is obvious. Ironically, alcohol and cigarettes are harder to get because they are subject legal constraints. We fought the war (on drugs) and the drugs won.

4. Some teachers still attempt to inspire discussion, thought, and sometimes scholarly activity in their students’ lives. Working within the No Child Left Behind environment, the feeling is almost as if they’re being sneaky by departing from rigid, linear teaching modes which teach almost excusively to the test. It’s never been easy to engage high school students, but with teachers being forced to teach in an especially boring way, the students hate school. Many will equate school with learning.

5. Again, the computer. Many students have computers in their bedrooms. They fall asleep in class. Even with a machine in the hall near the kitchen, one is quite challenged to get a teenager to log off and get to bed. Some of your students may have gotten to bed at 3-4 a.m., woken up at 6, and show up in your class. In class they may be texting on cell phones the size of a credit card, or listening to music, or playing Tetris, or...

Never mind the content they are viewing. The time spend in front of the screen is an enormous impediment to their learning.

Teaching has gotten more challenging, with many extra-curricular factors to reckon with. Good luck...despite all, much good still happens between students and caring, determined teachers.

miracatta, at 3:05 pm EDT on August 2, 2008