Tutoring Nuggets

Body language speaks loudly. I have seen tutors who sit behind a desk with the tutee in front of them. To me, that shouts of "I have all the answers, just ask me the questions." I make a point to sit beside my tutee, and to turn to face him or her as much as possible, in the spirit of partnership. The last thing I want my tutee to think is that I am the oracle. For tutoring to be successful, as much of what I do well as a learner needs to be transfered to my tutee, depending upon his/her challenges and issues. If a tutee can't ultimately be a better self-sufficient learner because of me, then I don't see the point.

Teacher as learner

From my experience, it is very important, sometimes more important than the "expert" mantle, in creating the best learning environment for students. A teacher who is an active learner can model the way to ask illuminating questions, methods for discovering whether information found is reliable and authoritative, and the sense of excited curiosity about something previously unknown. Better than having someone who becomes a fount of facts and truisms, students who have a teacher-learner have someone who can be a partner in questioning, discovering, and wondering, a persistent explorer in spite of barriers and lack of immediate answers. Curiosity and wonder are qualities that most children possess when they begin school, and those that many children gradually lose as they progress. To be a successful learner is to be a successful thinker. This is the best thing we teachers can model for any of our students.

Frankenstein--still relevant today

And I am not talking about the old-time horror movies where the monster just stumbled around and scared people! I have decided to use the novel by Mary Shelley for an upcoming college composition class with a focus on literature. It brings up many interesting issues about scientific intervention in creating life, responsibility for one's scientific creations (which may be alive or not), how to relate to people who are not considered "normal," and more. One major issue with new technology is always "how far is too far?" It would seem that we are always pushing the envelope with any scientific advance. I find it interesting to bring the moral voice into such a discussion and see what boundaries a group of interested people can agree with. In any case, lots of possibilities for writing!

Lit Hit!

I have been revamping my literature curriculum for a new course I will be teaching at a local college. At first, I thought I might have trouble coming up with poems for that section in the curriculum, but I have ended up with more ideas than I can use. I didn't even think I was much of a poetry fan, but apparently I am (!). I left a pad of paper by my desk to write down curriculum ideas, and every couple of days, I would write down another idea, for instance, Robert Frost ("Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood") and Dylan Thomas ("Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night). These are poems that I have frequently heard quoted or otherwise used in all sorts of public and private venues. The common, everyday metaphors of the "fork in the road," and of going "off the beaten path" relate back to Frost, for instance. Emma Lazarus, whose poem is on the Statue of Liberty, originated the phrase "Give me your tired, your poor," part of her poem including this line was put to music (I sung it with my high school choir). Of course, popular and classical music is full of poetry, set to music, of course--I am hoping to have students bring in favorite songs and we can talk about how music adds to (or detracts from) the enjoyment of the poetry itself.

More Metaphorical (Meta)fun

One of the nice things about metaphors is that they can release one from whatever is a bother or an annoyance, or just mundane, and allow the mind to float away into abstraction. I think about people who are trapped, for whatever reason, in mind-numbing routines of different kinds; some people who are seriously obsessive-compulsive, for example, might have to wash their hands dozens if not hundreds of times a day. They may have to check certain things before they leave a room, make sure certain objects are placed certain ways before they can do anything else.....I wonder what therapeutic value poetry might provide in such instances (and even lesser cases). A poem is like an emotional burst of description-narration-perception, and the opportunity for leaving compulsions behind is large (I think). To just look out a window and begin comparing concrete things seen to those not seen but imagined....an irrational, nonsensical opportunity to play with perception could be a welcome distraction maybe, or even a release of all the pent-up anxiety an obsessive-compulsive person is constantly trying to assuage.

Metaphor what?

They are everywhere, these pesky metaphors...in simple references such as "I am feeling up today" or "I'll see you around," we are pretending, for example, that there is actual motion in some direction. When we make comparisons, our imaginations often take flight (there it is again!) and show the breadth of our ability to observe, create, and generally describe. Some mountains look like hot fudge sundaes, complete with whipped cream (snow), while others resemble a breast, perhaps, or a giant dinosaur foot. Without metaphors, we would be left with tall, brown, white, long, short, wide, very wide, and so on. Limited descriptions, at best. Think about some of your favorite ways of describing things, or maybe everyday language you like to use often. You'd be surprised how frequently those metaphors can occur!

"Sub-bole" or delicious understatement!

Ah yes, we have all done it. "How are you?" someone asks, when we are steaming mad, and we say something like "oh, a little perturbed." Huh? Or, we have just seen a movie we loved, and respond to an inquiry about it with "not bad" or something equally milque-toasty.

Why? Well, let's see: sometimes we want to hide information from the asker of the question, or otherwise not let them know the extent of our enjoyment or displeasure. Sometimes we may be feeling the need for privacy. Sometimes we may deliberately want to mislead, for a variety of different reasons.

Any other ideas?

The Joys Of Hyperbole

It is a great word; its Greek roots mean to take a great big old (hyper) throw. Toss a big blanket of exaggeration over something. For an old softball player, that sounds like a lot of fun! Using hyperbole is, in fact, a very effective way to emphasize that something is incredibly important, more important than precision. To say something is a million, or billion, times more important than something else conjures up an image so all-encompassing that it is hard to shake it from my memory. I could color the words bright red and put them in a dramatic font, too, but there is nothing like a bigger-than-life metaphor to draw attention. Print advertisers like to do all three. If I were writing a poem, I would probably use hyperbole at some point to enlarge the passions of whatever I was describing. Where passions are involved, hyperbole cannot be far behind!

More On Hyperbole

Remember as kids how we might argue by saying things like "that happened a million times" or "no way in the world".......The more extreme our expression, the more convincing we were trying to be, or hoped we were, in any case. With my writing students, I try to steer them away from extreme or overly broad statements, since such statements usually cannot be backed up. Just one exception to such a general statement takes the air out of it. To be clear is to be precise, to express in degrees. But, sometimes that extreme statement is just what is called for, especially if all you care about is overwhelming the other person into submission ("is, isn't, is, isn't-infinity!")

On Hyperbole

Anyone who is a sports fan has probably noticed the tendency of broadcasters and players alike to use hyperbole. Something is absolutely "critical," "horrible," "unbelievable," and one of my personal favorites, "the world will know/see." Is it complete absorption, complete self-absorption, overenthusiasm, the excitement of the moment....? Any ideas? With what other activity do you notice wonderfully hyperbolic language? Post some samples!

Teaching is Important

Sometimes, as an adjunct, I have been offered jobs which paid by the "unit-hour"--that is, if you were teaching a typical semester class of three units, it would meet for three hours per week, so I would get paid a certain amount times three, every week. That amount has been, recently, as low as $40 x 3, for up to as much as twenty hours creating curriculum, preparing for class, grading assignments, reading revisions, responding to emails. As a writing teacher, reading a 3-to-5 page essay and making enough comments so the student would understand what to do differently could take 20 to 30 minutes. Multiply that by 30 students in a class, and each essay might take as much as 15 hours to grade.

More often than not, the amount divided by the hours I would actually spend, or have to spend, that week, would drive my pay down to minimum-wage territory. That is just shameful. We, as instructors, are required to have advanced degrees and years of experience, and yet the job itself can be valued so little. And, if we are teaching lower-division classes, we may be among the first teachers new students meet--harried, without time for questions or conferences outside class, speeding to another teaching assignment many miles away most days a week.....Wouldn't a savvy business want to compensate those "front-line" workers well, since they are not only the face of the franchise, but have a large influence on how many of those first-year students stay? It is much more expensive to have to market and otherwise recruit new students.

What would United States colleges do without adjunct instructors?

Adjunct is a fancy word for part-time, and there are small private colleges, especially those of the vocational school variety, not to mention others such as John F. Kennedy University in Pleasant Hill, whose part-time faculty far outnumber the full-time faculty. When I worked for De Anza College, their English Department had almost twice as many part-time as full-time instructors. We are cheaper, we don't always demand offices and campus voice mail, and we might actually teach more classes than a full-time instructor.