It has been almost 6 weeks since I've been here. Even for me that's a surprising absence. This time I can't blame it on mathematics -- I'm in school, yes, but taking an educational foundations course, not a come-to-Jesus math course. So, that's not it. But what is, is that I am now working for somebody else (part-time) and I haven't figured out the line between impolitic and sometimes profane discourse (this blog) and my job responsibilities. This will be the first of many attempts in real time to do so.
As I said before, I turned 60 this year. It's been glorious and I may well celebrate it for the entire 365 days I'll be this age. Husband, son-in-law and daughter conspired to throw a party in Brooklyn that was Absolutely Fabulous™ what with friends long- and short-term, great food, dancing, my own personal 60 crown with feathers and glittery pipecleaners, and a kick-ass pair of false eyelashes which I'm conspiring to wear again.
I returned to Planet New Haven to resume a life of studying American education, and enjoying a wonderful job that is both a continuation and an extension of some of the public health work I've done here as a citizen-activist. Both in school and at work I am overwhelmed (in the best sense) by what I'm learning. I feel myself to be fortunate indeed.
Of course, in times like these, I barely write. So, once again I'me struggling with the paradox of being stimulated by so much that is new and being energy- and time-delimited from trying to turn it into fiction. At best, and as far as I'm concerned it's a nourishing best, I will write some for my course, "The Child in the American Culture". The title seems innocuous, and godknows, American education courses get dinged all the time for being content-lite, but I'm getting a lot out of this one. The professor is a kooky pro and students, as they will, mistake her kookiness for a tolerance of mediocrity. But she's sly: she'll let a student get as much or as little out of the class as they want. She asked us after a few classes how we wanted to conduct the remainder of the course. Currently, we have a dense chapter a week to read and then a student has to present on the assigned chapter; and we've been given a few independent research assignments. She wanted to know what else we wanted to do, and as she polled I kept hearing: I find the textbook (American Education by Joel Spring) hard to understand so I'd like to discuss it in class ...
Now. I gotta tell you that 1) even state school tuition's expensive and I am always conscious of paying for this 3 hours, once per week course that starts at 7:30 in the evening and 2) the textbook is hard to get through because in a typical chapter the author can cover decades of Supreme Court decisions that altered American education, educational theory and contemporary movements in education, and an analysis of the impact of No Child Left Behind on say, bilingual education. In all fairness to the other students, a majority of whom are in their early to mid-20's, the book's not easy and the hour is late. But, goddamn. The people in this room are, for better or worse, going to shape generations of American minds, and if there's one thing I know about learning it is if you can't demonstrate that you've learned something, you can't teach it.
So, when she rolled around to me, I was bloody, but I was quick. I simply said that I was about 25 - 30 years older than most of the other students in this class and frankly, I don't know how much value I'll get out of classroom discussion (although I did say that I could be surprised), and that some of what Spring writes about I've lived, that many of the Court's decisions I read as contemporaneous accounts, I've raised kids, I'm a writer and I'm used to writing and so, in addition to in-class discussion, I vote for having to do a research paper. Or, as I put it to friends: Oh hell no I'm not paying to show up for 3 hours at night to hear some 20 year old talk about their feelings (largely because they're so incurious and ahistorical that although they are probably going to teach in public school they've never heard about Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, or Dred Scott, or how Loudon County Virginia closed it's public schools for years as opposed to desegregate, or the genesis of charter schools and magnet schools in Connecticut).
And so the course is a hybrid of class discussion as before, and a research paper where the first draft is to be shared with a partner to critique (a suggestion of yours truly) before the final version is written. People, a little rigor here, please?
One friend said to me that the others will appreciate what I did later. Don't know; don't care. This is the minimum I demand of myself.
Tomorrow I leave for New Orleans (pronounced Nawlins) for a national meeting. I haven't been there in 35 years since I graduated from college. Loathed the place back then -- much of what I learned about the enduring trauma of racial oppression I learned in Louisiana -- and will probably see very little of it this time what with being consumed by presentations and meetings. Didn't gloat when Katrina happened, it made a profoundly unjust culture exponentially worse, but am not sentimental about the place or its cultural roots or its food. But, as in the case of my 20 something classmates, I may be surprised. One can hope.
So, until the next intermittent dispatch, au revoir.
As I said before, I turned 60 this year. It's been glorious and I may well celebrate it for the entire 365 days I'll be this age. Husband, son-in-law and daughter conspired to throw a party in Brooklyn that was Absolutely Fabulous™ what with friends long- and short-term, great food, dancing, my own personal 60 crown with feathers and glittery pipecleaners, and a kick-ass pair of false eyelashes which I'm conspiring to wear again.
I returned to Planet New Haven to resume a life of studying American education, and enjoying a wonderful job that is both a continuation and an extension of some of the public health work I've done here as a citizen-activist. Both in school and at work I am overwhelmed (in the best sense) by what I'm learning. I feel myself to be fortunate indeed.
Of course, in times like these, I barely write. So, once again I'me struggling with the paradox of being stimulated by so much that is new and being energy- and time-delimited from trying to turn it into fiction. At best, and as far as I'm concerned it's a nourishing best, I will write some for my course, "The Child in the American Culture". The title seems innocuous, and godknows, American education courses get dinged all the time for being content-lite, but I'm getting a lot out of this one. The professor is a kooky pro and students, as they will, mistake her kookiness for a tolerance of mediocrity. But she's sly: she'll let a student get as much or as little out of the class as they want. She asked us after a few classes how we wanted to conduct the remainder of the course. Currently, we have a dense chapter a week to read and then a student has to present on the assigned chapter; and we've been given a few independent research assignments. She wanted to know what else we wanted to do, and as she polled I kept hearing: I find the textbook (American Education by Joel Spring) hard to understand so I'd like to discuss it in class ...
Now. I gotta tell you that 1) even state school tuition's expensive and I am always conscious of paying for this 3 hours, once per week course that starts at 7:30 in the evening and 2) the textbook is hard to get through because in a typical chapter the author can cover decades of Supreme Court decisions that altered American education, educational theory and contemporary movements in education, and an analysis of the impact of No Child Left Behind on say, bilingual education. In all fairness to the other students, a majority of whom are in their early to mid-20's, the book's not easy and the hour is late. But, goddamn. The people in this room are, for better or worse, going to shape generations of American minds, and if there's one thing I know about learning it is if you can't demonstrate that you've learned something, you can't teach it.
So, when she rolled around to me, I was bloody, but I was quick. I simply said that I was about 25 - 30 years older than most of the other students in this class and frankly, I don't know how much value I'll get out of classroom discussion (although I did say that I could be surprised), and that some of what Spring writes about I've lived, that many of the Court's decisions I read as contemporaneous accounts, I've raised kids, I'm a writer and I'm used to writing and so, in addition to in-class discussion, I vote for having to do a research paper. Or, as I put it to friends: Oh hell no I'm not paying to show up for 3 hours at night to hear some 20 year old talk about their feelings (largely because they're so incurious and ahistorical that although they are probably going to teach in public school they've never heard about Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, or Dred Scott, or how Loudon County Virginia closed it's public schools for years as opposed to desegregate, or the genesis of charter schools and magnet schools in Connecticut).
And so the course is a hybrid of class discussion as before, and a research paper where the first draft is to be shared with a partner to critique (a suggestion of yours truly) before the final version is written. People, a little rigor here, please?
One friend said to me that the others will appreciate what I did later. Don't know; don't care. This is the minimum I demand of myself.
Tomorrow I leave for New Orleans (pronounced Nawlins) for a national meeting. I haven't been there in 35 years since I graduated from college. Loathed the place back then -- much of what I learned about the enduring trauma of racial oppression I learned in Louisiana -- and will probably see very little of it this time what with being consumed by presentations and meetings. Didn't gloat when Katrina happened, it made a profoundly unjust culture exponentially worse, but am not sentimental about the place or its cultural roots or its food. But, as in the case of my 20 something classmates, I may be surprised. One can hope.
So, until the next intermittent dispatch, au revoir.
