circle of words

On Gradelessness: The Knives of Self-Reflection

2017-10-03T18:37:00.004-04:00

Curious!

Today my students completed a survey consisting of 20 "I am..." "I do..." or "I have..." statements about course objectives. (e.g. "I practiced my presentation alone, with a peer, or in front of a camera and improved my confidence and smoothness of delivery," or "I always organize my writing by planning ahead, dividing my ideas into logical paragraphs, and using transitional phrases to link ideas.")

They had to rate each statement on a scale from 1 to 10, where 10 meant that they felt they had done a stellar job at it. Add up those numbers, divide by 2, and you have a number between 10 and 100--which kind of not coincidentally looks like a grade in the course. It isn't a grade, I reminded them--it's just a number. But it's hard to see numbers between 10 and 100 in school without seeing them as grades. Even I had to be very careful and consciously re-culture my use of language while explaining this activity.

The final question on the survey asked them to write a paragraph giving specific evidence of their progress to support the mark they thought they had earned so far.

I'll be honest, I was expecting many of my less-than-motivated 4C students to give themselves inflated marks. This does not reflect kindly on me, but there you have it. News flash: jaded teacher makes unwarranted assumptions about reluctant learners. I have much to unlearn. So do we all.

I am intrigued to report that without exception, each student has advocated for a lower mark than the math suggests. Yep: none of them think they deserve the (non) mark that they just gave themselves.

This, as I said, is curious.

I'm not sure how to tease out the factors at play here:

Maybe the very specific nature of the reflection questions has made them suddenly aware of their own shortcomings and gaps.
Maybe years and years of being told that they are "bad" English students has made it hard for them to see themselves in the mirror and find themselves worthy of "good" marks.
Maybe they're just modest.
Maybe they figure I'm just going to give them a bad mark anyhow, like every other teacher has so far in 12 years of school, so they're just beating me to the punch.

There are probably as many possible explanations as there are students in the class. I anticipate some interesting conferences at mid-term, and hopefully some happy students who come away from this process with the sense that they're better than they think they are, and are actually learning even if they don't yet stack up to some externally-imposed set of benchmarks of standardized achievement.

A good day in the gradeless classroom, indeed.

On Gradelessness: The Buy-In

2017-09-30T16:10:00.003-04:00

Conceptually, I really like the idea of gradelessness. In practical terms, though, it's a bit of a mixed bag--and the difference seems to be entirely one of buy-in: students that are already invested in the broader goals of education are cheerfully engaged with the new directions and activities of the gradeless classroom. Students that were not particularly invested are sometimes floundering.

I am in a pretty ideal position for doing field observation on this dichotomy. I currently teach a highly-motivated and mostly university-bound 3U English class, a significantly less-motivated and mostly trades and college bound 4C English class, and--to complete the split--a stacked 4U/C Writers' Craft class: a little bit of everything.

The 3U class mostly loves this. They are embracing the opportunities to revise, to teach themselves and each other, to choose texts and topics that are of personal interest. And they are learning. We have done less "work," but we have done it more intensively and more focused on particular individual needs, and it is already paying off. My 3U class, like most 3U classes I've ever taught, was generally a productive and engaged roomful of people helping each other get better at the task at hand.

The 4C class, on the other hand, is for the most part languishing. They're nice people, don't get me wrong, but there is not a strong built-in culture of self-improvement in this room--at least, not as regards English skills. Around a third of the class has directly told me that they just "want a 51% and to get the hell out of high school," and they are playing this class the same way they have played every other boring high school course they've ever taken--look for the quickest, easiest way to meet the minimum requirements, then stop.

Trouble is, this class is different, and the expectations are different, and what they're doing is not likely to result in a passing evaluation at midterm. The change has been too dramatic for some of them, and others simply do not take me seriously--the only part of the talk about what a gradeless classroom looks like that has sunk in is the half-misunderstood notion that they "get to give themselves their own grade."

All my efforts to impress on them that "the bare minimum" is no longer sufficient for a pass are currently falling on deaf ears. When I give them checklists asking them if they've done the process work, they blithely check every box, even if there's no evidence to support it. When I remind them that one of the important considerations is how they use class time, they nod sagely and then surreptitiously return to playing games on their phones. "Don't worry, sir," they reassure me; "it'll get done"--as if "getting it done" was all that was required.

Gradeless classrooms shouldn't be reserved for academically-inclined students. But much more work needs to be done both to explain and to sell the concept to my disinclined students; much more work needs to be done (probably much earlier in their academic careers, mostly not even within the walls of the classroom) to create a cultural expectation that we do not go to school with intent merely to demonstrate minimal proficiency, but with intent to set personal goals, work hard, and show progress.

Of course, that should be--and for the most part is--the aspiration of every teacher for every student in every course; and yet we find ourselves, time and time again, facing a wall of resigned apathy from disenfranchised senior students like some cold war detente: "Don't make me work too hard," they seem to say, "and I won't make your life difficult."

Ah, well. End rant. Back to the task of not just teaching English, but of trying to shift the cultural needle in the room. More specific and productive ideas in my next post.

On Gradelessness: No Carrot, No Stick

2017-09-10T12:47:00.002-04:00

Marks, my students tell me, are a carrot on a stick.

"Do this and I will give you marks" is the basic motivator in the traditional high school classroom. "Don't do this, and I will withhold marks." Dangle the prize forever just out of reach and the donkeys will move forward, if grudgingly.

In a school system like this, everything is transactional: the end always justifies the means.

Trouble is, learning is not a series of ends. It is not an outcome. It is a process. What we should be trying to do in schools is create not people who have learned, but people who are learners: people who understand and value the process of learning, and can use the process in their own lives without a teacher dangling a carrot or waving a stick.

So I did away with marks. No carrot, no stick. This is where the panic creeps in at the edges: after 15 years of developing resources, strategies, and techniques for a marks-based classroom, what does that leave me with? How will I motivate them? How will I make them DO anything?

Pause. Think about that. Those three questions above are all about me and my own fears--fears of letting go, fears of losing authority, fears that the children of today won't bother learning anything at all without some Shea-shaped éminence grise lurking in the shadows, driving them onward to adulthood.

This is ridiculous, of course. There are already a host of motivators, both intrinsic and extrinsic, driving these young adults. They may be the most thoroughly driven people in our society today. What they might not be motivated to do is to master the skills and concepts required by the Ontario English Curriculum. What they might not be driven to do is to appreciate some of the finer points of literature that I, an English teacher, might want them to appreciate.

So I have two ways forward:

1. Set clear goals and expectations: whatever it is you are reading, whatever it is you are working on, you must accomplish outcomes X, Y, and Z, as outlined in the curriculum. Explain why these are important outcomes. Trust students to understand. Give them checklists so they can track their own progress, set their own directions, move at their own various paces.

2. Be a coach, role model, and cheering section: whatever it is I ask them to do, whatever it is they decide to do without me asking, help them understand not just the what, but the why; work alongside them to show them the process and the value of these activities; whatever it is they are doing, support them and help them to do it better.

There is no room in a gradeless classroom for a joyless teacher. There is no room in a gradeless classroom for a teacher who does not, on a personal level, value doing the work that students are doing. And there is no room in the gradeless classroom for a teacher who projects their own insecurities onto the classroom by seeking to control student behaviour.

No carrot, no stick.

the geometry of everything

2017-09-06T21:18:00.001-04:00

i trace the geometry of everything:
these words
this discount pen
the angle of the lamplight on the page
my face--or is it yours?--
seeking congruences:
points of balance, absence,
overlap.
spirits haunt the compost heap
where all my clipped ambitions sleep
and dream themselves to dirt.
there is a map of how we grow
and twist and burst inside each wall
of each wooden cell. there is a map
the size of the world
laid out beneath our feet.

admit it: you know as well as i
that there is no accident
to tonight's transparent sky
no mystery to the moon:
we name it,
you and i: we are doing it right now. it lives and dies
and lives again, this smoke ring
this solid shifting thing
because we twist our lips
and breathe and trace
with the mind's hands
the contours of what would otherwise go
unfelt.
we snip the world with scissor words
until we each see our own face.

we who have senses to sense
and names to name,
we make this place.

Diving into the Nothing

2017-09-06T16:11:00.003-04:00

It is easy, and refreshing, and kind of liberating, to say "I will not be assigning grades for individual work this semester."

Turns out, though, that it is kind of a little bit terrifying to actually do it.

But like I always say, if you're not a little bit scared of your new project, it's not worth doing. So forward we go, knees shaking but still walking.

The students seem on board. We read Alfie Kohn today and discussed his ideas. They mostly echoed his sentiments, and mostly expressed enthusiasm about the idea of going gradeless. They had hard questions about how this was going to work, questions that I was not entirely prepared to answer. Humility is a gift here: I think a lot of teachers are not programmed to say "I don't know, lets work together and figure this out" when students ask very basic questions about one's practice. And yet I said it today, over and over again. It got to the point where we all started believing I meant it.

The big problem, we all agreed, was motivation. School has traditionally been predicated on an exchange system--you do a think (often an onerous or useless thing) for me, I will trade you for some marks that you can then use to purchase admission to the post-secondary program of your choice. Traditional marking strategies essentially buy work from students--and the better the work, the more I am willing to pay. But we only buy the product. We can nickle and dime and try to buy some process, too--show me a rough draft; no reading notes = no essay--but a lot of that can be faked.

Once the marks are gone, the exchange system breaks down. What is left to get students to WANT to do English class things?

Well, there's still an exchange--it only happens at mid-term and at term's end. So there's that: instead of buying an essay or a poster-board, I'm buying a semester of reading, writing, reporting. But we're trying to decentralize that. Putting all the eggs in one nebulous and arguable basket doesn't make the eggs taste any different.

We need intrinsic motivators. We need students to care about the subject, about the topic, about the products that they are supposedly engaged in making. Which means we need to decentralize the classroom as much as possible: let students choose texts; let them choose topics; let them choose forms of presentation. There are still limits, of course--they have to choose challenging texts; they have to choose relevant topics; they have to present their work in a way that showcases their English skills according to the strands outlined in the curriculum that I am still obliged to follow--but within those broad guidelines, I need to get myself as much out of the way as possible and enable students to bring their passions to the room and to the tasks.

It is hard to disappear. It's hard to get out of the way in my own classroom.

But it's easier for students to see through a window than through a wall.

Student quote of the day:

" I remember learning about something in class and being interested by it and wanting to learn more, but not being able to because it wasn't part of the format/curriculum or not having time to do so because we had already finished the project from that part of the curriculum. I think grades, and just learning things for the grade, oppress students interests and diminish their motivation, much like Kohn thought. ...students should want to learn things in class for the sake of knowing something or being interested in it, not just learning something for the sake of passing a class."

On Gradelessness

2017-09-05T19:06:00.001-04:00

You would think something like the decision to transition to a gradeless classroom (a decision I made at the start of this school year) would be a difficult one. You might be surprised to learn that I first considered going gradeless only five days ago, and didn't even discuss it with my school's administration until this morning--15 minutes after the first bell had signalled the start of another year.

And yet that's what I did. It almost felt like a whim--but it was a whim borne of years of observation, years of frustration, years of quiet discontent.

I have spent my teaching career writing volume upon volume of feedback on student work, only to have students flip past it all in search for that two digit number at the back of the essay--and then watching those same students approach me and without a hint of irony or sarcasm ask me why they got that (invariably too-low) grade and what they can fix to get a better one. The comments were invisible. They were useless. I was trying to initiate a conversation about what quality work looks like and how students might grow as readers, thinkers, and writers, but that insidious number was undoing all my efforts. There were exceptions, sure, but most students didn't seem to want to be better writers; they just wanted better marks, as expeditiously as possible.

I watched fear of low marks hamstring student after student in my creative writing classes. "I want to do something really interesting," they would tell me, "but I'm afraid I won't be able to do it well and then I'll get a bad mark." "Just tell me what will get a good mark and I will make one of those for you," they would say. (Seriously--more than one student has uttered that very sentence to me.) The hunt for the high mark stood between them and their own creativity. It stood between them and their own brilliance. It stood between them and their willingness to take risks.

I watched actual low marks create sullenness and despair for the struggling learners in my classroom. Even when I sat down with them to tell them in no uncertain terms what I liked about their work and how they could make it better, that grade spoke even louder, and told them they were no good, that there was no point in them practicing their incipient skills. A "bad" mark became a sign that they were a "bad" student, unable to learn, unable to progress, not suited for my discipline.

Grading seems to be at the backbone of our current system. Without grades, we instinctively wonder, how will we know how well we did? How will universities know if I am ready to swim upstream? How will I compare myself to my classmates? Surely any attempt to decentralize the importance of grades would involve a complete subversion of the entire classroom structure, maybe even the subversion of the academic enterprise in its entirety?

Well, no.

Grades, at best, offer us a strange and deeply flawed mirror in which our students may see their faces. They serve to continually remind weak students that they are worthless, while telling high achievers that they need not strive for further improvement. Grades shift the focus of courses from learning to earning, from exploring and growing to completing and accumulating. Grades actually work rather against what we teachers like to think we are trying to do: foster life-long learners with independent inquiry and self-improvement skills.

So when I learned about the growing stop grading movement, the light switch in my head was already well-primed for flipping. And flip it did.

I'm still working out the bugs--and there are a lot of bugs. As pieces become clear in my mind, I will post my thoughts, my processes, and my resources here.

Stay tuned--big things are underway in room 2062.

peripheral

2017-03-08T21:38:00.004-05:00

just off the edge of every map--

peripheral--

like the body beyond the nervous system

the flesh and bones and circulating blood

that are not you, but surround the shock

you are, give your lightning form--

is where you linger. sidelong

to my vision

a lost country

broke enough to be exploited

by the sleepwalk kings

in slow procession down the

intersecting aisles that run

adjacent to / conjunct with

the unsteady window of my eye.

i see you (not see you)

there (not there)

in the light that does not shine

upon the hundred faces

you have never had.

i keep writing you poems

because i can't write you poems.

if i could, i would stop

as one does

when there's nothing left to say.

i suppose you can feel flattered

that these words exist at all.

maybe my great failing

has been to keep you always there--

peripheral--

a rock i refused to shake from my shoe

a sliver untugged from my hand

the itch i could scratch but didn't

on the phantom limb i don't have

and maybe my great flaw

has been a wholeness

false and solid

a sense that i contain all i need

a quilt of cherished gaps

a map

(just off the edge of every map)

to lead me back

to where i've never been

to find you there

with all your other selves

peripheral

and perfect.

don't move.

not one of you.

don't change a thing.

departure lounge

2017-01-08T12:45:00.003-05:00

to fly is the thing

to spread out your wings

and depart--

that is the art

so here we are at the gate

a few awkward minutes left

waiting to wait

before you leave me here

on the scraped grey edge

of the sky

i don’t know why

i said i’d see you off

or even why you asked

i guess you needed

a witness

i guess i needed

one last glimpse of your ass

as you walked

up the ramp

and checked in

to the hollow museum

of my past

i don’t kid myself

that you’ll call

so don’t kid yourself

that i’ll answer to you.

after so long kidding each other

it’s a relief to be through

a gift to be simple and true

i’ll miss you

like i miss the radio’s hum

that itch in my ear

where a sound used to scratch me

to sleep, all white noise and numb

to leave is the thing--

who cares about landing

when flight

is the point?

so here we are

at the departure gate

and you’re shedding feathers

i’m as far from the horizon

as i’ve ever been,

still home

but home free.

i don’t know why

i said i’d see you off

but i’m glad i thought

to check my phone

the moment you looked back.

i’m glad when i looked up

you were gone.

how to kill a bird

2017-01-04T19:47:00.000-05:00

dan takes the twine
ties the ankles tight because
we've heard the bird will run
even
after the head is gone
then, not knowing
what comes next, we two fool kids
throw the line over a limb
cowboy-style we guess because
all we know of death
we've learned from film.
only
now
my childhood business farming eggs
is flipping fictions for
real-life execution.

once a chicken's old
it ain't no use, the crusty neighbor says.
once you stop paying your way
we slay, toss your feathers away
forget you had a name--
ashes to ashes, clay to clay.

pause.

consider the stump:
axe-scarred and waiting
for a neck thumb-stretched
and shaking
weak hand covering that yellow
eye that won't stop blinking
don't dare to wonder
what a chicken might be thinking.

the first swing

is a miss. hatchet swish and thunk
a chunk of wood. you flinched.
infirm of purpose.

didn't think you could, dan says,
tugs the rope. gulp down hope
and try to cope. once more
heft handle in hand review
the plan: neat swing clean cut
string it up to bleed out
the true red cost of food on table.
i'm ready, able
to swing. no tremble
this time. we are but young
in deed.
dan yanks the bird away
head still under my hand
up and out the leg-trussed body arcs
spasm and sputter-vein frenzy
swift death to the myth of dying easy
i freeze in my
murderer's pose
unbelieving.

like any pendulum
splendid dependable
weight on a string
the corpse swings back
trembling
over my penitent head
and i am baptized in blood
dissolved by the rain of what i have done
and reformed into something
a little taller
a little older
a little callused
where the hand
held the axe.

Had a Band

2017-01-04T10:41:00.001-05:00

i knew them back in high school

just because they went to my school

but it’s not like we were friends,

i mean, i knew they had a band

but they were stoners, they were skids

and we were only kids

so we laughed at them because they didn’t

know how to play

Free Bird.

I had a guitar that i

would play out in the yard;

i was starting to get good

and they were only two-bit hoods

but they were making up their own riffs,

a bit like old Black Sabbath

only faster, and we all knew

they had stolen all their gear; and

somehow

that was cool.

At the talent show that spring

we did the “Battle of the Bands” thing

my band went on first

so they would have to eat our dust.

We played U2 and R.E.M.--

we covered all the latest bands

we had a drummer from the army

and a teen tour jazz guitarist;

i played bass

because somebody has to, right?

We were cool; the crowd was dancing

we were not quite like the real thing

but we’d learned it note for note

and we were trying to emote

someone else’s emotions--

we were calculated fictions

and everyone believed us; we got a reasonable facsimile of a

standing ovation

when we stopped.

They were up next.

The crowd held it’s breath.

We looked at them, they looked at us

And they laughed as they took to the stage.

They started with a bang--

a song 38 seconds long

entitled “Ms. Kelly, the Librarian,

is a Servant of Satan.”

A fight broke out somewhere,

the vice-principal appeared

and flicked at the house lights--

which, of course, started more fights--

while the band ground our ears down

with exquisite mountains

of menacing sound.

Well, the cops did what cops do

and the ambulances ambled through;

three kids and a teacher

were hurt when the bleachers collapsed.

The band was expelled;

word is, they were sued

by Ms. Kelly, the librarian,

who suffered a breakdown

next Sunday at church.

I never saw those four guys again,

but later that week i wrote my first song

and it sucked,

but at least it was mine.

Why You Fly

2014-10-16T17:51:00.000-04:00

i heard elvis costello singing ‘alison’ today

steel guitar and a mandolin

behind him on the stage,

his voice finally finely crumpled

by the million collisions of encroaching old age.

he leaned back from the mic

to sing ‘the bartender turns the juke box

way

down

low’

and his voice filled the room

with the strength of his convictions

instead of the strength of microphones.

all the amplifiers in the world

can’t bring a mouth that close to an ear.

all the powers of this electrified world

can’t bring my fingers any closer to you

than when they brush the strings

of this guitar.

i wanted to sing

straight into your heart

but i let the machinery keep up apart,

conquered by fear that my faltering voice

wasn’t power enough.

‘i know this world is killing you,’ he sang,

‘but my aim is true.’

i turn off the lights, unplug the sky,

recede to human size, and

say for once what i mean

which is simply

‘i love you.’

that’s my only song.

I’m sometimes confused,

words come out wrong

and my fingers are stupid—

they grope for chords

i’ve known since childhood:

i lose sight of the truth of a minor and c,

i lose sight of love

and find complexity—and with it always

soft sorrow and tension,

high harmonic structures,

upper dimensions,

paths curved in time,

time curved in possibility.

my life takes the form

of a series of lines intersecting connecting

the silk of the sky

to the dust of the coal mines;

the smiles of lovers

to the handlesof coffins;

the math of the seasons

to the men taking off

in their amplified rockets

bound for the heavens

and lost to the earth,

humming songs from childhood

to shield their human ears

from the thunder of engines

those machines that compel us

to rise from our beds

pay homage to power

and leave all that matters for darkness, vacuum,

pinpricks of starlight perfected.

they hang there, weightless, these lost men,

observing the empty heart of the sky

while all they love--

the smoky rooms

the steel guitars

the fragile courage of the human voice

the futile optimism of the always-open ear--

all these wonders spin away beneath them.

they hum to themselves their childish tunes,

prayers unheard beneath the roar

of engines firing, turning them finally earthward.

‘my aim is true,’ elvis was singing; ‘my aim is true.’

when i come down and the roaring stops,

i will touch this silent soil

strum that long-lost simple chord

place my lips close beside your perfect, optimistic,

ever-forgiving ear, and say

‘i love you.’

‘i know,’ you will answer.

‘that’s why you fly.

and that’s why you return.

i know.’

Overpass (cut and paste)

2014-03-03T20:05:00.003-05:00

i see you on the overpass:

invisible, i might tree the breeze.

invisible, lovers reveal the wind.
i could fly i could...
love sees beneath the cold

look down. you'll see all the rain in me
just ghosts, just everything
every car
bitter black sorrow
all ink running together

without you beside me i'm tangled
by line by rain and leaf and wind
and invisible ink. just
the black beneath bridges,
secure inside.

i could be spring
but even then you wouldn't see.

birds learn to disappear into the world.
notebooks pour paint
like a high into the night.
overpass spills ink
to purple the blue fingertips
of these low places.

On Eclecticism: The Joy of Being a Mess

2013-10-02T23:54:00.002-04:00

"There are two kinds of music: good music, and the other kind. I play the good kind."

~Duke Ellington

I used to worry that I didn't have an identity. I was playing guitar in a rock band, playing bass in a blues band, writing as half of a folk duo, and then going home and churning out strange little string quartets and orchestral pieces on the computer. I was flitting about from style to style and sound to sound like a slightly detuned hummingbird. I was never sure who I was going to be when I picked up a guitar. And it worried me.

Because, you see, I could listen to any cut from any one of my guitar heroes and hear their personality shine through like a beacon. I could spot Bill Frisell a mile away. Jimmy Page is always and forever Jimmy Page. Frank Zappa?--no matter how far out weird he got, there was always that thread of continuity, what Zappa himself called the Project/Object, running through his music like an overloaded hydro wire that somehow connected Igor Stravinsky, doo-wop, funk, and the glory hole of your local truck stop bathroom stall in a way that sounded unmistakably Frank.

And then there was me, soaking up and imitating styles like an echolalic sponge, and never even having the good grace or self-discipline to get my imitations right. I was, I down-heartedly concluded, a duffer and a dabbler, a poseur and a fake. Not shredder enough to be a shredder, not bluesy enough t be a blues player; I was half-assed in every possible direction at once.

I tried to find a direction. Really, I did. I told myself I would only write pop songs. I told myself I was part of a piano-guitar-voice trio, until death do us part. I told myself I was working on an album of solo acoustic fingerstyle stuff that fans of Bruce Cockburn might like if they were willing to ignore the fact that Bruce was already so much better at that than I would ever be. But I couldn't stick with any of them.

And then I realized that all this compartmentalization was just me cutting off my nose without even the satisfaction of spiting my face. I wasn't trying to make a shitload of money. I didn't need a marketable image. And if I looked back at the heroes I referenced--Zappa, Frisell, Page, and Cockburn, not to mention Brian May, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Ani DiFranco, Vernon Reid and Pete Townsend, among many others--none of them were compartmentalized, either. If you listen to their widely varied output, they don't seem to have a marketing strategy other than "do whatever the hell you like, as long as you do it well."

Neil Young was once sued by his OWN RECORD LABEL for making an album that didn't sound like Neil Young. Ween has basically been an entirely different band every time they've made a record, but they consistently crack me up and fill me with joy. Listen to Adrian Belew play for the Talking Heads, then listen to his solo albums and quick-cut to his hilarious Bob Dylan impersonation on Zappa's wonderful "Flakes"--the guy's all over the map, and I adore him for it.

And bands that find their sound, find their formula and grind out album after album of the same shit, year after year? Well, when something dies it soon enough begins to stink.

We all know AC/DC hasn't done anything worth listening to since Who Made Who, or maybe earlier. Bon Jovi, bless his slick black corporate soul, has made the same bloody album every year since Slippery When Wet, but people are so dumb or so stuck in their ways or so die-hard committed to their love of mediocrity that they continue to buy it. Fifty million Bon Jovi fans, I humbly suggest, can most certainly be wrong. Or at least be wasting their time.

Gradually it dawned on me that my only job as an artist was to sound like me. But still the doubts persisted: what does "me" sound like? Do I sound enough like me? What if "me" changes from day to day--is that bad? Weak? Demonstrative of a lack of conviction?

Basically, I was a neurotic twit. But I got better.

Projects came; projects fell away. Collaborators brought out different facets of my musical personality, helped me understand truths or partial truths about myself. I stopped trying to impress other people. And then, one magic day, I stopped trying to impress myself, too.

Now I just listen to the noises in my head, and try to duplicate them in the world. And if that means a slow Dixieland blues today and a jangly pop confection laced with jazzy #11 chords tomorrow, well, that's just fine. It's all me. Even if I'm trying to imitate Bruce Cockburn. Because, you see, here's the secret:

I never perfected that Bruce Cockburn imitation.

So all those mistakes I make? They're uniquely mine, and I love them fiercely. All that wandering doesn't mean I'm lost--I'm just enjoying the ride. The mess that I am defines me, and I wouldn't trade it for any polished imitation--not of any other musician, and not even of myself--now that I've figured that out.

why who how where when what

2013-08-29T22:14:00.001-04:00

Like most teachers, I was at work yesterday setting up for the start of another year. In the photocopy room I found myself discussing courses with a colleague. She asked me about my 3U English class this semester: was I starting with the novel, the short story unit, the obligatory Shakespeare?

I gave her the straightest and simplest answer I could (straight and simple answers are decidedly not the spécialité de la maison: Shakespeare, probably, I guess. I dunno. Truth is, I hadn't really thought much about it.

She looked around nervously, waiting for the lightning bolt. I hadn't thought about it? But the semester starts in three days! Why the hell haven't I thought about it?

Because I'm thinking about other, more important things.

Because WHAT I'm teaching on a day to day basis is the least interesting and least important aspect of my job.

Because the real sequence of questions for any serious teacher goes like this:

WHY do you teach?

WHO do you teach?

HOW do you teach?

WHERE and WHEN do you teach?

And only then, at the very end,

WHAT do you teach?

What matters most is the intention--the WHY. A good teacher must be aware of their motivation, their goals, their inspirations, their aspirations. A good teacher must understand themselves and their relationship to their profession and their students if they are to be effective. Kids can smell insincerity. Adults going through the motions at the front of the room teach kids nothing except to go through the motions themselves. Adults who love what they do, love learning, love sharing--they teach children to love learning too.

Next on the list is WHO. Contrary to what the stylish nonsense of standardized testing would have you believe, there are no standardized children. They each come to school with a different set of motivations, goals, triggers, passions, expertises, and challenges. In effect, they each come with their own WHY. A good teacher needs to learn WHO is in the class in order to teach each student the way they most want to be taught--as much as is reasonably possible within the increasingly narrow confines of budget, time, and sanity.

Which brings us to HOW. You know what you're doing in the room. You know who else is in the room with you. How are you going to get through to them? There are no "guaranteed success" teaching tips or tricks. There is no one textbook, or activity, or strategy, that works for every kid, every time. So the good teacher, once aware of WHO is in their care and WHY that child wants to learn (or not learn!), has to grapple on a daily basis with HOW to bring a diverse group of children each to a place of receptivity. This, really, is the majority of the job for most front-line teachers on a day-to-day basis: how to make the subject matter at hand sensible and appealing to the children in our care. This is the art that elevates the craft.

WHERE and WHEN are really just a subset of HOW. Children cannot learn effectively in hostile or uncomfortable environments. Part of the job of a teacher--and here we must also include the surrounding host of administrators, architects, cafeteria staff, government funding models, community support groups, soup kitchens, urban planners, furniture manufacturers, and child and family welfare agencies, among others--is to create an environment where children feel safe, comfortable, and engaged. Every day teachers struggle to help students who have not slept properly, not eaten, never been read to at home, are worried about money or their personal safety or that of their family members, worried about whether the heat will still be on when they get home from school, worried about whose couch they'll crash on tonight. Schools run breakfast clubs, walk in closets, drug addiction counselling programs, and a host of other programs designed to make the WHERE and the WHEN of learning possible and palatable.

The last question, the WHAT question, certainly bears consideration in the grand scheme of education. WHAT equals CONTENT, after all--could there be anything more important than that? Sure, there are vital philosophical and sociological issues at stake in curriculum development: what we choose to teach, and what (more importantly) we neglect to teach are societally formative decisions. If our schools do not produce the next generation of physicists, cabinet makers, accountants or soccer coaches, who will do these jobs? Should our schools teach healthy active living at the expense of literacy? Advanced mathematics at the expense of poetry appreciation, ethics, or small engine repair? If we ignore Black History Month or celebrate Diwali in our classrooms, have we made the world a better or worse place? What if there are no woman novelists on the reading list? At first sniff, the WHAT question appears to be the most important one.

However, those decisions are largely out of the hands of front-line teachers; the big framework type decisions are entrusted (rightly or wrongly) to policy mandarins at Queen's Park several telegraph relays removed from the classroom. Most teachers have little part in curriculum design, even though many would have excellent insights. Most curriculum designers have no part in day-to-day classroom education, even though many would probably find it enlightening. As a consequence, the general outline of WHAT I teach is prepackaged and piped to me in a PDF file: the learning outcomes for my courses are not up for discussion.

This disconnect does not make classroom teachers powerless; it certainly does not absolve us from thinking about WHAT. Nowhere in the English 3U document does it say we have to teach Shakespeare, or even read a novel. So when I do either of those things with my class, I should have good reasons besides "that's what my English teacher made me do in Grade 11, a millenium ago." Funny thing is, though, the rationale for choosing a text, an activity, an assignment, never comes from the WHAT. It comes from the WHY, the WHO, the HOW and WHERE of education.

finally (you dreamers)

2013-07-14T15:40:00.002-04:00

fly me to a place
far beyond the moon
where i can look back at the earth
and watch it turn

all the oceans blue
and all the deserts brown
and all the billion souls
but me and you

half the world in darkness
half the world asleep
the thin line of the sunrise
racing west across the deep
waters of night

finally you dreamers
dream yourselves to life

limn the streets with gold
turn your half-blind eyes
the brown and blue and billions
towards the east
and open wide.

finally you dreamers
dream yourselves to life.

coast

2013-06-17T09:48:00.003-04:00

there are only two stories: the rise
and the fall.
there is no legend of the
coast along in the middle of life
doing just fine
just fine today thanks
for asking.

that man on the beach
call him me--does it matter who?
must look away instead
for the vector of his life
towards the multiplying versions
of his many births
his many deaths
his squalid unbecoming becomings
and his dessicated
inexorable
becoming unbecoming.

Exam Haiku

2013-04-29T09:17:00.001-04:00

Teacher knocks. Flurry

of mutely shouting hands rise

like startled pheasants.

“You have one hour

remaining. Tell me everything

you know about X.”

Nerves twitch electric.

Fifteen more minutes to sit.

Words are exhausted.

Someone always coughs.

My pen is always dying.

Negativity.

Tendons start cramping

Pinched scrawl limps across the page,

crow with shattered feet.

I just stopped to think.

Birds sang on white window ledge.

Where did the time go?

three bed poems, feb 2013

2013-03-23T22:08:00.001-04:00

Every semester I make 3 cut-up poems alongside the students in my EWC class. It's a nice way to put a finger on the pulse of my subconscious. We deliberately let go of the idea of grammar, the idea of making sense, the idea of "proper." We follow our instincts, succumb to the sounds of words, the rightness of clusters of images. We let go of the outcomes and accept what we are given.

This time, we wrote about beds--our earliest memory, our current bed, our dream bed. Then we chopped up our writing and made poems with pre-selected titles. Here are my three poems for the semester:

#1: breathing out

submerged and falling not a
motion sink soft into the watercolor
through the waving growing seaweed
down through layers of deepening night

the unspoken truth
slowly to coral the upper air like clouds
hooked c of the arms of the world
waning and filling the day so i can feel
      at home.

#2: like moonlight

desert moon rush across the black
waking up cold and twisted
  at hip and ankle

predatory cat in my memory
remembered fear: warm and earthlike
smelling of unexpected nouns
which surrendered the fight

tiny room beneath silent unseen fans
windows like moonlight
sleep is gone and so we
  and so
      and so
      towards the landing

#3: seeing you around

you take the warmth. it all runs
  to morning and
the secret verbs are soft and solid
curved summer across our winter dreams
portholes in the sunset are
      lost mariners

dreams are treasures
bound down with gravity and
sinking soft

although i was never there
and love has a memory
of ourselves from the side
i wonder what else we believed
so many years fooling everyone
  guess i still do

      i hope you do too

Barbarians (πᾶς μὴ Ἕλλην βάρβαρος)

2013-03-17T22:48:00.000-04:00

everybody's talking about

the war that no-one's talking about:

sizing up sides

stitching flags on the insides

of hollow eyelids

branding the kids with irons.

everybody knows

it's everybody else's house

that's on fire.

everybody's banging on

the drum that no-one's beating:

sounding alarms

moving back to farms

of their ancestors or

trading cash for a subdermal chip.

everybody knows

that hip

is the new death of hip.

everybody's hearing horses

at the gates of gilded cities

just off the edge

of the white map of sleep.

we each decide

if we walk or we ride

if we're out or inside

that circle of light.

everybody knows

the barbarians

are always right.

goodbye, and all that...

2013-01-23T23:13:00.000-05:00

there's nothing special about this
last cup of tea. i mean, yes, you
boiled the water, but that's

no reason to get worked up:
just a couple cents' worth
of electricity, some tap water

(practically free) and a few
dried leaves from somewhere
you'll probably never go.

me neither. yet there it sits
steeping on my desk, staining itself
antique green, pirate map brown

and cooling slowly. soon it will be
room temperature. tepid. undrinkable.
but that's entropy for you:

of all the laws of the universe, it's the one
most likely to ruin a perfectly good
cup of tea. i could drink it quick

but it wouldn't matter. either way
you will be gone, and i will have to
make the next cup all on my own.

it's no big deal. really. i
can make a cup of tea
without anybody's help.

it's just that i have grown
fond of having you around.
it's just that some friendships--like tea--

grow stronger, deeper, the longer
you let them sit. it's just that i might
miss you a little when the kettle starts to boil.

but i'll be okay. and so will you.
it's just a little water, just a little heat,
just the comfort of ritual and good company.

no big deal. so. goodbye and all that.
if you need the kettle, it's here.
i'll keep it warm.

Unloved Children

2013-01-22T23:47:00.002-05:00

There are no bad babies.

Some arrive unexpectedly.
Some are inconvenient.

Some overfill an already crowded room.
But that is no fault of the child.

Some are not loved:
Because their parents are not loving,

Or not in a position to love,
Or were hoping to love some other child instead.

Every note you play is a child:
Produce them deliberately.

Love them fiercely.
There are no wrong notes.

Only notes you didn't want,
Notes you failed to celebrate

Once you gave them life.

poet man (ii: a ball of clay)

2013-01-06T02:31:00.002-05:00

how nice not to have to live
surrounded by everything we have broken:

our failures

our embarrassments

the curio shelf i made in grade 10 shop class
in spite of having no curios
no plans to acquire
no patience for right angles.

the ashtray i made fathers day 1977
when smoking was in and podge was in
and i was old enough to know
the smile on dad's never-smoked-a-day-in-my-life face
was also broken a round bowl a lump of grey
a small 7 thumb-print for a cigarette to rest
along the edge. useless. ugly.

if dad had turned it over he would have seen
poet man as child had taken the compass
from a protractor set (buffalo instruments
blue plastic case with also
30/60 and 45 angles plus ruler inscribed
in both metric and imperial: the two official languages
of how-far-the-moon-from-here?)

and carved a heart.

the international symbol for
i-don't-know-how-to-say.

a rough but dutiful thank-you was fashioned from a tongue of clay.
poet man as child waited for elves to haul it away.

add it to the list of times an apology was owed to someone.

but who? and why? the problem has never been
how to speak, only what to say.

the problem has never been
how-do-i-feel-about-what-just-happened
but did-it-happen-that-way-at-all?

let's be honest here:

all i am sure of in that story
is a red picnic table under a tall hickory tree.

that, and maybe the protractor set.

the word "podge" has the ring of truth
and so it stays.

the past is clay we mold and shape
to make our ugly useless gifts
and every broken thing we give away
is redeemed only by the heart we scratch beneath.

whoever the hell you are
reading these wasted broken words right now,
forget everything else i have written.
turn this poem over:

see? i love you, too.

poet man (i: a ball of string)

2013-01-06T02:27:00.003-05:00

he is his cat.

he has this ball of string he bats about
worry is the word i'm looking for
i should go back and change line 2 but
part of me insists that every mistake
is a pure form of utterance
and every revision a lie
calculated to hide the honest ugly
of my mind. so as i was saying

he worries

this ball of string this scrap of cloth
this little nothing fished from under the sofa
where only tiny claws could reach
where no-one ever vacuums.
he has it. he worries it.
he worries he might actually be

normal.

that all this restless energy
this industrious assiduous creativity is just
an act he puts on
like a towel a scrap tied around his throat
to make a hero cape. poet man!
but all the world knows. and is laughing at
the underpants on the outside.

he worries--like i said--that he might just be
normal.

do normal people worry this? that they are
what they are? the fact that he worries
this ball of thread itself suggests that

normal

is not whatever he is
which leads to the counter-concern
that he is weird.
that all this sea of sounds is just
the thump of a poorly tuned engine
the whining friction of a fan belt turned too tight.

how comforting to live in a binary world
where everything not in is out
and everything not right is just
a short trip away from the curb
where garbage elves will whisk it away
to faerie land.

what i've been meaning to say

2012-12-25T22:53:00.000-05:00

i have not been totally honest
or rather i've been telling truths that are irrelevant
hiding the meat
hyping the condiments
waving my hands
to distract from my eyes
all 'look over there!' when really
it's all here inside.

i keep writing love songs
and leaving out the names
hoping the 'you' and the 'me' are obvious;
but pronouns are just loose change,
just shorthand,
just quicksand
where we lose first our particular shoes
then slowly our legs, our hips, our thighs
and even that's just me
resorting to my instinct to generalize
when what i'm really trying to do
is describe exactly you
to unscrew a pen cap
and freehand a road map
of the curve of your nose
the first time i really saw it:

that new year's eve, at the obligatory party.

you on the sofa, me on a cushion
in the middle of the room of my own private ocean
playing that game with the sharks
in the carpet
where if i touched a toe down
they would tear me to bits
autumn had waned into winter
but i was already springtime
all curved lines and anxiety
wondering if a girl like you could see
the trees growing wild
inside a guy like me
who played badly at cool
loved madly but foolishly silent and slow
who brushed his teeth twice before
daring to phone you to ask if you'd be there
so i wouldn't have to be there alone.

and yet there i was
knees drawn up to my chest
hoping you would suggest
i come over and join you
hoping you'd yawn and rest
your head on my lap
so i could stroke your hair
at the stroke of midnight,
hoping for once
i could start the year right
right beside you and your body
close enough to whisper your name
so nobody would hear it but you,
hoping i could privatize our public lives
could get inside your head
and your levis, hoping i
could dive into you. imagine
my surprise when you
read my mind and smiled
threw down a cushion that bridged the miles
of open sea around me
it astounded me then
as it still does now
that you could see the future
where i just saw tea leaves
that you said yes before i knew
what question i was asking.

so i take back every song i have written,
redact every poem with your name not yet in it
and swear on my heart
and the forests that grow there
to renounce all my pronouns
and celebrate the sound
of your name:

Cathy.

enamel (time enough)

2012-11-19T23:16:00.000-05:00

smiling doctor mark informs me
every six months, give or take,

that the grooves in my molars
come from my hands. it's my fault.

i grip the brush too tight.
i dig the bristles in.
i try too hard to scrape away
the day before i sleep at night.

odd to consider the toothbrush
that most useless of cleaning tools
can--given time enough and hands
too persistent, too rough--erase

the enamel of my teeth.
harder than bone, they are.
i read somewhere that i
(hypothetical i at least)

could chew through my wrist
if i needed to. a persistent
back and forth, a wearing away
of parts. it's all about a willingness

to meet the coarse material
of life with a spirit of resistance.
it's all about a willingness
to work at what needs working.

to kill what needs killing.
it is never too late to start.
with time enough
we can erase any mistake.