We could probably use a bit more kindness

I've been thinking about the idea of kindness over the last 24 hours, because I read a lovely tribute to Mr. Rogers yesterday (it would have been his 84th birthday).  Mr. Rogers was important to my childhood, and he taught us all a lot about kindness and caring for each other.  In the piece that I've linked to, Mary Elizabeth Williams talks about the way that Rogers' kindness wasn't simply about being gentle -- or about shielding children from the real world.  His show was instead about how we treat each other in this very difficult world -- and that simple acts of caring can help us get along better.  That thinking about other people's needs once in a while will help everyone do better. (Tangentially, this reminds me of a piece by Jim Hightower that I teach my English 101 students, where he explains that his father's philosophy was "Everyone does better when everyone does better." Or something to that general effect.)

Anyway, I've been thinking a lot about kindness, and about the fact that we could use a lot more of it right now -- in our public sphere, but also in our private lives.

So I've been thinking about my own relationship with kindness.  Like I said, I loved Mr. Rogers.  Loved him.  Despite the fact that I'm pretty sure one -- if not both -- of my parents thought he was a total nerd.  I loved his show because it was about imagination and about caring for one another -- but again, not about completely sheltering children from the reality of the world.  Mr. Rogers talked about sadness; he talked about being afraid; he talked about being angry.  And he acknowledged that those were legitimate feelings and that we needed to find ways to deal with them appropriately, and not just hide from them.  Acknowledging those feelings as natural allows us to express them in ways that are healthy -- and ways that allow us to build productive and caring relationships with other people.

Kindness isn't simply gentleness.  And it's not being a doormat.  But it's also not something that's particularly present in much of literature (or at least in the literature I generally read).  There are gentle characters, certainly -- Bartleby was gentle, but he wasn't necessarily kind.  He could have used more kindness from the lawyer -- and that seems to be part of the story's point.

But much of literature actually eschews kindness, which in many ways is understandable since without conflict we really wouldn't have plot.  I think most obvious is Lady Macbeth's concern that her husband had even an ounce of "the milk of human kindness" in his nature (and he didn't.  He was a warrior who rather handily killed some enemies even before the play began).  That's what I spend a lot of my time with -- I teach literature; I read literature; I watch a lot of movies.  Kindness isn't exactly in high regard in those things.

For that reason, I think I've often forgotten the need for kindness -- and that there have been advocates out there for it.  I think that we all need to take better care of one another, and I know that I see people all the time who are treated poorly.  It may be outright bullying (which seems to be about the opposite of kindness) or simply neglect by other people.

And where does that get anyone?

Spring Break

I always have very noble intentions for how much stuff I'm going to get done during breaks.  Of course, as a student I was always traveling somewhere on spring break.  With the exception of last year's spring break trip to London (with students and colleagues), spring break now means an opportunity to stay at home and catch up on things (cleaning, grading, writing ... not necessarily in that order).

And so this spring break is just like the rest.  I have grand plans about how much I can get done, and I fully anticipate that I won't come anywhere near completing the list.  I will get a lot of things done.  Just not everything.

One of the nice things about a break of this length is that I have, ultimately, a specific deadline.  Things have to be done by next Monday, because I have to be back in the classroom and back in my office then.  And it's spring semester, which means that after break everything goes bananas.  (I cannot explain how much travel WB and I are doing between the two of us from late March to mid-April.  It's insane.)

The other nice thing is that the days are unstructured, for the most part.  Sure, I'll make a hair appointment for later in the week, but otherwise I simply have to pick from my to-do list each day and get as much done as I can.  There's something relaxing about doing work in that manner -- rather than having priorities set for me by my own class schedules.

And that's an odd thing about being an academic, I think.  We get the breaks along with the students, but we really don't take the break from the work.  What we need is the space -- not a total absence of work.  I will grant that a lot of my work this week will involve bourgeois home-owner stuff and not academic stuff.  But I can do it at my own pace right now.

Now if I could just stop checking my work email every twenty minutes, I'd actually be relaxed about things.

International Women's Day 2012

It's International Women's Day today.

So, I give you some links to some of my favorite early modern writers who you might not know:

Aemilia Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum;

A poem from Mary Wroth's Pamphilia to Amphilanthus;

Elizabeth Cary's The Tragedie of Miriam; and ...

A poem by Isabella Whitney instructing her younger sisters gone into service in London (one of my favorites, if only for the sheer quotidian nature of the subject matter).

Letting go of the reins

Today is the first day of student leadership in my eighteenth century class.  I have a small group of students this year, so I've only got a few days where students will be in charge of starting class -- but today is one of them.

I do this assignment for a number of reasons.  First of all, it fits within my department's objectives that students will develop public speaking skills.  After all, what is teaching but a lifetime of speaking in front of groups?

More importantly, I think that having students teach the first portion of class -- which is what they're doing rather than giving formal presentations -- encourages more sustained thought from the students about the literature.  It also gives them the opportunity to realize how much work goes in to getting discussion going.  My experience after having students lead discussion questions or teach class in any other way is that typically, they begin to participate more.  And I'm hoping that this will be the case with this class, too.  I think that generally, the students in this class have answers -- or beginnings to answers -- to the discussion questions in class (which they write, by the way).  But I think they're reticent to answer some days because they figure someone else will do it.

I also do this because it's one of the many ways that I'm trying to encourage students to talk to one another -- rather than simply talk to me.  Even though my students are in multiple classes together, and even though they know each other, they fall into the habit of talking directly to me rather than to one another during discussion.  I think that this is something that's incredibly ingrained in all of them (and I know that it was still somewhat ingrained in me, despite my time in awesome high school English classes that were entirely discussion based).

Plus we're discussing the first four chapters of Gulliver's Travels.  So we'll see how this goes.

Deadlines

One of the nice things about working as an academic is that I largely structure my own time.  I have times assigned to me, certainly, when it comes to classes; but within those classes, I create the schedule.  I am required to keep a minimum number of office hours; but I get to decide when those are, and whether or not I stay above and beyond those hours (I frequently do).  I don't get to decide when some meetings or workshops are, but I also schedule a lot of my own.

What I don't get to decide are the external deadlines.  And this has been a week of deadlines.  Most I made; one I blew (though with the understanding of the administrator who set the deadline).  Some deadlines are simply essential tasks -- I needed to register for one academic conference this week, and I'll register for another next week.  Some are work related tasks, like midterm grades (due today at noon) and fall schedules (due yesterday ... and that's the one that I haven't completed, because I'm dependent on department chairs to complete their work, and I'm dependent on knowing whether or not certain adjunct faculty members will be teaching again in the fall, hence the reprieve from above).  I think these are probably the standard work deadlines that people have in any job.

But then there were the scholarship deadlines.  The Shakespeare Association of America paper was due to my seminar group this week -- and after a great deal of panicking, and some serious impostor syndrome, I finished it and sent it off.  Is it really done?  I'm not sure.  But it's new material out in draft form to a group of people who will help me think about it.

Additionally, a friend and I sent in a proposal for a seminar for the 2013 meeting of the SAA.  I don't know whether or not it will be accepted, but I'm pretty pleased with it.  I think we've got a good topic and would have a great discussion.

This has been a stressful week, no doubt.  I didn't get all the grading done I would have liked to for the midterm grades (sorry guys, it's not going to be completely reflective of what you've done so far); I haven't washed a dish in two days; and I really need to do some laundry.  Meeting those scholarly deadlines, however, was exhilarating.

Perhaps this is something that I'm weird about.  But there's an excitement to actually getting something accomplished -- and it's something that I created (or collaborated upon), rather than something that I have to do out of obligation to the job.

I'm excited about the possibilities of where the scholarly stuff is going.  I don't know what that future holds, but it's those little reminders as I'm trying frantically to get the more tedious deadlines met: I really do like a lot of what I do.  And I'll take the other deadlines, just so that I can keep doing the things that challenge me intellectually.

Metaphors for teaching

I've been thinking a lot about metaphors for teaching lately, something that's been precipitated by things I've seen and read in the past week.  First, The Chronicle of Higher Education included an otherwise pretty good op-ed piece that used a metaphor for education that I really dislike: the student as an empty vessel.  And I did get a bit riled up during the Republican debate on Wednesday as Santorum said things about education that I found particularly ridiculous (and I think this piece at Salon that does a generally decent job of debunking Santorum's claims about the history of homeschooling in the early years of the country, though I'm not completely convinced by the final analogy that the writer makes).

But it was Gingrich's statement about education that really got to me.  He suggested, first that teachers' unions don't care about students (see this post for a discussion of education reform and teachers' unions); then he suggested this:

The second thing we bought into was the -- the whole school of education theory that you don't have to learn, you have to learn about how you would learn.
So when you finish learning about how you would learn, you have self esteem because you're told you have self esteem, even if you can't read the words self esteem.

That really, really got to me.  Because, first of all, it suggests a lack of knowledge of what actually happens in the classroom at any level, but more importantly it suggests the idea that learning about the ways that we learn (or the ways that we think) and learning content are mutually exclusive.  (And never mind that I really don't see how the self-esteem thing follows from metacognition, but whatever.)  The statement implies that classrooms where students are actively engaged with one another are classrooms where content is being ignored, that because time is spent with students working actively with the material means that students aren't actually learning it properly.

This claim that the two are essentially mutually exclusive is spurious, and I'm not quite sure where it comes from -- except that I strongly suspect that the Speaker believes that teaching is akin to pouring water into the empty vessel.

And I hate, hate, hate that metaphor.

I know that hate is a strong word, but that metaphor frustrates me because it ignores the importance of the student in education.  It suggests that students are passive actors in the educational experience, and that they will be filled with knowledge simply by being present in the classroom.  Even without knowing the latest research in cognitive psychology and pedagogy, anyone who has even a modicum of experience in the classroom should recognize that it doesn't work that way.  And frankly, anyone who has ever tried to remember anything should recognize that memory doesn't work that way -- we can't just be exposed to something and then remember it.  We have to do something with it.  Even rote memorization is more involved than simply being filled with knowledge -- when we memorize a passage from a text or a series of facts, we are actually actively doing something like saying it over and over again, or writing things down on notecards.

But that metaphor persists -- among faculty members, and more frustratingly to me, among students.  Early in the semester in my CT 101 and 102 courses, I have the students draw what they think education is ideally.  So often, their pictures are literal representations of students passively receiving the wisdom (or at least the information) of the expert in the front of the room.  (As an aside -- it's also odd to me that so many of these same students complain about lectures being boring.)

And so I talk with them about other metaphors for teaching.  I think two of the better ones are the professor/teacher as the coach or the professor/teacher as the guide on a hike.  Both suggest that the students have to be active -- and that there is an expert in the room.  I don't like the metaphor of the coach quite so well, because it ultimately suggests something of inactivity on the part of the instructor -- the coach does direct the game, but does so from the sidelines.  It's not that it's a bad metaphor, but rather that it's one that just doesn't really work for me.

I prefer -- at least right now in my career -- the metaphor of a guide on a hike.  I always draw mine leading people up a mountain, by the way.  This suggests that students must do the work of the educational journey -- and that the professor knows the way and can help along the way.  I also like this metaphor because it suggests that while I, the professor, may know the way, I still have to do the work of the hike.  I may be better prepared for it, in better shape for it -- but intellectual work for me continues as well.

These are pretty standard metaphors that people talk about when talking about teaching.  But I think it's useful to reflect upon from time to time -- and I think it's important to talk to students frequently about their own role in their education.  I can help you along the way, but you've got a lot of heavy lifting to do to become truly educated.

New gig ... and more blogging

I'm going to be blogging about teaching Introduction to Literature for Bedford/St. Martin's at their LitBits blog.   My first post is about student-developed discussion questions.  The blog itself has lots of creative writers talking about teaching their courses, and includes posts from Bradley, my friends Mike Kardos, David Eshelman, and Papatya Bucak.  All insightful, interesting stuff.  (Also, me.)  I'm excited about this opportunity, and I hope that I'll be able to share ideas with people -- and that it will be something that helps me to continue to reflect upon my own teaching.

I'll be posting there about once a week (I hope).  I'll continue to blog here about teaching other courses, reading, being an academic, and living with precocious cats.

I like to see it lap the miles

Recently, I've returned to one of the activities of my teenage years: running.  I realized last October that I wanted to be in better shape, so I bought a pair of running shoes and began slowly to rebuild endurance.  It's been slow and gradual -- and I've been measuring in terms of time and not necessarily distance.  But I'm up to about 30 minutes more or less every weekday.

While I began to do this out of consideration for my own health (I realize that I'm not getting younger, and that starting an exercise regime now is better than waiting a few more years), it's also given me opportunity to think about a lot of things.  I'm not quite experiencing that "runner's high" that I once did when racing in high school -- and I don't think I'm particularly interested in that.  But I am enjoying the time to myself, and I appreciate the way that running forces me to concentrate on my breathing and not all of my frustrations at one time.  I do think while I run, certainly, but it's impossible to multitask the way that I do the rest of the time.  I can meditate on something; I can breathe; and I can find space to myself.

I can also climb the stairs to the third floor of our administration building without running out of breath, so that's a bonus.*

I also realized this week that rather than leave school and immediately start grading papers -- despite a deadline that I had set for myself -- I chose to run.  It was more important to me to make sure that I exercised that afternoon than complete the grading that night.  There's always the next day for grading -- and I can find short breaks during the day for the work.  But I have to carve out the time for the exercise.

I know that sounds trite, to some degree: it's something that all the fitness magazines tell you that you have to do.  For me, though, this week's decision felt more profound than simple dieting tips: I've switched to running in the afternoon so that I can have more time, so I can begin to run for longer periods of time.  The risk, though, is that running in the afternoon makes it easier to skip the run if I'm tired or busy or just not feeling like it.  I realized, however, that I do feel like it, and that I'm carving out time -- and I'm really defending that time against the work of teaching -- to take care of myself.

That's been more difficult for me than anyone might realize, and it's been an ongoing process.  I know that people in other professions have to work to move away from habits they developed in college.  But I think that as an academic -- and as someone who only spent one year working between college and graduate school -- it becomes more difficult.  We're always around college students; and we're always bringing home reading and writing and all sorts of homework.  It easily takes over life, particularly because part of what we do is what we're really passionate about (and because most of us see the necessity of overcommitting in order to be scholars).  I decided in graduate school that no matter what, I needed to get a full night's sleep every night, and I mostly managed to do that.  It required some discipline in terms of getting work done earlier and an acceptance that sometimes good enough is good enough, but I've managed to operate on 7-8 hours of sleep most nights for the last 10 years.  Exercising was something that came in spurts.

There are plenty of other things that I ignore during the week -- housekeeping is generally not a priority on a Wednesday.**  But these recent realizations that I need this time to run -- this time to work out anxiety and anger, this time to think about the physicality of my body, this time to enjoy the peace and quiet that comes with my route -- strike me as important in my own development as a person and as an academic.  I canot control very much in my life, but there are those things that I can; and I should make sure that I do.

*It is very embarrassing to be out of breath in the Provost's Office.  My only defense is that the run and rise on the stairs in the building is slightly awkward.  But that's not actually a good defense.
** Or ever. Okay. I admit it.  Happy?

I have a helper

Leroy makes a good bookmark. Sort of.

"I shall have a grocer, and he will do admirable things"

I was just re-reading Francis Beaumont's The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607) as part of my work preparing my paper for this year's Shakespeare Association of America conference.*  And I was reminded of how much I enjoy this play.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the play (which would be most everyone reading this ...), the play begins with a London citizen (George), his wife (Nell), and their servant (Rafe) entering upon the stage, preparing to see The London Merchant.  The citizen announces that he does not like these plays that satirize Londoners, and he wishes that the actors will perform a different play, preferably a chivalric romance.  Because, as the players explain, the actors all have their parts and cannot add anything to the play, the couple suggests that Rafe become the knight -- of the burning pestle of the title -- and that he follow his own story.  The citizen insists that Rafe will be a grocer and a knight, eliding (comically) the role of the merchant and the hero.  The whole play moves on from there, intertwining the plots of the company's fairly standard city comedy and the citizen's romance.  As George and Nell direct Rafe, they forget which play is which and they begin to mix fiction with reality.  The city comedy ends happily; Rafe's play ends heroically; and the whole thing is incredibly metatextual and seems almost postmodern.  Anyway, I think it's delightful and silly.  Also, sweet (it lacks some of the acerbic barbs of a Jonson or Middleton play).

I wrote about it in my dissertation, discussing the relationship between masters and servants in both the Citizen/Wife plot and The London Merchant plot. And for SAA I'm working on a paper about children in city comedy -- and this play approaches both the issue of the lost child (the citizen and his wife lost their child to the river) and the very conspicuous fact that most city comedies were performed by children's companies.  (Incidentally, the paper is about children in city comedies, especially Middleton's Chaste Maid in Cheapside, Middleton and Dekker's Roaring Girl and this play.)

On this re-reading I was struck by Nell's tendency to give medical advice (which I'm pretty sure is covered in Wendy Wall's Staging Domesticity, but it's been a while since I've read that) -- and it's something I'm not sure I'll deal with in this paper that I'm working on, mostly for lack of space.

As the citizen and his wife increasingly lose sight of the line between fiction and reality, they begin to interact with the players: George gives the players money at one point in the play to bail Rafe out of a situation, for example.  But Nell begins to interact with some of the characters from the city comedy, particularly the character Mistress Merrythought and her young son Michael.  Mrs. Merrythought and Michael have, essentially, run away from home because Mr. Merrythought is a jolly, drunken wastrel.  Their plan to take the money and run falls apart when Mrs. Merrythought drops the money, and they spend much of the play wandering.

At one point, Michael tells his mother "In truth my feet are full of chilblains with traveling" (Act 3, line 186-187).  Nell interrupts at this point, giving medical instructions:

Faith, and those chilblains are a foul trouble.  Mistress Merrythought, when your youth comes home, let him rub all the soles of his feet and the heels and his ankles with a mouse skin, or if none of your people can catch a mouse, when he goes to bed let him roll his feet in the warm embers, and I warrant you he shall be well; and you may make him put his fingers between his toes and smell to them.  It's very sovereign for his head if he be costive. (Act 3, lines 188-195)

This is important to me because Nell is not only interacting with the characters -- she is, after all forgetting that this is a play that she's watching -- but also interacting with the characters who are played by boys.  In this, I see a converging of her roles: she's both the unrefined theater audience member, and the maternal figure who recommends how to deal with medical issues with these folk remedies.  (Also, this remedy is gross.  And I really don't know enough about it to know how realistic a rendering of such a remedy it is.)

But she does this throughout: she advises everyone in this maternal manner.  She sympathizes with characters she should sympathize with, though not always, it would seem, in the way that the theater audience is supposed to.

Anyway ... it's a delightful play.  And my delight, really, comes from the ridiculous behavior of the citizen and his wife.  While this is clearly a play that satirizes the lack of refinement among the merchant class in London, it does so without the Juvenalian snark (there's a nice literary term for you); it has, rather, that Horatian gentility to it.  We're supposed to be better audience members than the citizen and his wife, but we are drawn into their story -- and Rafe's heroic battles with Barbaroso -- and we delight in them as well.


*I have been going to this conference since 2006 and have yet to actually write about Shakespeare. Of this, I am quite proud.