Jim Burke: The English Teacher's Companion

Under Construction

I am taking advantage of the extra time over the break to begin work on my blog. The goal is to consolidate all my online content to this one site under the URL of englishcompanion.com, but for now, this... Ignore the dramatic stock photo of the old building! I am also working through my photo library and will soon have access to the images of my own class to use again. Best wishes to you for the new year!

 

Jim

Freedom From Fear

When I wrote and posted my recent blog in response to the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School last Friday, I could not imagine that I would, only hours later, that Sunday evening, while preparing my lessons for Monday's classes, receive an automated all-call from my principal informing us about the events described here:

When such news breaks, a teacher's first response is always the same: "Oh please don't let it be one of mine." You say this to yourself when thinking of the kids you teach who might be on either side--or both--of such a tragedy. In the last three years, we have had several incidents: one student posted threats online but far away; another student emailed threats using a classmate's account; and this student, who attended another school in our district, came armed with various weapons, among them pipe bombs. 

A colleague at another school today told me she has a student in her class who is on parole---for assaulting a teacher. But no one told her; I presume the argument is that the student has a right to privacy.

If I could, I would give the whole country---including the national media, our leaders, and those businesses related to the weapons used---a serious detention, all in the same room. I would tell them: Sit down. Stop talking. Start thinking---about where this all leads. Start thinking about what story the country wants to tell about itself; what story we want to tell about ourselves. What story we want our children to tell in the future when they look back on these days. For we are a great nation, capable of making any story come true when our hearts are one.

Last night, my wife's uncle Joe died at the age of 94. He fought in WWII at Utah Beach. He fought at the Battle of the Bulge. He started a small family-owned plumbing business with his father, which they grew into a business that provided for his family and sent his three daughters to school so they could live the better life all parents dream for their children.

Joe fought and worked hard so that his daughters would grow up free from fear but also free to learn and live as those fallen children in Newtown never will. When we bury Joe this week (as they bury more of the children from Sandy Hook Elementary), I will think not only of his example (and his laugh), but of those children who still live (and laugh), every one of whom it is our nation's sacred obligation to protect and provide for so that they may inherit and contribute to a world and a future that was stolen from their friends and classmates last week in Newtown.

The Monsters in Our Midst

Last week, prior to the Sandy Hook Elementary shootings, as part of our discussion of Dr. Frankenstein's "wretch," his "monster," we discussed what I called the "inflection point," that point in the trajectory of the story when everything changes. 

My seniors gathered quickly into small groups and began discussing whether the inflection point occured at one point or another. By the period's end, however, we concluded that the inflection point was when, after the monster revealed himself for what he really was to those he had helped and protected, they rejected him; in case Frankenstein's creature was not clear enough about his status, soon after, he rescues a young girl from the river, who would have drowned. Carrying her back towards town, the monster encounters men who draw guns on him as they assume he hurt her. 

At this point, feeling no hope of gaining a place within the human community, the wretch (he is never given a name) burns down the cottage of those he had previously helped and commits himself to the destruction of all that would otherwise allow Victor Frankenstein, his creator, to be happy. 

When you are a teacher, you see our whole society, for all people pass through our classrooms. Future presidents. Future CEOs. Future movie stars. All races. All ethnicities. All family configurations, religions. Those people born here; those who came here legally--and illegally. Future mechanics. Future business people. Those who will some day be teachers. Thiefs. Rapists. And, as we were reminded again this week, murderers. 

Several years ago, a student of mine was taken away one day by the FBI. He had posted terrible threats on a website, saying he was going to essentially do his own Columbine at our school, at a big school rally. This led to many outcomes, the main one being this: he was taken in, put on people's radar. But only thanks to the one anonymous person on the website who chose to contact people. Later in the year, a boy at another high school in our quiet little suburban district came suited up with various weapons and many pipe bombs, but was subdued and arrested before he could harm anyone.

Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, the two boys behind the Columbine shootings (which were supposed to kill nearly everyone through exploding tanks they had set up, but which did not detinate), submitted stories of alarming, graphic nature to their English teachers for creative writing assignments. When the teacher expressed concern about the violent content, the boys smiled and said dismissively, "Oh Mr. J, it's nothing, just based on some ideas we ripped off from a movie we saw last weekend!" And then one or both of them probably grinned. "Thank goodness! I wasn't sure what to think when I read them." Walking away, Klebold and Harris probably winked and smirked to each other.

In the end, we do not want to believe these kids, these events, these problems can be in our midst: they are not consistent with the story we want to tell about our children, our students, our community, our family---our country. Later, of course, there too often appears to be a grim inevitability to the events when viewed in hindsight. 

In the mean time, we teachers go into our classes every day, for all our students, and do what we can to help them write the best possible story about the lives they will lead in futures for which we prepare them. 

The word education itself comes from the word educare, which means to draw or lead out that which is within. We all have within us many different possible selves, some of which we know, others we do not know---and never will, unless the conditions arise that awaken that other self. 

What I know is that all the educators---teachers, administrators, school counselors and others---in our country, who have felt so disrespected and dismissed in recent years by most of our country, were the ones who came every day to do all they could to help the children at Sandy Hook Elementary School live in the world in ways that would make us all proud, even those children who might some day grow up to harm others, as Adam Lanza did this week. And what I know is that it was these fellow educators who died trying to protect those children (and their colleagues who saved others) so they could go on to someday live those lives that were taken this week.

As my class and I discussed Frankenstein last week, in those days before the Sandy Hook shootings, we considered the idea of the abject, an idea often defined as a state of feeling degraded and cast out from the home or community where it feels it belongs. Once the monster in Frankenstein felt it had no place within the Family of Man, it turned on that family, just as Adam Lanza did.

Will I do anything differently tomorrow when I go to school and welcome my students into the classroom where we pass our days? No. I will do as I have always done: Get to know them all, what they are interested in, what they want their lives to look like in the future, what they care about, what they think. When they are in our classrooms, our students are our community, they are our country, our future. And so we see in them only what we hope they will become at their best, then devote ourselves to helping them make that story come true for them, their parents, for all of us.

The Common Core State Standards---Wordled!

This wordle gives us a different way to look at the Common Core State Standards. I just created it using Wordle which, in this case, offers us a useful view about what the Common Core values most at least according to the frequency with which it uses certain words. You can also access this wordle by clicking here.

 

I know, I know: it's been forever since I posted to the blog. I am working on all online sites and sources like this now for major overhaul in 2013. Thanks for your patience with and interest in my work on this blog and my newest book.

2011 Edublog Award Recommendations

It is that time of year to reflect on whose online work or which digital tools have helped me or the profession the most in the last year. The Edublog Awards are especially meaningful and important as they come from the community of users who get the chance to say which people or services help or point us all in new directions. As someone said the other day, "we are learning to ride this bike (technology) as we are building it," so we need to shine a light on those such as Carol Jago and Meenoo Rami who, among the many other great Tweeters, are showing us what it can do for English as a discipline. Thanks to all---and to those who nominate and honor the great work everyone on the English Companion Ning do everyday.

• Best individual tweeter: @CarolJago
• Best twitter hashtag: #engchat (@mrami2) (Meenoo Rami)
• Best free web tool: Evernote
• Best educational use of audio / video / visual / podcast: TED Talks