Realism/Naturalism - notes for an essay

random humor found during research:
Naturalists study nature, based on Darwin.
The human is not "special," but subject to the same laws of nature, the same reality of natural selection. "Survival of the fittest" used as a justification for amorality. Because a species cannot adapt to a changing environment or condition, it dies out. The extension of this idea to individuals can be used to justify any behavior, since the very fact of one animal, person, or ideology being killed indicates that it is unfit for survival. This can proceed logically to a ruthless selfishness. Abandoned by morality, and even God, in the face of science, a moral relativism and reductivism predominates. A psychological transformation in the ethics of human behavior helps signal a change in direction away from the idea that an individual is responsible for his or her own actions. Their subconscious and conditioning have more to do with this. the accident of their birth delimits the trajectory of their potentiality. Chance and "fitness" come to the forefront in the justifications of unequal social hierarchies. This can be used to argue anything from social control to euthenasia to genocide. The "shock of the modern" begins to shake loose the old idealisms.

The triumph of science. "The aimless blade of science slashed the pearly gates."

Freud: 1900.
Television:
Radio: 1888-1896
Electricity: Alternating Current: 1886; The first modern commercial power plant using three-phase alternating current was at the Mill Creek hydroelectric plant near Redlands, California in 1893 designed by Almirian Decker
Light Bulb: ~1879
Motion Pictures: Roundhay Garden Scene, the world's earliest film, by Louis Le Prince, 1888
Internal Combustion Engine: late 1870's-90's
First automobiles sold by Karl Benz: 1888
Flight: 1903
TNT used in weapons: 1910
dynamite: 1866.
telephone: 1876
phonograph: 1877; gramophone: 1887
Fabian Society: 1884
Social Progress: Early sociocultural evolution theories—the theories of Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer and Lewis Henry Morgan—developed simultaneously but independently of Charles Darwin's works and were popular from the late 19th century to the end of World War I. These 19th-century unilineal evolution theories claimed that societies start out in a primitive state and gradually become more civilized over time, and equated the culture and technology of Western civilization with progress. Some forms of early sociocultural evolution theories (mainly unilineal ones) have led to much criticised theories like social Darwinism, and scientific racism, used in the past to justify existing policies of colonialism and slavery, and to justify new policies such as eugenics.

The casting of doubt upon much of this came as a direct result of the seemingly meaningless carnage of WWI. Modernism began as a projection of futuristic progress, limitless possibility of technology. When much of this new technology, in chemistry and related fields, was used to inflict wholesale death on Europe, the idealism of technology was quickly problematized, and Modernism looked inward, toward the psychological and away from the social, to find answers. Jazz, the Avant Garde, Dada, surrealism, followed. The loss of a moral center to life marked realism and naturalism, but the loss of a scientific hopefulness marked the beginning of the 20th century's most tenacious problem: alienation. An antidote was suggested by Marx, and his response was revolution and socialism. The bitterness of life in urban industrialism guaranteed an equally brutal reaction. It's Newton's third law of mechanics: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
one becomes separate from self, separate from community, and is left alone, seeking in vain for consolation. This gives free reign to any behavior, and the necessity arose to create an aesthetic morality, one that condemned various behaviors as barbaric. Barbarism was, prior to this, a distance from God. Then, it was savagery, unevolved, brute man, closer to ape than god. this gave rise to the "superman" theories of George Bernard Shaw, Friedrich Nietzsche, Hitler, etc. The exposure of human venality in industry by the muckrakers fueled the imagination of many artists, including London. The idea of a mass progress of society found difficulty in historical realities, and so the individual, with a personal "code," became dominant in American Literature. Hemingway, especially. After WWII, he killed himself. The postmodern anti-hero, Salinger's Holden Caulfield. Suicide is the question. The moral question. There is no longer any law 'gainst self-slaughter. It seems a moral tradeoff, no better than an approximation. "First, do no harm." Only by abdicating one's existence can one arrest the necessary parasitism, predation, and psychological violence intrinsic to life in society. Perhaps returning to an original state, wild, apart from civilization, would provide one with an authentic ethics. The original necessity is to live, pure and simple, and to perpetuate the species. Violence, sex, toil, luck, invention, and intelligence--not theoretical, but practical--form the ground rules for existence.

Experience of life, pitting a protagonist in a primal struggle for survival, the dramatic constructs of Man vs. Man, Man vs. Nature, and Man vs. Self almost become one and the same, for man is nature, a small, practically insignificant part of nature, an organism, food for wolves or vultures. There is no room, in this worldview, for Grace of God, or Faith in God, for it is a cold struggle, Man Alone, forsaken by the consolation of his invented religions and fairy tale of being "chosen" or "saved," or even "moral," for ideas like "good" or "evil" are exposed as survival mechanisms, designed to keep the species intact and impose social control on brutish, devious omnivores.

The concept, prevalent at the same time, of evolution as a movement forward, to a better life, a more civilized human population, seems to be in direct contrast to this view of Man as Beast. The primal truth of "survival of the fittest" provides, in fact, a great richness of characteristics which could lead to any number of conclusions. An individual could be elevated or degraded. Conditions seem to determine which. "Been Down So Long, It Looks Like Up to Me." The violent and selfish behavior at the core of human desire can render an individual either more or less fit, depending on the circumstance. An individual who acts too anti-socially can be "culled from the herd" as an unfit member of society. The main idea, then, of the Naturalists is that there is no particular direction toward which the individual or the species is headed. Progress is blind. There is no predetermined salvation or benevolent benefactor of humankind. God is not looking out for us. Where we end up is chance, probability, struggle, and adaptation. Many characters in Naturalist literature simply have no future. They exist as animals, in the moment, in their pleasure or pain. Plans or assumptions are destroyed by circumstances. The "get rich quick" motivation leads to destruction: in the North and the West.

I need examples of all these things. I have a framework. I can give a task, and they can bring it to pass. A mini-research project. Look into the time period, find a connection between an author, one of those who write about naturalism, and their time. Print something? hmm. We could try it. time now for sleep.


modernism.
postmodernism: nuclear weapons. television.

Don’t upset yourself so - a thought about Harold & Maude

The individual is only an iteration of reality, a conduit through which the divine can be perceived or connected with. Her call for him to “love some more” extends past his or her individual lives, but is a suggestion for him to continue to allow the divine to take shape through his life, his reality, to bless him with its light, its beauty, its power. The one through whom love flows is made divine. That is the only divinity. The only thing about love is god.

He relinquishes his tao of death, having seen the light. His last suicide is the killing in himself of the fascination with death. He kills death so that life may live through love. The two are irreconcilable.

Dan is back with more dynamite insights: this time on Classroom Management!

Daniel Williams

A Crash-Course in Behavior Management

        As a first-year substitute teacher with no prior experience, I learned very quickly that classroom management and discipline are issues that no teacher can avoid. In some ways, they are the most important skills for a teacher to have because, as I learned in many unruly classroom situations, if your classroom looks like recess time, you will not be able to teach anything. This paper is my attempt to do an “emergency study course” in classroom management and discipline so that the rest of my year will go better. I am positive that my knowledge of this subject will continue to grow and deepen over the course of my career; however, by consulting many sources on this issue, I have come to understand a few basic ground rules for classroom management. In the following pages, I will attempt to synthesize my learning on the subject. After reading several articles and parts of two books on the subject, I noticed that many of the same ideas and concepts were common to all the sources. Since we can only hope to remember so much, especially in the “heat of the moment” when kids are misbehaving, I decided to focus my paper on the ideas that showed up in all or most of the sources. Thus, I am making the inference that the items that showed up most often are the most essential.

        From my reading, I was able to classify the information I was receiving about classroom management into two categories. The first are the techniques that I think of as “background” techniques, because they are aspects of the classroom culture and the teacher-student relationship that help improve classroom management without being specific to a given misbehavior. They are just the normal day in day out procedures of behavior that a teacher establishes in his or her classroom. The second type of information regards how a teacher should handle a specific instance of misbehavior. I will begin by discussing the background factors.

        The most important background technique for a teacher to employ is building good relationships with their students. Every single source I referenced mentioned the importance of this. One teacher reported the improvement in her classroom management after she began to make a more concerted effort to build relationships with her students: “Asking about their lives…can help build trust and familiarity that will foster a more respectful and manageable classroom.” (Walker, 2008). After developing a detailed classroom management system in his Tools for Teachers, Fred Jones adds the caveat: “The effectiveness of any discipline management procedure relies to a considerable degree upon the preexisting goodwill between teacher and student” (2000, p.232). The reason for this, Jones explains, is that we can not physically make students do anything. “At some point, the disruptive student must decide to ‘go along with you’ rather than fight you” (2000, p.232). Jon Saphier and Robert Gower agree with this principle; they state: “Building community is a powerful preventive force against discipline problems” (1997, p.124). Thus, while it may seem to be unrelated to the issue of classroom management, building relationships is in fact an essential component of classroom management.

        The second background technique for producing a disciplined classroom is clearly and explicitly teaching desired behaviors and routines. Many of the sources I consulted agreed that a common teacher error was not wanting to “waste time” teaching simple routines and behaviors expected of students. These teachers simply hoped that students would basically know what to do and just do it. However, Saphier and Gower warn that this type of practice opens the way for discipline problems: “The students must be clear about what [the expectations] are, and thus expectations must be specific so there is no room for misunderstanding, or room for argument” (1997, p.110). Jones describes students as gamblers who are always trying to see how much they can get away with and how far they can push our limits—not because they are bad, but just because they want to know who holds the power in the classroom and what they can and can not get away with (2000, p.197). Combining these two ideas we may conclude that when we as teachers don’t specify a clear limit, we are allowing students to very effectively test our limits. Jones believes that by taking the time to establish clear rules and expectations in the beginning, we are communicating to our students that their behavior in the classroom is important to us. On the contrary, if we try to overlook discipline problems to save time for instruction, we are showing students that dealing with classroom behaviors is not worth your time. As Jones says, this is equivalent to “Declaring open season on yourself” (2000, p.180). Thus, the sources I consulted imply that taking time, no matter how much, to teach rules and expectations in the beginning while likely save time in the end because problems will not be as persistent throughout the year.

        The books and articles I consulted were replete with tactics for encountering misbehaving students in one’s class, but a handful of general rules stuck out above all the rest. The single most important rule, according to the majority of the sources, was consistency in your approach to discipline. The main implication of consistency in the classroom, according to Saphier and Gower, is “Every time an expectation is not met, the teacher must react…The teacher must do something; otherwise students—especially resistant students—come to disregard the expectation” (1997, p.114). Fred Jones is also very strict about this principle. He says, “There are no degrees of consistency. Either you are consistent, or you are inconsistent. There is nothing in between” (2000, p.147). Thus, the first aspect of consistency is that we must do something when an expectation is not met. A second aspect of consistency is that the rules, once established with the students, are no longer negotiable. To borrow Jones’ phrase for this, “No means no every time, or it means less than nothing” (2000, p.181). To put these two ideas together: when a student breaks a rule, we must respond in some fashion (not necessarily punishment, but some form of acknowledgment), and once we say no to a behavior, we cannot turn back. To paraphrase Jones’ argument for this last point, when we are inconsistent, meaning that sometimes when we say no we mean it and sometimes we give in and let the student break the rule, we are actually teaching this student that it pays to pester the teacher. From their experience they learn that when a teacher says no, it is still possible to get your way if you just complain about it enough. From this perspective, giving in on a rule even once invites students to challenge you.

        Another principle of classroom management I encountered, which is relevant to the paragraph above, is that teachers must develop a management system that has a range of consequences for both positive and negative behaviors (Simonsen et al, 2008, p.364). Therefore, when the authors quoted above insist that we must respond consistently to broken expectations, they are not saying we need to do the same thing every time, nor that we need to do something dramatic every time. Examples of teacher action listed included nonverbal communication such as looking and signaling students to return to work, verbal commands, warnings, behavior contracts, and, when necessary, implementing some sort of punishment (Jones, 2000, Saphier and Gower, 1997, Simonsen et al., 2008). Having many options for responding allows teachers to be flexible and prevents teachers from being forced to dole out a punishment when it is inappropriate (Saphier and Gower, 1997, p.113) . The other advantage to having a pre-established repertoire of possible consequences is that when we give a student a warning and they continue to produce the undesired behavior, we will know how to respond without hesitation. Jones warns against making empty threats, because once kids discover that you don’t know what to do or don’t plan on doing anything, they will realize that all your yelling is just a lot of hot air (2000, p.198). Saphier and Gower seem to advocate this approach as well. They tell us: “Act. Don’t talk. Too much talk is the downfall of good discipline” (1997, p.148). By taking action and not engaging in arguments with students, we are more likely to avoid what Jones calls “silly talk”, where teachers engage in meaningless back and forth exchanges with students such as: “Stop talking” “I wasn’t talking” “Yes you were” “No I wasn’t” “I saw you” “I was just asking a question”, etc. It is clear that such exchanges accomplish nothing.

        A final point of good discipline mentioned in several sources was that the teacher is most effective when remaining calm, and that consequences should be delivered without emotion, in a matter of fact kind of way (Saphier and Gower, 1997, p.147, Jones, 2000, p.164-174). Consequences should seem to result naturally from the students action, giving the impression of “no choice” (Saphier and Gower, 1997, p.148). This type of advice directly contradicts the practices of many teachers I have observed, who seem think that the key to classroom order is a loud voice and emotional intimidation. I was very happy to read that I won’t have to yell and snarl at my students in order to have an effective classroom.

        The literature on the subject of classroom management is vast, and in this short time of study, I have learned more than I can write in this limited space. To summarize my understanding at this point, good classroom management comes from certain general characteristics of the classroom, such as good relationships and clear expectations, as well as from the way in which a teacher responds to specific instances of misbehavior. By attentively applying both of these principles together, creating a manageable classroom, though difficult, should be possible.

References

Jones, Fred. (2000). Tools for teaching. Portland. Frederick Jones and Associates.
Saphier, J., and Gower, R.. (1997). The skillful teacher: Building your teaching skills. Acton. RBT.
Simonsen, B., Fairbanks, S., Briesch, A., Myers, D., Sugai, G.. (8/2008). Evidence-based practices in classroom management: Considerations for research practice. Education and treatment of Children, v31(3), 351-380.
Walker, Tim. (2008). You’re in control, right? NEA Today. Fall 2008. 20-21.

Guest blog Essayist writes about Literacy!

Daniel Williams

        My recent participation in a journal article roundtable focusing on literacy in the social studies classroom has provided me with many great ideas, and has raised several good questions in my mind. I will give a brief account of these thoughts and questions, focusing mainly on Christine Pescatore’s article Current events as empowering literacy: For English and social studies teachers (2007). My general feeling is that Pescatore’s article is filled with many great ideas, but lacks a clear vision of how these ideas could be implemented in a social studies classroom. After discussing both the positive and negative aspects of this article, I will discuss ways in which Pescatore’s ideas could be adapted to the context of social studies.         

        Pescatore’s article describes a large, research-based unit that she conducted with an 11th grade English class on the subject of global warming. As the title suggests, Pescatore’s main claim is that the use of current events as reading material is a particularly effective means of developing critical thinking skills in students. Pescatore describes additional benefits of current events material; namely, that students are likely to be more engaged in the work because it feels relevant, and that there is a huge variety of readily-available reading material.

        Many of Pescatore’s ideas resonated with me immediately. The concept of doing an in-depth, thematically based unit is appealing to me. Tovani remarks that content teachers inadvertently “Water down our content because we try to cover too much” (2004, p.54). Tovani’s assertions are reinforced by Pescatore’s claims that students began to actively seek out reading material when they had a question they wanted to answer (Pescatore, 2007, p.333). In this way, Pescatore’s global warming unit resembles the interdisciplinary theme-based units conducted at Best Practice High School(BPHS), as reported in Subjects Matter (2004, Daniels and Zemelman). In both cases, the use of a wide range of reading material from diverse sources seemed to contribute to students understanding and enjoyment of their topic. Daniels and Zemelman’s discussion of textbooks has convinced me that their use needs to be seriously limited, and that textbooks by definition do not constitute a healthy reading diet for students (2004, p.38-45). Pescatore’s use of newspaper, magazine, and internet sources demonstrates that she likely shares this same conviction. Additionally, the topics of both BPHS and Pescatore’s English class were topics of immediate interest and were relevant to students’ everyday lives (i.e. current events), which produced great enthusiasm and student initiative in both cases. In designing my own units and projects, I will certainly incorporate the above-mentioned practices and would also strive to include current events in the curriculum.

        Despite my overwhelming approval for the project Pescatore describes, her model would have to be modified to succeed in the social studies setting. I am becoming a firm believer in the fact that content area teachers need to incorporate literacy development and critical thinking into the curriculum; however, with such a large amount of content to cover, literacy and critical thinking need to be taught through the content. In a social studies setting, it would not be possible to do a large, extended unit on current events, such as she was able to do in her English class. Rather, literacy activities and current events would both need to be applied to the specific content of a particular history course.

I have two ideas for remedying this problem which would allow me to design large, interactive units which develop literacy skills, such as Pescatore and Daniels describe, while making progress towards the content objectives. The first idea involves incorporating specific literacy techniques mentioned in articles that my colleagues read. Boyer (2006) describes numerous writing activities that help students master the key concepts of social studies. One brilliant idea she had was having students adopt a historical persona and write several journal entries as this person. This project would require students to research a historical period, include specific historical details, and also practice writing skills. This process would likely make their learning very meaningful and would help them to “hold” the information they leaned, to use Tovani’s phrase (2004, p.68). I would definitely incorporate this type of activity, as well as others mentioned in the article.

        The second way to transplant Pescatore’s English-class based ideas into the social studies classroom would involve a revolutionary reframing of the curriculum. It seems to me that it would be much easier to construct interactive student-based units that incorporated diverse reading and writing activities if the history curriculum was organized thematically rather than chronologically. Obviously, a three page paper is not the place to lay out the complete plans for such an undertaking; however, I will mention a few of the units that I envision. Comprehensive and in-depth units could be constructed on the following topics, as well as many others, in a U.S. History course,: Race and Ethnicity in the U.S., the Immigrant Experience, Religion in the U.S., the Creation and Development of Constitutional Law, Urban/Rural Interdependency, etc. Thus, each unit would focus on a particular concept or theme, which could be studied through many specific cases in history and in the world today (which allows for the incorporation of current events). I believe this thematic arrangement of the curriculum would allow more possibilities for the teacher to build in literacy techniques, and would come closer to the type of learning advocated both by Pescatore and by Daniels and Zemelman.

References

Daniels, H., and Zemelman, S. (2004). Subjects matter: Every teacher’s guide to content
area reading. Portsmouth. Heinemann.
Pescatore, C. (2007). Current events as empowering literacy: For English and social studies
teachers. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy. 51(4). 326-339.
Tovani, C. (2004). Do I really have to teach reading?: Content Comprehension Grades 6-
12. Portland. Stenhouse Publishers.

Online Literacy Takes Off: Classroom Crossover

Online Literacy Takes Off: Classroom Crossover

by Glenn Marsala

In “’Tomorrow will not be like today’: Literacy and identity in a world of multiliteracies,” Bronwyn Williams (2008) writes of alternatives to the archaic practice of writing for a grade or sharing with a few friends, at most, to publishing a text “instantly available to a global audience” (p. 683). While David J. Rothman, in “The crisis of literacy and the courage to teach,” (2007) bemoans an alarming loss of literacy at all levels of society (p. 97), in large part as a result of “commercial electronic media” (p. 100), Williams views these new media and technologies as offering new opportunities to build new kinds of literacies. This stands as a challenge to the accepted norms of our education system, and so students have “been told too often that their online activities are a waste of time” (p. 685). Literacy of this kind may appear antithetical to the “accepted” form practiced in proper school settings with entrenched curriculums. However, respecting things like blogging, texting, and the complex and simultaneous interactions involved in online literacy as valid forms of expression and participation in a community can offer educators a valuable tool for engaged learning. This parallel development of self-directed literacy practices and school-focused outcomes can help foster a vibrant critical literacy, which Pescatore calls “fundamental if one is to be a thoughtful and responsible participant in a democracy, and participant is the crucial word here, because it underscores an active orientation toward and engagement with society” (p. 330).

Williams writes about the use of literacy in online technologies, like blogging, messaging, social networking websites, and whatever the ever-changing reality of publishing on the web encompasses today. In the deep past, before the early 1990’s, most kids, or anyone else for that matter, never got the chance to publish anything. If we were lucky, in my day, some project or contest would be covered by the local media and we’d get our picture in the paper. I distinctly remember my contribution to an art (or maybe health) assignment to design a poster against drunk driving. The contest may have been associated with SADD or MADD. My poster’s slogan was “Boozers ‘R’ Losers.” I didn’t come in first, but I was very proud, and my work was published! But today, with the advent of the internet and cellular communications, students have access to relatively cheap technology with astonishing capabilities.

However, these practices of reading online material, responding in writing, opening diverse channels of communication, global sharing of ideas and information, and finding an identity (or identities) through this active, immediate form of literacy, offer a challenge to educators versed in more traditional models of literacy. Williams claims that if teachers listen to their students “closely we will find that their experiences and resulting knowledge may surprise us and offer new opportunities for connecting our pedagogies with their lives” (p. 685). The issue here may be simply educators’ unwillingness to admit the preeminence or even validity of these new literacy practices. They are not “by the book,” certainly, and these changes could shake the foundation of education to its core.

As just a quick example of one of these evolving challenges, a coteaching duo visited my SEC 500 (Foundations of Secondary Education) classroom this semester, and they opened my eyes to some of the realities of “texting” in schools. Students can disengage from their unengaging classroom and focus their energies on written communication with an ease and expertise that can only come from long practice. Texting out of sight of the teacher, even in a pocket or a purse, passing notes wirelessly, sharing test answers—how can a teacher keep up? With the internet available on handheld devices as well, students can have access to a huge body of knowledge in an instant. When has the likelihood of a student exposing the gaps in a teacher’s expertise ever been greater? It’s almost like a psychic connection with all the knowledge in the world, which can be netted and claimed, caught and released, forgotten without concern—any memory of which becomes a fish story, “the knowledge that got away,” perhaps.

Keeping and synthesizing knowledge seems a far cry from this practice. Rothman, for instance, fears that “commercial electronic media”:

will eventually transform everything that it touches, including politics, religion, education and more, into entertainment until it conquers the universe. Destroying traditional notions of literacy is merely one of its byproducts. The new commercial electronic media are antithetical to every aspect of reading, from notions of grammar and syntax (which they do not have; images can appear in any order) to the way writing organizes and stores information (p. 100).

Does literacy necessarily submit to a specific grammar? There are grammars of film, of music, of painting, or any other art form. These norms have been claimed, challenged, reformed, transcended, reinvented, and altered repeatedly by the very nature of engagement. Rothman does not here define what exactly comprises “commercial electronic media,” but the internet radically redefines the borders between commercial and “freely available,” private and personal. Therefore, many active literacy practices can be crucial to safely and effectively navigating these new media. “Critical literacy,” as Christine Pescatore puts it in her essay, “Current events as empowering literacy: For English and social studies teachers” (2007/2008):

offers a way to speak out against injustice and unfairness. Critical literacy builds awareness of how power is used to marginalize and silence certain groups in a society, and engenders a willingness to reveal that situation in order to bring about change. Critical literacy is an active engagement with the world as well as with text and requires the ability to think
critically. (p. 330).

I wonder what pre-modern literacy rates were, before things like radio, television, recorded music, films, and other “commercial electronic media” were like. What does Rothman really mean by “traditional notions of literacy”? If he wants to exclude film and other media, then this literacy must predate the 20th Century. What are the challenges to literacy in the 21st Century?

Many of the challenges of structured educational settings transcend time periods, of course. For example, because of the difficulty in finding interesting things to do in school, students seek active engagement. When they turn to “underground” literary pursuits like blog writing, they seem to find no connection to their studies, despite the shared skills involved. Rather than learning to learn, or learning how to learn, students all too often learn only what will be “on the test,” presumably so schools can stay in business. Just how interesting can it be to students to test for tests’ sakes? What is the end purpose for learning “‘deep literacy’—the ability to construe complex symbol systems of any kind, from a novel to the periodic table to the quadratic formula to a Beethoven sonata” (Rothman, p. 101). I think any of these critical living skills might fail to impress your average adolescent.

Contrariwise, activities like blogging, texting, video blogging, multi-tasking with computers, internet, cell phones, and other electronic devices all do engage students at an increasing rate. Williams speaks at length about social networking websites, like MySpace, where students spend time constructing their identities, building statements about themselves with text, pictures, and video. They write lists of “likes,” which serve as points in common with others, because “Popular culture is one of the most powerful organizing forces in determining where young people go online and with whom they interact” (Williams, p. 684). Students, non-students, and people worldwide, find each other based on preferences for high, middle or low culture, connecting fans of anything imaginable, or beyond imagining, with people of similar interests. The test of literacy may be, then, not so much based on grammar handed down from the historically “correct,” but any means of interacting with others which enables a functional exchange. As Williams asserts, “Our taste in popular culture is not innate but learned from the culture around us” (p. 684). Therefore, “traditional literacy” may indicate an insistence for students to temporarily regress culturally to an ever more distant literary past, which they abandon whenever possible during school, the whole time they are not in school, and for the rest of their lives after high school. “Tradition,” from a student’s perspective, just does not seem all that important.

As we have studied throughout the reading in this course, the most effective learning comes from building connections to things already known. Williams emphasizes that “the knowledge that students are bringing to the classroom from their daily experiences emphasize the necessity of an ongoing, open-minded conversation about the ways in which evolving online technologies are changing literary practices” (p. 685). Being sensitive to this changing atmosphere in the intellectual lives of students, where their intellects actually spend their time and attention, means a greater chance for connecting to students, engaging students in literacy that connects their outside interests to activities that can serve them well academically and beyond.

Williams speaks of students constructing identities online, but of course they do this in life, as well. I wonder—what, exactly, is a “student”? Is it a mask worn to school? Who brings their “self” to class? Breaking down some of these boundaries, perhaps with the help of technology, can help integrate school concerns with a student’s “life” concerns. As Williams writes, “Reading and writing offer distinct opportunities for connecting our minds and hearts to those around us” (p. 686). I find it exciting that technology now affords us all the chance the connect to a global community. If we, as teachers, can connect to students, respecting and using their experiences to engage them in literacy, then we teach both the skills they need to succeed in tests and other more “traditional” assessments, and we model the option of valuing their own interests and opening their minds to the diverse viewpoints and interests of others.

References

Pescatore, C. (2007/2008, December/January). Current events as empowering literacy: For English and social studies teachers. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy , 326- 339.
Rothman, D. J. (2007). The crisis of literacy and the courage to teach. Acad. Quest. (20), 94- 111.
Williams, B. T. (2008). Tomorrow will not be like today”: Literacy and identity in a world of
multiliteracies. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy , 51 (8), 682-686.

Extracurricular Activities: NOT Extra

Extracurricular Activities: NOT Extra

Glenn Marsala

October 28, 2008

Engagement in their school culture makes all the difference with students succeeding in school academically and socially. The students on the edge, who care so little for showing up for the whole process; who struggle to get C’s, or even D’s; for whom school only means failure—because they need more credits or points to graduate or pass than they can possibly get; these kids have nothing to lose by leaving school. They could have their time to themselves, rather than suffer in an institution that treats them as inmates, rather than consumers. They can earn money at a job, or however they may find to make money, and so achieve an even more favorable impression of themselves as whole persons. When a student has a mountain to climb, and it just gets steeper every day, then there must come a point when even pretending to try to climb appears as what it is: futile. They tried, but they were swimming against the tide. The harder they tried, the further out to sea they got. The harder they tried, the more they came into contact with themselves as failures. The harder they tried, the more exhausted they got, right down to their souls. What do these students have to lose by dropping out of high school? They have nothing to lose but their chains, this Jacob Marleyian penance for the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune their lives lived in poverty have relentlessly driven in on them. As time inexorably crawls over them, eating away at whatever may be left of their feelings that school is a ticket to success, the old homily to “stay in school” rings ever more hollow. When trying means failure and not trying means failure, then self-respect dictates that failure without trying is no failure at all compared to failure despite one’s best efforts. Dropping out of high school for these students is a matter of self-preservation, and even seems like the smart thing to do.

Students who connect with their school, however, can often find a sense of value and inclusion the world outside school, including their homes, may not offer. Hoff and Mitchell posit that “Playing in sports and participating in extracurricular activities often mitigates the effects of poverty on achievement and can help keep students engaged and motivated in school” (p. 32). Yancey echoes this idea: “After-school sports or other programs at the school site give students a chance lo make new friends, experience a positive atmosphere, and feel a sense of accomplishment, which, in turn, may reduce their likelihood of skipping school” (p. 62). Extracurricular activities, provided free to all students as part of the core function of the school, can be a great equalizer. However, according to Reeves in his article, “The Extracurricular Advantage,” “The policy challenge is this: The students who would most benefit from extracurricular activities—those with zero participation, poor academic performance, inadequate attendance, or poor behavior— are most likely to be barred from such activities by school or district policies” (p. 87).

While school priorities may rightly justify focusing resources on core academic curriculum, and may insist, as Reeves attests, that “Budgets are tight, and extracurricular activities cost money” (p. 87). However, the ideal of saving money for academics at the expense of extracurricular activities may actually turn out expensive, indeed. Reeves asks administrators to “think of what each course failure and course repetition costs your school, and consider what each dropout costs the entire community” (p. 87). If students shut school out of their lives, then the system fails to meet it purpose, anyway. According to Hoff and Mitchell, for example, “Schools devote a large portion of their budget each year toward programs designed to enhance attendance, graduation rates, and test scores” (p. 33). The ideal balance of curriculum and extracurricular participation really does not threaten this funding, and “Research has shown that extracurricular activities can improve outcomes in these areas. These activities are important to students and help shape them, contributing to what they know and their character, and meeting the vision of graduating smart students who are good people” (Hoff & Mitchell, p. 33).

Many after-school activities require little, if any, funds or even teacher supervision. Clubs can provide students with the agency to organize, develop leadership skills, and can serve as a valuable corollary to curriculum. Math, literary, journalism, naturalism (including hiking, bird-watching, or other interests), and computer clubs all can translate directly into valuable abilities in the classroom. Areas not dealt with in standard curriculums, like gaming clubs (chess, computer gaming), can help develop problem solving and logic abilities. Learning in classes on civic responsibility can be extended in clubs that include community service in their charters. Braddock, Hua and Dawkins speak to a fundamental ideology of public education, that:

"it has been argued that civic education should be considered central to the purposes of American education and essential to the well-being of American democracy (National Alliance for Civic Education, 2002). American schools have, therefore, served the function of preparing students to become informed, participating citizens committed to the values and principles of democracy. Indeed, the primary purpose underlying the establishment of public schools in theUnited States was to develop literacy and nurture citizenship" (202).

The potential for student development of any number of possible activities can provide a reason to attend school, a connection to the school through their connections with their peers, and the growth of social and collaborative tools. Again, according to Braddock, Hua and Dawkins, “Especially important to the fulfillment of civic education are extracurricular activities (including sports), which typify the informal curriculum in schools while serving as key socialization contexts” (p. 82).

Some communities have even begun to develop an extended school day which includes after-school activities as a scheduled portion after classes in the afternoons. Koutoujian writes about such a pilot effort in Massachusetts: “Originally enacted as an effort both to raise student test scores on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System and incorporate extracurricular activities into the day, the program is now a comprehensive one that features enhanced time for core subjects, physical education and even theater arts” (p. 15). If this time extends to more structured hours and prescribed routines, then this longer school day may just foster resentment in students. However, this time could provide students the opportunity to engage in school more fully, providing a chance for students to develop their own agency—by making choices, organizing activities related to their own interests, and using leadership to make this time valuable to them.

The benefits extend beyond intellectual pursuits, of course. Sports teams generally hold practices and games after normal school hours, and even later than other after-school activities. Sports programs often have required great expenditures on the part of the school system—for busing, coaching, uniforms, insurance, etc.—but this assumes a competitive, varsity level of athletic involvement. These sports are often exclusionary, as well. Team rosters are limited and more highly skilled players receive the bulk of participation time during competitions. A more inclusive afterschool physical education program could enable many students to take part, and could include sports that do not traditionally comprise a varsity sports rostrum at high schools. To name but a few, ultimate Frisbee, kickball, and dodgeball can get more students involved. Even highly selective sports, like basketball, baseball, softball, and others, could allow students to play in club or intramural formats.

Extracurricular activities mean a great deal to students and schools, and many consider “participation in athletics and extracurricular activities may be necessary for the child to benefit from the child’s educational program” (Fetter-Harrott, Steketee & Dare, p. 63). These authors speak most specifically about students with disabilities, but the numbers are there across the board. Yancey refers to the 1995 report on Adolescent Time Use by the Department of Health and Human Services, which states that “students who spend no time in extracurricular activities are:
• 57% more likely to have dropped out of school by the time they became seniors.
• 49% more likely to have used drugs.
• 37% more likely lo have become teen parents.
• 35% more likely to have smoked cigarettes.
• 27% more likely to have been arrested than those who spend one to four hours per week in extracurricular activities.” (61).
These numbers show that extracurricular exclusion can be devastating for a student’s academic career and life path. With the options available for open and creative solutions to the problem of student engagement with their education, a connection to the culture of school through extracurricular activities may mean the difference between success and failure of their entire educational program.

References

Braddock, J. H., Hua, L., & Dawkins, M. P. (2007). Effects of Participation in High School
Sports and Nonsport Extracurricular Activities on Political Engagement
among Black Young Adults. Negro Education Review , 58 (3/4), 201-215.
Fetter-Harrot, A., Steketee, A. M., & Dare, M. J. (2008). Boosting Inclusion for Students with
Disabilities. District Administration , 44 (10), 63-65.
Hoff, D. L., & Mitchell, S. N. (2007). Should Our Students Pay to Play Extracurricular
Activities? Education Digest , 72 (6), 27-34.
Koutoujian, P. (2007). Longer Days in Massachusetts. District Administration , 43 (8), 15.
Reeves, D. B. (2008). The Extracurricular Advantage. Educational Leadership , 66 (1), 86-87.
Yancey, A. (2007). How to Get Your Peers to Support the Athletic Program. Coach & Athletic
Director, Mar2007, Vol. 76 Issue 8, p61-63 , 76 (8), 61-63.

This is what extremely grieves us, that a man who never fought
Should contrive our fees to pilfer, on who for his native land
Never to this day had oar, or lance, or blister in his hand.
- Aristophanes, Wasps, 422 B.C.

F.A.T. City: Could I Be A Fathead?

Glenn Marsala SOE-501 Instructor: Minarcin 091108
F.A.T. City Video (youtube clip)

F.A.T. City: Could I Be A Fathead?

The potential benefits of providing students with time surprised me. I know people freeze up when under pressure sometimes, & other times may come up with great ideas, but I was not aware of the reasons learning disabled students have difficulty with this. The concept of "processing demands" makes sense to me, especially since I am familiar with computers. I did not know that when students hear a question, they begin formulating a response, but LD students have begun to understand the question. The hearing and understanding come simultaneously for me, I guess, though perhaps this, too, depends on my level of familiarity and comfort with the topic.

My need to learn more about LD kids and strategies for teaching to these various skill sets comes from a great many sources of late. My work at MSC brings me to classrooms with an extremely diverse student population, when considered from aptitude, proficiency, and age, while remaining extremely homogeneous with regard to race, class and culture. Most are white and come from modest means. I also have encountered, as a sub, many kids with a whole spectrum of special needs. This video has shone a light, for me, on some possible explanations for these kids' issues. I would never have guessed why certain kids shut down, or act out, get violent, or submerge their true concerns and personalities around others. I vividly recall many occasions where I helped out kids one-on-one at BOCES and the kid I was talking to went from sullenly restrained and what I felt was unstable, as far I could determine what the child might do at any moment, to very engaged in the activity, explaining things to me, asking questions, and even inviting me to collaborate. The clearest times this happened was on computers, when kids were somewhat free to read things in their line of interest--some of these were farming, racing, designing video games, playing video games, and looking at more or less artistic pictures related to a project in class. Well, not all these things related quite so seamlessly with their teachers' expectations! But for me, this opening into genuine engagement with a field of interest seemed to enable a connection to emerge, which could then be nurtured in other classroom activities. When it seemed difficult to bring students around to me as a classroom authority, to do work the school system demanded, student responses just looked chaotic, unpredictable, offensive sometimes, or even scary. However, when I moved forward and expressed an interest in learning from them, I just felt that this opening up of a dialogue was invaluable in serving them as a teacher. Plus, I learned that these kids are extremely bright and interesting people.

When I look at the average kid fooling around in class, do I jump to a conclusion? I definitely do. I see them as "lazy," or disrespectful, or something equally bad. I see them, in fact, as "bad." The film exposed these prejudices in such an easily visible way, that I instantly began to challenge these expectations. I am not happy to say, I have seen some of those kneejerk reactions in my own behavior. These are the very things I hope to learn taking this and other courses here at the SOE. I just hope I can effectively integrate this new knowledge into my practice.

Coteaching Becomes Collaboration

Glenn Marsala SEC501 Instructor: Annette Minarcin 09.25.08

Coteaching Becomes Collaboration

The teachers who visited our classrooms impressed me greatly with their ability to communicate, and with something interesting in the article, “Understanding Coteaching Components,” by Susan E. Gately and Frank J. Gately, Jr.: use of humor. This makes sense to me, because when a person feels comfortable, the ability to let go of some seriousness, even laugh at oneself, with good-natured ease seems conducive to enjoyment of work, flexibility, and acceptance of suggestions. The three women who visited our classroom showed something interesting with the contrast between the two more experienced teachers and the new teacher. She was much quieter and even seemed embarrassed. When she started talking about her work, her confidence level seemed to increase, and she was able to relate her experiences and address our class. The other two, in contrast, showed an easy rapport with each other, and a confidence in themselves, right from the start.

The idea of evaluating one’s experience of a coteaching situation seems a very simple way to compare individual outlooks. The article suggests that differences in this area, or mutual concerns, can open up channels of communication. It’s heartening to see that collaborative relationships, even very positive ones, take time developing. I can imagine being in a situation where a conflict in teaching styles could lead to friction if both parties had difficulty working things out.

Another issue raised by both the article and our guest speakers was male/female coteaching situations. All our speakers were female, and they shared their experience of an inappropriate and uncomfortable interaction with a male colleague. This seems even more critical considering the notion mentioned by Gately and Gately that “when the coteaching partners are male and female, …students have the opportunity to observe effective communication between the sexes” (42). If the behavior of the classroom adults models behavior that strays from polite or cooperative, and even becomes disrespectful or harassing and insensitive, students’ educational interests could suffer greatly. Especially because “students with disabilities in the cotaught classroom often need to develop more effective social interaction skills” (41), positive and mutually affirming collaborative partnerships can teach more than the content of the curriculum. These professional relationships can exemplify “effective ways to listen, communicate, solve problems, and negotiate with each other” (42).

The Gatelys’ three-stage model of coteaching, with beginning, compromising, and collaborative relationships in the classroom, seems very apt to me, not because I have cotaught, but because I can see myself in collaborative groups—in school, work, friendships, and even family—negotiating that “give and take” in all kinds of situations. I can identify examples of the first stage very often in the early days in a new job. I think that many people find compromise easiest when working on small group presentations, because that familiarity does not have the six or more weeks needed to gain and give trust. Collaboration, blending one’s own skills into a powerful team effort, with unselfishness, unself-consciousness, humor, joy, and an exchange of mutual appreciation can be a very beautiful thing.

As the article and our guest speakers attest, such successful collaboration does not always happen on the first attempt, or easily, or quickly. To risk sounding cliché, I feel empowered with this knowledge to risk open communication. Our guests repeatedly sounded the gospel of forthrightness, honesty, and what looks to me like courage in their dealings with colleagues. After all, building a strong coteaching classroom is not just about liking a coworker, but also, when achieved, seems to be a powerful teaching force.

An Essay about the Films Rushmore & Juno

Handjobs & Replacement Children By Glenn Marsala

“I knew for sure when I saw them out back skinnydipping & giving each other handjobs while you were taking a nap on the front porch.”

"If I gave you a handjob, would it put an end to all this?"

“What do you call getting a handjob from Mrs. Calloway in the back of a Jaguar?”
“A fucking lie.”

“I’m sorry about what I said, about your mom giving me a handjob.”
“I know, Max. I’m sorry I didn’t take your hand when Buchan kicked your ass.”

“So, this is where the magic happens?”
“What magic?”
“I wouldn’t know.”

Theater full of hands. A thunderous applause. Orgasmic response to Max's "hit play." He gets punched in the face. "Don't fuck with my play!" He's fighting over it like he's fighting over a girl. He's jealous of the play? Yet when Miss Cross asks him if he thinks they are "going to have sex," and he says, "Isn't that a crude way to put it?" she responds, "Not if you've ever fucked before." His imaginative life, the dramas of love, violence, drugs, and even academic heroism, are more masturbatory fantasies, involving little real intimacy. He shakes hands with Mrs. Calloway and Miss Cross. This seems benign enough, as the reporter kid responds to the news of this intimacy with Dirk’s mother with, “Big deal! Buchan said he’d have already banged her by now.” In both of Max's plays he suffers a blow to the head. He also is rewarded by those standing ovations, that affirmation of his worth that he has such a hard time getting from friends or family. Even with these most public of affirmations, through his sufferings and his triumphs, when he recieves personal praise his comments are: "It was better in rehearsals," and, "It went ok. At least no one got hurt." This certainly differs from the bombast of his insistance that he “wrote a hit play and directed it,” so he’s “not sweating it, either.” This posturing comes with the perceived threat of Peter Flynn, Miss Cross’s fellow Harvard alum. Max does hit Peter’s hand with his spoon—he doesn’t shake it.

After the final scene of Heaven and Hell, Blume does not applaud with hands, but with a raised fist, fierce, showing comradery and solidarity—with tears. He is moved. Through emotional infidelity, actual or imagined infidelity, fights with his sons, his divorce, he feels nothing. He runs over Max's bike with no change in expression. He is fierce, but sad. Blume resignedly suffers a buildup of non-emotional inability to feel, a dullness & almost deadness. He even seems lackadaisical about a threat to his life. Max tells him he wanted to have a tree fall on Blume, who says, "It would've flattened me like a pancake." He expresses this profound ennui in a few understatements: "I'm a little bit lonely these days," & "I don't know, Burt." With this, we see a man floundering, with only bursts of rage aimed at his sons, a genuine fondness for Max—perhaps his only real friendship. He has focused on work, probably a contributing factor to his disconnection from his sons, and spends hours after dark at his factory. His physical and emotional distance may explain why his wife flirts with a guy at the twins' birthday party, even as Blume sits nearby, on the other side of the pool. But the pool symbolizes the ocean that divides them. Blume is profoundly alone.

Blume offers the 15-year-old Fischer a job, saying, "I could use someone like you," because he sees the world and companionship as something that needs to be hired to be kept. It's a safe way to bring a person he is truly interested in closer to him. Who's the mentor? I think Max mentors the older Blume. If Max, "one of the worst students we've got," has "got it pretty figured out," then what does this say about how figured out Blume has it? He asks for money to build the aquarium. Fischer obviously has great leadership & planning abilities. He has ideas. He follows his ideas through. He doesn't give up on anything, to the point of self-destruction. Blume has gone about things with a similar drive, but not because it answers a specific calling. The force of momentum, clearly, pushes him through his life. He wants "steel, not alloys." He wants what he knows & trusts, not something different. His life has a sense of sameness.

He tells Max he was "in the shit" in Vietnam, & this carries with it a depth of trauma, of possible abandonment of traits such as friendship or comradery, perhaps because his best friends died. Why does he cry at the end of Heaven and Hell? He finds in it a “spark” of that old “vitality,” which he buried in a meaningless role as husband and father, a thin role as industrialist. His life is empty. His advice for the young is one of competitiveness, survival, bitterness, contempt for people like his sons—children of wealth. His wife is also a beneficiary of his wealth, rather than a producer of it. She and the boys serve as lamprey eels to his shark.

The ocean also symbolizes Miss Cross’s separation from love. Her husband drowned, presumably in the ocean, pursuing his love of the sea. Max is “married to the sea”—Rushmore. He, like Miss Cross and Blume, has “been out to sea a long time.” Time, of course, could be relative. In Miss Cross’s case, her husband died “last year,” Blume has struggled to achieve what he now sees as meaningless for probably a good 25 years, and Max’s mother died when he was seven, eight years earlier. Just as a person could be lost at sea just a few miles offshore, or finally spot land at the furthest distance from the origination of the journey, the emotional distance interposed between these characters and real intimacy—and the psychological time elapsed while they have spent “out to sea”—is indicated by Max’s so aptly vague and suggestive “long time.” “Long” does not measure a specific number of days, months or years, but seems a hard trial, an interminable stretch, to the individual considering where he or she has been, and yet remains.

The relationship of Max to his mother, who died of cancer when he was seven, helped him get into Rushmore. "My mother read it & thought I should go to Rushmore." His mother is the reason he's at Rushmore. She is connected to this situation. He is a performer, wants the glory. He dreams in chapel about being applauded for solving the "hardest geometry problem in the world," which even Dr. Leakey at MIT couldn't solve. He cannot achieve glory through academics, & he probably learned this long before. He doesn't care for private accomplishment or quiet good grades. He seeks applause. It is this recognition that he craves. He has a rather mild & polite relationship with his father. Everything he does is something like Buchan says, "big show, all talk, no results." He brags of the infamous handjob, which is, as Buchan so eloquently puts it, "a fuckin' lie." The show—Max's play or plays—which are really a public performance of talk, with artificial situations and drama, rather than real "results." The resounding applause, the "handjob" writ large, are what he desires. As he turns to stare down the actor who punched him in the face, his triumph—overwhelmingly evidenced by the standing ovation as he crosses the stage—comes as a result of a dangerous drive to overcome obstacles. He pursues Miss Cross with a similar vehemence. He ignores his "sudden death academic probation,” & moves forward, completely in his own world, undeterred.

What of Juno & her pregnancy? Who decides to have sex? Bleeker must have been in on it. The runners. Boys running. Bouncing boys, bouncing balls, always running. Mark runs—away from marriage and, perhaps most of all, fatherhood. Juno's mom runs, to Arizona, and builds a new life, sending annual cacti back to Minnesota on Valentine’s Day. Is this symbolic of defenses she raises against her first child? Are they a warning to "stay away"? Juno, however, expresses her bitterness about this abandonment with typical sarcasm, distancing herself from feeling anything about it. Could a true emotional response threaten to expose her as weak and afraid? If her “uncool” idealism, even in so basic and obvious a truth as her love for Bleeker, were exposed, then the consequences could devastate her. This happens at the Lorings’. She cries, on suspects, for much more than this disillusionment. She cries for her loss of innocence, definitely, but also for her mother, for Brenda’s generosity and motherliness—when she stood up for her to the ultrasound tech and then warned her about “the dynamics of marriage.” She cries for her predicament, for Vanessa’s loss, and she realizes that she loves Bleeker and she needs to give her child to Vanessa. She suddenly becomes clear and decisive. Perhaps she discovers “what kind of girl” she is.

Juno, despite being so clearly “different,” as Bleeker’s mom puts it, appears to really see things a little differently than her image advertises. She wants the "magnificent discarded living room set." She wants the pipe & the old-fashioned American Drean ideal of Leave it to Beaver or Mayberry or something. She believes in true love for a lifetime. Her idiosyncracy is in her innocence, which extends throughout her universe. She makes jokes about her condition, about abortion, about everything, leaving it in a child's way of unimportance. There is nothing to be responsible for, no one to be responsible to. She is a child, and revels in her childishness, “a kraken from the sea,” until she’s not a child anymore. She insists on total freedom and self-will, until she gets pregnant. She still considers herself free, until she declares her love for Bleeker. Of course, he's perfect. Of course, she's beautiful.

The baby boy is a replacement child for the the child Vanessa married. He feels like a teenager, his mom telling him to “get a job,” ridiculing his “jam session,” while he feels he has not had the chance to get out there and live his dream. He speaks with great faith about the “best time for rock and roll,” and longs for nothing more than that feeling. It is his Rushmore. Fatherhood, marriage, “contributing”—this is nothing more or less, to him, in his heart of hearts, than selling out. His scene working on a microwavable brunch jingle, interrupted by a youth who worships at the altar of punk, represents the loss of something profound to his imagination, and the still further, future loss of his last, best chance at freedom. As a father, he will really be expected to contribute. Rock and roll will die.

Juno is the queen of the gods. The only "lay" that Jupitor married. She is the "family values" goddess. If I'm not mistaken, she did not commit adultery. I need to check on that.

Max is obviously delusional about staying at Rushmore "forever." He is also unrealistically dedicated to "getting with" Miss Cross. As long as nothing happens, he can pretend that a relationship is possible, like receiving a handjob from Mrs. Calloway. In his plays, play gunfire, play cocaine, play war. He shoots Buchan with a bb gun. That's the "cap" he "pops" in his "ass."

When Max says, after his play, "At least no one got hurt," Miss Cross glances at his bandaged forehead and responds, "Except you." This statement resonates past the cut on his head, to the punches he took to the face, his expulsion from Rushmore, the loss of his mother at age seven, the feuds with Dirk and Blume, and especially his rejection by Miss Cross herself. Max, however, replies, "I didn't get hurt that bad." Why? Because his world is imaginary? His creativity is unbounded by reality, by possibility; consequently, he can make the impossible happen—dynamite, fire onstage, chainsaws, Latin. As the music at the end seems to insist, Max wishes he had known before what he knows now, "when [he] was younger" and "stronger"—younger not in age, but innocence; stronger not physically, but in his faith that he could go to Rushmore forever, or consummate his love for Miss Cross.

2 haiku

a shrub of coriander
mostly brown,
thin webby leaves & perfume.


dark green, hot, dry wind
tomatoes fattening on prone vines
a branch of orange, an exception.