This morning, as I’ve perused the blog world, I’m seeing what I think to be a wonderful trend – people speaking up for what they believe. So in solidarity (a concept that often gets underappreciated), here are links to a few ways we can support those who are taking a stand for important things.

1. Horace, at To Delight and to Instruct, has pointed out a potentially very dangerous situation at the University of Toledo where the university, led by the new president, is seeking to focus only on STEM (Science, technology, engineering and mathematics courses) while limiting resources and support for other courses unless they prepare students for work in the sciences and mathematics. This trend is national as the U.S. tries to compete with other countries in these areas. . . I find the desire to compete to be silly – a bit like an elementary school footrace into the woods at the end of the playground – but I can see value in these studies, just not to the detriment of others. So visit Horace’s post and see lots of valuable resources on the topic, and if you’re willing, sign the University of Toledo petition.

2. TJ at Toujours Jacques is taking on The Compact, where he doesn’t buy anything new for one month . . . I’m doing the mini version – a couple of weeks – and then we’ll go from there. Take a look at join up if you’d like.

3. For all your BookMoochers, they’ve set up a system for recycling your packaging. When you visit that link, also read the comments because the users have some great ideas. For me, I try to reuse envelopes and then create padding by wrapping the book in a little plastic grocery bag or two, because no matter how hard I try I still end up with a billion of those things.

4. Andi at Unlikely Activist has gone water bottle-free through the use of Brita. I carry a reusable plastic bottle – but have just learned that I’m ingesting toxins – so it’s off to find – once I’m done with my time with The Compact – to find something else. Meanwhile, I’ll keep drinking out of those crazy things called “glasses.”

5. I’m starting to investigate micro-finance a lot lately, seeing how I can give money (the little I have to give) in ways that are meaningful. Two organizations I really like are Kiva and Hope International. (Hope Intl is run by a guy I graduated from college with, so I have a little bias there.) Both of these organizations help folks like us give small amounts – $10, $25 – that they then compile into a loan amount that is specified by the person using the loan. These loans, in amounts as small as $500, are then used for people to start businesses that will then allow them to pay back the loan and continue making profit after the loan is paid off. If I put this idea in terms that I understand, I think about it like what I would need to buy that used PRIUS I’ve been eyeing. I would either have to save enough money to buy it, or take out a loan. For people in developing countries, savings is almost always out of the question because they have so little income to begin with, and they have no collateral so they can’t get a loan. It’s in instances like those that micro-finance makes a difference.

One final thought – for the EcoJustice Challenge, I did my night without electricity last night. I didn’t get started right on time (8:15 instead of 7:30) but I did it . . . I read by candlelight and was, interestingly enough, asleep by 9:30 – must have been tired. It was a peaceful evening, and it also gave me an excuse to stop grading papers since I couldn’t see well enough to make good commentary . . . Sure, I could have lit a few more candles, but let’s not get picky here. . .

Take action, speak out, rock hard – that’s my motto for the day.

Filed by Andi at 5:37 am under Teaching Triumphs and Travails
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It’s almost the end of the semester, and as one colleague wrote in an email last night, “all we have to do is outlast the students.” I’ll have to eek out every last reserve of energy just to do that; I’m plum tuckered out.
But I will say that the end of the semester does give me some great stuff. First, I get to see how much my students have progressed through the portfolios they put together. They pull together their best work and write commentary on it. These are always my favorite things to grade – they remind me how much they’ve improved and encourage me that I’ve actually taught them something. Secondly, my creative writing class has gelled into something resembling a community. We’re emailing each other; the students are working hard on their writing (and producing some really good stuff, I might add); and all in all, I think, if nothing else, this class has shown all of us how much we need each other in this writing world. Finally, the semester’s end gives me summer . . . and this time I’m not teaching. Gloria, hallelujah.

This morning’s post on BookNinja got me thinking about another aspect of teaching – the privacy and decorum concerns that come with this role. Apparently, young teachers (and probably older ones, too) have been forgetting that the Internet is a public space, one where people can see what they do, a spot where their students can find them. It seems these teachers are posting crude, sexual, and otherwise not student-aware content on the web. Eeek!

While I would certainly support people’s right to say what they want, I would not support these teachers because this isn’t a matter of free speech – it’s a matter of modeling appropriate behavior for our students. When I post things on this blog or on my Facebook page or anywhere else, I’m hyper-aware that my students might see it, might even seek it out. And I censor myself (no one has to censor me) with them in mind. That doesn’t mean I don’t say what I think or criticize when I feel appropriate, but I do curtail my personal content a bit for two reasons: 1. To be an effective teacher, I have to maintain some distance from my students. They are great people, but they are not my friends (something I told my creative writing class last semester and was teased about incessantly). 2. I expect them to behave well and appropriately in my presence and in the presence of their classmates and other academic officials. There is, fair or not, a standard of behavior for school, and so I try to follow that standard even on the web. I don’t show up late for class; I don’t wear tube tops when I teach; I don’t swear like a sailor when giving a lecture; and I don’t post sexual content of myself on the web – all these seem to be of the same ilk to me.

I wish my students would do some of the same. I love being their “friends” on Facebook. But I hope they know that as their “friend” I can see their break-up status, their keg stand photos, their video clips, and even snippets of their conversations with friends. None of this changes the way I grade them, but it occasionally (when I’m not super-vigilant) does change the way I look at them. Imagine how they would look at me if I put a picture of me with a bong on Facebook (students, I do not have any pictures of me with a bong – so don’t ask;)).

What do you guys think about these ideas? Should teachers be able to post whatever they want on social networking sites or their own private webpages? Chime in at will.

Filed by Andi at 4:44 am under Teaching Triumphs and Travails
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Today, one of my students confused the words wander and wonder. Such a simple but strong mistake. The difference of a little line on that “o.” A physical action, a mental action, another mental action. A noun.

And tonight, I see wander wrap into wonder as I finish Sharman Russell’s Standing in the Light: My Life as a Pantheist. The book is both a bit of nature writing and a memoir as it studies Russell’s wonderings about and wanderings in the natural world. Without parsing out what is a highly interwoven and gorgeous text, let me just say that she explores all her subjects – from climate change to javelinas to bird banding to water conservation to religion to travel to her own life process – with compassion, with complexity, with depth.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that Sharman was a teacher of mine, and I have this copy of the book because she sent it to me pre-release (the book comes to stores in July). But I hope that even if I didn’t know her, I would still praise this book highly. It spans history, exploring the roots of pantheism (for more on this spiritual movement, visit the World Pantheist website or read Russell’s book) and delves into life’s honest moments, moments that I often avoid. Take, for example, this passage on loneliness:
It sounds good on paper. Me and the earth. Me and the animals. Me
and the sun and moon and stars. But when I am in a bad mood,
pantheism feels more like unrequited love, the dreary task of whipping
up both sides of a relationship. The truth is that I often feel
lonely. I am talk to myself and no one answers. Yada-yada-yada.
Blah-blah-blah. The same stuff I have heard all of my life. I am so
tired of this voice. I am so bored. It may sound strange, but I
don’t want to be alone in my body and mind. I want someone with me.
This is an ontological loneliness that my husband can not redress,
although I love him and he loves me. My children distracted me from
this feeling for a long time, twenty-two years, and then they grew up
and went away. (Which was, of course, the right thing to do. Still,
you can’t help but feel – ungrateful wretches.) Now I am no longer
distracted. I have more time to talk to myself. Yada-yada-yada.
Blah-blah-blah. Now this loneliness seems unending and almost
unbearable.
I have a few theories as to its origin. (1) It is my mother’s fault.
That’s a given. (2) It is a flaw in my character, and I would have
more friends and never feel lonely if I were a better, more
extroverted, more gregarious person. Also quite obvious. (3) I
started out in the womb with a twin sister, but then she died and was
absorbed into my body, and I carry that grief every since. (4) We are
all hard-wired for that Paleolithic tribe of thirty to forty people
with whom we feel intimately linked, but instead I grew up in the
suburbs of Phoenix. (5) It is chemical. It is menopausal. it is
neurotic. It is imaginary. it is the empty nest. (6) It is the loss
of a personal God.

This book isn’t as much advocating for pantheism, as it is explaining it, showing us how Russell lives this life. But it delves into the religion of science, into Buddhism, into Hinduism, into deism, into atheism – it’s a religious catch-all. And everything is treated reverentially, if not approvingly.

Russell’s voice is soft, coaxing, like she’s calling the reader over as she would a tentative cat or the friend’s toddler who doesn’t know her yet. Her description is exquisite; her style languid and luxurious; and her ideas simple, soft, real. Everything is connected – her, me, my student, you . . .

And so I’m back to what she taught me as a student. Look for those “fruitful questions,” the ones you need to know the answers to. . . And for now, I want to ask her, “How do I write like you?”

Filed by Andi at 6:03 pm under Book Recommendations, Teaching Triumphs and Travails, Written and Wrought
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I’m in what might be a barn . . . there are lots of small hallways with construction equipment strewn about . . . halfwalls crisscross the space into what my dream mind thinks are stalls. I don’t know why I’m here, but as in all dreams, I take it for what it is – reality.

Gunfire explodes around me, and David McKay and I dart around corners to avoid being shot. (Here again, David McKay is someone I went to elementary school with, a boy I haven’t talked to for almost 20 years – he figures frequently in my dreams though.) Earlier in the dream, at least I think it was earlier, David and I were in a diner, sitting side by side in a booth, talking, catching up. Now, we are trying not to be killed. We jump into what I think might be an Isuzu Trooper (much like the one my choir teacher Mr. Scruggs used to drive) and crash through scaffolding and such to get out. We make it.

We’re just breathing our sighs of relief when out of the bushes on Brown Ave – we’re back on my childhood town of Waynesville now – jumps a man – a shadow man, a shadow, a demon. He appears at almost the same spot where my friend Mary Ella and I were in 8th grade when these high school boys chased us. In my childhood life, we ran right past David McKay’s house on Brown Ave. We ran to his door. We pounded. No one was home. Now, in my dream, we’re driving, not running. Much faster, no less scary.

As the man jumps out, I wake up. I twist under the covers, trying to get out to go see my mom, to get her comfort. But I’m 33 years old, and my mother is 200 miles away. I am alone in my house.

I have always used my dreams to figure things out about myself. I’m not sure what this one tells me – except that once again I’ll try to find David McKay (anyone know him?) There’s something to write about here – obviously, since I just did – the content of the dream itself but also the way dreams are formed. The barn-like space, the scaffolding, the Trooper – all of that comes from watching Nancy Drew, the Movie last night (I know, I know – but it’s fun), and maybe that’s how I came to connect that stuff with Waynesville, NC. I read Nancy Drew when I was living there, so maybe my brain made a subconscious connection that I didn’t even know of. . . maybe. . . . or maybe I have fears (of course, I have fears) but maybe I have fears about this incident in particular. . . . about being alone, about being without my parents. . .

But I don’t want to get too personal here; I simply wanted to say, as many writers do I imagine, that dreams are fertile territory for a writer. Do you have a dream that you relive? A nightmare that haunts you? Can you use it to delve into yourself for writing? Share if you will.

Filed by Andi at 4:43 am under Written and Wrought
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So I was going to post on this tomorrow, but I couldn’t wait (especially after I joined up for the Sunday Salon – thanks, TJ, AGAIN. )

I finished A. J. Jacobs‘ The Year of Living Biblically just a few minutes ago, and I loved it, every minute of reading it. The basic premise is that Jacobs tries to live by ALL the Bible’s (meaning both Old and New Testaments) commandments, including the commandment not to touch, for seven days, a woman who has had her period or anything she has touched. (One of my favorite moments was when his wife, apparently on her period, sat on every chair in the house.) He meets with religious leaders that run the list from snake-handlers, to Hasidim, to Jerry Falwell’s contingent of pastors, to “pastors out to pasture,” all in an effort to figure out what the Bible really means.

As a person of faith who has been raised in the Christian church her whole life (and has, because of various traditions’ rules, been baptized four times, much to many other traditions’ mortification), I found Jacobs’ honest questioning and real, if not conversion-guaranteeing, realizations to be beautiful, complex, and hard – all the things I’ve experienced faith to be. He’s honest about his limitations, and he’s honest about the problems of people around him.

And even if you don’t like the theme of this book – religion just really isn’t for you – then read it for the writing, for the freshness of wit, and for the writer’s ability to paint the human so carefully.

This is a hit, folks, a real hit.

Filed by Andi at 1:56 pm under Book Recommendations
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