mccomas, August 1, 2002 at 7:36:19 PM CEST

Morning Pages: July 24, 2002

I didnt' really talk yesterday about my social action project. What really stood out to me yesterday was how the focus of most people's work is about people, not necessarily content, but real human emotinos, a recognition of the pain and isolation so many of our young student feel (no matter what level).

As for me, I'm not certain where I fit. I'm looking at the social action principles and trying to fit my work into one of them because i really don't want to start something brand new (except I might have to).

One of my jobs is to document the work of the site - perhaps another is to be the social action facilitator - to facilitate this gorup through the five step process - as they work through solving a problem (or at least thinking about solving a problem) in their own teaching practice.

I'm struggling with some tensions then. The tension of being a facilitator of the process, an agent for change, but here I am a member of this group - where CSA suggests working alongside, not becoming grou member or group leader. It's hard for me to find the space I need to be in and to stay within that space...I keep overstepping my boundaries - moving the lines a little - and while I dont' think this really hurts anything - it does change the boundaries and I need to be aware of that.

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mccomas, August 1, 2002 at 1:14:41 PM CEST

Never Satisfied

I wanted a dark piece of fabric but I'm not certain why. The dark colors stabilize me, provide weight and balance, and perhaps I like that because I need stabilizing and I need balanced. There are contrasts in this piece of fabric, lighter blues placed around in a predictable, repeatable patter - a kind of organization that I ilke. But, as I examine this piece, I'm beginning to wonder why I didn't want the other piece of fabric. It was light, an odd shade of yellow that reminded me of baby poop. But that isn't what turned me away from it. What turned me away was its openness, the way it said, "Come on - dive in!" I couldn't stand that because I couldn't see what I was diving into - that cavernous openness is frightening, it petrifies and paralyzes me.

I remember driving to Philadelphia a few years ago with Dolores and Diane. We had Diane's big vehicle - a Jeep perhaps - and it was my turn behind the wheel. We were in a hilly area and the road was a bit curvy. We were descending a hill and making a curve when all of a sudden the sky opened up and almost swallowed us up! Ahead was a river with a long, high bridge across it and the hills had ended. The whole world was visible to us from there. I nearly choked; panic rose in my throat (and I feel the butterflies in my stomach and a desperate needs for air even as I write this, just thinking of it) and I felt as though I had been punched in the stomach and had teh wind knocked out of me. I was nearly frozen and I sensed this small part of me saying to myself (I hope), "Keep breathing; there now, breathe again; look at the road; no don't look left, don't look up, look at the road; keep talking; breathe." I had no choice but to keep driving for there was nowhere to pull over. I suspect I had an anxiety or panic attack - but I found it so odd because I have claustrophobia; it's supposed to be closed in spaces that I can't stand. Considering the claustrophobia and this panic attack brought on by wide, open, high spaces, I realized that there are few places in the world where I can be.

Well, that was interesting. I ended up writing in resopnse to the swatch of fabric I did NOT want; but in a way, I knew when I put it back that it wasn't going out of my mind. The second I saw that swatch, that bridge came to mind.

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mccomas, August 1, 2002 at 12:50:52 PM CEST

Morning Pages: July 23, 2002

Sitting in the doctor's office this morning waiting for Christopher, I do my morning pages, about an hour and a half behind everyone else!

Having re-entry problems this morning as I usually do after being out of town for a period of time. It's not that I'm out of work mode because I worked the whole time I was gone, but it is a different sort of work and while away - my other work kept piling up and accumulating so I don't have much hope of catching up - at least not for several days and in the meantime I'll have even more work pile up.

The heat and humidity here is suffocating, especially after the cool, crisp air in Berkeley. Patrick said they were having unusual weather for this time of year, that it was typically colder than it was!

I guess I need tot hink of more prompts for morning writing. Don't quite understand why someone else couldn't have done that while I was gone, but never mind...

Dr.'s out, Christopher is "finished."

[NOTE: Christopher had his keloid removed today instead of last week as originally planned.]

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mccomas, August 1, 2002 at 12:46:56 PM CEST

Morning Pages: July 17, 2002

My writings thus far have been scattered, haphazard and I'm not certain if they are leading me anywhere or not. Actually, my real interest this summer is looking at the process of social action - or the lack of that process (?) - in the Summer Institute. I'm interested in hearing the teaching stories that come out while we're here - perhaps I'm looking at the critical incidents that occur here.

The topic or issue I'd probably want to explore - if I were to pick one - would be the question of "Why students don't take more responsibility for their learning?" They should, in fact, not only take that responsibility, they should demand taht the power be handed over to them. Who has the right to tell another what they need to learn? I don't know the answer to that - but it is an interesting question.

In a way, this is what my work with Kelly is digging at. The three case studies in my research were selected precisely because they were successful in taking the responsibility for their own learning. What I'm trying to know then is why were these three students able to do that and others weren't? Why were these three ready and the others not?

There's some kind of connection with not worrying about the grade and responsibility. At first I was thinking that I didn'tk now which came first - but now I think that once they surpass the grade issue they are then able to accept that responsibility because then the grade doesn't mean that much - the value being shifted from grade to knowledge and skills.

I'm really feeling sleepy here right now. Keep losing my train of thought - unable to hold even the barest bit of a sentence in my mind! My eyes are crossing as I write because that is ... see another spot where I completely lost the sentence. I'm certain it is quite obvious about where I'm dozing because my handwriting, I'm certain, becomes much messier.

Have a wee bit of a headache this morning.

I love Beth, she is truly a gifted and talented writer - she loves the whole process. I wish I could emulate her in that respect. Did you know that she reminds me of Robin McComas when she writes - she holds her pencil the same and her penmanship is round, like Robin's is.

YAWN

Several people in here write with those skinny leaded pencils and I don't hear pencil leads popping as they do when I use them. I'm all about intensity and pressure - as both person and scribe!

YAWN

Good God, I'm boring myself! No, seriously I think I"m just not getting enouhg sleep. I also just realized that I forgot to wear my patch - perhaps I'm counting on the nicotine as a stimulant and without my patch - no nicotine.

Oh, it is close to time for me to leave. Going to meet Christopher at Dr. Blairs to get his keloid cut off...finally! I've asked him many times and he's always refused. Oh, what a difference a girlfriend makes!

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mccomas, August 1, 2002 at 5:22:31 AM CEST

Morning Pages: July 16, 2002

Today I'm supposed to be putting, in order, those critical incidents I wrote about yesterday that are distressing to me. This forced me to go back and think about the critical incident I wrote about and to define it more clearly. The class itself wasn't a critical incident. The critical incidents were me laying out invitation after invitation for my students to join me in untangling certain obstacles as they presented themselves. I found it even difficult to identify the obstacles, perhaps due, in part, to some changes I had made from previous semseters. In an effort to reduce the paper load for myself I decided last semester to have students make concept maps based on their readings instead of the usual reading log. The first week we did one together to provide a model for them to follow. There was, in this class, either a resistance to or inability to complete these as instructed. Where I wanted students to identify key concepts, they tended to focus on details. Where I wanted them to group and categorize key concepts in a system meaningful to them, they followed the outline the sub-headings in the text provide to them. I'm certain, given the manner in which they completed these assignments that the concept maps were nothing more than busy work to them. This failure on my part to grab hold of this problem early on meant I was not going to get a hold on it later. I should say that the four seniors taking this graduate class did "get" how to do a concept map and, if I recall correctly, they had some of the best work overall in the class.

Another thing that just popped into my head had to do with KM and her project. I divide the semester project into parts and have the students submit drafts of the various parts along the way. I review their work looking for particular patterns of problem areas and give feedback. When submitting her ifnal project KM admitted she had put virtually no effort into the project for the various checkpoints, essentially causing her to start over after spring break-redoing the whole project. I was upset about this (mad? sad? disappointed?) because she had, I felt, taken advantage of me and a good opportunity. I often remind students that they must submit the best possible work when submitting drafts. This ensures they will get the best possible feedback. This student didn't do this. I'm quite certian I took more time in providing feedback on the checkpoints than she did in preparing each of the checkpoints.

This kind of thinking is a mystery to me. I can't quite grasp this line of thinking, especially in graduate students. So, what is the critical incident here? Where are the disconnections? I think that the disconnection lies in the way that I and the way that my students define scholarly work and scholarly attitudes. There's a disconnection in how I believe students should respond to learning invitations and how they really respond to them.

Now, the thought keeps crossing my mind that I cannot change anyone else - only myself - but, do I have influence over others and in what way can that influence be parlayed to reduce or eliminate the disconnections I saw last semester? Does realizing that I cannot change others mean that I must give up my dream of what learning should be about and how that might look? I don't think so, but what does it mean? It means I must look at myself from different angles to get different views of the same thing. It means that with different ways of seeing the same thing I might also begin to see different ways to respond to the same old situations.

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mccomas, August 1, 2002 at 5:10:03 AM CEST

Morning Pages: July 15, 2002

The joy of teaching, yestserday? today? last week? Usually these moments come at me from behind - I don't necessarily expect them and I'm not always fully aware of them as they happen...but they do happen. This morning I had an email from Matt - he was checking to make sure I was alright because, he said, I'd been unsually quiet over the weekend. Last week, when my computer class met, Summer, who is often a step or two behind the others came up with a dynamite idea for organizing her project. Lekei called me on Satuday to run some ideas past me - she wanted to keep them "secret" from the rest of the class for a bit because she wanted to really "WOW them," she said. Then there was Kelly and Alex and Kristy last spring who took an assignment and ingested it so it became theirs, not mine. These are the moments that keep me hungry for teaching, that keep me learning, that keep me in teaching when otehr possibilities knock on my door.

On the other hand, there are those painful, painful, painful and pathetic times when I swear to myself I'll never teach again and I wonder at what ever made me think in the first place that I could teach. I don't have to think back too far to find one of those experiences. Unfortunately it wasn't a single event or a single assignment. Hell no, it was a whole semester of a graduate class that is typically one of my favorites to teach and typically an experience I would write about in my joy of teaching section. Not this time around though, it was a slow and agonizing death. It was doomed from the start and I failed to acknowledge this. In retrospect I know that I knew - but I kept acting "as if"...as if they were interested in discovering, as if they cared about thinking, as if they thought phonological disorders were the most fascinating thing on earth. I played that game until about midterm. Then I read something Ira Shor wrote. I had turned to him and Paulo Freire for inspirtaiton, seeking ideas and motivation to rescue this class. One day I read that at times, on ehas to realize and accept the fact that sometimes students aren't ready to be empowered. Ira said that sometimes he just gives in and I remember thinking then and there that I was gonig to give in. It had been a hell of a year, with personnel issues in the fall, 9-11, an overload in the spring, the death of my father in February. I was simply too tied, exhausted, to struggle any more. I worried about giving up, didn't like to think of myself as a quitter but I was seirously concerned that if I didn't give in I might not make it tot he end of the semester with any of my classes. These moments, too, while difficult and depressing spark my interest, appeal to my natural curiousity as a teacher and a learner. What makes students resist taking responsibility for their learning? What makes me so adamant that they must? What makes students feel safe enough to take that responsibility? Strangely enough, one of the students in that class came to talk with me after the semester was over. She understood my struggle - at least understood that I was struggling. She shared her insights about the situation. She said as undergraduates stuents work so very hard to get into our graduate program because they know the grades count so much. Once admitted to graduate school, according ot her, they slack off somewhat realizing that As are no longer the main gola. Here they focus on their clinical work, not coursework. While her explanation seemed plausible given what I had observed, it left me sadder than I was before we talked. How could students not see the connection between being independent learners and good clinicians? How could they, as graduate students, be satisfied letting someone else tell them what to think?

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mccomas, August 1, 2002 at 4:56:02 AM CEST

Spelling

The beauty of words like phenomenology and susurrus Is their magical voodoo sound. In the moonshine, Quixotic word wizards will Commiserate with children learning to spell flabbergasted and reiterate, While luminous ghosts exhume a nebulous pedagogy.

[developed in response to a favorite word list on the board: 07.15.02]
 

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