Just Plain Pleasure

Last Thursday, my colleague Karen shared her love for lists, her love of book lists, and her views on how those book lists help her sort books into three categories of “Pleasure, Guilt, and Defiance.” I am also a lover of those lists that come out at the end of the year because they give a nice summary of the year that is leaving, and they can give a good signal to what to expect in the New Year. Additionally, I love the book lists that are published in various venues, and I read them often. I agree with Karen that most of the books can be neatly sorted into the three categories: books I know I will really enjoy, books that are either good for me and I really should read, but I just don’t want to, and books I will not read no matter how highly they are acclaimed.

In other words, the “pleasure” category is going to be the winner every time. I have reached an age where I do not want to waste my time and energy reading something I do not really like. I tend to be genre driven, loyal to characters, and subsequently, loyal to various writers. Of course, I am always looking for a new author’s work to read, and I find some nice little surprises when I browse library book shelves and book store shelves, both real and virtual. I usually know within the first few pages or at least the first chapter if a book is a good fit for me.

When I was younger, I finished every book I read most of the time. However, as I have matured, I am more apt to discard a book or at least to skim large portions of it if I just have to find out who was the murderer or to find out if a happy ending is in the works. I may have become shallow in my reading to a certain extent, but I am giving myself permission to go with the pleasurable aspect of reading above all else.

So for 2016, my goal is to see what the critics say, read the book lists, browse some shelves, and then just READ. I look forward to a year of figuring out mysteries, of being spell bound by beautiful words, and of getting caught up in a story. I hope I can entice many of you to share the journey with me. Happy 2016.

“Outlook Good”

I enjoyed Brian’s post earlier this week about first days of class, a source of anxiety and anticipation for teachers and students alike. After you’ve done this teaching thing for a bit, you can make a pretty fair assessment of your class’s potential after the first couple of classes.  Or, to borrow a more elegant phrase from an English proverb:

A good beginning makes a good end.

I’ll confess that a few previous classes have found me looking like this after the first day:

Happily, my A&P II class for this term appears to hold great promise.  Several students from prior terms are very talented and dedicated, with a good base of knowledge. Moreover, they are willing to help their classmates who don’t pick things up quite as quickly. As we tried a few getting-to-know-you exercises, I encouraged them to make sure that any “newbies” felt welcomed.

I needn’t have been concerned.  As the class progressed and I laid out my expectations, my “old friends” reminded me of things that “new friends” might want to know.  By the end of the day, newcomers were engaging in discussions with the old hands, and I heard phone numbers and email addresses being exchanged.

My Magic 8 Ball is a favorite toy.  Before the students left, I pulled it off the shelf and asked,”Is this going to be a great class?”

“YES”

“Will everyone do well on the first quiz?”

“YOU MAY BE CERTAIN OF IT.”

(You can click here to learn more about the fascinating history of the 8 Ball…and you really need one for your class.)

 

Keep It Simple, Part 3

My colleague teaches Anatomy and Physiology. She does an amazing job at being able to present the material in a succinct and extremely clear manner. I wish I had had her for my bout with this subject! Is it easy for the students because of her clarifications? Heck, no! Easy has no place in A and P. She has spent and continues to spend countless hours in planning and dissecting the text to create simple (notice I didn’t use the word easy here) ways of explaining the material and stressing to students that you must learn the basics before you can understand the complexity of future information. Nothing must or should be assumed here!

Let’s imagine, for example, a hospital where infection rates are high. There are five basic procedures which all doctors (should) know that will inhibit an infection. You could say that they are basically “no brainers”. However, most doctors fail to use one of these procedures because they are caught up in the hoopla of new, cutting edge practices, treatments or procedures. Did they forget the tried and true, or did they think that the new and improved mouse trap would outperform the simple method? Remember we are talking about simplicity here. Could the doctors be in the same situation as the football coaches I described in a previous post, failing to realize that simple, well-known procedures are directly linked to results?

Switching gears, I owned a flower shoppe at one point in my life. Around April girls would come in and be in a panic about getting the right bouquet in the right color – la ta da ta da. For those who don’t know the significance of this time of year for high school girls, it’s PROM SEASON!!!! These are two dreaded words no florist ever wants to have to deal with. The prom girls wanted the biggest, the most unusual, the most expensive, and the newest technique – and so on and so on. You get the picture. It was virtually impossible to convince these flower fashion divas that the prettiest and most sophisticated bouquet was always the simplest. Heavens, no! When I would say “less is more,” they would just look at me as though I had no clue. I laugh now remembering one who one had “no clue”! You know, looking back on those days, the prettiest bouquet I ever made was a softball-sized bunch of purple violets in a little silver holder. I still get compliments on that one.

Think again about the phrase “less is more”. Why don’t we use this philosophy more in our classrooms? Presentation of a gift in a plain brown wrapper doesn’t devalue the importance of its contents. Hope your bouquet is a pretty little bunch of violets.

Day 1 Butterflies

There is no day like Day 1 of anything. It is the unknown. It is the unexperienced moment just ahead. For a teacher, there was Day 1 of teaching. Then as months or years pile up, there is Day 1 of a new term. No matter how much subject matter knowledge a teacher has, the first sight of an incoming class has its butterflies. The students have them, too. Everybody is thrown in to a new chemistry that hasn’t happened yet, and everyone gets to be a butterfly in the making—even the teacher.

The teacher knows the content respectably enough. The students need to know it, unless it is one of those subjects still offered that have nothing to do with certain students’ career goals. This is the best butterfly possibility of all; it reminds me of children trying a new food, or in education, perhaps a new recipe for an old food. With children, the insistence on trying a new food comes from the parent, who hopefully is willing to endure the rebellion. In college, the insistence is largely the fact that students see goals ahead impossible to attain without this temporary test of endurance in the classroom.

The one thing a teacher must never do is insist on the horrendous. For example, when our oldest son was a baby, my wife pureed delights like bananas and sweet potatoes and put them into plastic ice cube trays (this was the day before refrigerator icemakers). One night we had liver, and not wanting anything to go to waste, she … yes—she pureed some liver and made frozen liver cubes.

The test came at her parents’ house when we had eaten supper, and it was time to feed the baby. Out came the frozen liver cubes. Thawing and warming up the cubes introduced the moment. She kept aiming the spoon at the baby’s mouth, but the poor little fellow made the most horrible responses of avoidance, only to have the spoon come at him again. I was not the brave one. My wife’s dad suddenly stood up, took the spoon and jabbed it toward my wife’s mouth, saying, “Here, you eat some!” That was it. In all fairness to my wife, I have done many more dumb things than that, and her sainthood is not jeopardized by that one well-meaning, but ill-fated idea.

What I am getting at is this. Some entering students already have your class pegged as frozen liver cubes that you plan to foist upon them. You, on the other hand, see butterflies in the making. This apparent contradiction is why teachers get butterflies too, and not just the students.

Ending on an Up Note: Keep it Fresh

Today’s quote from the folks at Behappy.me:

Don’t live the same year 75 times and call it a life.

(Teacher version: Don’t teach the same class 75 times and call it good instruction.)

Enjoy your weekend, but get ready for Monday.

Book Lists: Pleasure, Guilt, Defiance

As a confessed lover of lists, I look forward to the end-of-year “Best Of ______” lists offered by the media at the end of each year, especially the book lists. As we made the long drive home from the Florida beaches last weekend, I delayed a much-needed rest stop so that I could hear NPR’s choices, which you can access from their “Book Concierge” page.  Goodreads, Time magazine, The Washington Post, and many others featured favorite books as well. As I listened to or perused the selections, my responses fell into three categories.

• Pleasure/anticipation.  These are the books that immediately found a spot on my Amazon Wish List. I can’t wait to read The Mare by Mary Gaitskill.
• Guilt. These are the books that I should have read by now, but haven’t, including All the Light We Cannot See. This section also includes books that I shouldn’t want to read, but actually do, like The Truth About Twinkie Pie.  I will also once again almost certainly break my no-more-cookbooks resolution by buying more cookbooks, compounding the guilt by failing to make any of the recipes contained therein. Yes, food porn is a real thing.
• Defiance. Why, no, I will not read your dark, depressing book about a threatening and insoluble world problem or another memoir of man’s horrid inhumanity. And I will not read any book that I can’t make sense of, no matter how critically acclaimed. Life is just too short. My rule, poached from some wiser person to whom I can’t give credit, is that I need only read 100 pages minus my age.  So it better grab me in 39 pages, or I’m out.  Sorry, City of Thorns. I was riveted by the interview on NPR, but I can’t face the book.

What about you?  Do you read the book lists? Do they influence your choices? Do you “talk back” to the lists? What about your own list of the best of 2015…I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours.

This Soup Is Weird (and So Is College)

“Uh-oh,” I thought. “Looks like I may need to implement the grilled cheese back-up plan tonight.”

The “Weird Soup” recipe in my Blue Apron notebook.

I had just opened the Knick Knack packet for Blue Apron’s “Spiced Pork, Squash, & White Bean Soup with Lacinato Kale & Sage-Walnut Pesto.” The Spice Soup Blend, consisting of flour, Ras El Hanout, turmeric, nutmeg, and cardamom smelled really weird. The entire list of ingredients sounded weird. I was not optimistic.

I promise that this is not an ad for Blue Apron, but rather an ad for college…and not only our college, although I’ll cop to personal bias that HCC is an extraordinarily great school. If you’re not familiar with Blue Apron, the company’s website states that “Our mission is making incredible home cooking accessible to everyone.” Subscribers receive a weekly box of ingredients for three complete meals that can be prepared in about 35 minutes, and recipes are never repeated in the same year. All you need is oil, salt, and pepper.

Thirty-five years of married-life dinner service has wearied even this fairly accomplished and adventurous cook (no false modesty here). Our small community’s, shall we say, specific regional palate often limits the availability of “exotic” ingredients.  So, on a lark, I signed up for Blue Apron, thinking that I’d probably cancel after a few weeks.

Sample page for celeriac, a featured ingredient

Soon, boxes full of interesting and beautiful ingredients were arriving at my front door, allowing me to skip my late-afternoon wanderings through Walmart wondering what on earth to make tonight. We sampled all sorts of things we had never tried: farro, fregola sarda, fareek, gochugaru, golden mountain sauce, sambal oelek, yu choy, celeriac.  Who knew that the earth offers so many delicious things, all new to us?

Back to the weird soup. Reluctant to waste the ingredients and the time I’d invested, I persevered. After carefully following all the directions, I ladled the finished product into bowls and apologetically presented a serving to my husband. We each took a tentative bite. Weird, but maybe a good weird.  Another bite…still weird, but definitely a good weird. Soon we headed back to the stove for seconds.

As we washed up the kitchen, I thought that Blue Apron’s recipe rotation is a bit like a college curriculum. Some offerings are comforting, familiar, and inviting, like a burger with fries. However, like a good college course, BA’s burger and fries always provide a little twist to challenge students’ preconceptions. Other required courses may cause students to think, “I don’t think I’m gonna like this.”  Sometimes their apprehension proves justified. But some courses that seemed off-putting and weird turn out to be weird in a good way. At the very least, students are exposed to “exotic” ideas that broaden and educate their mental palates.

As Blue Apron has taught me, a varied menu with some unfamiliar ingredients can be a very good thing. Your class may just be the weird spice that opens a new world to your students.

8 Lessons from the Paper Towel Guy

Who knows how or why I was bewitched into watching this video over the holiday recess, but I did.  After a chuckle, I started pondering. Joe Smith provides a darned good object lesson in how to teach. If you’ll devote a few minutes to watching his spiel, I’ll share what I learned.

 

• He has great energy.  How often have I slogged into class, stooped under a load of concerns professional, domestic, or personal, to begin a session with a complete absence of enthusiasm for my topic? And this guy is excited about paper towel usage. Just observe his body language.
• He offers convincing evidence that his topic is important. I teach anatomy and physiology. Human anatomy and physiology. All of us humans have bodies, and if they don’t work properly, we get sick and die. I should be able to explain why my topic is important.
• He doesn’t assume that we know anything about paper towel usage. If you had never washed your hands before, you could understand his message and follow his instructions.
• He doesn’t just talk, he demonstrates.
• He provides a helpful mnemonic. In fact, he offers several.
• He involves the audience as he teaches. He reinforces his points by having the class respond verbally and repeatedly.
• He shows that his technique is useful in multiple scenarios. (Where did he find so many types of towels?) I don’t always explain to my students how information can be useful in other contexts.
• He is evangelical. His message is tranformative.

I know what you’re thinking.  C’mon, Karen, a lesson using just one paper towel is hardly a life-changing event…except that it is. Proof? During our holiday travels, I visited a number of rest stops, restaurants, and shopping venues. I was suddenly aware of how many paper towels folks used in the ladies’ rooms. And I found myself using just/one/towel and enjoying the righteousness of shaking and folding. Thanks, Joe!

Birdfeeders

Spring and summer always mean enjoying the hummingbird feeder. Then comes the October sigh, and the lack of entertainment outside the kitchen window. Last winter we filled the other feeder with seeds a few times but then left off because the birds emptied it so fast. The kitchen just isn’t the same without birds through the glass, so we’ve filled the feeder twice now, drawing the following: house finch, chickadee, titmouse, cardinal, dove, and downy woodpecker. This winter, the commitment is to buy seed regularly and do the chore of filling the feeder. Unless one buys a ticket for entertainment, any good sight usually has an attending chore.

Bird Feeders

Another feeder has been empty for over two weeks, the college. It’s not that the students can’t find knowledge on their own out on the everyday terrain, but it doesn’t hurt to have a ready-made feeder in place, staffed with every kind of helper in the process of discovering the feeder, gaining access to the feeder, knowing how to move from sub-feeder to sub-feeder within the aviary, learning how to transfer to a more extended aviary, and gaining qualification for advanced bird operations in the ever expanding bird force at large.

When I was growing up, it was an insult to be called a birdbrain. However, this might now be considered a compliment. After all, if birds were so incidental and trifling, we would not spend so much time looking at them. There also used to be an old saying about having “another feather in your cap.” That was a compliment, and the saying has been out of use long enough from its cliché days to reintroduce it to conversation.