You can order print copies of the 2024 Spring~Summer edition of Teach. Write. at Lulu.com. Here is the link. If you are interested in submitting to the journal for the 2025 Fall~Winter edition, please go to teachwritejournal.com to see the submission guidelines.
The publication of the print copy is always great, but one more exciting thing is coming up that some of you might be interested in, especially if you live in North Carolina. I’m going to be a guest editor at the North Carolina Writers’ Network spring conference. I will be one of the “Slush Pile LIve” panelist. I was honored that they asked me, and you can be sure that I will take copies of this most recent edition!
March came and went without me posting, but it wasn’t like I was just sitting around! No, I was spending every waking moment working on the new edition of Teach. Write. And taking walks with friends and playing with my not so little kitten. Going to Alabama to help take care of my mother. Working on my play as a Dramatists Guild Foundation National Fellow And spending ten glorious days in Germany to celebrate our 35th anniversary and my brother’s retirement.
Yes, Katie’s been busy NOT teaching. Without the pressures of preparing lessons and grading essays, I was actually able to take my time and truly enjoy the editing process. I’m happy with the results; hope you will be, also.
I’ve probably written this in a post before, but it bears repeating. One of the best teaching professors I ever had said, “The goal of any good teacher is to become increasingly unimportant.” To me, that meant teachers are successful when they help students learn how to be independent, critical thinkers–self-starters who can be trusted to troubleshoot and problem solve yet still ask for assistance when needed–people who aren’t afraid of a challenge or obstacles or even failure. My goal was to give my students tools to meet those challenges and overcome obstacles, to learn from failure and become resilient. I wanted to equip students for all of life, not just work.
But here in North Carolina and elsewhere in our country, education has become more of a means to an end. The general attitude seems to be “get those general ed classes out of the way” (I heard that ALL the time). They seemed to say to me, “Those classes, especially English and math, are just annoying steps a person must take to be pumped into “the pipeline” and “enter the workforce.” Gaining an education that helps people live better lives, no matter what they do for a living, or if they choose to stay home and raise children or pursue their art, has been replaced with training for a particular, specific field with a goal of employment, not life-changing education.
So many of the intangibles that occur when students are truly engaged in an educational experience are lost when the emphasis is on training for local, narrowly focused workforce development based on current trends that will shift and change with every economic bubble that bursts. In the last few years of my teaching, I yearned for the days when so many of my students actually enjoyed going to school, who relished simply learning something they never knew about before. They built relationships with their classmates, studied and ate meals together, listened to music, played video games between classes and had spirited discussions in and outside of the classroom. I remember the days when students would work together, pouring hours of work into extra-curricular activities like producing a play, some of them spending hours in rehearsal on top of all of their classes and after school jobs, but they did it because they wanted to–they had a passion for it, even if they had other long-term vocational plans.
There was a time at the college where I taught when all students in the college transfer program were required to take a literature class. There they had a chance to stretch themselves by reading complex texts that are at the foundation of not only ours but the world’s culture and government. Now, a student can get either an Associate of Science or even an Associate of Arts degree without having to take a literature course at all. How can that be?
In addition, more and more in our community colleges, three disturbing trends have taken hold–asynchronous online learning for developmental English students, high school students earning high school and college English credit for the same college-level class, and so-called accelerated classes. I helped to develop some of these courses and taught them, so you would think that I would be a proponent, but in my defense, I was misled in all of these cases into thinking the situations were temporary or that only advanced students would be taking these classes. I feel like a fool. That’s an understatement.
In my and the college’s defense, the developmental co-requisite English class that I had developed, which was part of North Carolina’s third iteration of developmental education in less than a decade, was not intended to be an online program. The plan was that all developmental classes be taught in the classroom. Then, in March of 2020, when we were soon to roll out our new co-requisite English classes, the pandemic hit. All classes, including the co-requisite English courses, were forced to go online.
In North Carolina, as in many other states, those who teach in kindergarten through twelfth grade are required to meet certain qualifications to teach in the public schools. Being a certified teacher means
Receiving a bachelor’s degree, including certain courses in education, depending on the institution. Appalachian State University, for example, requires 44 credit hours of general education for its English Education (secondary) degree, plus 24 hours of education courses, including
Completing, in addition, three credit hours of a foreign language, and of course, to teach English a student teacher must have a significant number of courses in the subject area, 43 credit hours, including six hours of British literature, six hours of American literature, six hours of world literature, three hours of Shakespeare, three hours of literary criticism, genre studies, or creative writing, nineteen hours in language, writing, and pedagogy, as well as two cognate courses, Psychology Applied to Teaching and Reading Instruction in the Senior High School, for a total of 120 credit hours. All of these courses require a C or better to count towards the degree. The average cost of a degree at App State is close to $48,000.
Passing two national standardized tests including the Praxis Core Academic Skills Test (required to enter most education programs) and the Praxis II test for every subject area to be certified. These tests are administered by the very large, supposedly non-profit Educational Testing Service (ETS), which has been widely criticized for the monopoly it holds on testing for teachers and students and for its continued non-profit status despite its huge profit margin (OlixAlex) Potential teachers pay out of pocket $90 to $210 for each exam.
Maintaining Licensure is also required. Every five years North Carolina English teachers must have completed either eight Continuing Education Units (CEUs) or 80 clock hours of professional development to maintain their certification. Most teachers pay for CEUs out of pocket.
Question for the North Carolina Public School System:
Why does North Carolina require certification for K-12 teachers when there are two major groups of non-certified teachers, not counting private school teachers, who can teach freely in North Carolina but are not required to have the same qualifications as K-12 public school teachers?
Photo by Jessica Lewis ud83eudd8b thepaintedsquare on Pexels.com
A high school diploma or its equivalency, no minimum GPA is mentioned.
A notice of intent to operate a homeschool
Operation under either Part 1 or Part 2 of Article 39 of the G.S. 115C as a religious or non-religious school
Operation of the school on a regular schedule for at least nine calendar months, excluding reasonable holidays and vacations. Who checks this?
School disease immunization and annual attendance records for each student, although the parent is the one maintaining these records and there’s little oversight
Administration of a nationally standardized achievement test administered annually to each student. Parents get to choose which test from a recommended list, and not all of these exams require a proctor. There is no minimum score required.
Notification to DNPE when the school is no longer in operation
That’s it, folks! Oh, the state encourages those who homeschool to talk to professional educators from time to time, but this, of course, is voluntary, because, I mean, what do those certified teachers know?
The other group that is not required to achieve and maintain certification is community college instructors teaching dual-enrolled students. I was a relatively rare community college instructor who had taught at the high school level and been certified to teach grades 6-12. At one time or another I was certified to teach English and German in Alabama, Georgia, Ohio, Colorado, and North Carolina. Although instructors must have a minimum of a master’s degree in their subject area, few of them have had education courses or have studied adolescent psychology and classroom management because most of them never dreamed, not older faculty anyway, that they would be forced to teach 14-, 15-, and 16-year-old high school students.
And yet, more and more, not only are community college faculty expected to teach high school students within their classes on campus, but also online classes, and even in the high school itself. That’s right. More and more full-time college instructors are expected to leave the college campus and go to the high school to teach high school students exclusively, regardless of their level of training, experience, and comfort working with large groups of young teenagers in a high school environment. Believe me, teenagers in groups can be intimidating and even cruel. Not everyone can handle it. I couldn’t.
That’s one of the reasons I left teaching high school and got a job at a community college where I was happy until I was forced to teach large groups of young teenagers again. I retired early for a lot of reasons: teaching more and more high school students who were not prepared academically or emotionally for college-level work was one of the big ones. Don’t even get me started on the pressure from parents and administrators to lower academic standards for high school students.
One-on-one or in groups of two or three, I did just fine, they did just fine, especially if the parents allowed the students to navigate the course as a college student should, without interfering. I love teaching teenagers under those circumstances. However, I know my strengths, and teaching groups of teenagers is not one of them. Dealing with parents, no matter how well-intentioned, is also not one of my fortes. However, it didn’t matter how many times I talked to the administration about how faculty were more and more frustrated with teaching high schoolers in large numbers and having to go to the high school to teach. Because the college is making money, because high schools and parents are saving money, this dubious educational process continues. In the end, it’s the high school students who lose sometimes two years of life experience they could have had learning to be independent thinkers if society would only think about the students first and find better ways to lower the costs of higher education.
Do you see what the problem is? It’s the incongruity. The state puts so much emphasis on testing and licensure, so much seeming concern about the qualifications it has for teacher education. “We only want the best, fully vetted teachers for our kids,” they opine. Except when it’s politically or socially inconvenient for the powers that be to have standards and fully vet the teachers. Or fully pay them.
Side Note: Of course, certification isn’t the answer either. Little supervision happens with any licensure program because it’s mostly bureaucratic hoops to jump through to provide data so politicians, school administrators, and the public can pretend they care about the quality of instruction. In reality, very few people truly care about the quality of education students receive, says the cynical retired community college instructor.
I can see the political gears turning: “Oh, I know, more people are mad at the schools and teachers than ever. They think their kids are being indoctrinated, so let’s take money away from the public schools that require teacher certification and give it to parents so they can start homeschools that have few standards, where the “teacher” only has to have a high school diploma or equivalent and the students have no minimum score to reach on a yearly national exam that may or may not have an outside proctor to administer it.”
And then there are the dual enrollment programs, Career and College Promise in North Carolina, Again, because it’s convenient and saves money, got to save the money even if it is bad for education, let’s just throw our oh so important teacher education courses out the window and toss our unprepared college instructors into the high school classroom, those who never planned to teach high school and often resent having to teach an age group that they may not have the aptitude, or attitude, to teach.
Oh, we’re so worried about those big bad liberal high school teachers out there that we want to pull our kids out of the public school and homeschool them, but by golly, if I’m gonna save some bucks on the kid’s college education, then let the indoctrination by those free-wheelin’, gender pronoun talkin’ professors begin.
“If I don’t want my 15-year-old kid, who is going to bypass her first two years of real college, reading To Kill a Mockingbird, then I’ll just march down to that college and complain to the president.” Or “I don’t want my child feeling bad about slavery, so I’m just going to ask the professor not to make my baby read that slave narrative. The teacher just has to give him an alternate assignment. I mean, we just skipped all the history and literature that made us feel icky when we homeschooled him, and he still graduated.”
Of course, he did. Aren’t you so proud? Let’s just see how everything pans out when your baby wants to become a teacher (you should talk him out of it) and has to pay for and take the Praxis I exam and pass with a minimum score in order to get into the education program. Of course, I hear there are lots of Praxis prep courses he can take, only $399–a steal.
Okay. It’s time for all sides in the book banning debacle to simmer down. If people would just chill, the world would be a better place. (And I am the chief non-chill person, so I’m talking to myself here, too.) I do think that people throw around the word “banned” a bit too freely, especially where school classrooms and libraries are concerned.
Take Florida, for example, where people are justifiably concerned about House Bill 1467 that requires extensive review of classroom materials by members of school boards, most of whom are not educators nor librarians with no training in curriculum development. It also requires principals to take on onerous clerical responsibilities for materials. In addition, only certified librarians, who are already certified in Florida, must go through further training on what is considered “appropriate” before they can review material and if they do not comply completely with the new law, then they risk being disciplined or removed from their positions.
Therefore, the decision by some Florida school districts has been to remove any book that could possibly be considered inappropriate until the librarians can be trained, or indoctrinated, into seeing a book the way those of a particular political persuasion sees that book. On the other hand, people, again justifiably so, are upset when they read headlines about books being removed from the shelves and see photos of those empty school library shelves.
But, here’s my thing, those books that are being pulled from the shelves, they haven’t been banned. They are being pulled for review. Now, I know I don’t know nuthin bout the running of the government and I’m just a little ole retired English teacher, but I’m just gonna say it. This Florida law is stupid. The way I read it is that for political purposes, the Florida legislature has passed this law to placate extremist folks of all kinds, many who could not care less about the true education of children, which involves the continual development of their ability to discern what is right and true and good. Think John Milton’s great speech on censorship, the Aeropagitica.
In reality, all this bill is doing is creating a bureaucratic, unenforceable mess. Already, teachers don’t have enough time in the day to actually teach students much of anything, much less form relationships with them so teachers can match instruction to the individual student’s needs. Librarians don’t have time to lead students in instruction on how to complete research or help them find books that they WANT to read or encourage them to love reading. How is a school board that meets once a month, is not compensated for their time, and more than likely does not have the knowledge of curriculum for all of the different subjects, with usually no training in determining grade level, how are they supposed to review ALL instructional material for the school? AND as I understand it, the law indicates that school boards must do this review in public and allow for public comment and input. It’s a ridiculous notion to think that compliance with this law will be possible.
This is one reason why everybody needs to chill. This is bad law. What needs to happen is people standing up and having a conversation about why it’s bad and challenging it.
Perhaps I’m cynical. Perhaps I’m bitter. So, take my words with a grain of salt, but I just don’t think many people really care. In the end, the outrage on both sides will pass and teachers will be stuck with more rules to follow, forms to fill out, evaluations to be made, everything to take them away from what should be their focus, explaining, mentoring, encouraging, assessing, remediating–teaching.
To me, all of the bluster is intended to make people feel like they care about the education of children. To show that they are a true believer in either a religious or secular sense. “See, I go to school board meetings and speak out about showing pornography to our kids.” “Look at me! I go to school board meetings to speak out about freedom and against censorship.”
But the teachers and administration need to chill, too. There’s just too much reactionary activity on all sides. Florida passes a law. The admin and some teachers are worried about being sued or losing their jobs. I know there might be a chance of that happening, but life is risky. Look, I’m not trying to make light of that fear, but is a job at a school that consistently makes you go against your conscience really worth having?
Teachers, look at your situation. How likely is it that you will lose your job? How many times in your career has your job been threatened because of what and how you teach? I know there are some, but it is kind of like a police officer using a gun–many officers go through their whole career never firing their gun except on the firing range. A 2016 Pew Research Center study sponsored by The National Police Research Platform found that only 27% of officers fired their guns while on duty.
It seems to be even rarer for a teacher to be fired for cause. A fact check by 74 indicates that only 2.1% of American public school teachers are fired for cause, mainly for incompetence, not for their ideology, not for what they are teaching. I couldn’t find separate statistics for those directly fired because of the books they have on their shelves and in their curriculum, but it’s less than 2%.
I would never tell a teacher what to do, but I would encourage teachers everywhere at every level–stand up for yourself, stand up for what you believe, stand up for freedom of thought and against censorship. At the same time, admit when a book is inappropriate for your students. Avoid feeling threatened when a parent challenges a book. It’s their right. At the same time, encourage parents to come to you when they have a question about something you’ve said or about a book or some other aspect of the curriculum instead of going immediately to administration.
If you are an administrator or a school board member or a parent, please don’t leave the classroom teacher out. Ask them what’s going on. Have real discussions face to face with the teacher, instructor, or professor. Understand that what a student says about what a teacher says and does is not going to give anyone a complete picture of what is really happening in our classrooms. However, talk to our students about what is happening with book bans, challenges, and removals. They might surprise us with what they are able to “handle.”
So, let’s try not to overreact. Instead of leaping to review every book for any remote perception of something wrong, or more than likely to make our big important political statements, why don’t we allow teachers to make their own judgments while parents make theirs, recognizing that sometimes all we need to do is talk together about books and ideas and feelings, even if they make us uncomfortable. Sometimes, that’s when real education begins.
I started requiring interview reports with local experts early in my career teaching freshman composition as part of the students’ major research project. I still think it is one of the best ways to help students focus their research. In more recent times, it has thwarted plagiarism and an overdependence on the internet for research. But the biggest reason I always leaned towards a local interview is that it helped students become more enthusiastic about their projects.
I have written about my “process over plagiarism” approach before and included the example of my student from a poor background who became excited about his project after interviewing a florist at the Biltmore Estate, but I have numerous other examples of how students have benefitted greatly from interviewing a local expert.
There’s the time a non-traditional age student and mother wanted to write about breast feeding in public (this seems like a non-issue, but this was over a decade ago, and I live in the Deep South, nuff said). She was a great student and had a good, balanced argument supporting the importance of breast feeding and why women who choose to breast feed in public should not be shamed. For her interview, she contacted the director at the La Leche League in our county. The student was happy to report that not only did she come away from the interview with a more focused topic, she also received valuable print materials to use as sources, made important contacts with experts, and walked out with a job! That’s right, this pre-nursing student was getting help with her research paper as well as gaining invaluable experience.
Another student wanted to focus on forensics (I got a lot of that when CSI was at its peak of popularity), but she was having trouble finding someone to interview. I suggested she reach out to the county coroner, which she did. The coroner turned out to be a woman who was particularly interested in what could be discovered about cause and time of death by looking at skeletal remains. My student met her at her office in the county courthouse where the coroner shared book titles with her and allowed her to take notes and make copies from texts on her shelf. She also showed the student samples of bones, explaining what she could determine from examining them. The student narrowed the focus of her research paper and at the same time found a new interest in a career as a forensic anthropologist.
One of the most interesting stories of the face-to-face interview I had was with a student who wanted to do his research paper on Habitat for Humanity in our county because he was opposed to the organization, thinking the group in our area discriminated in favor of the Hispanic population. My student was a non-Hispanic and of a non-traditional age. His opinion at the beginning of his research was that too much aid was going to Hispanic people to the detriment of the white population. You may be surprised that I allowed the student to write on the topic; however, I warned him that he should not write about it unless he was not willing to change his mind if he found that his assumptions about the project were untrue. He agreed. It was risky but after talking to him, a risk I was willing to take. Sidebar: Being a good teacher involves taking calculated risks. It doesn’t always work, but it did that time.
I can honestly say that in all my years of teaching, I have never seen a person so completely change after one interview. The thing is my student didn’t just interview one person who worked for Habitat for Humanity. Because he was a carpenter, he felt that the best way to find out what was really going on was to volunteer to work on a Habitat for Humanity project house within the Hispanic community of which he was suspicious. When he came to class after his first volunteer experience, he had a big smile on his face and admitted to me with no hesitation that he had been so wrong.
The idea of “sweat equity,” where the person who will receive the house works alongside those who have volunteered their skills, strongly appealed to my student’s work ethic, and he was impressed at how hard the people benefiting from the program worked on the house. After working with and talking to the future homeowners, he was convinced that Habitat for Humanity was an organization that gave a helping hand, not a handout. He became a long time Habitat for Humanity volunteer after that. One interview assignment had changed his attitude, and his life!
Of course, not every interview has been a life-changing experience for a student, some were actually complete duds, but students learned from negative experiences as well. They also learned how to prepare appropriate questions, contact someone they didn’t know, meet with that person, record answers, and summarize the interview in a report, then integrate that information into their paper.
Even if students failed to satisfy the requirements of the assignment, I was alerted to the student’s difficulties and often able to avert problems with the researched essay itself. I would often address these issues in the student conferences that I held before the students began working on their rough drafts.
Like many kids growing up in the 60’s and 70’s, I watched movies on Saturday afternoon. I was usually finished with my chores or riding horses by the time the matinee came on. Some of my favorite movies were about schools and teachers, go figure, and I saw some great movies over the years. Some of the films that inspired me to seek out teaching as a career were ones I just came across by accident, usually on Saturday afternoon because I was bored. Boredom is good for kids, btw. Let them be bored.
Here are a few movies about teaching that I still love just as I think of them:
Conrack–This 1974 movie starring Jon Voight is based on The Water is Wide, the autobiography of writer Pat Conroy (The Great Santini, Prince of Tides, Beach Music, among others) who taught on remote Daufuskie Island off the coast of South Carolina. Conroy was a rebel whose non-traditional methods teaching poor black kids were effective but not socially accepted. Hummmm, guess anyone who reads my blog knows how this movie influenced me.
Good Morning, Miss Dove–1955, starring Jennifer Jones–Miss Dove is a very different type of teacher from Conroy. Very strict and traditional, she nevertheless realizes the dramatic impact she has had on her students as during her convalescence from a serious illness, she is visited by some of her former students and reflects on the personal sacrifices and quiet successes she has had over the course of her career as a geography teacher in a small town. It was good for me to see that different kinds of teachers meet the needs of students in different ways. Most students need and want discipline.
To Sir, with Love — 1967, starring Sidney Poitier – I had an immediate love of Sidney Poitier when I watched the handsome actor star in this film, based on the autobiographical novel of E. R. Brithwaite, about an immigrant from British Guyana taking on the trials and tribulations of teaching in an inner-city school in London. What inspired me was the power a passionate teacher had to change the lives of people the rest of the world had counted as lost and abandoned, the same thing that drew me to the movie Conrack. Frankly, I don’t care about the criticism that has been leveled towards the movie in modern times. To me, as a child growing up in the Deep South, it crossed racial lines and showed a black man as a hero teacher, winning the admiration of mostly white students. I wanted to be a teacher who, despite his flaws, stood up for what was right.
Goodbye, Mr. Chips–1939, Robert Donat and Greer Garson and musical version 1969 starring Peter O’Toole and Petula Clark–I remember watching both versions as a child. Based on the novella by British author James Hilton, both films showed me that teaching doesn’t just change students’ lives, it also changes teachers for the better. In the beginning Mr. Chips is a stiff, awkward pedant with little ability to relate to his students, but then he falls in love and marries a woman with less education but considerably more charm than himself. While their marriage is short-lived, his wife’s influence lasts a lifetime and softens Mr. Chips. He never marries again, pouring all his energies into his teaching. Robert Donat won an Oscar for his performance as Mr. Chips. Years later, O’Toole was nominated for an Oscar and won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a musical or comedy. Both films showed me that teaching is more than a profession. It gives life meaning and purpose even when a teacher is faced with great tragedy and personal loss.
The Blackboard Jungle, 1955, Glenn Ford and Sidney Portier. I saw the Blackboard Jungle after To Sir with Love. Because I had such a huge schoolgirl crush on Portier, I would watch any film with him in any role. I had no idea who Glenn Ford was, but I quickly became a fan because of this movie. Ford plays the role of the teacher in an inner-city school and Portier, ironically, is one of his students. This movie, that talks about the difficulties of teaching, including low pay, classroom management when the room is full of troublemakers (understatement), the lack of respect from students and little to no support from administrators. But, despite the difficulties, Ford’s character, Mr. Dadier, persists and students learn. I found out through bitter experience that The Blackboard Jungle told the truth about teaching, only exaggerating a little. It helped me go into teaching with my eyes wide open and partly because of it, I was able to keep going even after some of the worst times.
The Miracle Worker, 1962, Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke–Of all the movies about teachers I saw growing up, the movie about how Annie Sullivan wouldn’t give up on her blind and deaf student, Helen Keller, was a prime influence on my decision to become a teacher. I will always remember that moment when Helen Keller finally understood connected the word being signed into her hand with the meaning–Water. The look on the young actor’s face as the meaning dawned on her. It so moved me that I watched the film, and the stage play by William Gibson based on Helen Keller’s autobiography, The Story of My Life, on which the play and film are based. I have read it many times, always returning to that scene at the water pump:
We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Some one was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten—a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that “w-a-t-e-r” meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free!
The joy of Annie Sullivan, played brilliantly by Anne Bancroft, as she shared word after word with her student, now hungry for more and more now that the floodgates were open–that was the joy I wanted to experience and for almost forty years have been able to, despite some of the hardships encountered by those movie stars from long ago. I will always remember how they inspired me.
Poor college!!! Seems like every Tom, Dick, and Henrietta is taking a pot shot at you these days. I know, I know, you can be expensive, especially if people get sweet-talked into taking on college loans (Don’t do it unless you absolutely have to!). Also, some classes and professors will be really sucky at your place. People can be downright mean, too. Plus, students can get in a lot of trouble given the kind of freedom that you bring. Don’t forget, you forced me to question my core beliefs. Yes, I didn’t abandon those beliefs, but admit it, I did question them, loudly and a lot.
Is it just me, or did you, along with a supportive family and friends, help me find my way through my late teens and early twenties? Did you help me forge positive, meaningful relationships with people from other cultures and countries with varying backgrounds and values? I think it was you who qualified me for a fulfilling career as an English and German teacher at the high school and college level. During my working years, you helped me provide a strong high school education for my child and made it possible for me and my husband to pay for her now debt-free education (two degrees). You allowed me to contribute to a pension plan that means I can enjoy a financially secure retirement.
Because of you, in undergraduate school at a Christian university, I traveled to Europe for six weeks, studying German and history. I visited West Berlin when it was still trapped within a wall, but somehow still free because of what my country, along with England and France, did for that city. I laid hands on the graffiti-laden free side of that wall and was thankful to be a citizen of a nation that saw the value in maintaining the democracy of a country with which it had so recently been at war.
Because of you, I visited Christians in East Berlin who were trapped outside the wall by an oppressive communist regime that would not let them worship freely. Yes, older people could go to church, but their every movement was monitored by the Stasi, the East German secret police, and younger people were prevented, by law, from attending church. And yet, in those few hours in the East, I witnessed the bravery of those who longed for freedom–an old woman who shook the hands of every student and said in broken English, “Tell them we have no freedom here. Tell them we have no freedom here. Tell them we have no freedom here.” The young people in their teens and twenties who traveled two-by-two just to meet, in secret, a group of American Christians, tell them their stories, and fellowship with them.
Because of you, I was able to spend the second half of my German trip in Tübingen to visit my brother who was studying theology there. I lived in the international dorm and traveled into the city, learning the mass transit system (new to me), eating at the Mensa (student cafeteria), visiting the old castle where my brother preached his first sermon to an intimidating crowd of professors, and sitting in on lectures about biblical archeology, some of which I could actually understand! We punted flat boats on the Neckar River, took walks into the forests, and had picnics with my brother’s friends. We took a train to Munich to hear The Rolling Stones at the Olympic Stadium and hitchhiked the way back (not recommended these days but safe back then).
Only because of you could I have afforded this trip. You didn’t pay for it outright, but you supplemented it, enriched it with quality faculty members who had the knowledge to plan our trip in order to give us the best educational and personal experiences possible. I also learned how to work for what I wanted, taking on two jobs and saving to raise the funds.
I had so many other wonderful experiences during my college years because of the support you offered, and I have gotten so much more out of my experiences since then because of you, but you also gave me a chance to make a living doing what I love to do–teach. The data shows that you give many people that opportunity–people with a bachelor’s, master’s, professional, or doctoral degree still make more on average AND have lower unemployment than those with a two-year degree or less, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics using 2022 data. You give so many of us so many opportunities we wouldn’t have without you.
I know you’re not perfect. Far from it. You have so many problems that more and more people are saying you’re not worth it. But you are!! Even though I realize you are not right for everybody–my own husband went to trade school to study x-ray and ultrasound technology, which has led to a great career for him. But for me, you made the difference despite the drawbacks. College, you have enriched my life more than I can say in one brief post. I can keep writing about you and the lessons you taught for at least the length of one book.
Oh, I think I will.
How about that for a segue? I hope to finish the rough draft of my educational memoir “Lessons” by the end of the year. I will keep you updated about the progress and maybe spin some more tales as I’m working on the book.
Also, the journal I edit and publish, Teach. Write., is open for submissions until March 1. The 2023 Spring/Summer edition is to be published on April 1. See the submission guidelines at teachwritejournal.com.
Many instructors are fearful about artificial intelligence and what it will do to student writing in freshman composition classes. I understand their concern, especially with the recent announcement about changes in Open AI’s leadership; however, it seems to be clear that AI is here to stay and is quickly changing the school and workplace landscape. Composition instructors, therefore, have a choice. Fight a losing battle or change the way they teach so as to meet the needs of students and their future employers.
If I were still in the classroom, I would seek to use AI in constructive ways. Indeed, AI may prove to be a boon to overloaded, overworked, and overwrought composition teachers, helping them deal with the heavy courseloads they are given. The answer, as indeed in most things, is engagement. Have a curious and playful attitude when using AI in the classroom, discussing the ethical implications along the way.
One assignment I thought might be useful is to introduce a common topic that students in general might find relevant to their lives. Work together as a class to come up with one or two paragraphs produced by Chat GPT. Then, discuss the positive and negative aspects of the paragraphs. Also, teachers might want to pursue a discussion of the ethical considerations of students using AI. When would it be appropriate to use it? When would it be harmful? Why would it be counterproductive to submit a purely AI-written essay in any college classroom?
I asked Chat GPT to come up with a couple of paragraphs on the topic of pros and cons of mandatory classroom attendance for college students. At first Chat GPT just gave me lists of pros and cons, which seems to be its favorite style of writing, so I asked it to write the pros and cons in paragraph form. Here’s what it gave me:
College Classroom Attendance: Striking a Balance
The debate over mandatory attendance in college classrooms revolves around finding a delicate equilibrium between engagement and autonomy. On the positive side, compelling students to attend classes can create an environment conducive to active learning. In-class discussions, real-time feedback from professors, and collaborative projects thrive when students are consistently present. The communal aspect of the classroom, where ideas are shared and debated, contributes to a rich educational experience. Furthermore, mandatory attendance fosters a sense of responsibility and discipline, essential skills that students carry into their professional lives. The structure imposed by attendance policies can guide students in time management and the establishment of a routine, skills that are beneficial beyond the college environment.
However, the cons of mandatory attendance are not to be overlooked. College is a time for individuals to explore their independence and learning styles. For some, this involves engaging with course material independently, through readings, research, and self-directed study. A rigid attendance policy may stifle this autonomy, impeding students from developing the self-discipline needed for lifelong learning. Additionally, external obligations such as work commitments or family responsibilities may clash with a strict attendance policy, putting undue stress on students. In such cases, the emphasis on attendance becomes a hindrance rather than a facilitator of learning. Moreover, there’s a risk that attendance policies incentivize mere compliance rather than genuine intellectual curiosity. Students might attend classes to fulfill a requirement, but the focus on attendance metrics does not guarantee a meaningful engagement with the subject matter. Striking the right balance between encouraging attendance and respecting individual learning styles and circumstances is a nuanced challenge for educators.
I would hope some of the following points would come up in our discussion:
Paragraphs are well-written with few writing errors.
A strong thesis statement begins each paragraph.
The paragraphs are well-organized and uses effective transitions.
The paragraph is logical and makes good arguments for and against mandatory classroom attendance.
One issue is the phrase “there’s.” I teach my students to avoid contractions and the use of the expletive “there is.”
The diction in general is too formal and sounds rather pretentious for a college-level paper. Really need to get rid of “incentivize” in the second paragraph. Yuck!
The paragraphs need to be fleshed out with specific examples and details, preferably from the writer’s own experience, some things that show the pros and cons more clearly and make the paragraphs more interesting to read. With good examples, these two paragraphs could be the basis for an entire essay.
Use this opportunity to talk with students about the importance of developing their own unique voice.
Another great thing to do would be to see if any students disagree with Chat GPT. What do students think about the logic presented in these paragraphs? Encourage students to “argue” with Chat GPT or “defend” it. Maybe have a classroom debate about mandatory classroom attendance. What ideas did the classroom come up with that Chat GPT didn’t include?
Another idea is to help students brainstorm ideas about topics that they are interested in, a process that is not always easy, I found. But asking relevant questions like how to pay for college without going into debt or managing mental health without medication might spark a student’s interest and inspire them to THINK FOR THEMSELVES.
How about even being brave and venturing into controversial topics, like the difference between banning and challenging books in public schools, transgender rights, universal health care, and Black history studies. Yes, I know, it can be scary, and administrators may not thank you, but remember that college is meant for adult learners, many of whom are already wrestling in the real world with all of these topics. Furthermore, using AI may help remove some of the fallacious reasoning some students use when writing about sensitive topics. In fact, try using Chat GPT to start a discussion about fallacies of logic.
The main idea is to get them to realize that all good writing needs their real-life experiences and their own critical thinking to add interest, for the reader, sure, but especially for themselves because writing that the writer doesn’t care about will be dry as toast and not worth anyone’s time. Give students confidence in their own ideas through lively, mediated debate, and then ask them to write, by hand, if possible, right there in front of you.
Total honesty. I wasn’t really looking forward to the North Carolina Writers’ Network fall conference as much as I have in the past. I’m not sure why, but I think the main reason was my inner critic. I guess sometimes I don’t think I deserve to call myself a writer. I know I am one, but, oh, I don’t know what I mean. I think I should have had a book published by now, I suppose. I have had many short stories published. I’ve had four plays produced, I blog, I edit and publish a journal, but….
But, but, but, but…why do I do this to myself?
Anyway, this is the way I had been talking to myself BEFORE the conference.
First, thing, though, I saw two writer friends whom I hardly ever see except at writing conferences. We talked about our writing, got caught up on life events, our families. We ate several of our meals together and chatted about what we learned from the sessions we attended. I always feel so much better when I get together with other writers. They get me. So, they totally understood why I was so happy to find out that my play “A Carolina Story” made it to the finals for the Dramatists Guild Foundation’s Virtual Musical Theatre Fellowship.
I was also glad I went because of the quality faculty. All my sessions were led by people with the knowledge, experience, and wisdom that I was looking for. Most memorable was the session on writing books of essays led by Patrice Gopo because it helped me get a breakthrough about how I want to structure Lessons, the teaching memoir/methods book that I’m working on. I can’t wait to read her book Autumn Song to see how she applied the techniques described in her session.
Another great thing that happened is I met one of my contributors. He walked up to me and introduced himself, saying how much he appreciated my acceptance of his work for the last edition of Teach. Write. Especially meaningful was how he thanked me for giving teachers an outlet for their work. Man, made me feel good.
Finally, I just had fun. I was relaxed. It was the first conference I attended without having to worry about checking work e-mail in between sessions or getting behind in planning classes, maintaining online courses, or grading essays. It was glorious to use my break just to walk around the little lake by the conference hotel on a glorious autumn day.
If you’ve never heard of the North Carolina Writers’ Network, then I encourage you to check it out. You don’t have to live in North Carolina to be a member. The thing I like most about it, as I rediscovered this past weekend, is that it is a true network of writers, and more than a few teachers, who teach and learn from each other, who understand the struggles and triumphs of the writing life.
Hey, Mrs. Winkler! 