Coming to you from the mountains of Asheville, gloriously post-finals.

Hello, dear friends.

I write to you from the mountains of Asheville, North Carolina, where I have been fortunate enough to go on vacation with my family. First of all, Asheville is amazing. There is basically everything any literate hipster could dream of... zillions of cafes, local bookstores, independently owned shops and restaurants, tons of microbreweries... all surrounded by gently rising green-covered mountains. In a way, it reminds me of Vermont, and I've relished the ability to live again in peaceful seclusion (although not quite as secluded as dear old Thetford Center!). Here are a few pictures from yesterday to communicate my joy:

  

I've been solidly MIA for the last few weeks. Graduate school finals week is a unique kind of hell, one with myriad forms of caffeine, a solid lack of sleep, but overall better choices than the finals weeks I experienced in undergraduate. I still managed to cook my own meals, eat healthfully, and not touch RedBull--I suppose that's the small amount of wisdom acquired over four years at KU.

So, what was I doing, you might ask? Well, the ultimate goals of my summer courses this summer (besides to readforever) were to produce several documents that I will later send off to the State of North Carolina to get my teacher's license. Those documents consisted of a 5-page "Philosophy of Teaching English," a 10-page "Philosophy of Teaching Adolescents," and what came to be (for me) a 60-some-page unit plan (consisting of 13 days of lessons for a unit on African literature). Now, 60 pages may sound like a lot, but I witnessed several of my classmates hand in units of 100+ pages. In one word: "Formidable," especially within the 5-week timeline. By the last day we had all lost our minds. Luckily, sleep and beer heal all wounds! ha!!

Apart from that, I also wrote a 16 page paper for an "Investigation Project" on autism that I made into a website. Last Thursday I presented my paper to my class (which was really just a way to introduce them to autism). I hope to continue to develop this website in the future for Duke, but you can take a look at it in its VERY raw state right now: http://autisminvestigationproject.wordpress.com/

So, that my friends, has largely influenced my disappearance from reality of late! I must say that although I lost my mind several times (living alone doesn't seem to help with that), it was an extremely challenging academic experience that I wouldn't trade for the world. 

Having concluded that chapter, the next one begins on Monday, August 19th, at 8:00 am when I begin my internship in Durham Public schools. I'll be working right alongside my mentor teacher in 3 different types of English classes: (1) Standard English 10th Grade, (2) Honors English 10th grade, and (3) AP English 11th grade. Naturally, I am thrilled to re-live one of the greatest moments of my high school and English career. Pre-Monday, I plan to do some valiant soul-searching and possibly channeling of Mr. Luckert's AP English prowess--May the great English Gods bless me with their wisdom! If not, may they grant me mercy! haha. I'm nervous.

My new schedule will basically look like this:
Monday 7:00 AM - 12:00 PM Internship; 3:05 PM - 4:20 PM "Modernism Seminar"
Tuesday 7:00 AM - 12:00 PM Internship
Wednesday 7:00 AM - 12:00 PM Internship; 3:05 PM - 4:20 PM "Modernism Seminar"
Thursday 7:00 AM - 12:00 PM Internship; 4:40 PM - 6:10 PM "Technology, Society, Schools"
Friday 7:00 AM - 12:00 PM Internship

I'll be busy. Well, I think that's a solid update for now. I'll try to get back here before school starts on Monday with a more eloquent story post. I hope all is well with everyone--talk to you soon!

 -S.

My sister is awesome.

A Passage that spoke to me.

The following is an excerpt from The Social Neuroscience of Education that I found particularly resonant. Tell me what you think:

Filling a position once held by tribal elders, teachers can guide their students to become the heroes of their own stories. At the same time, teachers must also become heroes by overcoming prejudice, ignorance, and the bureaucratic status quo to make learning happen despite the forces that may be working against them... 

Carl Jung said that the answers to our most important questions are to be found in the shadow. The shadow is the repository of our own pain and shame; hidden with it is the pain of our families and the demons of our inner lives. The heroic teacher acknowledges the pain, suffering, hypocrisy, and lack of fairness in the world. Because you can't completely banish the shadow, you must learn to develop a relationship with it. If the shadow can be acknowledged and included as part of the emotional reality of the classroom, the teacher becomes transformed into a guide on the path to wisdom. Wisdom is knowledge mixed with compassion and presented in a manner that helps others to heal and grow. In other words, wisdom is knowledge in the service of others.  

In order for teachers to become guides, they need to be familiar with their own shadows, which will allow their students to confront their own inner demons. Because a teacher who adheres to unfair rules will be seen as too insecure to be a guide, a heroic teacher must be brave enough to break the rules in service of his or her students. A successful guide snatches victory from the jaws of defeat, gaining freedom from determinism. The teacher invites the student to take a journey out of the narrow confines of his or her life into a new world beyond limitations of the neighborhood, family, and culture. (199-200)

 

A Quick and belated post.

This week and last weekend have allowed me to coin a term that encompasses my current emotional state quite well: determinedly overwhelmed. Sure, there's an inconceivable amount of work to be done, but hey! "Poco a poco" as the Spaniards say. A better update will be had this coming weekend. In the meantime, if you're wondering what a Duke MAT graduate student reads, check out my recently updated shelf on goodreads shelf (an ever broadening shelf, it seems):

http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/6164533?shelf=grad-school-year-at-duke

¡Hasta pronto!
-S.

Week One: Readingforever and "the triangle"

Excitement. Stoked-ness. Angst. Over-caffeination. Readingforever. Snacks. Eccentricity. Hot.

These real and fake words sum up my first week of classes in Duke University. 

Firstly, let me say that I can already tell with absolute confidence that I am in the right place. My teachers are fantastic. My classes and classmates are engaging, intelligent, and interesting. Durham, while confusing as hell to navigate, is already starting to feel like home. I've been here for something like 2 weeks now, have explored half a dozen cafés and been to a Durham Bulls baseball game. I joined the frighteningly athletic crowd that walks around East Campus's "wall." I even went to Biscuitville. But this, my friends, is only the beginning. 

I met my mentor teacher on Monday at student orientation and she told me that one of her colleagues used to have this sign on her door:

This is already my reality. Yet, at the same time, forgoing my social life for awhile allows me to bask in the grand ideal of an intensely disciplined academic life: too much coffee, depleting eyesight from an excess of reading, rapidly declining social skills, and a overly-optimistic study schedule that is always in danger of being sabotaged by napping. This is all for a university that I don't owe my true allegiance to for I have yet to buy their token t-shirt (NOTE: I've of course been waiting to see if giving thousands of dollars to the graduate program would earn me a free one, but, alas, it appears I'm mistaken.). However, this cheap-assery is easily made up for by the fact that all MAT students get free unlimited Keurig coffee in the office. There is a God. 

This week's cool and useful discoveries: 

1. I can park for free in front of a retirement home near campus to rob Duke of a $100+ parking pass.

2. There is an excellent Zen garden café with delicious coffee ironically located next to Super Walmart (see photo).

3. Planning a class is not at all an intuitive process. 

4. The homemade raspberry danishes from the farmer's market are quite possibly God's gift to humanity. 

From now until mid-August it seems that my sole purpose in life is to read, write, and research, so if you don't hear from me apart from this blog for awhile, you know what I'll be doing. Until next week!

-S.

An Optimistic Beginning

You Shall Above All Things
you shall above all things be glad and young.
For if you're young,whatever life you wear

it will become you;and if you are glad
whatever's living will yourself become.
Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:
i can entirely her only love

whose any mystery makes every man's
flesh put space on;and his mind take off time

that you should ever think,may god forbid
and(in his mercy)your true lover spare:
for that way knowledge lies,the foetal grave
called progress,and negation's dead undoom.

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

 --E.E. Cummings

For the first assignment of Duke's MAT graduate program that I begin tomorrow, we have to choose a poem from the book "Teaching with Fire: Poetry that Sustains the Courage to Teach" that we will later read at orientation Monday night to introduce ourselves and how it represents out commitment to teaching. While this is a delightful assignment, it's not an easy one. I grappled with this decision and the various poems that made a strong impression on me, trying to decide which one is most appropriate to begin my teaching career. I finally went with my old friend E.E. Cummings, and here's why.

In this poem, like in many of his poems, E.E. Cummings simultaneously conveys an exactness of feeling(s) that is communicated amongst and through a series of difficult-to-decipher images. I confess that after having spent several hours with the poem, I am still unsure how to read "negation's dead undoom," and surely have not solved the mystery of "teach[ing] ten thousand stars how not to dance." However, should the meaning of this poem at once unfold itself to me, I would be denied the mystery which Cummings apparently so esteems. Life is not a series of right and wrong answers; truth can most beautifully be unique to the individual. What I take from this poem is a profound sentiment of optimism and self-affirmation. I shall be young and glad, and in doing so I will make my own way which will be right insomuch as I make it myself. I believe Cummings suggests that while along the path one surely will encounter mysteries, they are things to cherish, things that make you awestruck and alive, that make "[your] flesh put space on." He perhaps proposes in the next stanza that in this process lies knowledge, and the greatest doom along the path to enlightenment is negativity. I must be bold in all things, face change courageously, welcome perplexing mysteries and experiences. I must make my own way, for this is the only way.

I'm entering the teaching profession because I love learning, people, and especially people with passion. I love watching the influence a book or poem can have on a human being, as well as a simple conversation. I love being perplexed by life's mysteries and seeking their meaning for myself. E.E. Cummings reminds me that my commitment to teaching is equally one to life-long learning as well as one of influencing and being influenced by people. I hope to welcome life's mysteries from the start of my career through the end of it, even if I don't figure them all out by the end.

 Cheers to the start of a new and exhilarating adventure,
 -S.