The New Year

On the first day of 2014, Brian and I hiked Mt. Rogers, the highest peak in Virginia. 

Although it is not comparable to the bare and jagged western peaks in the Rockies, or even the rugged peaks of the northern Appalachians, Mt. Rogers allows gorgeous views of a living landscape in the Blue Ridge. The winter sunshine welcomed us, so we were warm even in the wind, and as we hiked we found ourselves breathless not from the strain but from the sights and sounds of the mountain. Wild ponies greeted us (really, they just wanted our lunches), and clouds moved across the blue sky.

The branches of trees and bushes, coated in ice, sparkled in the light, and, when touched by the wind, clinked together, filling the woods and fields with sounds like tinkling bells. It echoed poetry: 

I feel them, hear them even now,

The syllables of aspen leaves,

The words of waterfalls,

The stanzas of stones.

They make the whole world vibrate. (Smith, 2003, p. 578)

I felt connected, whole, and engaged in the vibrant and vibrating world around me. 

Filled with awe and wonder, I turned to Brian and said, “I want to feel like this every day.” I was working hard, climbing over rocks and balancing on stony, icy trails. I needed constant awareness to maintain my footing, and still, I was able to look around, amazed at every turn of the trail or hilltop as the valleys and views opened up around us. Every day, I meant it. I want to cultivate that sense of intentional amazement, a level of continuous effort that also affords a view of wonderment, of being in the moment, of moving forward toward a summit, filled with gratitude and with no better place to be. I am so grateful to have started the year in this way, and I hope, going onward, I can keep that momentum.

Smith, B. (2003). The language of poetry. In S. Ballard & P. Hudson (Eds.), Listen here: women writing in Appalachia (p. 578). Lexington, KY: U of Kentucky P.

All photos courtesy of B. Ricketts. 

My Reading and Writing Life: Digital Story

This week, in the English language arts methods course that I teach at Virginia Tech, students were to complete a digital story, a kind of reading and writing autobiography, that tells viewers something about who they are in terms of literacy. Because I believe it is important to write alongside my students, and also to understand the parameters of assignments I require in my courses, I made a video, too. 

Although I have made digital stories before, this is the first time I have incorporated an interview. Doing so changed the way I drafted--and did so drastically. Typically I write and record a script, insert images, and add text and music last. This time, I started with fifteen minutes of recorded interview, added images, and then filled in with script that elaborated on the interview discussion. It isn't perfect, but it works, and it tells something about me as a reader in the process. 

What do you think? 

The Present: Being Present

I am a little ashamed to admit this, but I love birthdays. I love cake, I love the way that a birthday honors one person’s becoming, I love the way that birthdays give us a chance to reflect upon who we are and to enter into a day of beginning each year. I love celebrating other people’s birthdays, and I love celebrating my birthday, too. Yesterday marked the final year of my 30s, and I spent my day celebrating and reflecting.

Bright morning on the trail...

Brian is new to Blacksburg (two weeks here) and still wrestling the alligator of finding lucrative and meaningful work. Because he is living somewhere in the application and interview process for more than five postings at Tech and countless others elsewhere, we decided that this would be a purchase-minimal birthday, which is fine with me. He did bake me a fabulous (and gluten free) cake, and, more significantly, he gave me the gift of a leisurely and solitary nine-mile trail run at Pandapas Pond. I feel blessed to have a partner who loves me enough to leave me alone when I need to be by myself. He was there, on his bike, but he was doing his own thing while I ran along the Poverty Creek trail.

The present that comes from trail running, for me, is the gift of really being present. A trail run is different from one on the road or paved path because rocks, roots, and other obstacles mean that I must be engaged and attentive to my steps and surroundings. I never listen to music on the trail—to do so means I am not prepared for bikers and bears, and I must be aware of what may be coming toward me or upon me as I move. Trail running makes me listen and look, feel, and be fully.

On the trail more than anywhere, I find myself a place of joy and play, where I can enter into a flow—mind, body, breath, and often, like today, a writing flow. So, yesterday, in a state of creative play, I began to make meaning, to problem-solve, and to compose.I wrote and reflected while running, “seeing things as if for the first time, seeing the familiar as unfamiliar, the common as uncommon”... and “bringing to that running, that play the attitude of the child, the perception of the poet. Being a beginner with a beginner's mind, a beginner's heart, a beginner's body” (Sheehan, 1998, p. 119). With my beginner’s mind and in the present, then, I was able to move forward—beginning again, reborn, on my birthday.

Reference

Sheehan, G. (1998). Running and being: The total experience (20th Anniversary ed.) RedBank, NJ: Second Wind II. 

Creating a Podcast: This I Believe

The first major assignment in the English language arts methods course I teach at Tech is a little overwhelming at first glance. Students are to create a “This I Believe" Podcast (you know, like on NPR). ReadWriteThink has a fantastic lesson unit on creating and posting these podcasts. This unit presents a good way to get to know ourselves, to get to know one another, and to take a critical look at a unit plan, complete with instructional objectives, state standards, daily lesson plans, and assessment rubrics, as well as modifications for different kinds of learners.

Because I believe (See what I did there?) in learning by doing and also in being able to do what I ask my students to do, I created a podcast, too. I am including it here. I used Garage Band to record and edit (I think I could have done a better job editing--there are a couple of hiccoughs, but hey...), posted to Sound Cloud, and easily inserted the audio track as a widget. I was surprised at how streamlined the process was, all done through my Google account. Composing the piece (doing the writing, always) and keeping it under five minutes (doing the revision, always worse) was the hardest part. In spite of feeling initially overwhelmed, I enjoyed the process. I hope my students did, too. 

Anyway, I hope you’ll listen, maybe offer feedback (even measure my work against the rubric, if you like). I think it’s a good first try. 

A little Fugazi for your Friday: “You can’t be what you were…”

I have loved Fugazi's song "Bad Mouth" from the time I first heard it as a rebellious adolescent. My understanding of it has changed and evolved, but it has remained a favorite. On my long run this week, I remembered how much I love this song when it came on my shuffling iPod. I don’t think Ian MacKaye had teaching and teachers in mind when he wrote it, but “Bad Mouth” got me thinking about teacher identity, growth, and learning—at least in the rambling, non-linear way that both running and music help me to think. And, yes, I do recognize that my interpretation here is colored, at 8 miles into my run, with my own head full of teaching and learning, but still... 

My pace fell into patterned in rhythm with the first few lines: “You can’t be what you were/so you better start being just what you are…” (MacKaye, 1989). I pondered the wisdom of these words, thinking about how learning changes us, and as we progress through life stages and role, we can’t go back. I thought about my own journey from English major to pre-service teacher to classroom teacher to doctoral student to teacher educator—I remember being all the places I have been, but it is essential that I embrace who and what I am now in order to do my best work.

As I continued to listen, heart pounding and legs moving, I remembered a time in a professional development session I was giving, in which a veteran teacher told me “I have been teaching this way for thirty years, and I’m not going to change now. You can’t change me. “ In my experience, this kind of negativity is common among discouraged teachers who experience the continual flood of new techniques and technologies that manifest in state or district mandated trends, which then go quickly by the wayside. The insecurity seeded by unsupported continual change often makes for negative talk, which leads to negative thinking, which leads to a sense of “stuckness,” which is clearly what the veteran teacher in my PD session was feeling. As MacKaye expresses, “You can't be what you were/No movement, no movement, no movement/In a bad mouth/It betrays a bad mind” (1989).

This negative thinking—“no movement”—can affect our growth as teachers, as writers, and as learners.  We can’t be what we were—we must move—life must move us, yet finding flow in flux is often terrifyingly difficult. 21^st century students are comfortable with continual technological change and a constant flood of information—and, as teachers, we must be too. This means, sometimes, being positive even when we feel afraid, going forward even when we feel like standing still. We have to “be what we are” as we change and grow: learning changes us.

A goal, then, for myself as a teacher and for the pre-service teachers who are learning with me is this: to move from a place of being stuck and (unproductively) still to a place of hope, positivity, and embracing movement, where practice and philosophy align, so that I am “living the life/that [I’m] talking about…” (MacKaye, 1989).

Reference

MacKaye, I. (1989). Bad Mouth [Recorded by Fugazi]. On 13 Songs [CD]. Washington, DC: Dischord. 

Summer Reading, Future Reading

Next week is the start of classes here at Virginia Tech. I’m sitting by the open screen door with a cup of hot tea and wearing a long sleeved shirt because the easy breeze blowing through our yard has the first cool hints of the turning season. The crickets are chirping in the underbrush, and apples were fresh at the farmer’s market this morning. It almost feels like Fall, and I am ready to begin my new work, but also I am not.

Soon, I will meet my English education students for the first time.  We will be reading and writing and learning together. I will be asking them to blog, too, and their first post due is the topic “Summer Reading, Future Reading.” Because I read and write with my students, their blog topics for class will be mine here, as well. And reflecting on the reading I have done this summer seems a good transition into my new role in this new place.

This is the first summer in several years that I have been given the time for pleasure reading. Having just finished four years of graduate school, I have spent the better part of my summers reading books related to work and study. The summer I was writing my comprehensive exams, I read 60 books—all related in some way to my evolving dissertation proposal. Last summer I was beginning the research work of my study, so again, my reading was related to that, when I had time to read.

But this summer, with my dissertation defended and submitted at the beginning of May, I was allowed the freedom to read in ways I have not in years. First, I read books that were related to what I had been reading—habits die hard, I guess. I found myself engrossed in David Abram’s phenomenological work Becoming Animal, which was beautiful. I devoured Being Caribou, a non-fiction account of a couple who follow the annual caribou migration from Canada to Alaska. It was fascinating. Then, I read a book on mindfulness given to me by a former student. I was working on some publications and conference proposals, so, I would read a book, take a short break, and work on something else until I found another book.

But then, something happened. I discovered that one of the public libraries at which I hold an account allows patrons to “borrow” e-books, and the bottom dropped out. After that day, I carried my iPad everywhere, ate with it on the table during meals. I knew Brian might have been terrified if he had woken to find me reading at 4:00AM, face illuminated as if by a campfire horror story flashlight trick, but I did it anyway. I read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I read a Jonathan Safran Foer novel. And then—on a recommendation—I downloaded the first book of A Song of Ice and Fire series, otherwise known as A Game of Thrones. I was lost.

Have you ever wanted so badly to finish a book—not to get to the end—but, instead, to get your life back? So stands my romance with George R. R. Martin and his smutty, schlocky fantasy series. For weeks, obsessed, I did little else besides lose myself in the drama of battles, romance, incest, wildings, others, lions, direwolves, dragons. I doing so, I became again the little girl I was, curled under the sheets with a flashlight, engrossed in Madeline L’Engle or Ursula LeGuin, reading all night, reading all day, even while my mother yelled at me to go outside and play. I read all four of the first Ice and Fire books without a break between, discovered there was a fifth, and then I read it too.

I had forgotten what it was like to be able to totally leave myself behind, so deeply engaged in a text that the world fades away. As a child, I loved that feeling, but now it is a little unsettling. After five books worth, I found myself missing me, even as much as I (ashamedly) loved the story and saw pieces of myself reflected in the characters.

Now, with a few days left before the start of the semester, I have real reading to do—pedagogy, YAL, and more related to my research. And, perhaps more importantly, I have myself and my world toward which to turn. Frankly, I feel I need a break from summer reading. The sixth Ice and Fire book is not out yet, and that is a good thing. I am not even going to look for it until next summer.