Notes from a High School English Teacher: Letter to my Students

Copy of a high school teacher's letter to his students about their final freshman year writing project with an addendum of quotes:

Valediction

    IT IS OFTEN said, "words are like bullets."

    While, this may not sound true - how can a word be like a bullet? - it is VERY true.

    Our words matter. Like a bullet, words can DO something. Cause destruction. Words can cause a revolution. Words can shatter. Words rock.

    Here we have a collection of your words, strung together to make a PORTFOLIO.

Words matter.

    Writing has not yet deserved a funeral. But a resurgence.

    SO

    It has been a quirky, productive year. Even Susie Q agrees. Bon Qui Qui also concurs. Even, Mr. Roselli, that unkempt teacher, who barely gets his grades in on time and wears mixed-match clothes, seldom shaves, and looks like he is married to a coffee cup, agrees - words matter. Keep writing.

    I remember all of you:

    Especially these random things:

    1. Raised hands; 2. fixing my hair; 3. plushy fish dolls; 4. Au Revoir Les Enfants; 5. Oedipus at the Museum; 6. Mr. Hebert's benign interruptions; 7. Mr. Stabiler's talk on Greek Mythology; 8. big words; 9. "imitation is the best form of flattery"; 10. "familiarity breeds contempt"; 11. Google Hacks; smartboard mishaps; 12. "Y'all are hot (higher order thinkers)"; 13. "A MANNNNN?"; 14. literary rally champs; 15. "Hey, I know what hyperbole means!"; 16. "Thunk is my word!"; 17. "Does reading about Lady Gaga count?"; 18. "You're making us read this .... sophisticated newspaper ...?"; 19. "Can we read the Inferno? I like hell"; 20. "How can a guy survive on a lifeboat with a tiger? I mean come on."; 21. "Mr. Roselli, you need a hug?"; 22. "You know you love us."; 23. "OMG! I love that book!"; 24. "This may sound funny, but I wrote this paper last night. But, it's brilliant."; 25. "You guys are sick!"; 26. "You know, it reminds me of an episode from Sponge Bob ..."; 27. "Give me back the pen, buster."; 28. A severe whooshing sound; 29. pile of sweaters; 30. Free Writes!; 31. interactive notebooks; 32. scotch tape; 33. indecipherable handwriting; 34. chronic sleepers; 35. overachievers; 36. underachievers; 37. "Hitch your wagon to a star! Or, what's a heaven for?"; "Can you exterminate the lights, please? Or is it terminate? I can't remember." 38. There's a difference: To be is to do (Socrates); Yabba dabba doo (Fred Flintstone)
G. Roselli

New Orleans, LA

PDF Copy for Printing

What I Eavesdropped at a Recent High School Graduation

In this post, I write about what I overheard at a high school graduation I attended.

The Author as a High School Graduate

At a recent high school graduation, an honors student receives recognition for a music and science scholarship. A parent in the row behind mine, says, "That's interesting, but, what do you do with music and science? Nothing, I guess."

If we need another example of anti-intellectualism in America - there you go.

Or, it could be just ignorance. Legitimately, maybe she did not how music and science can inter-relate.

However she sussed out the situation for herself, it was still a dim reminder to me to of how much my job is often looked at askance - or in a larger view - the often conflicted view Americans have of education.

PDF Copy for Printing

Quote of the Day for a Viper

Why Madame Rawdon “was no better than a vipère”:

She became a perfect Bohemian ere long, herding with people whom it would make your  hair stand on end to meet.

William Makepeace Thackeray, - Vanity Fair

photo credit: ceillac

Is it Ethical for a Current Teacher to Publicly Write about their Job?

In this post, I write about the ethics of writing about what teachers do in our jobs. Is it right to write about what goes in the classroom?
Yes, it's ethical. Teachers should write about their jobs, not as journalists but as biased humanistic observers. It's unethical not to. With the recent outlash against teachers for not reaching the bar, teachers more than ever should write about what they do in the classroom.
Not just about education, but cliques, trends, clashes and what works and what doesn't work in the field. The department of education is cheering about the new trend, crowdsourcing.

Since education is failing, the Department of Education wants to champion this idea of great educators sharing ideas in the cloud. The problem is the bad teacher doesn't benefit from crowdsourcing. It's enough to teach most teachers how to update lesson plans.

I began to write about teaching, not as a criticism, but as logotherapy, two years ago. I've clocked 23,000 words on the subject. A book? The nut graph is this: teachers are not like Mr. Holland's Opus, but more like a beleaguered Yoda after the fall of the Jedi.

The first amendment protects my right to free speech but doesn't protect how people respond to what I write.

Can I get fired? Sure. So, I guess it depends on the writer. Can your students find your website, your article, or your blog? Sure. They can choose to agree or disagree, dispute or support. If someone disagrees isn't it the egalitarian nature of the web at work? As long as what you post is not slander, dishonesty, hate speech, or intentionally set out to harm someone (like cyber-bullying) then I think it's ok to post.

For me, I write publicly. It's pretty easy to trace my real identity. I do not claim to hide who I am.

If I were to write for a zine, a blog, a newspaper or a book, I think I deserve to be transparent.

I teach, "write to be heard" so I try to practice what I teach.

I do not include the real names of other people unless these people give me permission.

I sparingly include images of my workplace, students, logos, or anything that identifies my school. I try to write in a humanizing manner, and not merely to harangue on my own institution.

I will mention identifying information If I think such whistleblowing is for the greater good. But, I would write about the whistle-blowing and not use my website as a whistle. Proper channels should be used to expose corruption.

People are afraid of the power of writers.

The printed word is potent.

At the coffee stand, yesterday, the world geography teacher and I commiserate. He says I don't commiserate enough. I tell him about my writing. He says, "You know, I'm tired of this gig. The kids. You know. They're like robots."

His remarks strike me as remarkable. Here's a fairly intelligent guy, good looking, head on his shoulders, but I see the same dispassionate face in him that I see in my own face.

It's pretty rough out in the field. I don't see as many teacher bloggers as there are librarian bloggers. No teacher friends commiserating on the web. We need to represent. I'm sure our students write about us on the web, so we need a national writer's project upsurge to write about the class.

In France, a teacher wrote about his experience as a suburban French teacher in Paris. His story was made into a film, "Entre Les Murs" (The Class). It's a sobering chronicle. He does not represent himself as a champion in the classroom, but rather as a beaten down, yet prodigious, educator. Like my coffee buddy and I. All of us intellectually curious. But what beleaguers us?

Thoughts from a Newly Minted Teacher: It Ain't Mr. Holland's Opus

Teaching is fun though. You feel like yer making a difference - but it ain't Mr. Holland's Opus.

“A Mere Labyrinth of Letters”: Preoccupations of Librarianship and Epistemological Conjecturing in Borges’ “The Library of Babel”

An illustration of the Library of Babel by Erik Desmazieres 

Librarians share two major philosophical preoccupations:

1. The idea of a total library
2. The futility of such a library.

Librarians are “total” in their desire for a perfect, or a complete library, but, unfortunately, the totalitarian nature of librarians has fossilized the notion that if it isn’t in the library then it doesn’t exist. The "if it is not in the records it does not exist" idea is as old as recorded history. The promise of complete, total, accessible knowledge (the first preoccupation) is shadowed by the librarian's futile wading through miles and miles of totality (the hell) to search and find that one piece of totality that one is looking. The total nature of the catalog is supposed to mirror precisely what is on the shelf. But the maddening job of the cataloger is to constantly check the catalog against what is on the shelf and fix any errors; this process has the hope of finish but is bound to be endlessly nonfinished. Librarians spend hours cleaning records, assigning call numbers, shelving books in an endless cycle of return. This nature of librarianship is actually not only the preoccupations of Library Science but of Western Philosophy in general.  Ever since the philosopher Thales posited that there must be something material that underlies all existence — we will forgive him for positing water — philosophers have searched for a univocity, or an absolute to explain that which undergirds reality. Of course, the philosophical search comes short. There is a futility in this search (think of Adam futile search to name all animals or Aristotle's futile search to give names to everything) although it does not cancel out the desire to search. That, my dear, is the paradox of the quest.

Note on New Orleans Nightlife: Leaving the Bars

Nude Descending a Staircase

Now, in the city of New Orleans, a good time can be broken down into twos:

Hang out at a bar

Or

Hang out at a house (bar)

Both are pretty much the same choice in a city that looks with suspicion on people who don't drink.

If you tell your friends you're not drinking tonight, they'll inevitably say, "Oh, you don't drink?" and then whisper to each other, "Is he an alcoholic?"

Now, those who drink a lot are certainly prone to rules. If you hang out at bars, you'll find it's common practice to treat the bartender like a god. Don't mess with her (or him). Or you'll be kicked out.

Walking down South Carrolton Avenue near the Riverbend on most nights in the Spring, it is easy to find people outside drinking, grilling, walking, drinking - the local bars are filled and people are sitting out on patio decks in front of restaurants (this city has more food than the Vatican has indulgences) or coffee shops.

There's a grocery store near Dante and Cohn streets where people get a six pack: people ride their bikes along Carrolton, drink a bit, eat crayfish at the Fly (the park behind the Audubon Zoo). My buddy's getting married this coming weekend. He's having his birthday at the fly, a cozy municipal park with an unobstructed view of the Mississippi River.

A bit of nostalgia pervades this post.

This post is a valediction of sorts. I'm saying farewell. So, I conjure up images of a city.

New Orleans sleeps. The denizens here are notorious for the eazy but we still show up for work and we still dress snazzy when the occasion merits it.

It's funny. For a city that places emphasis on laissez-faire, it's easy to deconstruct that concept and rather interpret the city as rather insular and rigid.

We do party here. But our festivity borders on the vicissitudes of human suffering. Just today, a man doused in a sheen of silver paint loiters in front of the Robert's on S. Claiborne Avenue. He looks like a misplaced French Quarter performer. He shuffles around the parking lot as if lost.

On Facebook, a random user bemoans an LA Times article that paints a laissez-faire city more interested in the beat of tourist dollars and the mambo rather than collaborating to stop the oil leak in the gulf.

"Oh, we don't deal with crude oil, just the end consumer's access to gasoline."

Why so angry? The city is a paradox. When the mirror is put to the Cresent City's face we balk and turn our convivial nature to indignance.

Here the party scene is a masked insouciance for opting out of social responsibility. What can you do but pop another shot, neat? I think I finally understand Walker Percy's quote about dispelling anomie with a glass of bourbon. He must've lived here!

We love our traditions and culture (laissez-faire) but fail to wake up from our Mardi Gras slumber and DO something.

Our city is beautiful. The city struts herself like boys on a bar. We pop dollars (at Liuzza's last night, a feverish 30 something women showed we here stash of dollars she saved for her vacation here) and a group of petroleum engineers in front of John Besh's August raved about food but wouldn't even answer a question about the danger of oil exploration. The metaphor for the city (a parallax view) is of the nude descending a staircase.

PDF Copy for Printing