Education Narrative

I wanted to try my hand at writing an education narrative, and thought it might also be a good opportunity to experiment with the audio blog format. Unfortunately, even though I recorded the narrative as an audio blog, WordPress won’t let me host it here on this site (without upgrading to a paid account). Darn and blast! So, I’ll post the text anyway, and try to figure out the audio file later. The written narrative itself was another attempt at creative writing, so please be gracious as you read it and recall that creative writing is not usually my “thing.”

One of the assignments that my English 111 students will be tasked with next semester is to write an education narrative. In other words, they will be instructed to “narrate a significant event impacting their education and to analyze how this experience has influenced their thinking, values and beliefs.” Because I will be requiring students to complete the assignment, I thought it would be interesting for me to try writing my own education narrative. So, here goes…

As the daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter of numerous school teachers, education has always played an important role in my life. Both of my parents are college graduates with successful careers in their fields, and my siblings and I were always encouraged to consider attending university after we graduated from high school. The experiences that have shaped me as a learner and a student are probably, for the most part, very similar to the experiences shared my many of my colleagues. The one distinction that sticks out in my mind is that I studied at home for three years while I was in elementary and middle school, with my mom as my teacher. When you tell people that you were homeschooled, it evokes a wide range of responses, from awe to shock to disbelief. “But you’re so well adjusted,” people have said. Some immediately question my mother’s credentials, and when I tell them she was an elementary school teacher by trade, they often breathe a sigh of relief, as if that fact alone were capable of saving me from a lifetime of incompetence and ignorance. The truth is, my mother was (and still is) a wonderful teacher. She always made detailed lesson plans that combined the fundamentals of a sound education (mathematics, science, English and history) with engaging experiments, field trips, and art projects. In addition to our schoolwork at home, we spent countless afternoons at the ice skating rink and swimming pool, in order to meet our physical education requirements. I never felt deprived as a homeschooler. In fact, I remember crying and protesting loudly when my parents announced they were enrolling us back in public school. By studying at home, my brother and I were able to complete our homework in concentrated intervals, finishing much earlier than regular schools. Once we did return to a public education, we couldn’t believe how long the days were. What took us three to four hours to do at home, was now stretched out into an eight hour day. I recall complaining extensively during those first few weeks of transition, convinced that my parents and the entire school system were set on torturing me with a slow and steady death of mathematical equations, writing assignments and extraneous classes – such as the homeroom hour we were subjugated to every other day.

People frequently feel sorry for homeschoolers, because they believe that by homeschooling one has restricted choices and a lack of variety in their studies. On the contrary, the opposite was true for me. My mother knew that both my brother and I excelled at English and history, so she allowed us to spend extra time on those subjects. She pushed us to read extensively, and we quickly absorbed whatever she gave us, often breezing through our history textbooks like novels. During the first year that we homeschooled, I remember being assigned my very first “literary” work of fiction. Up to that point I had read plenty of the Children’s Illustrated Classics, The Hardy Boys and all things Roald Dahl, but I hadn’t yet been stretched to read a lengthy novel, in its entirety. Knowing this, my mother provided me with a copy of Marjorie Kinnan Rawling’s The Yearling, and instructions to write a multi-page report after finishing the book. I agonized over the assignment at first, finding the novel’s opening pages quite dry, but eventually I became fixated by the story, and proudly told everyone I met about the feat I had accomplished in reading the book to its end. Completing the project was a turning point in my education, because I suddenly realized that if I could finish The Yearling, I could surely read just about anything. Shortly after that experience, my brother and I took part in a summer reading program at the local library that forever cemented our commitment to being voracious readers and knowledge gatherers.

So, while I understand that homeschooling isn’t the ideal learning environment for everyone, for me it was a challenge that refined my character as a student, developed my love of language, literature, and history, and ultimately focused me toward a career in education. In looking back, I now realize that the three years I studied at home had a huge impact on my values and ideals as both a student and a future teacher, because they gave me the confidence to pursue knowledge and the temperament necessary to complete the tasks set before me. My education is by no means over; for I started something fifteen years ago with the completion of The Yearling that I’m proud to say is going to take a lifetime to finish.

A Run-In With Humanity

The following is an experiment in creative writing…

As I drove home from the university today, I had a run-in with humanity.

Now, I’ll admit that by the end of a long day at school, I’m not usually the most focused driver on the road, but I certainly try to remain aware of the other vehicles and people around me. While making my way towards the parking lot exit, I slowed to let a pedestrian walk by. As I watched the female student moving past my car, I couldn’t help but notice that she looked directly through my windshield, into my eyes, and – well – she snarled at me. I broke eye contact with her for a brief moment, as if to give her the benefit of the doubt that I hadn’t actually seen what I had seen, but when I looked back, her face was still wearing an undeniable and unpleasant expression of contempt. I drove away completely perplexed, wondering what I had done to offend the woman. Had I almost hit her with my car? I knew that I had not, since I had seen her far before she walked in front of my car, and had really gone out of my way to slow down and let her pass. Had I been unkind in some way, so as to deserve her ill will? Apart from that brief moment, I had never seen the woman before, so I was fairly positive that I had never intentionally done anything to mistreat her. The more I retraced the steps leading up to our encounter, the less likely it seemed that I was at all responsible for her obvious disdain. As I drove onto the main highway that leads toward my house, I continued to think over the brief episode. Insecurities about myself as a driver – and even as a person – surfaced, so that I spent the next twenty minutes questioning what had actually happened and replaying in my head any possible causes of the scenario.

At one point, as if shaking myself out of an inadvertent trance, I recognized that my harried reflection on such a chance encounter was becoming increasingly personal. Was it my imperfect humanity that had caused the mean expression on that passerby’s face, or could it be that something deeper was at stake? Was I really so imbued with self-doubt that each look or word of criticism from another would immediately inspire waves of internal conflict?

The more that I thought about it, the more I realized that I had certainly experienced a run-in with humanity that afternoon. But, unfortunately, the humanity I had run in to wasn’t that of a passing stranger’s; it was my own.

Free Write: e.e. cummings and Paul Heilker

“An essay is a singular weighing out, an inquiry into the value, meaning, and true nature of experience; it is a private experiment carried out in public.”

-Scott Russell Sanders, “The Singular First Person”

Several graduate students in our English department have decided to start a Writing Group, so that we can meet once a week and provide feedback on each other’s work. At our first Writing Group meeting this week, we tried Heilker’s poetry warm-up exercise, in order to get our “creative writing juices” flowing (see Paul Heilker’s The Essay: Theory and Pedagogy for an Active Form). Heather chose her favorite poet – e.e. cummings – and Gwen and I took notes as she read one of his poems, line by line (Heather paused between lines to let us write down whatever came to mind). The goal of Heilker’s exercise is to get a writer to think and essay about the internal dialogue that occurs when he/she approaches and tries to understand a poem. What follows is my attempt at the exercise….

“When I realized that Heather would be reading an e.e. cummings poem, I began to speculate that the poem’s content would have something to do with politics, human interaction or conflict, and/or modernism. I also felt confident in assuming that the poem’s readability would be affected by its lack of standard grammar, its free verse and its disregard for traditional poetic forms.”

i thank you God for most this amazing day:

“The poem opens, surprisingly enough to me, with a benediction of sorts. The speaker incites the name of God, and I start to think that this particular poem will be less of a commentary on the condition of humankind and more of a personal reflection about spirituality and life, in general.”

for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

“The tone seems to take a more fanciful approach at this point. Nature enters as the poem’s new focus, although an essence of spirituality remains, and cummings’ use of color and movement clearly animate the poem.”

and a blue true dream of sky;

“At this point, I can picture the speaker standing on a porch at the front of his/her house and looking out – towards the ‘greenly spirits of trees’ – and then looking up – toward the ‘blue true’ sky. His/her role might be that of a peripheral observer, but he/she is not disengaged from the lively world around him.”

and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes

“It’s almost as if words fail the speaker at the end of this stanza and his/her most honest means of expression is simply to end on affirmation – yes!”

(i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth

day of life and love and wings: and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth)

“I find myself wondering what the speaker means by ‘i who have died.’ There is a type of coming alive that takes place every morning, when we rise from sleep to wakefulness – but could this be what the speaker means? I can’t help but think of the phrase, carpe diem, in the sense that THIS is the day that all things good and limitless can happen. THIS is the day for the sun to celebrate its birthday and for the speaker to rejoice their shared rebirth.”

how should tasting touching seeing hearing

breathing any–lifted from the no

of all nothing–human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

“Infinite possibilities exist for this now life-filled planet and speaker. No thing or person capable of tasting, touching, seeing, hearing or breathing has the right to doubt the existence of an ‘unimaginable You.’ I like the ‘merely’ that cummings inserts between human and being, as if he wants to reemphasize how dwarfed and insignificant humankind is in comparison to the God responsible for creating all amazing days, tree spirits and blue skies.”

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

“Was e.e. cummings religious? He writes of a knowledge or a means of knowing that is stirred by nature, and by the speaker’s reflection on the open displays of beauty that he/she is witness to. But the speaker is quick to give God (‘You’) credit for the day occurring all around him/her. Also, cummings implies that there are levels of understanding that can only be obtained once the ears of your ears or the eyes of your eyes experience a form of consciousness. Once the innermost, deepest part of a human is truly awake and responsive, he or she will attain a god-consciousness. The subtler implication of cummings’ poem is that there are those who remain spiritually asleep, unable to share in his joy at the true vivacity of nature.”

Time and [a Second] Space

While reading this week’s assigned essays and writing my review article, I couldn’t help but notice how often the themes of time and space reoccur. From the beginning, Paul Heilker refers to time in his definition of chrono-logic, calling this distinct method of progressive (although somewhat spontaneous) writing a “logic of time (first this, then this, then this, then this…)” (23). In other words, essayists don’t adhere to the traditional writing process of making an argument and then strengthening it with supportive, unified sub-arguments. Heilker suggests that Montaigne, for example, wrote about the “uniqueness, mutability, and discontinuity” of time, believing that his ideas were bound together by a chronological progression of ideas, not classical, reason-based dialogues.

Kirklighter also noticed Montaigne’s “conversational writing form that [included] accidental turns and abrupt shifts intrinsic to extemporaneous speaking” (23). The spontaneity that she finds in his essays speaks of a disregard for always commenting on the most current issues in the “here and now,” and allows the writer the freedom to record his or her thoughts as they come.

It’s almost as if the physical and personal act of writing of an essay creates a separate time and space (a second space) in which the author’s ideas function and take shape. In her essay, “The Future is Now,” Katherine Ann Porter appears keenly aware of the passage of time and the “silence and space of the endless universe,” where the writer’s imagination flourishes (195). Although she herself worries about the future of humankind because of new technology that facilitates nuclear war and the atom bomb, Porter also understands that “what we have is a world not on the verge of flying apart, but an uncreated one – still in shapeless fragments waiting to be put together properly” (198). Rather than dwell on the seemingly dismal present, Porter looks toward an unformed, undiscovered future (and not to add further confusion, but she seems to look toward the future while believing that the present will continue as it is). She learns to take her cues from a neighbor who disregards the outside anxiety of the Cold War (the outside space) and steadily refinishes a table. “He was full of the deep, right, instinctive, human belief that he and the table were going to be around together for a long time … At the very least, he is doing something he feels is worth doing now…” [emphasis added] (195). Porter expertly weaves the concepts of past, present and future into her essay, so that the reader is constantly aware of the unavoidable (but not to be feared) passing of time.

Gretel Ehrlich’s essay clearly describes the vast, open spaces of Wyoming as physical locations. But she intertwines the concept of physical openness and space with personal solitude and an emptiness that facilitates reflection. Even her essay, which talks about solace, creates a place in the space of the future for her ideas to continue gaining readership. Rachel Carson points to the marginalized space of the seashore and tries to draw connections between the writer’s world (or space) and nature: “…[In] nature, time and space are relative matters, perhaps most truly perceived subjectively in occasional flashes of insight, sparked by such a magical hour and place” (219).

I’m not entirely certain why space and time are such prominent themes in the readings, but I enjoy drawing the connections and “philosophizing” as to what it all could mean.

Resisting Definition

As our class moves closer and closer toward a working definition of the essay, I feel less and less confident about my own ability to write one. There seems to be an element of creativity involved in essay writing that I had hoped to avoid by focusing my academic efforts on rhetoric-based studies. Contrary to the opinion of most students, I find the inherent structure and logical progression of the five-paragraph essay safe. Something about my literary brain responds positively to writing that has a clear direction (i.e. thesis) and various evidence or text-based statements that support the essay’s main proposal (i.e. supporting arguments). I suppose that I enjoy being convinced of truth – that what the author has worked to prepare for me is either unquestionably correct or moving in that direction. Even if the writer’s ideas are mostly opinion-based or entirely fictional, I still want to be persuaded by the essay’s end that he or she knows their subject-matter and is forming concrete ideas about it in some way or another.

But to suggest, as T.W. Adorno does, that the essay resists definition and “reflects a childlike freedom that catches fire, without scruple, on what others have already done,” (152) is to move the writer far beyond the formulaic conventions learned in basic composition studies. In moving beyond those principles I was taught as an English undergraduate, I suddenly find myself in unfamiliar territory. If an essay isn’t five paragraphs, what is it? Far from reassuring me that the essay is a definitive entity, structured according to certain qualitative characteristics, Georg Lukacs merely concedes that “the essay has a form which separates it, with the rigour of a law, from all other art forms [sic]” (2). In fact, both Adorno and Lukacs issue heavy-handed and conclusive statements about what an essay is, or is not, without actually leaving me any means to write an essay for myself. Their essayistic theories are, like most theories, totally impractical. But I don’t want to be bombarded by lofty, poetic theories about writing. I want a knowable set of criteria that defines for me in bold, bulleted points what an essay is and how I go about writing one. Is that too much to ask…?