As a writing teacher and a college writing center director, this project by Dave Eggers really caught my eye. He set up a storefront in his neighborhood in SF to help kids with writing. I saw Eggers last March at a conference in SF. He’s a smart and motivated guy (and a helluva good writer). This project of his is awesome. I can see myself doing something like this one day. Sometimes I feel like my life as a teacher can be a little bigger. I teach college writing, direct a college writing center, and help my son with his learning (some call that homeschooling), but expanding that to an even larger community might be really nice. I’ve been thinking a lot about community lately, and service, and a distinct lack of it in many places. Anyway, this project got me thinking. Check it out.
I’m a homeschooling parent. (Lately I’ve taken to calling that life learning, not homeschooling, but that’s another conversation.) When you say you home school (and the like), people take that as kind of criticism of mainstream schooling because, well, at least in my case, it is. There are many problems with the mainstream system, I think. The idea that it is a system in the true sense of the word is part of the problem. But I don’t think that means one should completely separate themselves from those within that system. Sometimes we life learners catch ourselves perpetuating a kind of homeschooling snobbery–most likely as a kind of defense mechanism against the prejudices we sometimes face. Of course, that is not the answer.
One thing that has attracted me to what Eggers is doing is that he’s bringing to public school kids what many life learners and homeschoolers strive for everyday–a real sense community, purpose, and authentic voice. The kids at 826 Valencia Street are really there–doing real and rewarding work, letting their voices be heard, enjoying the respect of adults who are really interested in what they have to say. These kids are participating in what Egger’s refers to as cultivating democracy and enlightened lives through the participation in community (and in the case of 826 Valencia via the primacy of the written word). These values are closely aligned with those of my family as we negotiate this thing called homeschooling and learning with others.
Tags: community building · teaching · writing · writing centers
The semester has finally come to a close, and that means there is another installment of “
This I Know: Students Speaking with Conviction.” Check out the site, give a listen, and leave a comment or two.
This is a project that I’ve been running for the past few years. It’s based on the national essay project “This I Believe.” Students are encouraged in my version of the project to articulate as clearly as they can a core belief of theirs–something that is essential to who they are–and to tell us how they came to this belief. We do this in the spirit of listening to one another–not to proselytize.
Tags: assignments · audio · classes · student work
It’s getting harder and harder for me to keep fighting the good fight–to expect anything other than mediocrity from me, from my students, and from the apathetic masses barely shuffling through life. The other day, I received this all-caps e-mail from a student’s mother. I changed the case because the all-caps hurt my eyes.
Dear Sir:
After reviewing what my son has been discussing in your class and viewing your website, I have advised him to drop your class. Maybe COM 101 has changed somewhat since I took the class in 1982 at [...], but I find your website way over a young adult’s comprehension. You are teaching at [...] in the south suburbs of Chicago. A junior college.
I also object that your website advertised via [...] faculty website is tied into personal info and pictures of your family. My son and I feel that your class is way over his head and that he is not learning the basic writing skills which is what COM 101 should be. Maybe you should teach at Berkley, Yale or Harvard.
Honestly, after reading this, I was offended on so many levels, I was without speech. In some ways, I was impressed that one could, in such a brief message, offend so many groups of people while simultaneously demonstrating such ignorance and gall. When my head stopped spinning, I had many choice words, but I resisted. After a few days my anger settled into a kind of aching sadness. What does one say to this? Education has failed this parent, and, I’m afraid, will fail her son.
I did not send a response e-mail. FERPA laws prevent me from doing so, as I can neither confirm nor deny that a student is even enrolled in my class, let alone discuss his or her progress, with anyone other than the student or an official of the College. I can, however, exercise my First Amendment right to free speech to respond publicly to this message (removing all identifying information, of course). So, here is my response to this parent and all others of similar ilk.
Dear Parents,
You love your children. Of this, I have no doubt. When you send them off to school–teetering under the weight of their first backpacks–you want only the best for them. I too am a parent. I know what it is like to stand with bated breath, holding yourself somewhere between protector and emancipator. We want to keep them safe, and we want to set them free–to watch them fly. To reconcile these contradictions we teeter ourselves on the precarious ledge of parenthood.
Your children are capable of amazing things, potential beyond what you might imagine–for yourself and for them. It is challenge that taps one’s potential, stretches the possibilities, and lets you grow. To put children (and 18-year-old young adults) in boxes, to load upon them baggage of your own creation is to pass on a legacy of limitation. Chicago South Side, junior college, young adult–these labels used as excuses for a lack of drive, ability, and achievement are offensive. To lower your expectations of what your children can do is to savagely clip their wings.
The Community College is a place of tremendous possibility–of great potential. People of all walks of life come to pursue an education here, to grow personally, professionally, and intellectually. To “dumb down” the curriculum would be to bow one’s head to all those who ever told you the life you want is impossible. A course like COM101 is a transfer-level college course. This means the credit for this course transfers to four-year institutions–even Berkley, Yale, and Harvard. The standards for such a course are not and should not be lower if you pay less in tuition, if you are young, or even if you are from the south side of Chicago.
Paying tuition and sitting in the classroom is not the same as gaining or earning an education. Contemporary consumer culture and acquisitive mindsets have students (and their parents) believing that one can buy an education and that teachers are agents of a business that serves customers. Teachers worth their salt are not agents of business. Rather, they are committed members of both the academic and the broader community; they have families–and some even have websites where they proudly post photos of their families, where they voice their politics, and where they vent their frustrations. They draw few lines between their work as a teacher and the rest of their lives. It is who they are. They sit, late into the night, reading their students’ words and planning lessons –in the hopes young minds will be challenged to engage eagerly, to think, and to grow–despite their parents’ best intentions.
Truly,
Michael S. McGuire
There is a bigotry of low expectations that is not soft but as fierce and as destructive as the worst kind of prejudice, as it cuts away at our vast human potential.
Tags: parenting · student work · teaching
