Writing

I can't write. You may think this is what I'm doing now, but you're wrong. There are words, and then there are words. There are no words for what I want to write about. I have started this post four times already. There are hidden words that no one will ever see.

No, I am not writing now. There are words here that are signifiers for something, but this is not writing. It can't be. I am unable to write.


I have been unable to write for some time now.

I am wondering if/when it will feel alright to write again. If/when the words will being to flow again from the writer/soul. If/when the words will mean/reveal what I/the writer want them to. It is strange to think that I am typing, but not writing. The keys rise and fall and letters/codes appear/burn but there is nothing/everything to be made from this.

I don't want to write. That is why I am not writing now.

***

For those of you/whoever you are/whatever you are for whom my posts have been a little obscure lately, I lost a very dear friend/colleague of mine in a tragic/terrible/unnecessary/hateful accident 5 1/2 weeks ago. It feels like so much longer than that. My fellow 'inquiring mind' is gone and there is so much that I want to talk to him about.

Now that I have started to type about it there isn't really anything else that I want to say.

***

Now, you will see that I may start to type again, occasionally, about other things. But don't misunderstand me. I am not writing. Not yet.

A Nice Moment

On Friday one of my year 10 boys, 'Metallica', knocked on my staffroom door and said,
"Miss nb, I want to take you to lunch."
"Oh really, Metallica? What did you have in mind?"
"I'm making a three course meal for catering and I need someone to eat it."
"Can you cook?"
"Yeah"
"Metallica, that sounds like just what I need. Thank you for asking me."
"Okay, cool, I'll come and collect you in about an hour or so."
"I'll be here."

An hour or so later, I sat down at a beautifully presented table and dined my way through a warm and spicy lentil soup (so good- Metallica has promised me the recipe), fettucine carbonara and pancakes topped with strawberries, kiwi fruit and homemade chocolate sauce. Yum.

A colleague of mine was saying the other day that at times like this, the fact that 'life goes on' is both a blessing and a curse. That certainly feels true at the moment.

This dead flatness

It's not true that I'm always thinking of H. Work and conversation make that impossible. But the times when I'm not are perhaps my worst. For then, although I have forgotten the reason, there is spread over everything a vague sense of wrongness, of something amiss. Like in those dreams where nothing terrible occurs- nothing that would sound even remarkable if you told it at breakfast time- but the atmosphere, the taste, of the whole thing is deadly. So with this. I see the rowan berries reddening and don't know for a moment why they, of all things, should be depressing. I hear a clock strike and some quality it always had before has gone out of sound. What's wrong with the world to make it so flat, shabby, worn-out looking? Then I remember...
Feelings, and feelings, and feelings. Let me try thinking instead... I knew already that these things, and worse, happened daily. I would have said that I had taken them into account. I had been warned- I had warned myself- not to reckon on wordly happiness. We were even promised sufferings. They were part of the programme. We were even told 'Blessed are they that mourn,' and I accepted it. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not in imagination...

-C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

***

I am finding that I can walk into class and laugh when a year 12 kid leaps up from behind his desk, snaps a photo of me mid-teaching, then return to his seat and says, "Sorry- photo for the Valedictory dinner. Carry on, miss".
Then, I wander back into a silent staffroom, and wonder why.

Year 11 Lit Texts

I'm teaching year 11 Literature for the first time next year and I get to choose my own text list (how exciting!). This is what I've (semi)settled on at the moment:

Bush Studies, by Barbara Baynton (lots of interesting possibilities)



A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams (the play and the film- I love it and the kids will love it)





The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde (my colleague taught it this year and the students laughed uproariously all the way through- but that could be because she's really great at the accents)





Songs of Innocence and Experience, by William Blake (interesting comparison possibilities)




The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne (love it- rich in symbolism, fascinating context, all that good stuff)




I'm still playing with a few other things, too, like The Crucible, Lambs of God, The Well, Jane Eyre...

I'm a bit worried that I don't seem to have anything really contemporary, though.

Any suggestions/comments?

Read this. Please.

This is an experiment. I am not necessarily writing what I mean, because I don't know what I mean. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING. I just want to write and see what happens.

I once wrote a poem using one of those 'magnetic poety' sets. I only had about thirty words to choose from. It was about the sea. NOte: there was more text here, but I deleted it.

In the beginning, there was a girl who loved music and drama. She loved low, resonate notes that hung like fog above the ground, not the twinkling high notes that vanished as if they had never been. This was odd because she was a flautist. She wanted to play notes that didn't exist. No one understood that.

She should have played cello.

She performed a monologue that made people cry. 'This is all I want to do,' she thought to herself. 'I want to make emotion leak out of people.'

In the end, the music warbled away. The voice was replaced with black squiggles on a white sea. Or, perhaps the squiggles were really holes, burnt into the page. Spaces one can slip through.

and what is the other option? the imposter cried. and what are the choices? the misfit sighed.

i don't know she whispered. all i can do is keep tripping across the surface and hope i don't fall
through
the
crevices.

and if you do???

there is always another page lying beneath waiting to be read she said and hoped that it was true.

it is true, the misfit said. i have tried to find the end. i have searched for it in

ATWOODOCONNORRICHBARNESCOETZEETENNYSONSTRAUSSMALORY
CARMODYPLATOH.D.DICKENSSETHWILDEMACGUIRETOLSTOYFOWLES
and many other places but i have never reached the end.

it is therefore a reasonable hypothesis to assume that there isn't one, the imposter assented. a never ending DNA strand

it's true, she exclaimed. i can type and type and type and type meaningless squiggles and the pages never end. a fresh one is always waiting even if all i write is

that is because the page doesn't judge you, the misfit smiled, relieved. isn't that nice? the page is open to anything. anything!

mmm, it's the reader you have to worry about, the imposter grumbled. the reader judges every word. and even when they don't know what you mean they assume that they do. they interrogate you, hunt for misplaced squiggles, criticise your shape, doodle on margins and well, all sorts of awful things really.

but worst of all, the misfit whispered, worse even than the interrogating and the hunting and the criticising and the doodling is

is-s wh-what, she stammered.

worst of all is when they walk past without ever glancing at the page. that is the worst thing.

oh. yes.


See? I told you so. Even when I don't mean them to the black squiggles still take on shapes, definitions. Even if I fight against it. But perhaps I don't fight hard enough. I want to be understood. Even when I'm trying to be elusive I still leave enough clues strewn across the space for people to put a picture together. Even if it clashes with the picture in my head. There are still common brushstrokes, similar tints. Tricky, isn't it?

yes, said the misfit

What is English?

What is English? How do we define it within a shifting and fragmented world?




How do we address the inherent challenges in attempting to avoid definition?




How do we challenge the reductive definitions and control foisted upon us by policy makers and government bodies?



How do we prepare our students to engage critically with a world that won’t stand still?




In a textual world where classics, visuals, voices, games, comics, poems, hypertexts, blogs, ezines, newspapers and cultural trends continue to overlap and merge, leaning on each other for room, how can subject English ever be defined?

Crafty Coetzee

While reading the Review section of The Age this morning and crunching on toast with peanut butter and honey, I discovered that J.M. Coetzee's latest novel, Slow Man, is now on sale. Naturally, that meant I had to dash down to Borders to get it, even though I'm not sure exactly when I'll get to read it.

Coetzee and I have had a bizarre, one-sided love-hate relationship over the last few years. He infuriates me- I hate what he does to his female characters in particular- and yet I am continually drawn to his crisp, precise prose that I could never hope to emulate and don't particularly want to.

The first book of his that I read was Youth. It provoked such a strong reaction from me, to the point where I would feel the need to wash my hands after I had put it down. There were times when I wanted to stab forks through its pages, and other times when I felt like pinning it to the clothesline and watch it slowly succumb to the weather from the relative safety of my bedroom window. And yet, there is a moment in that text that has stayed with me over the years and pops into my mind at odd times when I least expect it. It is the horrific, yet oddly tender reflection from a father on his aborted child:

His thoughts keep going to what was destroyed inside her- that pod of flesh, that rubbery manikin. He sees the little creature flushed down the toilet at the Woodstock house, tumbled through the maze of sewers, tossed out at last into the shallows, blinking in the sudden sun, struggling against the waves that will carry it out into the bay. He did not want it to live and now he does not want it to die. Yet even if he were to run down to the beach, find it, save it from the sea, what would he do with it? Bring it home, keep it warm in cotton wool, try to get it to grow? How can he who is still a child bring up a child?
He is out of his depth. He has barely emerged into the world himself and already he has a death chalked up against him. How many of the other men he sees in the streets carry dead children with them like baby shoes slung around their necks?

Phew. See what I mean?

Slow Man is another experiment in metafiction for Coetzee (a genre that I find fascinating). Apparently, the central character from his last novel, the elderly writer Elizabeth Costello from the novel of the same name (a woman who I wanted to rescue from the very pages that she had been created within- damn Coetzee and his arrogant, assuming treatment of female characters) appears in this new novel, quite unexpectedly, which allows Coetzee to examine the nature of the creative process. ("Postmodern shenanigans" is what one reviewer termed this device). Slow Man is also supposed to continue in the more overtly philosophical vein of his recent books, which I quite enjoy but some reviewers seem to abhor.

There have been a few quite interesting and contradictory reviews published:

Kerryn Goldsworthy for The Age

Sarah Emily Miano for The Times

D J Taylor for The Independent

Robert Macfarlane for the Sunday Times

Looks like it will be an interesting journey...

The highs make it all worthwhile...

Typing up feedback for my year 12's on their writing folio SAC today has reminded me that I need to remember the wonderful moments that are still happening in my professional life, even when life has become a little tougher than usual.

It is my year 12's personal writing folio pieces in particular that bring this home to me. We don't draft the writing folio pieces at my school (yes, I want to change this, too)but I had some wonderful discussions with my students about their writing process- conversations that have been one of the major highlights in my year. Consequently, their statements of intention (the only thing I'm allowed to look at and discuss with them) are works of art that convey to me the students' level of engagement in their writing and the fruit that has come from our discussions as my students have experimented and succeeded with interesting structures and complex imagery and symbols. It will be interesting to see how my students' statements are received during crossmark tomorrow, as they are quite a bit longer and more detailed than usual. Then, there are the pieces themselves...

H's piece, for example, who has reflected on an important family tradition- the making of the Christmas pudding. Her narrative begins with an image of a tattered scrap of paper, bearing the precious recipe, on a ship bound from Ireland six generations ago. Her descriptions of the present family festivities are connected with the voice of her grandmother, the family figurehead, with snippets of the recipe to show the passing of time. I love the image she creates of her grandmother and great aunt, as children, leaping up to tap the puddings while they bob gently to and fro in the laundry. H is my patriot- her notion of 'Australianness' oozes from her writing- the love of the bush, Banjo, Lawson and brumbies that she has inherited from her father.

Then there is D, my scruffy little soccer player, who writes the most beautiful, evocative prose that you would never expect to come out of this quiet, but cheeky boy (I wish I could write like him). Until this year, he has gotten C's in English, which flabbergasted me until he explained, "I just never tried before now, Miss". I can't understand how he has managed to hide his lovely prose, though. He writes about sky diving- the rush that allows him to break free and reflect on his day to day existence.

L is a wonderful percussionist, one of the best in the state for his age, and of course writes about his love for music in his writing folio. He begins with a series of drumming terms, syncopated and scattered across the page, before describing his love for music. He uses the metaphor of a small child, that he must nuture and care for, feed with hours of practice, commitment and responsibility to allow it to grow. It is his best piece for the year, because he is writing about his passion, and I have enjoyed talking about music and this piece of writing with him.

J is intense, a scientist, who stresses over calculating enter scores and wanting to get everything 'right'. Her descriptions of the rural university that she longs to go to is juxtaposed with what she sees as the cold architecture and bustling hub of Melbourne that could steal her away from her roots. Love and respect for the rural landscape comes across in many of my students' writing. I have always loved the city, but I occasionally envy the memories and experiences many of my students have of waking up to the sound of kookaburras and looking out the bedroom window to see gently rolling hills.

K spontaneously hugs me after every sac result she gets back, grateful for C+'s. She struggles to fit her ideas and words into a tightly structured text response essay. She has written a lovely narrative, though, describing her relationship with her art teacher, her mentor, and reflects on the way in which 'stray paint drops' can allow her to create and explore her own identity. This has been a particular triumph.

There are many other students, of course, too many to describe in this space. I need to make sure that I don't forget that they are the real reason why I teach, they are ones that I really want to spend time with each day (well, most of the time). I don't know why my short career still seems to consist of these perilous lows and exultant highs- never anything in between. It's kind of exhausting! It seems to match my interior- I think that I mostly come across as fairly calm and placid, but that really only hides the turbulence within. Still, as long as I keep having these highs, then I think I must be doing okay. At least I know I teach the most wonderful students in the world (and don't even think about arguing with me).

What kind of girl am I?

I am Academic Girl Click on the picture below to read more: Take the 'What Kind of Girl Are You?' quiz at CookingToHookup.com Of course, no one can really define me through the use of a quiz (or anything, really). But, if there's anyone out there who wants to cook me dinner, perhaps they should visit this site!

What is your world view?

You scored as Postmodernist. Postmodernism is the belief in complete open interpretation. You see the universe as a collection of information with varying ways of putting it together. There is no absolute truth for you; even the most hardened facts are open to interpretation. Meaning relies on context and even the language you use to describe things should be subject to analysis. Postmodernist 94% Cultural Creative 81% Existentialist 75% Idealist 31% Romanticist 25% Modernist 25% Materialist 19% Fundamentalist 13% What is Your World View? (updated) created with QuizFarm.com

Hmmm...

If only Howard and Bush had inquiring minds...

Inquiring Minds

I'm about to solve all the problems of the world in a single blog. Or, at least, I will start to make sense of some of mine, and hopefully those of a few others, as well.

I've been trying to figure out for ages how to 'create' the professional environment that I want to work in. I have a few 'strategies' that I am working away at, but it's not easy. I have often felt frustrated by the way that I can experience a few wonderful, fulfilling professional relationships and still not feel like that is enough, because I want everyone to experience these kinds of relationships.

Driving home from MU yesterday, I figured out what the 'common denominator' is in the fulfilling professional relationships I have, and the mysterious absence in all the other collegial relationships that I want to develop further. Are you ready for this? It's a real doozy... The answer is:

A shared love of inquiry

That's it! Saw open everyone's skulls and pour in a splash of inquiry, and the world would suddenly be a better place.

I've come up with a list of factors that are particular to these 'relationships of inquiry', based on my relationship with my year 12 partner:

1. A willingness to listen,
2. The confidence to admit one's own weaknesses and gaps in knowledge,
3. A willingness to share your ideas and understandings
4. Having confidence in the other member(s) to question and think critically about what you have to offer,
5. A willingness to question and be critical of your own practices,
6. Having confidence in each other (and giving each other the occasional supportive pat on the back)
7. A desire to learn,
8. A desire to learn together,
9. An ongoing collaborative process that you reflect on together from time to time, to see what good things are springing from it, and,
10. TIME to talk with each other.

So, that's my preliminary definition of a relationship of inquiry, collaborative inquiry, or whatever you choose to name it. That's all you need, really. It's not about agreeing about everything, or even necessarily having a similar perspective- my colleague and I certainly don't agree about everything, but we agree about enough things- the shape of our learning processes being at the top of the list. It's only a very rough first draft- I'll probably add to it and refine it over time. I'd be keen to hear what others out there think of it.

Mis(s) adventures in the Maccas drive thru...

Driving home from parent-teacher interviews and feeling a bit peckish, I decided to detour via the local macca's drive thru...

Cashier: Hi, what can I get you?

NB: A cheeseburger happy meal, thanks.

Cashier: Would you like a boy's toy or a girl's toy with that?

NB: (silently thinking) Oh... my... god... She's joking, right? What century are we living in? Post feminism era, gender equity... and good old maccas still thinks that it's ok to have separate toys for boys and girls. Why not ask me if I want a skateboard or a pony? But a boy's toy or a girl's toy? And I suppose it's not difficult to guess which one would be pink and which one's blue... I can't wait to tell my year 10's when I see them next- they've been discussing binary oppositions and stereotypical representations of masculinity and femininity. They'll be outraged...

(after a definite pause)

NB: (aloud, with a nonchalant wave of her hand) Whatever.

(The cashier hands her the girl's toy- a stuffed pony.)

* * *

Then, to add insult to injury, I stop at traffic lights and a dimmy van full of confident young lads decide that they need to roll down the window and wink and wolf whistle at me to prove how masculine they are. I won't tell you what I felt like telling them they could do with their 'boy toys'...

Thought for the day?

"We don't know what women's vision is. What do women's eyes see? How do they carve, invent, decipher the world? I don't know. I know my own vision, the vision of one woman, but the world seen through the eyes of others? I only know what men's eyes see."

-Vivianne Forrester (What Women's Eyes See)

At the moment, I'm not even sure I know my own vision...

Just in case it wasn't already obvious that the country is going mad...

This little pig goes post modernist

Fading theory has no place in schools

Words without meaning

States deconstruct postmodern trend

Minister plays down postmodernist role in schools

Kevin Donnelly: Teach the simple joys of reading

Derided theory a headline act

Luke Slattery: Put literacy before 'radical' vanity

I'll let this rot dig its own grave... for now...

Factors, Determinants

Hmmm... determinants... factors...

My grandfather passed away on early Thursday morning. There is so much to say that I will not say here. On Wednesday night, I drove with my parents and sister to 'country town' to sit with my nan and aunty and watch him gasp for breath, unconscious, in a hospital bed. At midnight, Mum, H and I whispered words in his ear and left to drive back home, leaving Dad behind to stay with his mum and sister. Pa left this Earth an hour later, much quicker than we expected.

Thursday morning, I went to school. I didn't know what else to do. I discussed with my year 12's the beliefs that colonising countries must hold in order to choose to engulf another nation, amongst other things... Iraq... Australia... America... Vietnam... The belief that there is only one god... the belief that there is a 'right way'... the belief that 'the end justifies the means'... rights... duties... responsibilities... communism... democracy.... capitalism...

In the staffroom, I was feeling antagonistic when a staff member barged in looking for coffee, mumbling something about 'these postmodern kids who think they can make their own rules and believe anything they want'. I fired up, when normally I would let it go, asked him what he meant by postmodernism first of all (didn't really wait for a response- wasn't expecting a decent one), and then commented that, if anything, most of our kids are being conditioned to be traditional realists, especially in the classroom. He countered, "well, isn't that what you would expect in a Christian school?" Well no, I wouldn't, not in any school, which is why I've found the online discussions that I've been having with my year 10's in relation to postmodernism and reader response theory so 'empowering' (to use that icky word) for me, and hopefully for them. He left with his coffee and I turned to my friend and we discussed our understanding of postmodernism until we were both relatively satisfied and then discussed our dialogue and why inquiring minds seem rare to us at the moment. Then, I drove back to 'country town'.

I sat around the dinner table with my family and extended family and we pooled our thoughts and feelings to form a collective memory of my grandfather. We sobbed together- my mum has a way of getting emotional out-pourings happening. That is a part of me, and that night I heard stories that are also part of me, some which I can't recollect ever passing my ears before, others that sparked and merged with fragmented scraps of memories in my own mind, and some that came from my lips. I heard for the first time about how my pa built his own speakers for a stereo when they had just become affordable (some time before ipods, I presume). He slaved over them for weeks, planing the wooden boxes until they were perfectly smooth, varnishing them and finally setting up, impatiently, on the stove for goodness sake, blasting jazz through the kitchen. This memory was from my father's eyes when he was still a boy, beginning for him an interest in electronics, and music. This memory has shaped me, even though I never heard it before last night, because it shaped my dad, and reminds me of the perfectionist tendencies that ran through my pa, run through my dad, and run through me.

So... yeah. Individual? Family? School? Community? Society? I can't see the lines anymore.

I'll start again tomorrow

I'm depressed.

I had a wonderful lesson with my year 10's today- making short animated films in groups in order to 'add' scenes to Act One of Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet'. I used a really simple (and really fun) online program found at dfilm to do the activity, and it only took one lesson. The students were engaged and motivated for the entire 75 minutes- smiling and laughing faces everywhere I looked- they worked together, experimented with Shakespearian language and imagery, talked and thought about the characters, found places in the text that could be developed further (a conversation b/w Romeo and Rosaline was a popular choice)... They emailed their films to me and I uploaded them to our class intranet site.

On Monday, I had a wonderful conversation with my head of faculty over coffee about 'the possibilities' for developing productive and ongoing dialogue between members of my faculty about critical literacy and our practices. We were both excited, eager to get some ideas underway. It is a conversation that I will remember for quite some time, to conjure in my mind whenever things at school are not going well.

Despite these wonderful moments, I'm still depressed.

I just arrived home from an English faculty meeting. We had eight staff present (out of 20). All absenteees due to quite understandable reasons and commitments. We began the meeting with lap tops plugged in while the IT people showed us how to use a new markbook feature. It took ages and there were only eight of us. Due to the time devoted to that, and the fact that so few were present, most of the rest of the agenda seemed better off put aside for another time. It's no one's fault. Mark book is important- it saves teachers valuable time for when they could be doing more important things. I was going to share the work that my students were producing on my new discussion board. We were going to talk about what transpired at the VATE conference. We were going to discuss critical literacy and ways to teach text response. We were going to discuss ideas for next year's book list. It will be very difficult to schedule another meeting- this term is impossible.

It can be difficult to maintain my enthusiasm when reality keeps dampening it. I'm not going to give up, though. I'll be depressed tonight, and start again tomorrow.

Dear Dr Rowe,

I was at the VATE conference today and I heard you speak about your take on the effect of teachers on student learning. I must admit, I sat down at a round table not quite knowing what to expect, even though I had heard plenty about you and even skimmed through a paper or two. I thought that I would take the time to write you a letter, to say what I could not articulate at the time, to try to recreate those minutes that seemed to pass me by in a haze of gesticulating fingers, violently red skin, and strident masculinity, and to tell you what I think about it all, because I know that you're there, waiting, listening, thinking.

Before I go on, I should pause to tell you that you shocked me. Oh, I knew beforehand that you existed- I had seen your voice in newspapers, policy documents and some research publications- but it was quite a different experience to see you in the flesh, so to speak, to hear your confident, vociferous voice. A pumpkin, rather than a pimple. And only a few metres away! You shocked me, because I suddenly had to face the fact that you were 'real' and not just a theoretical position that I can't imagine ever wanting to claim. You were no longer simply rhetoric, yet in a strange way, that's all you were.

As I drove home afterwards, the question that I wanted to put to you began to take shape in my mind. I'm like that, you see, I tend to like to process things, before responding to them. Sometimes, that can be unfortunate, and to my detriment, but most of the time it feels like the right course of action. Anyway,

you spoke about visiting schools for research purposes-
I conjured up an image of you
getting your hands dirty,
amongst the fray,
part of the action,
in your face,
a piece of the furniture,
a white (or angry red) elephant.

You said that you speak to the students,
because they tell you how it is,
what it's really like,
airing the dirty laundry,
the true reality.

You don't speak to the teachers, because they
paint a rosy picture
ignore the white elephant
try to shove postmodernism through your navel
(and many other crevices, I'm sure- a painful business)
and, last but not least,
they
TELL YOU WHAT YOU WANT TO HEAR.

It made me wonder, Dr Rowe, whether you thought the teachers at the VATE forum TOLD YOU WHAT YOU WANTED TO HEAR. Oops, I've left out the question mark. I guess I'm not expecting an answer, but feel free to give one if you're out there somewhere in WWW land.

I'll let you speak.

Yours sincerely,

nb

Thought for the day

Thinking isn't agreeing or disagreeing. That's voting.

-Robert Frost