flaneuse.org

I got it from Chris and, as a result, we spent most of the weekend on the couch, fighting over the tissue box and chasing Willa around. She, not surprisingly, has developed a taste for cough drops (I think it’s all the sugar) and easily consumed half the bag. I can only imagine, after eating many drops in their individual wrappers, what is going to come out the other end. Chris swears the other day she pooped a dish towel. I shudder to think.

Right, well if you were eating when you read that, my apologies. In the germ infested world I am currently living in, no topics are off the table ’cause when you and your significant other are both sick, you share your symptoms and any updates quite easily. We have been watching The Wire from the first season, and it is excellent and incredibly well written. We also watched a lot of news and I feel more caught up than I have been in some time. So there you are, another exciting weekend in my world.

If the title sounds familiar, then you know the joke. If not, check out the movie Accepted — which is probably not on the list of approved films for educational purposes, but has an interesting point nonetheless. College has become a prerequisite for almost anything you could want to do, but that doesn’t make it the best fit. Some colleges are better than others, and almost are all unique in their own way. Yet that doesn’t mean everyone should go to college (and since I am saying that as a college teacher, that makes it even more interesting). I never honestly considered not going and, as a result, I was two years in before I really started thinking about what I was doing there and why. College is too important not to think about, and much much too expensive. Trust me — from the girl whose doctorate cost at least $200,000 in dollars alone.

This morning, by way of a series of mishaps, I offer you tips to creating your very own disaster before even leaving the house –

Steps

1. Allow the dog to sleep with you instead of her crate. Wake up to 82lbs of Labrador on your chest, with one of your shoes hanging out of her jaws and a big grin on her face
2. Try to get same dog past both cats, who are angry that she took their place in bed last night
3. Attempt to wear hose that you bought for the size you *wish* you were, rather than the size you actually are
4. Realize that today is the Centennial Celebration on campus, so you will have to look decent and wear regalia
5. Spend countless moments looking for your cap and gown only to remember that they are on campus, on the back of your office door
6. Realize you will have no time for lunch. Briefly wonder if you can eat and teach class at the same time
7. Ignore whining Labrador, now in crate, because boyfriend is sleeping off a nasty cold
8. Ignore voicemail messages
9. Ignore scads of email
10. Leave house late.

Enough said. I’m off.

Am working on the book, but in the gathering notes and research phase — what’s out there about the uses of blogs and wikis in educational settings? Who’s doing what work — and what’s working? Those are some pretty big questions and, as I cruise the web, I realize how much there is out there, and what small percentage is systematic work: trying blogs and wikis, rather than talking about them as pretty cool things. One of my biggest issues with academia, particularly in education, is that we can be rather good at talking about the theoretical implications of something rather than actually doing it and seeing it play out. The day my students think of me as someone in an ivory tower, rather than a person who is connected to learning and schools and kids (of all ages) is the day I have stopped doing my job. We have to try and walk our talk, and if we want schools and systems to change, we need to change what we’re doing too.

I know this because when I teach reading methods classes, about *how* to teach reading, I draw directly on what I’m doing in the reading classes I teach (yeah, that got a little complicated). Sometimes what I do with students works. Sometimes it doesn’t. This semester, for example, I’m taking a break from Kite Runner and started with Hot Zone in the reading skills class. That’s a big leap — I am not a biologist, nor do I know an enormous amount about epidemiology, although it fascinates me. The idea is to be reading about big questions, and learning to ask our own — why is this important? How do viruses impact history, people, the world? Why should I care? — and that’s the biggest one. Why should my students care? I know what I believe — that an education is one of the essential parts of a life well lived. That college is not just for job training but life training too — to learn the habits of mind, the curiosity and interest, that keep you from being duped. The world will take advantage of the slow and the silent. I want my students to be quick and loud — loud enough to tangle with the complex and fascinating ideas the world has to offer.

Yeah, and learn that way of being in one class. I’ve always been good at coming up with enormous goals…

Today is the first day it really feels like fall. There’s that tinge of coolness in the air and the trees have started to turn. I love fall, and it makes me think of home. Back in Colorado, the aspens are already golden and the high country has probably had snow. My friends and family have been wearing fleece for a week at least (there’s very little fleece in my part of NJ. I miss it, and hiking boots, and general granola fashion sensibilities). None of my students in class today knew anything about snowshoeing (OK, one had done it before).

Fall isn’t as spectacular out west as it is here; we don’t have the same range of trees, but it signals the winter and snows to come. The days are bluebird ones, with a crystalline sky, and layers of clothing have to come off & go back on as you move through the sunshine. You feel like you’re living in a dome, or the bowl of the world — the most beautiful place on the globe right now. You feel lucky.

It seems only fitting that it’s raining today, on the sixth 9/11 since the one that changed everything. I was far away, in Nashville TN. I watched it on television and breathed a sigh of relief that everyone in my family living in NYC got home OK. But for Chris, 9/11 changed his life. It swallowed up the company he worked for, and destroyed that part of Manhattan. Before long, he was unemployed and profoundly shell-shocked, having been so close to the Towers when they fell. Still, even now to talk about it is hard for him, and it’s taken me a long time to ask questions about it — what was it like to see that? To fight your way out through the dust and debris, knowing the people behind you were dying? To make your very long way to the Upper West Side to your girlfriend, like a refugee?

I have no idea what living through that, so close, must have done — I just know that it did something and we all, as a country, are still feeling the effects.

This year, this fall has been tougher than most. I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe it’s that I’m now far enough into my new career that there isn’t the slow start to the semester. Remember those first days of school? It used to take a little while for most of your classes to get started, everyone was glad to see each other after a long summer, and the leaves were turning. We had new clothes and shoes. The halls were hung with posters and everyone was talking about the Homecoming Dance, or the Greek Rush, or whatever the social events calendar had to offer. (In the case of rush, my friends and I were busy parodying it, but that’s a story for another time. I didn’t set foot in a fraternity house after my freshman year — at least until I was married to a Delta Chi alum and found myself a fraternity wife. Now that’s weird.)

This year started like a good book, in the middle of the action (in media res, for you latin buffs) and I haven’t caught my breath yet. New classes to prep, committee work to do, connections to be made. Recommendations to write, people to see. Add to that a spring conference we’re thinking about having here at MSU on new literacies. Oh, and the book. Right, right. I’m so busy juggling, I don’t even flinch when a couple of the balls hit the floor. Instead I apologize and keep my hands in motion. Sometimes the best thing is a little sleight of hand, I think.

Spense is doing better & reacting well to the penicillin, thank God. First class was yesterday, and already I can tell they’re going to be a good group — active, talking, interested in the topic. I have a new GA who seems really on top of things and is also an animal person — he and his girlfriend have two dogs, so we had something to talk about right there. Plus he seemed to know exactly what I was talking about, which was pretty good, especially for the first week when I’m not sure I even know what I am talking about.

And there’s that tinge of fall coolness in the air. Bright days and brighter leaves coming. Tomorrow: happy hour. It’s time.

It’s fall again, and the first day of classes. The summer went quick and was a roller-coaster from the get go. Still is, actually. Chris’ father is much better and back at home, and Chris and I had a great time over Labor Day working on the yard to get it ready for his dad’s homecoming. His father has this cool motorized hedge trimmer that I used on the hedges and trees. For some reason it reminded me of the Play-Doh hair salon I had as a kid, where you could use this funny plastic razor thing to cut off the play-doh hair on the little figures. I cut the extension cord once, but I didn’t fall off the ladder so I’m thinking that was pretty good.

But now Spenser, my little man (and my white cat) is really sick. Thankfully the tests for feline leukemia and FIV came back negative, but he’s out of it: not eating, not active at all, running a high fever yesterday. I just want him to be OK. Actually, I just want everyone I know to be OK, at least for a little while. It’s gotten to the point where I am kinda cringing, afraid of what is going to come next. You know?