How I Spend My Time/Life/Love

Today was the last day of the San Antonio Writing Project Summer Institute. Our Visitor’s Day was a great celebration of our teaching/learning/writing journey together.

Here is the piece I published in our 2008 anthology.

How I Spend My Time/Life/Love

In On Beauty, Zadie Smith writes, “love is how you spend your time.” And I believe that’s true. I believe you demonstrate your love not only by what you do, but how you do it, and why—towards what larger purpose.

Figuring out what I wanted to do in the world came easily to me. I’ve known I wanted to be an English teacher since I was in the 9th grade. I always loved to read and write and share in the beauty and power of words with others. I also loved everything about school. So once I realized “career student” was not an option, I naturally began to envision my future self as a teacher.

Figuring out how to be a teacher turned out to be a much more challenging process—and, in fact, a perpetual one. My early days in the classroom were punctuated by experiences that showed me just how little I knew about teaching. Ironically, the more I learned, the more I realized how much more there was to learn. While this realization was surprising at first, it wasn’t scary. Instead, I was delighted to discover that being a teacher meant being a life-long learner.

Year after year, I’ve grappled with questions about how to meaningfully and authentically fulfill my role as a teacher. So far, some of the most important things I’ve discovered are 1) to think in terms of teaching students, not teaching content, 2) to share my real, authentic self with my students, rather than a “teacher-ly” persona, and 3) to remember the answers to Tolstoy’s three questions: “there is only one important time, and that time is now. The most important one is always the one you are with. And the most important thing to do is to do good for the one who is standing at your side.” (The Three Questions, by Jon Muth)

“To realize one’s Personal Legend is a person’s only real obligation . . . [and the] universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” (Paolo Coelho, The Alchemist)

As Mandy Aftel says, “in a very real sense, we are the authors of our own lives.” But we do not write our Personal Legends in a vacuum.

I believe “love is how you spend your time”—and with whom. And I’ve realized that following my heart means not only devoting myself to teaching and learning and pursuing those endeavors the best way I know how, but also giving myself—my time, my energy, my passion—to a community whose mission and vision and purpose I believe in. I believe that in order for my life and work to have meaning, I must spend my time in teaching and learning communities whose core beliefs and values I share.

To my friends in the San Antonio Writing Project: Thank you for giving meaning to my life. I’m so glad the universe has conspired to bring us together. I’ve enjoyed spending time in community with you. And you know what that means . . .

Love, Honor

National Youth Day in South Africa

During our daily check-in at the San Antonio Writing Project Summer Institute this morning, Ngoakona (one of the three South African teachers participating in our project) mentioned that it was National Youth Day in South Africa. She explained a bit about the historical significance of the day, and I decided to read a poem I had written after I learned about the Soweto Massacre during my Fulbright-Hays trip to South Africa in the summer of 2002. Here’s my poem (it’s written in the voice of the young people who protested that day):

Soweto Uprising/Massacre

We only asked to be taught
in our mother tongues,
or at least in English,
the lingua franca of South Africa,
the global language of freedom.

But the government said
“Bantu Education will be conducted
on our terms, in Afrikaans,”
the language of your oppressors,
spoken by no one else on the planet.

So we gathered together on June 16,
near the Orlando West High School,
thousands of school children
declaring, “Freedom today,
Education tomorrow!”

Our signs read
“Afrikaans Must Be Abolished,”
“Release our Detained Students,”
“Black Power,” and
“To Hell with Afrikaans.”

We were passionate, but peaceful
until suddenly, soldiers
and policemen appeared
firing tear gas and bullets
at our words and our stones.

Hector Pieterson, 13,
was the first to be shot dead.

We may never know
how many died that day;
some say 20, some say 200.
But we will always remember
June 16, 1976 in Soweto.

Summer Institute Starts Tomorrow!

Tomorrow will be the first day of our San Antonio Writing Project Summer Institute. This marks the beginning of our third year as a National Writing Project site; it will be my second summer institute experience; and it’s my first time as a co-director. Needless to say, I’m pretty excited.

If you’re already involved in your local NWP site, I don’t have to tell you how great it is to be part of this amazing professional network. But if you’re not, I strongly encourage you to find a site near you and join.

San Antonio Area Council of Teachers of English

Yesterday, we—the SAACTE officers—got together to make plans for the upcoming school year. We typically have two conferences, one in the fall and one in the spring. Since we also have the NCTE Annual Convention coming to San Antonio this year, I thought it would make sense to tie the two together. My idea was inspired by the session Gretchen Bernabei did for us last fall, which she explained was a sort of “dry run” for the session she was going to be sharing at NCTE in NYC.

So at our Fall Conference this year (October 25, 2008) we're hoping to have a variety of breakout sessions presented by local teachers who will also be presenting at NCTE (November 20-23, 2008). This will give the presenters a chance to try out their sessions, and it will give our attendees the chance to catch an extra session or two, saving time to attend other sessions during the jam-packed convention schedule.

If you're an NCTE 2008 presenter in the San Antonio area and you’d like to present at SAACTE this fall, please contact me. And if you know others who are interested, please help spread the word. Thanks!

Final Night of Methods Class: Sharing Multigenre Research

Last night was our final class meeting for the methods course. Since students were turning in their multigenre research projects in lieu of taking a final exam, we used our last few hours together to have each person tell us briefly about what he or she had learned. Based on their presentations, it sounds like everyone really took advantage of this opportunity to learn more about teaching secondary English. And can't wait to read their multigenre research papers!

On a side note, since we were limited on time, I asked each student to speak for no more than two or three minutes about his or her project. I know from personal experience that once I start talking about something I’m interested in, I can lose track of time. So one suggestion I made to help people monitor their talk time was to think about leaving a voice mail message. On most voice mail systems, the maximum time for recording is two or three minutes before it cuts you off!