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“Will I miss anything important?”: About absences
Did I Miss Anything?
Tom Wayman
Nothing. When we realized you weren’t here
we sat with our hands folded on our desks
in silence, for the full two hours
Everything. I gave an exam worth
40 percent of the grade for this term
and assigned some reading due today
on which I’m about to hand out a quiz
worth 50 percent
Nothing. None of the content of this course
has value or meaning
Take as many days off as you like:
any activities we undertake as a class
I assure you will not matter either to you or me
and are without purpose
Everything. A few minutes after we began last time
a shaft of light suddenly descended and an angel
or other heavenly being appeared
and revealed to us what each woman or man must do
to attain divine wisdom in this life and
the hereafter
This is the last time the class will meet
before we disperse to bring the good news to all people
on earth.
Nothing. When you are not present
how could something significant occur?
Everything. Contained in this classroom
is a microcosm of human experience
assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
This is not the only place such an opportunity has been
gathered
but it was one place
And you weren’t here
From Did I Miss Anything? Selected Poems 1973-1993, 1993
Harbour Publishing
The Three Moving Forces
The Elizabethans of Shakespeare’s time, in response to the Question of Good and Evil, believed in three factors that shape how things unfold:
Providence, i.e., God’s will,
Fortune, i.e., luck and chance, and
human character, i.e., your diligent study, practice, training, and action.
Take care of your end, my friends: “‘Good luck’ is when opportunity meets preparation.”
A letter to Advanced Placement students…
…who have been assigned Crime And Punishment as a summer reading book:
HaaaaahaaaahahhhhaaAAAAAAA!
Nah, seriously:
“College-level literature.” By that, they mean university-level literature. (What, did you think it would be, The Alchemist? HaaaahahhhhaaaaaaHAAAAA. Okay, let me compose myself.) Hence the exhortation to start now.
One chief reason that we recommend the Norton Critical Edition of the Coulson translation is because of the excellent essays that follow: you did notice that 1/3 of the pages are commentary and essay, no?
Read the story. Raskolnikov thinks he can do the murder — that he should do the murder — but when he’s done it, his thinking really falls apart. Human nature is being illuminated quite deeply in this rich story.
Are you seeing that? If you are, then you’re on the right track and you’re doing fine. When you finish, read the commentary and essays. Things will click.
CaP is part of the canon. If the novel doesn’t show up on the free choice essay list, I will be a monkey’s uncle. (Even if it doesn’t, the question will say “or a work of equal literary merit,” and CaP is indeed that.) By taking your time with Dostoevsky, you are laying a firm foundation.
Take time and have faith.
Re-Imagining the Comprehensive High School
Re-Imagining the Comprehensive High School
What is the “authentic problem” of poetry?
You’re missing the point: Long-term potentiation
I get steamed when colleagues insist that “the information is all on the student’s smart phone: why do we teach just the information?” I get the point. But.
When you fall down and hurt yourself, I run up to you and I start the primary assessment. When that is complete, I start a secondary assessment. If there are more of you hurt, I start to triage.
What I am not doing is looking things up on my smartphone. You get me?
What are the basics that need to be in the long-term memory?
(I am dismayed by the amount of high school seniors who can neither write a sentence, nor define a sentence, nor understand a sentence: how the hell did they make it to my threshold?)
Teaching philosophy: Simplify, memorize, apply.
I come from a background of training in organizations in which one is called upon to recall information and complete tasks during stressful conditions. The EMT uses acronyms and abbreviations such as AVPU and APAIL in order to run through a memorized checklist and efficiently classify the patient’s condition. The infantry soldier likewise uses training standards such as SPORTS to clear a weapons stoppage under fire.
In English, I try to simplify the processes and definitions into memorizable units, which I ask the students to master by rote. Then we apply.
Repetitio est mater studiorum: Repetition is the mother of learning.
(In the classroom, I demonstrate the techniques and standards as they are taught, adding the elements of the physical, the choreography of it: this is one reason why the teacher and the classroom are crucial, and simply reading my blog is an incomplete experience.)
Kingsley Andersen 