gasp!

Dear Colleagues,

The old, old story.

Laura Turchi finally asked me to abandon the
Teacher Education Committee because of my
inability to respond to the Rubric of Aspects &
Values necessary for the training of teachers
we needed to fill out in preparation for
re-accreditation.

I wasn't (in my mind) being incorrigible or even
recalcitrant—I was simply unable to assess the
English part of the program in the terms set forth
by the incoming evaluators.

“It's NOT Rocket Science, Sam,”

I remember Laura encouraging me.But in fact almost
none of it (what was required for certification) fit my
experience as both a junior high and high school English
teacher.

IT didn't make my own sense, didn't correspond to my
experience. Having majored in philosophy and without
the benefit of teacher-traiing, I didn't know relative squat
re: content and subject matter, methodology, coverage of
this or that.

I was inclined by my major to turn ignorance into virtue
(just the right prerequisite) so as to practice genuine
(rather than faux) Socratic method:
What?
What the?
What the hell?
Legitimate questions rather than the often abused
so-called socratic guess-what’s- on-my-mind.

UP for grabs, pushing for divergence rather than
convergence. What's going on here? What's the
meaning of this? (Our collective, shared textual
harassment. )

I did some of my best teaching those years. After
grad school I knew answers and couldn't fake the
stupidity necessary to Do Socrates ( “what the?”)
any more, plus of course it got complicated with
sequential -quisites and requisites, ground coverage
and period background as well as Great Writers to
worship and a focus on texts rather than on us
students scrambling to figure them out. (Those were
the days before e-Media hit the fan: how else would
they get the info if I didn't dish it out?)

Professional.

When I arrived here, we were bumbling and amateurish
enough to decide to reconfigure the semester to two terms,
drop course loads from 5 to 4 per semester (student), 4 to 3
(faculty), and convert the Core to a Ways of Knowing
(as opposed to discipline-content ground-coverage
driven agenda.).

Composition was collapsed into First Yr Seminar—and
monitored thru the Core courses in the event any student
might at any point get a couple of red flags—in which
case: REQUIRED.

Of course they didn't learn How To Write They never do.
Go ahead: double the requirement and add CC II—there
will still be some of us rightfully wringing our hands at
the inability of students to write as good as us, amazed
at the incompetence of High School to teach writing
and research and convinced—well, we’ll fix THAT..

This reminiscence was provoked by Catherine Reid's
urgent desire to brainstorm our English, Theater, &
Writing Program. Imagine: Questioning Everything.
Assumptions explicit and tacit. Sacred Cows especially.
Zero based Critical Thinking in practice.

When we re-visioned semester
and core it was because there was
a shared feeling that

We Were Doing Much Too Much

—academics, service, work, shared
administrative duties, 10^th month service
(faculty helping out in the work program),
coaching, managing the service program
(an add-on for Sheldon Neuringer, and
thenBill Mosher who gave service project
credit for, among other things, swatting
flies in the kitchen...)

And so our brain-storming shibboleth:
How to Do Less with More?
Or maybe: How to do More with Less?

Either way: we realized we were squeezing
our own neck and blaming the whirl for
our breathlessness.



Help Help, I can't breathe.
But if you touch my hands
I'll kick your ass.



Oh—that’s so much better!