Tightrope

Anna Kate is at the beach this week. Without me. So it's going to be a long week of missing her. Fortunately, I have VBS and grad school to keep me busy. But since they are the reasons I'm not currently lounging on the sand with my lovely fiancee, it's a bittersweet feeling. Much as I love VBS and however relevant this course is to my teaching career, I know what I'd rather be doing, were it possible. Nevertheless...

Day 1 of VBS, or rather Wave 1, sped by beautifully. I have to digress and say that my comfort level around the children has grown dramatically. I found myself doing or saying things I never would've had the courage to say in the past. Using a loud and expressive voice. Gesturing with my face, hands and body. Even laughing. Mannerisms. I think it was only the second or third year I felt like a real music teacher rather than a kid playing at being a music teacher. I thank God and give Him all the credit for working within me, developing my abilities, and empowering me to get His message across in a way that draws in my kids. Certainly an answer to prayer.

My second partner Payton finally showed up only to leave immediately to take care of her sick child. I feel pretty bad for her; playing catch-up on the music is going to be a chore. As for me? No huge deal - Lynn was all the help I needed. She's a great friend, terrific to work with, and we compliment each other well. Small wonder why I lobbied so hard to keep her in my station. Sure, it ultimately meant merging grades 1-4, but that's all right. Once we planned it out and braced ourselves, the kids did great! The increased numbers actually worked in our favor because it magnified their voices, and the older kids helped the younger ones warm up to the songs faster. So I certainly wouldn't be averse to the possibility of keeping the grades joined if it means less headache for Laura, Amy, and Denise over locking down teachers long-term.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like the time we get to teach these songs gets less and less each year. I felt it worse today as we barely had time to get all the way through "Outrigger Island" and listen to "My God is Real" before we had to change to the next rotation. So a couple of my groups haven't even heard the Wave 1 song yet. But that's not too bad. Brandy and I came to an agreement on the songs to include on VBS Commencement Night. I felt strongly that we should keep the focus on the Jesus-centric songs; kids already get the big, majestic ideas about God (not that they are not important, of course; they are. But our goal is to bring them to Christ; so they need to encounter Him personally). She agreed, and we have our agenda.

More to come!

Return to Randomness

My last several blogs have dealt heavily with the research/educational side of my life. Let's see if we can change that...

- Grad school in summer bites. But at least it's a class with some relevancy to my life. And it helps that I enjoy it.
- Anna Kate is the most beautiful, caring, unselfish and understanding fiancee ever. I love you, sweetheart.
- President Bush at Furman three weeks ago. A nice, memorable experience; something I'll get to tell my children about. That's really all I wanted out of the affair. I am happy for the class of 2008, especially my dear friends. I am saddened by all the people - press corps., photographers, distinguished guests - who got up and left en masse after Bush finished. More of a disturbance than any "silent protest." At least the professors in protest stayed to see the seniors graduate. And that's all I have to say about that.
- Wedding plans are in full force. AK and I are drafting guest lists. I still have a few names to add. We're debating between two possible reception sites. Anna's gotten her wedding dress picked out and possibly the bridesmaid's dresses as well.
EDIT: Okay, I jumped the gun. Anna said she hasn't picked her dress out yet. My bad.
- Clemson is #10 in the country, the preseason pick to win the ACC, and a BCS dark horse (kind of redundant when you consider the ACC champion gets an automatic BCS bid). As of now, all preseason predictions count for nothing.
- I can make one crispy DiGiorno pizza.
- I signed up on the Bleacher Report to write about Clemson in the college football section. I guess this means I better start TiVOing all the games (yeah, right).
- Anna's Dad is one of the smartest men I've ever met.
- Vacation Bible School is next week. That merits a few subpoints:
* I've got a little more ambitious task this year. I'm still teaching the music this year...only I'm doing it for all four grades, 1st through 4th. Meaning at least two of my rotations will be pushing 80 kids. At least they're first.
* Because of my expanded assignment, I've lost the choir room as a home base. Wah. Back to the old chapel for me.
* Lynn Foster is my partner (along with a woman named Paige who I haven't met yet). Two years ago, my partner was older than me. Last year, Anna and I did music together. Now, my partner is younger. I'm getting old.
* The music as a whole rocks. Better than GameDay Central but not quite as good as Arctic Edge. I'm dying to see the kids do "The Word."
* I've got a bunch of decorative items collected, and of course, I have no clue yet how I'm going to decorate the chapel. And I have to do it all on Sunday. Here's hoping inspiration will strike.
- Anna and I are spending the weekend in Atlanta with my Uncle John, Aunt Sarah, and my three beautiful cousins. Closest thing we've had to a road trip in quite a while. Pray for safe travel and more of the nice weather we've had the last few days.
- Pray also for Ryan Harless, the son of Clemson correspondent Mickey Plyler who was seriously injured in a car accident three weeks ago. He suffered considerable brain stem trauma, but he's shown improvement with continued physical rehabilitation. Pray for Anna, who's going to the beach next week with her family.

That's about all for now. Carpe diem!

What's Wrong with this Picture?

"Many achievement tests come with instructions on what to do if a child vomits on the answer sheet" (Bracey 104).

What's wrong with this picture?

"Within the American psyche is a basic, albeit flawed, equation that states: “test scores = ability" (Dana Henley - "Standardized Tests: An American Obsession").

What's wrong with this picture?

"My son (grade 3) had a standardized test today. Yep, The Full Battery (whatever that means!). I think it is funny that the state would want to test your kids on the "full battery" (including Science and History) when you aren't even using the same curriculum, scope or sequence. It doesn't make sense, but we are law abiding citizens, so we complied." (Anonymous, "Standardized Test Humor").

What's wrong with this picture?

"My children generally do well on standardized tests...(However, one year, one of my little darlings decided that it was not necessary to utilize scratch paper to complete the math portion of the test, and his score suffered for it. The best laid plans and all that...)" (Life on the Planet: Standardized Tests).

What's wrong with this picture?

"[NCLB] hurts the nation's students more than it helps them; promotes low rather than higher standards; misleads the public about school performance; pushes teachers out of schools where they are most needed; and drrives down the level of instruction in many classrooms" (Bracey 107, quoting Washington Monthly journalist Thomas Toch in November 2001 - two months before NCLB was signed into law).

What's wrong with this picture?

Standardized tests are thought, at least under the precepts of NCLB, to assess what we know about the ways in which students learn, how much they have absorbed from the curriculum, and measure their progress on a yearly basis. But this is not possible. I didn't learn one thing about how my students write, adapt the writing process, or apply methods of drafting and revision from giving them a multiple-choice test last year. Oh, I still tested them, mind you - I had to, since I needed at least 6 major test grades per quarter. The best I could do was use short-answer questions in order to parallel the kind of writing we did in class, make the questions open-ended, and allow the students to use their notes, drafts, etc. Some still treated this test like an isolated, behavioristic test with pre-determined right answers.

Behaviorism assumes that we can take knowledge, break it down into bite-size chunks, and then let students suck it up through glorified straws - teachers - as knowledge funnels through them rather than spread out among the students. Not likely. Students learn when they are allowed to (1) connect new information to past experiences and (2) make deeper meaning out of the ideas covered. Standardized tests take concepts, reduce them to bite-size factoids with only one possible right answer, ignorant of the conditions under which students learned the content, and narrow-minded in the belief that a test claiming to be objective and non-biased in its structure produces accurate results.

But as Bracey reminds us (119-120), a test is only "standardized" in the sense that it has all students answer the same questions, gives them the same amount of time to answer the questions, groups them under the same format, and forces students to follow the same instructions. That has nothing to do with objectivity, which is only in scoring as done by machine, or bias - underlying bias will always exist in test content as long as subjective human beings decide what items to include on the test and what constitutes a correct answer.

No, when I think of standardized tests, I think quick results. Documentable data. Yearly progress goals. Same, same, same (or might I say shame, shame, shame?).

How is that an indicator of actual achievement? Bracey suggests the public gradually lost faith in the teacher's ability to ascertain what students learned in the school and replaced it with a hyper-dependency upon numbers to tell the story. Yet numbers are in the hands of people; they can only tell the stories people want them to tell. If it serves an agenda, they will focus on the glowing percentages of students that achieved high test scores ignoring the implicit percentages that did not. NCLB asks, no, demands that all children must be proficient in reading and math by the year 2014, yet it leaves states to determine what qualifies as "proficient" and uses nothing but tests to evaluate schools. Otherwise, as George W. Bush would argue, how can we know if children are learning?

What's wrong with this picture?

Teach by Numbers

Yesterday, I went on about the infallibility of numbers and how that only extends as far as the reach of people that manipulate them (which is to say, not far). We can make the numbers line up in favor of our views, but if we do so, we're dishonest, a traitor to the very research designed to enlighten ys We can reference only the statistics that support the points we wish to make, but if we do so, we're ignorant, missing out on valuable data that we choose to dismiss.

But Bracey is right on page 71 when he states that statistically significant results (I've always struggled with that term) do not always yield practical applications. Suppose in the example I gave yesterday, about comparing teaching styles, that I got statistically significant results that supported my initial theory of dialogic discourse correlating with higher scores than prescriptive instruction. What then?

Do I suddenly go on the talk-show circuit trumpeting my astounding findings to the public? Do I look up NCTE or ASCD and get my results published in some journal under the glamorous headline "DIALOGUE PROMOTES HIGH TEST SCORES!" Sounds tempting, but no. I'd be thoroughly discredited and my findings would be shot to heck because they wouldn't maintain consistency.

I already mentioned at the end of yesterday's entry that conclusive data isn't what I'm after, or I'd be out of work. But the internal issues that plagued the validity of my study are precisely what others would pounce on, and why my findings, however intriguing, wouldn't hold water under repeated experimentation. I had to follow a very carefully coordinated structure, and my schedule had a profound impact on why my findings turned out the way they did. Some of that was intentional; some not so much. What happens when I try applying dialogic discourse to classrooms pushing 30 students, or 35, or 40? What about when I have more time, like a nine-week quarter, or less time, 2-3 weeks, to apply the method to the curriculum? Do I get the same results? I doubt it. And the questions don't end there.

What if I implemented this approach at the beginning of the year (as opposed to near the end of the third quarter)? Would students be more engaged if I caught them early or would they have too much of a foundation on prescribed learning and rebel against me? What if I used it with ALL my classes (as opposed to one advanced, evenly split class)? Would the inevitability of academic plans, Section 504s, and a dominance of one gender over the other (number) yield different results? What if, heaven forbid, I came down with a debilitating illness a few weeks into the year and needed to hire a full-time substitute for my classes? Could I duplicate dialogic discourse onto the sub plans? Could I trust that the substitute would, in effect "copy" the instruction style faithfully until I returned? More to the point, is it fair to expect that much?

Teaching by numbers is statistically possible but not practically plausible. And as Bracey notes on pages 74 and 75, even if we can find a correlation between two variables (which is rather easy; as he details in examples with skirt length and shirt sleeves, we have been doing this for a long a time), it doesn’t necessarily imply a perfect, or strong, relationship.

This fact is what stops us from concluding that students who score well on the SAT causes high grades in their freshman year of college; it stops me from concluding that either prescriptive or descriptive instruction causes higher grades for all middle school students. For some, it probably will, but for others, it will have little to no effect at all. Additional research studies are required to discount other possibilities before we can even come close to causation.

Mouth Pieces

Despite my disdain for numbers, I grew up believing that they were as infallible as faith. And yes, I'm aware of how weird that sounds. In my mind, numbers (and later on statistics) told the truth. Clear-cut and concise. It's not hard to see the lure of quantitative research when it essentially cuts to the chase, cranks out answers [and leaves the rest for us poor teachers to sort through. Ha ha].

I detailed this example in a blog last year, but it applies to this scenario. In the first couple of weeks of the school year, we teachers were given the grade weighting scale mandated by the district. Grade weights were split into two categories: major assessments and minor assessments. Each category measured 50% of students' grades, which immediately raised one big question: what's the difference? I eventually tried to set up a system of sub-categories under each category. I put homework/classwork, journals, and quizzes under minor assessments, reserving the tests and projects for major assessments.

But here's the kicker. We were required (supposedly, because no one checked with me on this) to give students six tests per quarter. Right away, that's six major grades we had to prepare for students before we can even think about what to do in a class. I was also told we should finish each quarter with at least 16 total assessments. 16 grades, six of which are major tests. That's only two grades away from encompassing half of a quarter's work. If each quarter lasts nine weeks, we're talking scheduling tests within a week (or a week and a half) of each other. What about quizzes? Does this system still leave me enough time to schedule quizzes periodically to check progress not sufficient for a test? What of homework? Does this system imply assigning homework practically every night to push the number of assessments up to 16 (and then exceed it)? Even on nights when students are supposed to be studying for tests?

Bracey's statement about variables on page 40 correlates with my newly enlightened view of numbers (mind you, this one incident didn't alter my view; it had been and continues to be in a state of flux as I work to figure out how to balance it with my tendency to rely on qualitative research). He says "Variables [numbers] are not pure indications that reveal their meaning to us immediately. They must be interpreted."

Numbers always are in the hands of people. Since they cannot literally speak for themselves (at least not immediately), we, with our personal biases, platforms, and agendas are their mouth pieces. Nothing wrong with having these because, after all, we're human. We can't help what we are any more than numbers can help being what they are. But we should know how to recognize our bias so that we can monitor how they color the way we interpret numbers.

It doesn't make one person any more right or wrong than another person, as Bracey showed in comparing George W. Bush and his critics; it just shows how each used different statistics (i.e., mean and median) and, I'm sure, vastly different interpretations of the statistics. The key is to be aware of what point you want to make (p. 44), make sure the data supports your point without twisting it out of its context, know what populations your numbers are based on (p. 46), and monitor (i.e., be prepared to adjust) changes over time in the composition of your populations (p. 62). Otherwise, you either come across as a liar (more on that in a moment) or an ignoramus. I want to be trusted and to feel in touch with the world around me, so I have to resign myself sometimes to double-checking my views to make sure they aren't manipulated by statistics, as well as keep the big picture in mind when news breaks of schools measuring record highs or lows in achievement test scores.

I did a study in the spring with one of my Language Arts advanced classes to compare boys and girls' quiz scores on grammar concepts using two different teaching styles. On the surface, the class seemed ideal for a reliable population. No IEPs, APs, and an even split on the numbers for each gender.

But right away, I faced threats to the internal validity of my study. I had a few students drop the class, we lost time to assemblies, I had to squeeze four grammar concepts into a four-week unit for time's sake, etc. So I had to account for these threats as I presented my findings. The point I wanted to make (positive impact of dialogic discourse on grades as opposed to prescribed instruction) did not correlate with the results. If I was dishonest (I mixed that word up with "smart" in class today - my bad. Nothing smart about lying with words or with numbers, kids), I probably could have skewed the data in such a manner as to prove my point - but that's unethical. And if I like my job, I wouldn't want to do that anyway.

As a qualitative researcher, I am not looking for quick, tidy conclusions; I should want to raise more questions so that I can keep experimenting. It gets tedious on occasion, but if it keeps me consisently in-touch, it's ultimately worth the effort.

Lying Numbers Lie

I'm going on record as saying (or writing in this instance) I wish I'd had Gerald Bracy's Reading Educational Research last spring. I took the second half of the Research & Inquiry class set. Without question, it was the most mind-numbing and least stimulating of my graduate classes thus far, and most of my undergrad classes. I won't get into too many of my reasons for thinking this way, but I will allude to them in a few short statements that sums up what I appreciate thus far about Bracey.

I am not a statistician. If I'm honest, I couldn't care less about the terminology required for understanding statistics because it's not my field of choice - but I do admire and respect those who excel in it. Even so, I do want to know enough about how statistics are used in my field (and they are) so that I don't get blindsided by the games they can play with educational pratice (i.e. to make the state of affairs seem bleaker than it actually is).

And just so I'm clear, if that requires my knowing how to compute standard deviation, variance, correlation coefficients, interpret scatterplots, independent samples t-tests, and ANOVA, fine. But why stop there? Show me how it matters in the real world! Help me to go beyond how these terms work - let me see their strengths and weaknesses. What do the majority of researchers tend to highlight? Why? Are educators more likely to focus upon quantitative or qualitative research? Why? Are "lay people" more likely to listen to quantitative or qualitative research? Why? Which audience matters more? How can I incorporate data to support my teaching practice in ways that show I am aware of the risks inherent in trusting them to the extent that they can damage my credibility? How can I balance my tendency to use descriptive, holistic research with today's necessity to interlace generalizable, experimental research (given that both types matter, but one happens to be the type that more people in power take seriously)?

I've never been a lover of numbers (as my less-than-stellar math grades will attest) and I will freely admit to having a bias against their value that more than likely correlates with my lack of success in using them for my own purposes. Descriptive research is a strength, or at least a mode that I understand well enough to put to competent practice. And I think that says something about the way that we approach teaching math and statistics. Do most students who struggle with math and numbers tend to shy away from using them in the "real world?" If there is anything to that, what does that tell us about the way we teach the subject if quantitative data is the "in-route" these days? Now there's an inquiry essay waiting to happen...

Anyway, back to Bracey. Despite my relief at his take on the games that statistics can play, I was a little bit miffed at his statements on "effective teachers" in the Tracking Growth section. He does a good job of identifying what society at large, or at least TVAAS, thinks effective teachers are: the ones who bring up test scores. True enough.

But he seems to skirt the big question on the table, one that he posits himself as an introduction. If the implication is that test scores are an inadequate definition of effective teachers (which I agree with), then what exactly is an effective teacher? I was waiting for him to try and take a stance on authentic pedagogy backed, backed by carefully phrased statistics from trustworthy growth models, but he never seemed to get around to it. It felt like he was showing only one side, the faulty one, of the issue, which means if he is to be believed, I think you need to establish what research argues on the other side, particularly if you draw up the section with a question that seemed designed to be answered at some point. If there is no simple answer (and there isn't), then why set it up that way?

What was the point of his making up three of the four hypotheses that he shared in the following section, I wonder? Why did he use only one that had been field tested and held its own? His point that hypotheses are in constant need of tweaking to get clarifiable terms is well-taken, but to me, they aren't nearly as useful without the studies behind them. The studies would help to show me how well researchers followed their hypotheses, what variables existed (how they tried to work around them) and a brief sketch of the results that either verified or discredited the hypotheses. This would have given me more of an idea on how malleable hypotheses are in that once the studies begin, researchers often find the need to adjust their terms to adequately carry out experiments. Broad statements are more sharply defined, narrow statements are re-phrased to include more relevant points, and so on.

The Search for Balance

Doug's account in chapter 5 of Nash's book moved me in a deeply spiritual sense. As with Doug, I am a Christian and I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, as anyone who knows me or reads this blog regularly can discern. My faith has been the one constant in my life despite its ebbs and flows. I came to faith at a very early age long before I reached a point where the slings and arrows of relativism and inquiry waged war with it.

Naturally, as a child of 11, I couldn't have counted on Jesus coming under attack, let alone comprehended why anyone would want to attack Him or the messages that He proclaimed. 1 Corinthians 13:11 aptly summarizes my state of mind: "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me" (that last sentence should come with an asterisk because, in all honesty, I am nowhere close to becoming the man that God wants me to be. I say this despite my being a full-time teacher, a grad student, and soon to be a husband. But I have yet to put all my childish ways behind me, and in all likelihood, I will continue to struggle with this).

Anyway, mine was a very child-like faith. Nothing unusual there. To me, Jesus was invincible, untouchable. More than that, He was a deified split personality. Part interesting storyteller (never a moment when He didn't have a parable up His sleeve), and part divine superhero (my friend Taylor likened this to a form of Superman beating the crap out of some punk villains). And as a child this duality made all the sense in the world to me. What else was there to talk about or argue? Nobody could grab your attention with a captivating story like this Man, and if you weren't on His side, woe unto you!

Naturally, I ran into trouble upon entry into high school and college. I was naive, even somewhat arrogant about my beliefs, though I couldn't bring myself to admit it. Absent was the love and respect for others regardless of whether they disagreed with me. This didn't manifest in verbal discourse, mind you, but it was apparent in tone of voice, facial expressions, and attitude. I'm sure people noticed, and I won't do myself the disservice of pretending it didn't play a role in why some of them didn't go out of their way to hang out with me. Who wants to hang out with some clown who thinks he's always right? Who wants to associate with someone so narrow-minded he won't even do you the courtesy of listening to what you have to say?

This, at its core, was why reading Doug's account spoke to me personally. Nash came right out and asked him what it was he truly cared about, and he made it clear that it was his struggle for equilibrium. His search for balance. How could he live his life serving Christ and still manage life as a secular educator? What a question!

I deal with that problem almost every day as a public school teacher inwardly if not outwardly. How can I teach in such a way that my kids see the real "me?" No matter what the curriculum mandates, I will not compromise my moral values (and I am thankful for two things: that I work in an environment in which no one puts a price on my head for believing in Jesus, and that I have gotten much better at getting it across in a more creative, artful fashion) and I think they deserve no less. I say fairly often that kids are sharper than we give them credit for. What I mean is, they can "read" teachers. Chances are, they'll smell a rat pretty quick if I teach about something and my heart's not in it.

I say this, and I freely disagree with Nash on truth and absolutes. It doesn't mean I respect him any less - I've read his book the past three days and he already feels like one of the closest companions I've ever had. I'd love to meet him if I ever had the chance. How can I not admire someone who has the guts to lay himself out in the public eye and make himself vulnerable as he does in this book (particularly when I remember I had a chance to do the same years ago and failed - see "Courage to Be")? Regardless of whether I agree or disagree with him personally, I have to admire that.

But Nash's "it all depends" (chapter 6) philosophy? I disagree - to an extent. Let me use this to expand on the plagiarism issue I brought up yesterday. I promise I'll try to be brief.

I think relative truth has serious limitations when it comes to ethical issues. If all the reason I can give for why a student shouldn't plagiarize on a research paper is, "well, it's common courtesy to give credit back to your source" I honestly don't think he'll listen or care. It sounds too wishy-washy. No passion or earnestness in it at all. He could say, "I wasn't raised that way" or "In such-and-such class, we plagiarized all the time, and no one got in trouble. Now we gotta cite our sources? What's your problem?" It's not that he has a problem with my taking away his "right" to plagiarize; it's that I'm doing so in a way that fails to communicate how serious it is. After all, he learned one way to write a paper - he can easily learn another. But it depends on where the line is drawn, or if a line is drawn at all. If I don't make clear plagiarism is cheating, dishonest, and most importantly wrong, then he won't get the message. He has no perimeters to exercise his creativity. It's chaos without the necessary controls in place to justify it.

Does that mean everything I wrote yesterday was a big, fat waste? I acted by what I believed was morally right and thus have no right to regret not publishing my story? Of course not. I was in tenth grade, for crying out loud. My parents knew more about the nuances of plagiarism than I did. My teacher knew what the magazine required from its submissions; otherwise why would she recommend it at all? I knew plagiarism was wrong, and it is - but I didn't fully understand what it was at the time. I made a choice, but it wasn't the most informed choice.

But my point is, Nash's postmodernist idea that what we do depends on our situation seems to imply that there aren't any standards or absolutes to govern what we do. Maybe I'm wrong on that, but that's how I read it. I see the good in that; it helps produce more authentic work. But we shouldn't ignore the risks involved if we go too far with relative truth. I think it sets a dangerous precedent if students get the idea they can push the envelope as far as they want on the basis that it helps them write a more authentic paper. That's the goal, yes. But they can handle a simple "no." They can even handle "you should not do this because it isn't right." They might ask you to explain (which shows how much absolute truth they get on the homefront), so you should be prepared to do so. But they can handle it. Moreover, I think it makes me more 'real' to them. It lets them know I stand for something that I won't budge on, and I'm willing to take the time to explain myself because I care about the decisions they make. It's not that I'm trying to come off as a stubborn hardcase (though I may come off that way sometimes, and I apologize for it) or make their choices for them, but I want them to make the most informed choices possible.

Finding a balance between moral and relative truth is tough.

I hope to keep getting better at it.

Courage to Be

I try not to hold back in my writing. I like to believe that every time I, as Nash so eloquently puts it, apply my butt to the chair, I have something worthwhile to say, and I want to transfer it from formless schema, as I mentioned in my previous entry, into clear written language because as I wrote about yesterday, writing SPNs can benefit others, not just myself.

Sometimes that's easy; sometimes not. Regardless of the circumstances, it all comes back to my mindset about what I write. Do I feel it is important enough to commit to paper? Or is it better reserved for the cobwebs of my desk drawer, or an unfinished draft, or not at all?

In the tenth grade, I gained a new English Honors teacher at the start of the second semester: Brenda Stephens. I think I speak for most of my classmates when I say that a discernable tone shift occured when she took over. She piled on the literature and projects. She plowed through study guides and lecture notes. She was demanding and particular, pushing each of us to our limits. We read plenty of novels but made time for short stories, mostly in the textbook. One story I fondly recall is Washington Irving's The Devil and Tom Walker. A tense, gripping tale that eventually laid the groundwork for one writing endeavor that haunts me to this day.

For those that haven't read it, The Devil and Tom Walker is about a man who strikes a bargain with the devil, referred to as "Old Scratch," in order to make a better life: wealth, notoriety, and a way out of the miserable relationship with his wife. But everything has a price, and Tom's is the loss of his wife (which could be construed as a boon in his mind) and his free will; he must become the devil's pawn. The rest of the story follows Tom's journey to the depths of misery, then back again as he seemingly regains his freedom in God (our of fear for what will become of him when he dies), only to have it snatched from his grasp when the devil takes him away.

About a month into Mrs. Stephens' class, and only a week removed from reading this story, she assigned us a short story to write. I don't remember the exact perimeters of the assignment - only that I wanted to base mine off of The Devil and Tom Walker. I enjoyed the story, but I recall feeling a little cheated at the end. The idea that Tom got so close to redemption, turning his whole life around, only to lose it all at the end didn't sit right with me. It made me wonder. Do we as humans have free will? If so, to what extent is it ours to use? If not, what is the purpose of having minds and souls? Do our mistakes cost us in the end? Can we be redeemed by our actions? How much are we held accountable for the actions of those around us?

Nash points out in his guidelines for writing SPNs that all authentic written texts begin with constructs to focus the writer's attention and hooks to catch the reader. As you can see, I was anything but short on those. Getting my story started was pretty simple. I felt inspired by my subject. I had constructs to fasten my focus, and those constructs could also serve as hooks for my readers to latch onto. No easy answers to those questions, and if I did my job with care, they would keep pondering them.

I re-wrote Irving's story, using most of his main characters. I named Tom's wife and gave her more of a role in the story's climax. I also gave the family a son and made him a factor in Tom's pact with the devil, who was always referred to as "the black man" (he dressed in black from head to toe), the idea being that it wasn't instantly clear who he was, but the clues were present. I wanted to show, rather than tell, it in his appearance, his dialogue, and his manipulations of Tom (and later, his wife). I gave Tom a different history while keeping it true to the tone of bitterness and misery that pushes him to the devil in the original, and I made sure the reader had a clear understanding of his thoughts by narrating most of the story from his point of view. My ending on the surface was similar to Irving's; Tom still loses his wife (and his son), yet he comes out of it with more of a sense of triumph, not merely in that he "survives," but that he sees the devil's machinations for what they are and ultimately uses his free will to exorcise himself from his influence. True, things still turn out badly for his loved ones, but not as a direct result of his actions.

Mrs. Stephens enjoyed my story so much she wanted to submit it to a writing magazine and encouraged me to agree to it.

But I refused.

At the time, I was deathly worried about plagiarism issues. The fact that I used the ideas and characters of another writer to tell my story troubled me when it came to the notion of putting it on public display. My parents and teacher couldn't believe I would turn down the chance to get my story published. So what if I had Tom and Old Scratch in my story? Couldn't I just re-name them? So what if I borrowed concepts in Irving's text? Couldn't I just dub my story a what-if, or a sequel, paying respect to the source material while still allowing my version to be told?

I was too scared to do any of these things. I regret it now. I dug that story out my first year of teaching and read it to my middle school students as a model of short-story writing. I let them critique me as I would them. They were hooked. They asked me questions. It made quite a few of them think and apply some of my conventions to their own writing. A girl in my first period wrote a suspense story with a murderer and concealed her identity all the way to the last couple sentences, in which it was revealed the narrator was the murderer (with vital clues planted throughout).

Nash breaks down every writer's excuse for holding back by with this reminder: each of us has a story to tell. No single story is more or less important than another. I didn't think using another story to kickstart my own counted as telling my own tale. I couldn't have been more wrong. The constructs were mine. The focus was mine. The motivation and drive for putting the story to print in the first place was mine. I wrote The Devil and the Walkers with the best that was in me, and to this day, I feel as if I cheated myself by not allowing it to reach the public domain.

Not only that, but Nash also reminds us that we can't be purely detatched from some degree of influence in today's society. Whether we are conscious of it or not we are always drawing inspiration from someone or something else - we can't help it. So why should we let that stop us from telling the story that is genuine and flows directly from our own wonder and questions that prod us to apply our rears to the chair and write? Nash's students in chapter four didn't let it stop them from telling their stories, and they had tremendous personal issues to work through, issues that make mine pale in comparison, at least in my view.

I wonder; is it our own fear that holds us back? Fear of what? Rejection? Criticism? Embarrassment? Or do we choose to hold back because it's easier than, in the words of Phillip Lopate, "to attempt, to test, to make a run at something without knowing whether you are going to succeed?"

To Serve a Greater Good

I began reading a book for my EDRD-150 class early this afternoon. Dr. Thomas was out, and I wanted to take advantage of the extra time offered by a shortened class to get a leg up on the amount of coursework ahead of me. I did fairly well; picked up a list of possible articles of interest to use for annotated bibliographies, got both required textbooks, and sat down to knock out the first two chapters of Robert Nash's Liberating Scholarly Writing: The Power of Personal Narrative in one of my favorite cushy spots in the Furman library.

Interesting title, I thought at first glance as my fingers ripped off the cover-to-cover plastic that identified the book as "new." Just as well; not a used copy to be found (I considered ordering from Amazon, but that would have put me at least a few days behind. If I haven't been clear yet I'm not a time waster). Personal narrative? I always enjoyed the rare opportunities to write PNs in grade school. They were part of the impetus for my keeping a written journal from 5th to 12th grade, and moved to blogging my sophomore year - we didn't write them often enough. They were but one of many other modes of writing we had to cover within the span of an all-too-short year (a model I've been guilty of using in my own teaching). Not that I didn't enjoy the persuasive essays, research papers, or literature reviews - they all had their own respective purpose, and I like to think I learned something from each.

But they did not carry the appeal of personal narratives for me. PNs were, and still are, as close to free-form as you get in writing. It's the one mode in which you are truly limited only by the power of your imagination, your experiences, your feelings and your insights. PNs were my way of understanding myself. I took the fact that it was a "personal" endeavor to heart. In many ways, I am far too complex to understand sometimes (so you can just imagine how other people perceive me!). My thoughts don't always make sense in my head. I don't know why I feel the way I do, or even what my feelings are on occasion. Writing them down in my own voice helps me to try and make sense of myself, to bring clarity to my complexity, to give my thoughts tangibility, meaning. When I see them in written form, I can begin to sort through them, to play with them. They are no longer formless schema bottled up in my cranium like Woodruff Road traffic at Christmastime. They are in a form I can see and begin to understand.

Nash's opening insights about PNs (or scholarly PNs) raised my eyebrows repeatedly on multiple levels. I thought I would read a charming, occasionally witty account of how to compose scholarly writing. I did not expect to get that alongside an in-depth and revealing glimpse into the man's personal life. This is a writer who practices what he preaches. This is a man who holds passionate beliefs and makes no apologies for having them. This is a man who takes chances with what he does - not in a way so as to be outwardly reckless in his profession, but to make his voice "heard." I grew fascinated. I wanted to read more about his family life, his background - in other words, the raw "stuff" that made him the writer he is.

In doing so it occured to me that I was verifying the claims he makes about a writer being inherently more approachable in a vulnerable spot. Nash felt real, alive to me and less like another in a long line of published writers, experts, and researchers that have crossed my eyes in the last few years. With every word he wrote, I felt as though he were seated on the cushion next to me in the library pouring out his heart on why SPN mean so much to him. He touched me, and in doing so I felt that much more inclined to "listen" to his insights. While it is still early in the book (though I have no doubt I'll be reading more later tonight), his first points about the impact of SPNs made me rethink a few things about why I write personal accounts.

Personal narratives don't have to be just for me. They can benefit others. They can serve a greater good.

If I can be moved by Nash's anecdotes and distinctive flair in his writing, then he is accomplishing something much bigger in scope and much more powerful than merely spilling out thoughts at random. He's doing it to show the draw that SPNs have. The perspective that he offers is that scholarly papers need not be completely deprived of the writer's human side - such a feat is impossible to begin with. As humans, we are subjective and objective creatures, both at the same time. One may submerge the other more often than not, but we need not short-change ourselves by taking up shop in one category and remaining there always. We're much too complex for that.

Maybe that's why I keep blogging (though I've gotten horrendously slack as of late). A part of me hopes that someone out there, maybe a friend who knows the address or a random passerby, will read the entries and feel moved enough to post a comment. It's not why I blog - I don't worry about how people will react or try to craft my blogs in a manner that will deliberately entice response because to do so, I think, taints my voice in such a way that it ceases to be uniquely mine. It smacks of pandering to the masses.

Maybe that's why I took a leap of faith and shared a few accounts from my written journal with my middle school students this past year. A part of me wanted to show them I practiced the same concepts we talked about in class. At least that's what I told myself. But the real truth is that I wanted to relate to them. To show that I was a human being just like them, a card-carrying homo sapien who could feel just as mixed-up, lonely, excited, joyful, and confused as them. Being an adult and a teacher didn't change that.

The results of such actions aren't anything ground-breaking. No lightbulbs went off in my kids' heads on how to write personal narratives. They didn't ask to read more of my journal entries (which isn't necessarily a bad thing). But I hope it planted the first seeds of trust between me and them, and that it helped me come across as less of a teacher and more of what they were. Practicing writers. All of us tapping into the same field.

If those seeds sprouted during the year, with more guidance from me, who knows how far we got? That in itself, more than any personal outlet, is a far greater good.