"Put Me In Coach"

When I was a kid, I had a knack for finding the spot in the outfield or on the basketball court least likely to see any action. I would stand, shielding my eyes from the relentless Arizona sun, contemplating which Catholic saint was the correct one to call upon to deliver me from gym class. Sometimes, despite my best effort, the ball would find me anyway, and I would feel the eyes of my classmates upon me as I failed to execute whatever maneuver was required of me. Each perceived failure just confirmed for me that I did not belong in the world of physical fitness.

Here is a short list of things at which I did excel in my youth:

• daydreaming
• listening to a cassette tape of The Cure's Disintegration
• napping
• finding the right word in my rhyming dictionary to complete that couplet
• snacking

Given the theme of this blog post, you might assume that I am here to tell you about how, one day, I found the inspiration that would guide me as an educator within the pages of some book as I sat reading, alone in my childhood bedroom, P.E. be damned. This is not the case. In fact, I draw a great deal of inspiration for my approach to teaching from the world of fitness--precisely because I've always felt like an outsider in that environment.

Somewhere along the road to adulthood, I begrudgingly decided that I needed to exercise. I tried a number of different approaches to physical fitness over the years. I tried working out to DVDs in my living room with an audience of Cheerio-eaters lounging behind me on the couch. I tried running bleachers at Phoenix College. (There were so many ways I could have killed myself doing this.) I tried working out with a friend at LA Fitness. No matter the setting, I always carried with me those feelings of anxiety and a mean little (adolescent) voice in my head telling me that I don't belong.

About a year ago, I decided to try yet another new approach to cardiovascular health: I began taking classes at an Orange Theory Fitness near my house. I showed up with my dossier failures in sports and exercise tucked under one arm, and all my pet anxieties trailing obediently behind me. My experience at OTF, however, proved to be different. The students in class each week represent a diverse range of ages, body types, and physical abilities. The coach welcomes each of us with a high-five and remembers our names. When the coach offers a correction to a student's form when performing an activity, it is done with kindness, and in a spirit of helpfulness. I keep coming back because the coaches make it clear that every student in class belongs there, and that we are all striving for progress, not perfection.

Sometimes while I am panting through a hill on the treadmill, I think about what great teachers the OTF coaches are. With a little kindness, some high-fives a few accommodations, they have helped me to get out of my own way so that I can focus on my health. 

Every semester, just for a kick, I ask my classes who among them wants to become an English teacher. I have never had a single hand rise into the air. The students in my classes are not interested in spending their lives unlocking the mysteries topic sentences or MLA citation style for others. In fact, many of the students who show up to class on the first day feeling like outsiders to the world of English. Many of them carry around memories of a class they took where their paper was returned to them, bleeding red ink. Or one where they felt out of place because English is not their first language. Or one where they stopped coming to class because they were simply too anxious to complete the semester.

These days, I channel my inner Orange Theory coach. What can I do or say in class to show my students that they do, in fact, belong here? How can I help them to set aside their anxieties, quiet those voices in their heads, and start forging a new relationship with the world of words?

I think of my coaches, and I work to build a welcoming community in my classroom through friendly smiles, genuine interest in the lives of my students, some goofy memes, and an abundance of high-fives.

Introduction to Expository Writing

One of my favorite poems by former Poet Laureate, Billy Collins, is "Introduction to Poetry." 

I love the vibrant and clear images in the first five stanzas, as the speaker describes the many ways he wants his students to experience a poem. The speaker guides his students to "waterski / across the surface of a poem," and to "drop a mouse into a poem / and watch him probe his way out." I love how, in a poem exploring the difference between inhabiting a poem, and seeking the 'answer' to a poem, Collins's meaning is delightfully unambiguous.

"Introduction to Poetry" turns on the word 'but' in the sixth stanza, sharply contrasting the whimsical images found in the poem's opening with images of torture and violence in its conclusion. The poem closes with the image of students beating a poem with a hose.

It makes me chuckle every time I read it.

I thought it would be a fun exercise in creativity to write a poem of my own, emulating both the structure and the imagery of "Introduction to Poetry." However, I chose to steer the ending of my poem, "Introduction to Expository Writing," in a different, more hopeful, direction.

I had a lot of fun with this exercise. It is definitely a work in progress, and I have a feeling I'll keep fussing with it in the weeks to come, but I thoroughly enjoyed looking at the act of teaching First-Year Composition through the lens of poetry.




Introduction to Expository Writing


I ask them to take an idea

and roll it out before them

like a map of the world



or thump its melon hide

and listen for signs that it's ripe.



I say build a tree house, and view an idea

from above the canopy,



or shape an idea into a sandcastle,

and see what happens

when the tide rolls in.



I want them to chart a course to the heart of an idea,

using the constellations as their guide.



But they eye me with suspicion and ask,

"How many words

does this have to be?"



And then they pick up their tools

with uncalloused hands

and begin to chisel.

What Would LMM Do?

What Would LMM Do?

6x6 #1

This year, I've found inspiration in an unlikely place: Twitter.

Twitter was once a place where I popped in for the politics, but stayed for the cat videos. Twitter can often feel like a place where everyone's anger dial is permanently turned up to 11and there is only one way to spell the word 'your.' However, it is here that I recently found a guru of positivity, and a champion of grit. I have found inspiration as a teacher in the 140 character bursts of genius from the composer, lyricist, playwright, singer and "former substitute teacher" Lin-Manuel Miranda.


It is 6:30 AM on a December morning, and I am standing, bleary-eyed, in my kitchen. Putting off the morning's more pressing tasks, I am dumping heaping scoops of coffee grounds into the percolator while simultaneously scrolling scrolling scrolling through my Twitter feed. I settle upon the following tweet, and, suddenly awake, I yell out "Yes! YESSSSS!"

The animals at my feet who were hoping for food scatter into the shadows.

As a teacher of writing, it is this concept that I am forever trying to impress upon my students. Rewriting IS writing.

Lin-Manuel Miranda not only tweets about the fact that revision is the beating heart of writing, but he also shares his writing in its various stages--something I think takes a lot of guts and vulnerability. He reminds me that sharing my own writing with my students, and talking with them about my own (laboriously slow) writing process, can make a greater impact on my students than a presentation on the five steps of the writing process ever will.

~~

Despite the fact that Miranda has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize, an Emmy Award, three Grammy Awards, three Tony Awards, a MacArthur Fellowship, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, he has built a warm and welcoming community in his corner of the Twitterverse. He regularly replies to those who tag him in a tweet, chatting amicably, thus breaking down the barrier between celebrity and fan. Once, he even formed a book group dedicated to reading the works of Shakespeare with his followers.

He connects with his followers as one human being to another.

Teachers are far from celebrities, but the traditional collegiate classroom does still retain a bit of a hierarchy, forged over centuries of teacher-student dynamic. Is it my role to stand at the front of the room, imparting what I know unto a sea of students? Or maybe I am a writer, communicating with a room of writers, who happen to just be starting out on their journey?

I can connect with them, as one human being to another, and I can help create a community in my classroom, one amicable chat at a time.

~~

Lin-Manuel Miranda is relentlessly positive and supportive of his 2.75 million followers. He dishes out inspiration like my mom dishes out sheet cake at a family gathering. (Take it! It's for you! You want ice cream with that? Of course you do. Here.)

I assume that from time to time, an unkind comment pops up in his feed, or that he spots some questionable grammar in the comments section of a post. If it bothers him, if Twitter ever makes him worry about the future of humanity, you'd never know it. He carries on, tweeting out one little poem of positivity after another.

As a teacher, it can be too easy to look at a stack of essays and sigh. We can be quick to spot the misused first-person point of view, to deflate when noting the gaps in the grade book, or shake our heads at the empty chairs in class on a Thursday morning, but it the costs me nothing to choose to believe in the ability of each of my students to do truly great things anyway. I can emulate Lin-Manuel Miranda and remind my students, every time I see them, that today is a new day, and another chance to built their future.
~~
Finally, I find inspiration in Lin-Manuel Miranda because the characters he writes about share so much with the students in our classrooms here at GCC. His characters come from diverse backgrounds, and face a host of obstacles that they may feel are insurmountable.

In Miranda's debut musical In The Heights--which he wrote during his sophomore year of college, a feat in itself--the character Nina Rosario is the first one in her family, and the first from the barrio, to go to college. However, in the first act, she wrestles with how to tell her parents that she has dropped out of school. She found the pressure of college to be too great, and her support system to be too far away.

In Hamilton: An American Musical, in the beginning of the play, Alexander Hamilton is a nineteen-year-old "young, scrappy and hungry" immigrant from the Caribbean, trying to finish college early and go make his mark on the world.

These are the stories of so many of our students at Glendale Community College. A large population of our students are far from the country they call home, and are trying to navigate not just American culture, but the expectations of college as well. Many of our students are first-generation college students, whose family may not know how best to support them, or even have the resources to do so.

The work of Lin-Manuel Miranda keeps fresh in my mind the very real struggles faced by the students in my classroom, like my student who writes everything in Vietnamese, then translates it into English, but who also regularly visits my office hours to make sure she's on track. Or my student from The Gambia who wrote a beautiful piece about the conflict back home in one blog post, and about his favorite West African coffee (Cafe Touba!) in another.
~~
Much of Twitter may be loud, angry and riddled with trolls, but I've found lovely little corner filled with art, encouragement, and community in the tweets of Lin-Manuel Miranda.

e.e. cumming's "since feeling is first"

The name of my blog comes from one of my favorite poems by E.E. Cummings. I thought I'd include it here for your reading enjoyment!




                                                                    since feeling is first
                                                                    By: E. E. Cummings


                                                                   since feeling is first

                                                                   who pays any attention

                                                                   to the syntax of things

                                                                   will never wholly kiss you;


                                                                   wholly to be a fool

                                                                   while Spring is in the world


                                                                   my blood approves,

                                                                   and kisses are a better fate

                                                                   than wisdom

                                                                   lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry

                                                                   – the best gesture of my brain is less than

                                                                   your eyelids’ flutter which says


                                                                   we are for each other; then

                                                                   laugh, leaning back in my arms

                                                                   for life’s not a paragraph


                                                                   And death i think is no parenthesis

Fighting the Good Fight with a Hashtag

There’s nothing like giving birth to two perfect tiny humans to make you see the world through new eyes. My children both happen to be female. In a different era, this simple fact would limit the lives they could live, would shape their possibilities like a girdle, would surround them like a picket fence. But in 2016, in America, my girls can define what it means to be female for themselves. This is a fact so beautiful and astounding that it brings tears to my eyes when I think of it.

You wanna be an engineer? Go for it. You wanna be in politics? Hell yes. You want to travel the world, and never have children? Absolutely. You wanna shave your head, or get tattoos, or wear men’s shoes? Sure thing. You wanna have a kick-ass family, and teach your kids how to bake? Anything you want, my loves. 

The hashtag #LikeAGirl caught fire in 2015, with, I imagine, people like me who find the idea of equating being a girl with weakness as ridiculous and outdated. Such language is just another fence, another girdle, but one people find acceptable as long as they tag a quick “just kidding” on the end of their statement.

I used the hashtag frequently in 2015 in my social media accounts. I tagged it onto posts about my girls building and shooting off rockets with their dad, and on photos of them camping, building with Legos or blocks, or wrestling like puppies on the living room rug.

The hashtag was born not from a grassroots feminist movement, but was created by Always, the feminine care company. In fact, they launched the campaign in grand style—to an audience usually assumed to be big, burly and macho and male—at the 2015 Super Bowl. The commercial titled "Always #Like a Girl" captured America's attention.

The “Always #Like a Girl” campaign effectively communicates the message that today, the phrase “like a girl” means strength and confidence.

The audience of this ad is not the average audience of a feminine protection commercial. Yes, ultimately, it’s women who will purchase the product, but the message of the campaign is aimed at anyone who thinks that to do something “like a girl” means to do it poorly, and without strength or confidence. The fact that this ad debuted at the Super Bowl insured that it reached millions of people, many of them male.

One choice the director of this ad made was to allow it to feel raw, and unscripted. 

When the ad opens, the eye of the camera focuses on what might be the scene of an audition. We see the producer, sitting in the shadows, we see several cameramen, focused on the task at hand. It feels like we, the audience, are behind the scene and seeing things we are usually not privy to. This choice makes the ad feel honest, and not like a product pitch dreamed up in the offices of Mad Men.

As the action unfolds, it is similarly loose and informal, which continues to contribute to the ethos of the ad. We first see a young woman in her late teens or early 20s standing nervously before the producer, in front of a screen. The producer then gives her some instructions: "Okay, so, I am just going to give you some actions to do, and you just do whatever comes to mind." This scene plays out again and again with a string of young women, a young boy, and a young man.

This ad effectively employs pathos as the action unfolds. As the audience watches the auditioning people are directed to "run like a girl" "fight like a girl" and "throw like a girl" The first five people we see respond by running with legs flailing, arms tucked at their side, or wrists limp. They also respond by imitating a person who has no strength, confidence or skill. 

When they bring actual girls out, and the audience sees their bright eyes, and strong arms, their honest and determined gazes, the creators of the ad create a powerful contrast between the listless actions just performed and the reality of what it means to be a girl.

It is at this point in the ad where I feel emotions well up inside me, every time I watch it. When tiny, and undeniably fierce Dakota, age 10, stands before the audience in her shorts and running shoes, I think of my own girls, and their friends, and how I want to protect them from any message that tells them they are weak, just because they are female.

When the producer in the shadows asks these girls what it means to  "run like a girl" "fight like a girl" and "throw like a girl", they perform each action with strength and confidence. The music swells, and evokes feelings of inspiration. When a small girl in a dress, of maybe six years of age, is asked, "What does it mean to run like a girl?" She responds, "I think it means to run as fast as you can." The message "girl" does not mean "weak" is effectively driven home to the audience with the words and actions of each one of these girls.

Now words appear on a simple gray background: "When did doing something "like a girl" become an insult?" 

The ad effectively uses simple clean text periodically throughout the ad. The words fill the screen for three to five seconds at key moments in the ad, and serve as a subtle guide for the audience. The words on the screen help the message unfold for the audience, as some may "get it" right away, but some, given the prevalence of the negative connotation of "like a girl," may need more time and assistance. 

The emotional appeals continue to pile up as the producer then questions the people who first appeared, and portrayed girlhood as a weakness. We see the women become emotional as they think about how they have internalized this message in their youth, and as they think about how damaging it can be to young girls as they enter puberty, a difficult time of self-definition. Through these interviews, the message of the ad is made crystal clear. The ad closes with images of women running with strength, power, and confidence.

The ad closes with the words "Let's make #LIKEAGIRL mean amazing things."

Ivy, wielding a cross bow #LIKEAGIRL

The next day, the internet was flooded with articles about this ground-breaking ad. Jillian Berman with the Huffington Post wrote, "An ad for pads stole the show during the Super Bowl." She went on, "The Super Bowl ad won kudos all over the Internet for changing the conversation about what it means to run, throw and do pretty much any activity 'like a girl.'"

The hashtag then took off, helping this campaign to leap from the television, and into the lives of real girls, and the mothers, fathers, aunts and uncles and grandparents who love them. The Always company surely hoped that this ad would positively impact their sales, but they also made real progress in redefining the phrase "Like a Girl" in the American vernacular.