My Teaching Philosophy: A Comic

My latest comics effort is a 3-page soccer analogy for my teaching philosophy. This was our first major assignment for my Comics in Education class, so I put more effort into it than my previous sketches. In other words, I wracked my brains for how to express my teaching philosophy as a comic :-/

We've known about this assignment from the beginning of the semester, and I geared most of my previous comics towards education, hoping that a way to connect them into a cohesive statement about education would miraculously appear to me when it came time to draw. What I ended up with was a bunch of stories about teaching that only captured part of what I believe about teaching. In the end, I settled on this one when I was able to conceptualize a way to represent it as an interesting comic.

This story is mostly true. I did lead such a workshop and there was such a curmudgeon present. No, he didn't look like a clown, I didn't share my analogy with him, and he didn't walk out mid-presentation. But sadly, his attitude was all too familiar, and he now represents an entire school of thought about teaching (or really, not teaching) for me. Similarly, the comic also represents how I feel about teaching as a practice, namely that teaching is teaching. Subject matter and theories might change or differ, but the methods for conveying them really don't, in my opinion.

The title of the comic, "Practice Makes Perfect!" is not only my belief but what I ended up saying to this particular professor when trying to explain how he might need to reframe his writing assignments for student success.

As always, I'm open to feedback--both to my comic and ideas about teaching!

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

A Comic about Memphis and Me

My last publication was a flash non-fiction piece about taking Memphis for a walk during the harsh drought New Mexico was hit with during the summer and fall of 2011. Combined with wild fires, they forced more than the usual number of critters into town. I attempted to turn it into a short comic for an assignment in my Comics in Education class.

I got pretty experimental (for me) with the panel transitions. I tried playing around with my professor's idea of comics' simultaneity--it's the idea that comics are unique in that you can look at them "all at once" so to speak and take in information that can inform your eventual linear reading. I attempted to use this by closely connecting the different panels through the staircase to demonstrate our thoughts/memories as we walked downstairs, but it just turned out bland and text heavy. I think I'd like to go back and shrink the text, add backgrounds as well as more detail, and maybe even colour it, digitally, though I'm not sure that'll improve it any.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

Palm Sunday and Religious Education

Last week's Palm Sunday mass had be reminiscing all the way through to Easter Sunday. Growing up, Palm Sunday was always one of my favorite masses: we got palms (which made great swords, like the ones the disciples used to protect Jesus), we got to go on a field trip (it's one of the only masses in which part of the service takes place outside the actual church!), and the gospel was more like a play that just a reading (we even got to participate as the crowd sometimes!)!

As I've grown older, become a teacher, and been asked to reflect on my own education, it occurs to me that what I valued most about Palm Sunday services is what I loved best about school. I wasn't just learning about the Passion; I was, in my 10-year old imagination, experiencing it, in a way that was more real than watching all those Easter season movies on TV (The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, etc.). Also, I now see clearly how much a priest is basically an English teacher--studying and lecturing on the meaning of a text. So I'm even less surprised that at one point in my Jesuit, all-boy high school education I considered the priesthood after visiting Le Grand Séminaire de Montréal on a field trip with my fellow altar servers. It seemed such a noble profession--teaching and studying the gospel, living simply and piously. I quickly realized, however, that I could do this without taking a vow of celibacy.

But the solemnity of teaching in or for the Church never left me, and though I'd already decided to return to my Jesuit high school as an English teacher, I sought out ways to be more involved. I'd been praised by my public speaking teacher (and principal) for my ability to not only project and enunciate but capture the attention of my audience, and with his encouragement (and insistence with the church's deacon, who felt I was too young), I started reading at Sunday mass. People came up to me and my family after services to tell me what a wonderful reader I was, and the deacon even apologized for worrying I'd be unable to carry to the back of the church when, one Sunday, the microphone died.

When I moved back to the States and finished high school, I was looking for more direct teaching experience. I was already instructing swim lessons at the YMCA by then, I'd spent a year tutoring French at my university's language lab, and I was even TAing the university's horseback riding class when my new church announced that they desperately needed Sunday School teachers for all grades. Admittedly, I hesitated at first, but when my mom took up the charge, I decided too, as well. So I applied, stating my involvement at my previous church, as well as my attendance to a Jesuit high school and explaining my family's strong Catholic upbringing.

What followed was, I feel, the most grueling job interview I've ever had, and it was only over the phone! It lasted an hour and basically featured questions about my upbringing, faith, and beliefs. I thought it was going pretty well until I admitted that, even though I believed abortion was often a decision that I didn't agree with, I was still pro-choice. That was the first red flag against me. It was then I realized how liberal even my Jesuit education was in comparison to religious education in the Bible Belt.

Hadn't we been taught about the immorality of abortion at my school? Well, yes, but we were also encouraged to explore these issues with guidance. I'd even done an independent study that asked when abortion might be morally justified with my religion teacher, which I was allowed to research by student poll of one of his classes.

I was allowed to discuss that in school?! We didn't have an abstinence-only education? No, sexual education was included in our 11th grade ethics course, which was taught by a priest.

A Catholic priest taught sex ed?! No, a Jesuit one.

Wait, what's the difference? About twice as much schooling before ordination.

By this point, I had become really annoyed with what was, I felt, a cross-examination of my education. I could hear the "tsk"s in her voice and had already come to the conclusion I wasn't getting the job, however desperate they were. In short, I was passive-aggressively retorting to her condescension. Eventually, when she couldn't understand why I'd had a World Religions course taught by another Jesuit priest and I explained that the Decree on Mission Activity of the Second Vatican Council encouraged the consideration of other beliefs, I was just trying to make her feel dumb.

And while I didn't get to teach Sunday school, I did learn my first lesson about teacher politics and academic freedom. Granted, I understood, even then, that the "thoroughness" of the interview was to make sure no one derailed their teachings. But it's worth noting that I was interviewing to teach elementary school aged kids--an age at which I doubt the subject of any of the points against me would have come up. Nevertheless, the experience ended my desire to work with the church beyond one day returning to my high school.

I was telling a friend about all of this a couple of weeks ago. He was asking how my youngest brother was enjoying his Catholic high school in Mississippi. The week before, my Research in Practice professor gave us a group activity asking us to design a hypothetical study that took place in a Catholic school. Another peer and I were troubled during the discussion about the assumptions being made about such programs, and our conversation was, at times, centered around trying to get the rest of the group to think "outside of the box" about what a Catholic school looked like (which I think was, cleverly, part of the exercise--forcing us to move past our preconceived notions in research design).

None of this is to say I'm a model Catholic. I married a Southern Baptist with whom I lived out of wedlock for a year, I don't go to church every Sunday, and I continue to discover things I don't know about my church. But suffice it to say, my religious education has been on my mind a lot, as of late. I've even begun toying with the idea of applying to teach Sunday school again. And with all I've been asked to consider about my own education since coming to Teachers College, I hadn't considered much about my religious education until now...More ruminations about this to come...

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

Student Spotlight: "Lost in Translation"

My first Freshman English I class at Kingsborough Community College is reading Richard Rodriguez' Hunger of Memory. I was a bit nervous about using it as our non-fiction text because I have problems processing it myself. It makes me question much about my identity as a Mexican-American/Chicano/Latino (see, I can't even pick one!). But it was the only text on the list of approved books with which I felt familiar enough to put together a curriculum. However, my department seems to have a good handle on our students, because (as most of them are English Language Learners or bilingual) they've gotten really engaged with it and the accompanying readings I've chosen from our textbook. They're also proving quite adept at not only taking it apart but understanding it, as this "Blog of the Week" testifies:

Rodriguez continually struggles with this concept of public vs. private identity. He believes that one cannot fully flourish in one identity without separating himself from the other. He says that as he grew more fluent in English he was forced to give up Spanish. He felt that he needed to fully adhere to his newfound public identity in order to succeed. However, what irritates me about Rodiguez’s constant lamentations about his isolation is that that although he acknowledges that intimacy is not formed solely on language but rather on people, he still attributes his separation to the separation of the two languages. I don’t agree with his assertion that to achieve a strong public identity one must forsake their cultural identity. Many immigrants are able to maintain affluent public lives while still retaining a strong identity with their culture and maintaining those bonds.

pbalroop (the student) does an excellent job balancing the author's ideas with her own, without letting her bias influence the summary. I'm looking forward to continue reading their responses to the book, and I'm sure I'll have more to post about them here!

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

Memphis Memphis: Houston

Grad. school is kicking my butt, hence the delay in The Saga of Memphis. For a reminder, here's Day 1 and Day 2!

Much as I love our "Little Pup" and I'm sure he loves me, Memphis has always been Veronica's dog. It's true that I picked up him in Santa Fe and brought him to his new home, but he spent his first full day there alone with Veronica. I was taking a class on a field-trip across the state, and when I returned he was completely and totally in love with his new mom. When I come home, I get a token "Welcome!" pounce and maybe a few barks to announce to Veronica that I'm home. When Veronica comes home, he's beside himself with anticipation from the warning signs--a call or text saying she's on her way. At that point he moves from whatever spot of comfort he might be lounging (including on me) and either lays down in front of the door or looks out the window for her. And she loves him. Much as she makes of me being the one who first let him into the bed or on the couch or in our laps, I spoiled him at her pleas.

Mama's Boy

If I'm home alone with the pooch, he could care less what's going on in the world outside our apartment. When Veronica miscarried just 6 months after we got Memphis, his devotion to her was truly touching. Normally, if Veronica's on the couch, he's on her. But when she spent her first night on the couch after the doctor's gave us the sad news, he didn't try to pounce on or even play with her. He simply lied on the floor next the couch. When I came home from the pharmacy with things for her, I was greeted by the low growl of  a dog, not the welcoming yips of an 8-month old puppy. He didn't leave her side, and until he recognized me coming through the door, he was crouched, hair raised, and ready to defend. I don't think we realized how truly special he was until then.

In many ways, most of my worry over him being missing was directed at how Veronica would cope with losing him. Both her family dogs, including her Cooter--whom she raised from a puppy and even sent out birth announcements to family that neglected to mention he was a dog--had passed recently. And to add that on top of all the stress of preparing for our move to New York would have made for a difficult summer and put a serious damper on what was to be an extraordinary moment in our lives.

The stalwart Buddy and pee-happy Cooter!

The first night that Memphis was missing marked my first night of very little sleep. I simply couldn't sleep for worrying about the little guy, lost in the wilderness, surrounded by unfamiliar smells, sounds, and who knows what kinds of animals. When I did manage to doze off, I had nightmares of Memphis dashing across the moonlit New Mexican desert, being chased by a pack of hungry coyotes, which only woke me back up.

As much as I hate to admit it, that trip is a blur in my mind, and not only because I'm writing this 10 months after the fact. Even when I began drafting this last summer, the details were fuzzy--thanks to a lack of sleep and a surplus of worrying too much to really enjoy myself. We spent some time with my parents, Veronica's aunt, uncle, cousins, and her oldest cousin's adorable son. And of course, we spent a lot of time with Veronica's Mamaw--our main reason for visiting Houston aside from picking up my little brother Noah to spend the summer with us. My parents left a day earlier than us, so I spent the majority of our last day in Houston with Noah while Veronica visited with Mamaw. I dragged Noah to a huge comic book store and a gloriously air-conditioned Barnes & Noble to talk about "cool" books and games while playing Pokemon on our DSes, all under the pretense that I was getting him out of the boredom of visiting family-by-marriage. And like a champ, he let me go on like I was doing him a favor.

My new interest was Conan comics. I leafed through old floppies at the comic book store and flipped through the original short stories at Barnes & Noble, telling Noah about their awesomeness while trying to take my mind off of Memphis. But this was made all the more difficult by the nerve-racking updates about the search back home. Veronica made a simple flier that she sent back to our friends and the rescue from which we'd adopted Memphis. Already they'd let neighbors know he was missing, and the rescue shared our flier on Facebook.

The flier seen 'round Facebook!

By the end of our four-day trip, the flier had been shared and liked hundreds of times. And amid those were dozens of comments. Most were tips for finding him given the area he'd gone missing in (leaving out an article of our clothing for him to sniff, walking around with a can of open food, etc.). Several were well-wishes in our efforts. And a few were sightings. Memphis was still in the area.

The first came in the morning after he'd run away. A man on a motorcycle saw Memphis on his way to work, not 100 yards from the house he'd run from. Unfortunately, Memphis ran away when the man tried to approach him. At first, we were really surprised by this; Memphis loves people. But as more sightings came in, and Memphis ran away from more people, we began to realize he had only been friendly because he knew were close by. Without his family, he didn't trust anyone.