Quirky Kids

My classes this term are rather uninspiring. I have a handful of bright and interested students, but the dead wood they have for classmates pretty much ensures that a cloud of doom hangs over most of the class meetings.

My approach to this has been to complain on FaceBook and just forge ahead, making my own fun. I've let myself spin off into many "non-traditional" areas in all the classes - - liberally discussing contraceptives in the survey course and tackling homonormativity in the women's history class. Hey, it was what I was thinking about at the time and I thought maybe it would be good to model intellectual processing/curiosity for them. Oh yeah, and talking about sex and sexuality tends to bring the focus back to me.

Anyway... there was a lighthearted moment the other day that I thought I would share. In my Tuesday afternoon survey (deadly time slot: 3-5:50pm), while I was prattling on about post-war suburbanization and urban renewal, a young, bright, but goofy student raised his hand:

"Yes, K___?"

"I'm sorry to interrupt you, but there is a really big spider right here and I was wondering if I could just take it outside."

Needless to say, there was a lot of head-shaking and laughter from the class.

I told him go ahead if that is what he needed to do. And he did. And then I got back to the Housing Act of 1949 and how it isn't really about housing...

I actually really like this student. He does read. He got very curious about Minor v. Happersett and looked up the court decision while I was discussing it and then read a couple of juicy bits from the decision for the class in order to illustrate my interpretation. He has written very non-traditional papers and essays, but they showed a level of engagement and thinking that earned him good (though not outstanding) grades. Okay, he interrupts a lecture to save a spider and the other students must think him nuts, but I like him. I'll take a creative spider-saver over a plays-it-safe regurgitator any day, given the choice.

Things I recently learned from my students:

1) Many of them -- the traditionally aged ones anyway -- don't know what "blue-collar" and "white-collar" mean.

2) Many of them are highly critical of the class system in the 1950s (they've been reading Vance Packard's The Status Seekers) and its emphasis on appearances, material possessions, family background, etc. in determining status. They believe that that has all somehow been magically fixed for them. They believe that they now live in a society where individual ability and individual worth are truly appreciated and rewarded.

The first one is just a kind "hunh" look how far we have come sort of observance. This is not a designation I have really had to "teach" before.

The second one, however, well, that one gives me more pause and I find myself staring at them with a combination of pity and concern... and maybe just a tiny bit of alarm.

Overload

That's it. I reached some sort of saturation point. I thought I was going to have to poke my eyes in order to relieve the pain of this afternoon's faculty senate meeting where 20 people were trapped at a conference table while the chair drifted off into minutiae over procedure. People, rule #1 of meetings containing more than 3 people is DON'T TRY TO WRITE POLICY OR PROCEDURES. Useless waste of my time (and the chair was 10 minutes late to start the meeting!).

Then, I fly home to release the hound and run him around before I summon up all my courage and attend the Parent Advisory Board meeting at O's elementary school. It was as bad as I expected. The cuts to the school budget and the addition of 80 kids to the school have left everyone frazzled and the discussion was raw. The PAB is trying to plug the holes of left by the budget readjustment plan and, frankly, we can't. We can't raise money to replace the swings, fund a bus for a field trip for every class, supplement the art teacher's whopping $75 supply budget, pay teachers to run after school programs, and fund the music program. It is bleak. Teachers fear for their jobs and don't feel like they can ask for help and all the PAB can think to do it to desperately try to raise them some funds.

There was much more to my day but it is too depressing to record. It has all just left me feeling rather hopeless about it all...about my students, my colleagues, my kids' schools, my ability to work on my book. Really, I don't feel like I can take the time to write, let alone think.

And then there is Detroit... Detroit Public Schools has asked UMD to partner with them on a Teaching American History Grant. I've been involved in two for other school districts and I'd be happy to be involved in this one, but there is no one on the UMD side able to lead it. So, I should do it. The school system needs it -- only something like 9% of social studies teachers in the district had any history classes as undergraduates, yet most teach history. But where is the energy for that supposed to come from? Where can I find the energy to deal with yet another fucked up bureaucracy?

Gems from the draft box...

On the theory that it is better to laugh then cry, I share with you these gems from the most recent midterm season...

"I'm sorry I missed the exam, my liver hurt."

On the Identification section (what was it and what was its significance to American history?):

The Spanish America war was a war with Spain to win Texas and California.

"Hey, hey, ho, ho...

...sexual assault has got to go."

The Take Back the Night rally/march/speakout happened on my campus tonight. The student group I direct wanted to take on this event, maybe even reinvent it. Several had been to it in years past and left feeling that they hadn't even known why they were there. Several had experienced sexual abuse or assault themselves and wanted to raise awareness on campus. So we moseyed on into the women's resource center that has been running it and offered to help. The staffer in charge seemed mighty happy to see us. This was a task that came as one of many on her to do list when she was hired. She did it, albeit without much help and without much enthusiasm. The students offered both.

Now that it is over, I have many complicated thoughts, too many to process tonight. I will say this, I don't think we changed much except that we got more people out and we raised the energy level. The program still represented the staffer's vision and I wish my students had been more vocal in running the show. But I think people knew why they were there this year. And any who stuck it out for the whole speakout probably found their brains in the same mushy spot where mine is tonight.

There is something amazing about hearing people you know stand up and say:

"I was abused by my dad for seven years."
"My abuser was a cop, my stepdad."
"I have never told anyone this, save one person, but I was raped when I was 13."

How could I have not known this about them? Then you have to ask, what else don't I know about these people? Who else around me has experience horrific shit and yet goes on with their lives so much that people like me don't know this about them?

Even if you know a fair amount about sexual abuse, domestic violence, and sexual assault from an academic perspective, hearing how people who don't know the studies tell their stories is eye-opening. The stories have such similar themes: shame, silence, denial...

Okay, here is the point that really hit home for me: invisibility. Speaker after speaker tonight talked about feeling like a shell of a person, feeling invisible... And it clicked for me. Of course they feel this way, some of them experienced not just a one-time trauma but year after year of it and the people around them, even (especially?) their families, didn't ever notice that something was wrong.

If I run the numbers, something on the order of 6 women in my average 40-person class has experienced rape or attempted rape. Holy shit.

Anyway, I'm both proud and moved by my students' work on this. Rather than just flier the campus, they did presentations in classes, chalked the sidewalks, did a black eye campaign, and took over the University Center at lunch time to get the message out. They got people talking and 100 folks showed up tonight, which for a commuter campus is pretty damn awesome.

Two students sporting (fake) black eyes. About 20 students made themselves up the day before TBTN and carried handbills for the event to pass out to folks who asked what was up.

At lunch time, the black eye campaign gathered in the student center, taking up space with a short silent vigil and their signs, cited stats on rape and domestic abuse, and then they passed handbills through the crowded space.

Mmmm...summer's end

I've engaged in a couple of season changing rituals this weekend. Yesterday, there was some mountain biking in some lovely, crisp weather...it was definitely feeling fall like. Then today, I went to the Detroit International Jazz Fest, an end of summer activity that I've done for many years.

Over the years I've found less and less that I really wanted to hear at the fest, though it is usually fun to wander. There is often too much smooth jazz, standards, big band, etc. Don't get me wrong, I loved seeing Herbie Hancock, Joey DeFrancesco, Joshua Redman, and Medeski, Scofield, Martin, and Wood there, but I've come to not expect anything outside the mainstream. Considering this, I was delighted to see Myra Melford on the bill this year. My friend Jules introduced me to her music years ago, but I've never seen her live (and she has never performed at this festival before). She played with Matt Wilson and Mark Dresser as the Trio M. They were delicious. And it was wonderful to see the crowd get into it. Certainly some were surprised, but the response from those who stuck it out was enthusiastic.

Cottage 2010

The kids and I hit the cottage for a week at the tail end of August. The UP was lovely and, after a HOT July/August, the big lakes were amazingly warm. Even Lake Superior. The week only had one cool day, otherwise it was perfect mid- to high-70s and plenty of sunshine.




I sometimes had to drag the kids away from the TV kicking and screaming, but they soon forgot that as soon as we got down the beach. I love those times where they zone out... we all would sink into our own headspace while playing with sand or water.



And the dog. He loved it and we all loved introducing him to it. We chucked the ball as far as we could down the beach and he fetched over and over again with amazing speed -- a full gallop that we hadn't really seen before. He also is quite springy and will jump like a deer over the dune grass.

He seems rather unfamiliar with the great outdoors (must've been a city dog in his previous life) so he was surprised by waves on the big lake, feathers on the beach, frogs on the deck...