More:

Apr. 30. English is the Department of brooders. We brood over our existence, its purpose and meaning in the academic universe.

We are right to brood!

We know that a hundred years ago, colleges did not offer courses in literature, except literature in dead languages. Students who wanted to read
Keats or Shakespeare or Dickens did so on their own out of love, not for college
credit.

Nor did students of a century ago take courses in writing English. It was only after World War II, well within historical memory, that high school graduation
become a more or less universal expectation. High schools before the war only
dealt with highly-motivated students preparing for college, students who entered
college already writing at what we today call college level.

We see this historical fact and doubt the foundation of our very existence.

Are we doing no more than teaching the high school courses of old?
And our brooding takes on even gloomier overtones when we talk to outsiders about what we do. Outsiders often imagine that we teach 'communications' and
that we spend a lot of time correcting spelling, pointing out misplaced modifiers, explaining that 'ain't' isn't a word, and generally acting like old-timey schoolmarms with pencils stuck in our flyaway buns.

And whatever lip-service outsiders pay to 'communications,' the truth is that most people hated English in school, hate to write, are embarrassed at their own
attempts, are convinced that they can't write, hate poetry, would not be caught dead reading Shakespeare or one of those boring old classics.

Most people really have no idea what English is all about.

So, yes, we brooders can have a hard time explaining our reason for being. The nursing department turns out nurses, welding turns out welders...but English?

Sometimes we hope to explain ourselves to outsiders by talking about critical thinking skills, focus and clarity of thought expressed in writing and speech,
and the ability to logically analyze and synthesize materials.

But that is just a shadow of the truth. The truth?

The truth is that the world is broken. Everyone with eyes to see knows this.

But every time a good sentence is spoken or written or a clear thought is
articulated, this broken world of ours begins to heal; light enters and darkness
recedes. And we in English are priests of the word.


So, nursing turns out nurses, welding turns out welders, and English turns out people able to see better and, by seeing better, people able to make better
things to see.


Apr. 30. This flashy sports car zoomed by me on Sylvan one day--you know how important it is to hit those snaky curves at 60 plus! And a moment later I saw it slip into what would have been my spot, the absolute last slot in the faculty lot...

:(


...and a person got out who could not have been a day over 20...

:(

...and when I checked The Flashy on my way back from the Johnston Gym lot, no EM sticker to be seen.

:(

I try to be philosophical though. A few extra steps won't kill me ...

:)

...(unless there are no slots left for the flashy sports car in the faculty lot and it runs me over on the way to another lot....)

:(



Mar. 22. My students in ENG 162 are, among other things, doing lists about themselves, like this:

A list of random things about me:

1. One of my best qualities is my Yankee ingenuity
2. I can get all parts of a meal to be ready at the right times
3. I miss making yogurt cheese and miss even more eating it with my dear friend
4. My friend Terry died by crashing his BMW on Chuckanut Drive. It might have been half on purpose.
5. I forget most things I learn
6. I’m a fast learner
7. I’m a slow learner
8. In yoga, I don’t like warrior poses
9. I miss my kids when they’re at school.
10. I feel most patriotic when I flash my lights as fuzz warning for other drivers
11. I waste time, big time.
12. Looking at art kills my appetite.
13. I don’t know how to let go
14. The best thing I did last summer was swim in a stormy lake
15. My world is shrinking
16. I love sharp pencils
17. I’m terrible with money
18. I’m blessed with a good body
19. There’s not enough time in the day.
20. My relationships are treasured and easy but always sources of pain
21. We have way too much junk in our house
22. My child is not doing well in math and I don’t do flash cards with him.
23. My face feels like it’s going to explode when I talk on the phone
24. The drape of fabrics registers sometimes as joy.
25. I believe many of the things my mother taught me in spite of what I know to be true: feathers are dirty; a neat appearance is supreme; animals heal themselves.

One thing I discover from these lists is that several of my students not only text while driving, but also do their hair while driving, eat while driving, and generally treat their cars as extensions of their bathrooms and living rooms. They 'drive' with their knees if you were worried about that part of the on-the-road experience....

On the one hand I feel a sort of horrified amusement when I read these list items. On the other, I imagine myself smooshed all over the road because someone steering with knees hit a pothole and veered across the centerline. Or I imagine the student equally smooshed. You guys are not immortal, you know!

So, I hereby vow not to pass a single dead student. If you drive with your knees and get smooshed, you will have to face St Peter without that A in ENG 162 you were hoping for. Instead, I will post a grade of 'S'--for 'Smooshed.'

Jan.24. Student Felicia's first freestyle:

It was shortly before eleven o'clock one winters' day that I hastened into the over-heated room 223 of the main hall at Eastern Maine Community College. The students were all assembled, ready and waiting for English class to begin. Finally, Mr. Goldfine appeared in the doorway.

"It sure is hot in here," he said, then paused and asked if any one happened to be a former cheerleader. The class cast some confused glanes at each other,but no hands were raised.

"I asked that because if I were really mean I'd make them climb over the computers into the space between the table and the wall and open those two windows on the end. He paused. "Would anyone mind doing that?" he asked.

" I'll try," I said getting up and heading over to the table. I am not a former cheerleader, or even extremely athletic, just moderately able and not adverse to climbing over computers to open a window i might not know how to operate.

I did not know how to operate it.

"How does this thing open?" I asked fiddling with the myriads of little levers trying to get them to do something. Eventially, they did do something. The screen came off.

"The screen came off," I said.

"Don't laugh, she's trying," said Mr. Goldfine. "Just pull out the things on the side and turn the crank" he told me.

I did and it worked. Behind me, the class applauded. "I'll put the screen back on," I said

"Yeah," said Mr. Goldfine "We don't want mosquitoes getting in."

Once I had the screen back on, I opened the other window and started to climb back onto the table. "What's your name," Mr. Goldfine asked as I maneuvered around the computers.

"Felicia," I replied.

"Felicia means bringing happiness," he said "and that's what you've done. You've brought us happiness."

I returned to my seat, English class went on, and everyone lived happily ever after (or so I like to think).


Jan. 17. Married for nearly 42 years....

But the State o' Maine thinks I may be living in sin and committing a felony too.

Everyone with state health insurance has to update dependents on their insurance form and has to prove it too! I have to provide a bill or bank statement showing both my and my wife's name, a date within the last six months, and our address. Also I must show a marriage certificate to prove my missus and I are genuinely hitched, streetlegal lovers, and not bigamists, shacking up, or otherwise misbehaving and ripping off the insurance company and the state.

The bill or bank statement wasn't hard, but it is a little embarrassing showing some insurance examiner in East BF that I only have $196.30 in my account.

The marriage certificate is much much harder. The last time we remember seeing it was several moves ago, back in 1974 when we had to show it to the very same State o' Maine to prove we were fit to adopt a child. Now it's gone, vanished.

Maybe you're shocked. Maybe your marriage certificate is proudly displayed above your marriage bed. Maybe it is a good-luck charm and talisman to ward evil off your family. To us, it was just a piece of paper, one we've lost and now have to replace in the next few weeks if I expect to keep my missus healthy.

March 22, 1969, Cherry Hill, Camden County, NJ--what do I have to do to shake that piece of paper loose from the record vault?

Jan 17. I posted this on the MyEMCC discussion board just now:

I don't know how other instructors handle it, but I have 49 online students in three different classes, none on Blackboard.

Using MyEMCC class lists, I wrote them all last Friday with startup instructions, but I know that if you get your email through yahoo, aol, and so on, sending out mass emails automatically flips a lot of my messages into spam folders no one looks at . So, today, a day before classes actually start, I sent individual emails to each student I hadn't heard from.


At this point, I'm in touch with 12 or 15 of my students.

Why so few? Sometimes the school has bad email addresses (one student was john.smith@student.emcc.edub --how likely do you think that was to get delivered?). Other times students have changed email addresses without notifying the school. Some students (you know who you are!) are waiting til the last possible second to check in (that would be early tomorrow.) Others are taking another week of vacation and will check in next weekend, just before the end of add/drop.

If a student doesn't get my email, doesn't check my EMCC faculty page, doesn't read the notice board on My EMCC, they get upset that they are behind, or they get angry that the school and instructor are paying no attention. But student profiles available to me no longer have phone numbers, so, even if I wanted to make 35 phone calls (I don't), I couldn't.

That's where it stands. I'm frustrated because I don't like dealing with angry and upset students well after classes start, especially when I have done all that I can do to get them aboard. For heavensake, if you don't know what to do, email or phone your instructor. In my case: johngoldfine@gmail.com or 338-3080


Jan. 14. If you're an online student who has come here because you don't know what to do--I sent out start-up letters to all my online students a few minutes ago. If you never received it, send me your new best email address (johngoldfine@gmail.com) or check your EMCC student email.

Or just look to your left there where it says 'All online students...' and follow that link.

Dec. 17. An EMCC moment.

A student is walking toward me in the faculty parking lot, talking on his cellphone. As he brushes by, I hear him say, "So can you bring me up my shotgun tonight?"

Of course in the real world, I'd have to notify Security who would call in the SWATs who would lock down the campus and strip search all students, staff, faculty, and administrators to see if anything were amiss.

Here in the boonies, it's more likely--much more likely!--that the student just, you know, wants his shotgun.....

Nov. 23. Recent email to a dropped student:

Let me try to explain this from my point of view.

First, understand that when a student falls way behind, it's lose/lose
for me. I have no good options, not one.

If I've dropped but then reinstated a student, I carry them along,
praying that the student will not put me in a bind again. If the
student gets squared away, great. I gave the student a second
chance, and it worked.

But, more often than not, giving a student a second chance just
prolongs the agony. The student doesn't use the chance well, and we get bogged
down again.

When that happens and I drop the student again, I lose. I feel like I've failed
professionally. When students write and plead for a second or third
chance, I feel like a complete total heel when I refuse them. And
if I don't refuse them but reinstate them, I feel like I'm being played
and that I'll regret what I've just done. (I may in the end be wrong
about that regret, but that's how I feel when I do the reinstatement.)

And then when I do the reinstatement, suddenly I get a flood of
guilt-driven writing.

The problem with late work, with a whole pile of stuff coming in all at
once, is that it turns me from a teacher into a mere list-checker. The
student may be doing the same things wrong over and over in the whole
pile of stuff. Instead of having the chance to work with the student
and improve things week by week, all I can do is check off that the
assignments are done, send them all back for more work, and wish that
they had come in in a timely way so that I could have earned my pay. I
feel like my course is worthless and so is my time. That's not a
feeling I like.

And just in itself, I hate that flood, that pile. It can only exist
because the procrastinating student is depending on all the other
students to NOT procrastinate--if everyone acted like that
procrastinator, the teacher would literally not have enough hours in
the day to read all the end-of-semester submissions. I hate feeling that
resentment. It gives me no pleasure.

So, that's it from my point of view. You're probably more miserable
about this than I am, but know that I too am miserable, and I wish it
were otherwise.

Nov. 3. I'm giving a student a hard time for getting lost and taking 7 hours for what I claimed ought to be a three and a half hour trip.

She says, "Three and a half! If I don't get lost, I do it in two and a half."

"Two and a half! Holy hannah--that's flying!"

She says, "What do you do--sixty, sixty five? [talking about the interstate]?"

I get back in English teacher mode. "If it weren't for me, half you guys would flunk your classification essays. You love to write about the three types of driver you see out there, and one of those types is the old weirdo puttering along who thinks he's out for a Sunday drive. That's me, pal, and without me, what would you do for graf 4 of that essay?"

I had her! She could not help but laugh.

Nov. 1. Got a letter today from the state, trying to butter me up to vote tomorrow or tell me about health insurance or something. The letter starts this way, exactly this way:

"Dear State of Maine POS Member..."

The bureaucrats may think POS means 'Point Of Service,' but am I the only state employee who thinks POS means 'Piece Of S--t' and that the state sometimes treats us like it thinks so too? Oh well, I know which gubernatorial candidate is most likely to find a way to clean his or her cleats of anything nasty, like a POS English teacher....

Some class moments today:

* student remarks on how similar his and my boots are, same brand, slight differences in style. I want to get the whole picture and say, "I don't usually ask students to adjust their clothing, but, um, could you just pull up your pants a bit so I can see the boot tops?"

* student is writing about how to catch herself a man. I tell her how when my wife was growing up in the late fifties before liberation, the advice was to always pretend to be interested in the boring stuff he talked about and even to, you know, find out what a 'first down' was.....

* then I told her how, same era, nice girls were told at Sunday school to "Pick a date who would make a good mate" because if there was any problem, the only choice back then was a walk down the aisle.

"Didn't they have condoms?"

"Well, they weren't allowed in some states as late as the early sixties and, even where they were allowed, the pharmacist dispensed them--no vending machines--and when you asked, the pharmacist looked at you like you had asked him for cocaine and if it was a small town, he'd call your parents and tell them exactly what you were up to."

I don't think the several students listening believed a word of this genuine eyewitness history from the good old days, but it's gospel truth.

Sept. 26. What makes us strong? I'm sure religious faith, family, friends, our skills and abilities, our jobs, our hobbies all help gird our loins for the daily battle.

But, there are other things that make us strong, things we would perhaps rather not think about as sources of strength, things that are often called sources of weakness.

Yesterday, my new Dell computer was knocked right out by a virus, the fake 'Microsoft Security Alert Essentials Trojan Warning' virus. You can google it if you want to see what it looks like.

I am working today on a small and slow laptop I keep around for exactly situations like this. But the loss of my powerful slender green computer has made me feel weak, little, helpless, frightened, less-than, stupid, incompetent, negligible, unimportant. And I hate to admit that all of this stems from a computer malfunction. A computer is not much to worry about in the great scheme of things. It will be fixed and, if it isn't, I will work on my laptop til I can get a new one. Not much is lost.

I think that for many of my students their cellphone and through it, their connections to friends, Facebook, and cyberspace are a source of the kind of strength my Dell is for me. So, even though I roll my eyes when some lame ringtone goes off in class, I would never dream of banning those phones.


Sept. 17. A teacher's secrets....

I don't know how it looks from a student perspective, but when I sit down to talk to students for 15 minutes about something--let's say isearch brainstorming as I did today--, I always know what I want to say, but I have to improvise about how I'm going to say it. Sometimes material comes out structured, sensible, incisive, even funny--I can see it biting, can see the students nodding, smiling, thinking, applying what I say to themselves as I say it. Other times, not so much...

The key word in the previous graf is "improvise." When I was a young pup, I had lecture notes. I referred to them. I used a lectern and stood behind it and lectured. Like now, I always knew what I was going to say, but back then I also knew the order of material, what examples I would use, when I would ask for questions, even what jokes went where. It was, at best, okay, and, at worst, boring for my students and me both. I saw myself as a pipe through which knowledge flowed to my students.

Bad model. I know better now. I am not a pipe. I am more like a fast-growing plant. I know I'm supposed to produce tomatoes, but that's all I know. I'm not quite sure how to get there, how big the tomatoes will be, how they will taste.

When I say to my students, 'Aw, I'm sorry you don't have a real teacher to give you an honest-to-god lecture," I'm not serious. They are getting better than a lecture or a tomato. They are seeing the process of how tomatoes are created.

It can be unpredictable! Spontaneous! It's pretty exciting (for me anyway)! I'm flying by the seat of my pants and if I weren't the cocky guy I am, I might at any moment lose heart, give up, crash and burn. Instead, I make it up as I go along!

Today I gave pretty good tomatoes to my 8 o'clock. I was frippin psyched! But when I walked the halls before my 9 o'clock, suddenly the black dog depression tried creeping in. 'You will screw up the 9 o'clock,' it whispered to me. 'You will try to give the same lecturette, and when you stop improvising and thinking on the spot, it's the kiss of death, and it will suck suck suck. You will start your weekend on a suck suck suck note, sucker.'

But I fought back. I tried arguing myself out of it, giving myself the pep talk. 'Trust yourself, y'big a-hole! This is what you do and you do it better than anyone. Just go down there to 223 and kick butt and take names!'

'Easy for you to say....' I said back to Mr Peppy. But we went down to 223. I opened the door, full house, quiet students all staring at either me or the place where I was going to sit. I said to them, "This is terrifying! If I were a rookie, I'd turn right around and head back out, call off class." Several wanted to know what was terrifying.

"You guys! Very intimidating group! But you know what, I can do it." I huffed and puffed a little, popped my eyes, lifted my sternum, strode over the to my chair, and said, "Showtime!" By this point I was laughing so much at what a weird goof I was being that I'd kicked the black dog to the curb.

Delivered some nice tomatoes for the second time today!

Best moment in the isearch brainstorming lecturette:

I was describing the creative and knowledgeable part of the brain and the need to squeeze from it onto a fresh sheet of paper everything one already knows about the topic.

I pointed to the part of the skull behind which they could find the brain part I was describing. "It's right here and about the size of a small grapefruit. Remove it temporarily and squeeeeeeze!"

Several students looked doubtful. "How many of you are taking A & P?"

About half raised their hands. "They didn't tell you about this?" Heads shaking no. "So, who you gonna believe--an English teacher or some A & P person?" That sealed the deal!


Sept. 9. I'm a little sore today--lats, biceps, abs. Yesterday was my first day in the weightroom in almost two years. It's a little hard to explain how a 21-year devotion to pumping iron became a two-year layoff.

But I did lose heart when the school shut down the Johnston Gym for a year to deal with repairs and renovations. Instead of rolling out of my office to the weightroom and then driving home, I would have had to drive to Bay Area Fitness in Belfast, an investment of time and energy I knew I didn't have. And, in truth, the last few years my work outs had grown shorter, less intense, lazy. Finally I let them go altogether. And it shows with a flabby physique, low energy, and the loss of that body the men admired and the women desired.

The new weightroom was a big disappointment. The free weights are all squeezed into one end, a safety problem when a lot of people are around. Weightlifters need space, or someday someone will get bonked bad.

The fake-Nautilus machines didn't interest me. At best they are only useful if one goes super-slow and is very scrupulous about position. They are way too easy to cheat.

I missed having a heavy bag and a rata-ta-tata speed bag, but the room is too small, I guess.

Most of all I missed a lat-pulldown machine. A dedicated lifter can get all of the body he or she wants with free weights...except for one thing. The lats cannot be adequately exercised without a lat pull-down. Nothing you do with free weights can substitute. The old weight room had a wonderful Universal with at least eight stations for pull-downs, lat rows, triceps pushdowns, biceps work. That puppy was way too big for the new room and, no doubt, is sold and making some lifters somewhere big, strong, and happy.

Sept. 9. Comment on a student blog just now:

Honestly, I think writing well is not a matter of shedding inhibitions, feeling free, or relaxing. Writing's a discipline and following any discipline is difficult and sometimes painful, though it has its own rewards eventually. It's not freedom that allows a person to write; writing is a way of becoming free, but 'free' is not where you start.

My words of wisdom for today. Just what you wanted to hear, I'm sure.

Sept. 4. A student just asked why she has to take a writing course. Back in the day, I used to give the standard, white bread English teacher answer: 'Being able to communicate efficiently and exactly is a skill employers value. Your improved writing skills enhance your future employability and give you a tool helpful in all your classes both now and in future education you might undertake.'

That's true enough, but no one wants to hear it or read that dull sentence--and no one who has actually seen some of the lame communications turned out by the Important People who value communications so much can ever quite take it seriously either.

What I honestly believe is weird, I admit it, but it's a little late for John A. (don't ask!) Goldfine to be worried about weird. Here's what I wrote the student:

I'll tell you why you should write: because the universe only exists through our words, or, if you are religious, through the Word. Every piece of writing you write that is good and then made even better helps improve the universe, helps to bring light to the darkness that sometimes seems to surround us. The word is light.

Probably that's not much help when you're up late some night cursing me, the darkness, and your frippin isearch, but it's the best I have.

Update

Aug. 6, 2010. Beyond yes and no, beyond training, beyond good dog/bad dog, beyond treats and choke collars....

The five dogs and I have arrived at such a strange place.

The other day we were exploring a new path and they charged ahead 20 or 30 yards, but I decided we had to turn around. I said, very softly, 'Let's go back,' and then I turned and walked away without waiting or watching (if one watches a dog approach, they often get doubtful, taking a full frontal look as a signal they should be wary.) Within five seconds they were ahead of me, racing back the way we had come.

It's like that all the time now. All other things being equal (no fox scent), they are extremely eager to keep together in a loose file and to follow me. The quieter I am, the more attention they pay. A headshake, a hand gesture, a tiny warning grunt, a hard look, a muttered remark, a shift of body weight, a tap on the table--they see it all and respond.

I never expected this.

One day in 1969, my wife came home with a stray beagle and a few months later she managed to find a mate for him. For the next 16 years, I lived in a delusionary universe.

I thought beagles were dogs.

I thought all dogs were slaves and addicts, hooked on smell, deaf to their owners when howling after a scent, pleasant enough indoors but
likely to disappear for hours or days if allowed outside without a fence or leash. It really wasn't much fun, and it lasted 16 years.

I thought that's what having a dog was all about: frustration, anxiety, anger, embarrassment....

Then after Argo and Susie the beagles had gone to the Big Boneyard In The Sky, my wife came home with another stray, a poodle/terrier cross
already mature, already named Precious. Precious began my real education with dogs, but training Precious was not necessary because she already knew everything she needed or I wanted her to know, and the slightest cue or clue was enough to get her to do any trick in the world.

I wish I had known about clicker-training with Presh, though, as I say, she needed nothing more to be perfect.

But after years of clicker training the guys I have now and teaching them dozens of tricks both useful and useless, I have come out on the other side of training, a place I never knew existed. Training is not the goal. It's a means to an end and when the end is reached, the need for training dries up.

If I can take them on a walk, control them with a quiet word or a gesture, if they know and love their routines and are civilized, responsible citizens, then school is out.

Aug. 4. My perseverance may be a sign of mental disturbance or it may be a sign of a sterling work ethic. It may mean I'm dumb, it may mean I'm smart.

I just don't know.

How long do you think it took me to add two pictures to the gallery above, to caption them, to get them all more or less in line? Five minutes? Five hours? Somewhere in-between?

Understand that I really know nothing about sharepoint. When something gets done, it gets done because I play with it, mess around, fiddle, try, fail, get disgusted, curse, walk away, come back, try some more, give up, come back again, etc.

Which is why I get discouraged when people tell me they are 'confused." Of course, they are confused! That's the human condition. The universe is very big and very very confusing!

Then what?

July 18. The education biz likes to imagine that there is no problem that cannot be fixed with a nice, handy dose of education.

Someone beating their kids? They just don't know how to parent so give them a parenting class! Drinking and drugging? They just don't understand how that stuff messes up brain chemistry, so give them a dose of rehab. Kids smoking? Explain what cigarettes do to lungs. Guy running too many redlights? Send him back to driver ed for screwups as an alternative to jailtime.

But so often it isn't a matter of education. It isn't a cognitive issue. They understand. They just have a different idea.

I'm a teacher, but I'm pretty modest about what I think education can affect--not a whole lot. Because most of the time people already know what's right or what they might do or what they should do. They just don't want to do it.

Let's leave people alone and use dogs for examples.

At night when little dog Boca won't come under the covers with my missus and me, it isn't because she doesn't know what we're asking her to do. It isn't because she doesn't know how to get under the covers. If we tell her it's a wanna, not a gotta--she doesn't wanna so, as far as she's concerned, she ain't gonna.

Same with Scoot. Give him a cold night or a thunderstorm, and he'll be under the blanket in a second. But if you ask him and flap the covers a little and he isn't in the mood, he gives you the 'are you effin crazy' look.

Same with swimming in the farm pond on these hot days. I go down to the diving rock and say, "Scoot, c'mon, I'll lower you into the water." If you want to see a dog sit--sit suddenly and hard, with absolute intention to communicate--just ask him if he'd like to be dipped in the pond.

But that refusal isn't because he doesn't understand that water would cool him off. He gets it! No need for remedial education. He just wants to do it his way.

Yesterday he and I paddled out to an island on Pitcher Pond. We sat on a rock that trended into the water very shallowly. After a few minutes, Scoot stood up and tiptoed in just far enough so that when he lay down the water came up to his leg pits. Cool! Perfect! He looked extremely pleased with himself and with the way the day was going.

He did not indicate any need for a teacher's intervention.


June 23. Maybe because I'm Jewish, maybe because I was born the year World War 2 ended, maybe because I think a lot about words and their connotations, maybe just because I have an mean and nasty disposition, but every time I see the words "Camp Survivor" on the EMCC home page, I first laugh in horror, shaking my head, telling my wife, "You've either got to laugh or cry." Then I get mad at the blithe stupidity of it.

It doesn't seem possible to me that the words "camp survivor" could mean anything other than a Margaret Bourke White photo of the filthy, starving, typhus-ridden inmates of Buchenwald, taken after the camp's liberation by Patton's Third Army.

EMCC is partnering with EMHS in this "Camp Survivor" program, and I am sure it's worthy and educational. But whoever thought it was a cute name was tone-deaf to any nuance of language and ignorant of any history older than the day before yesterday. American soldiers died to free those camps and to see that some of the inmates survived.

Each one who did was a 'camp survivor.' That is the only possible meaning for the phrase in English.

June 15. To some extent we know or can guess, but to another large extent, the way animals think about things is a mystery to us.

I know when a horse is frightened, angry, or calm. Frightened: they snort, roll their eyes, try to run, wheel away, lift tail. Angry: squeal, pin ears, bite, kick, tuck tail. Calm: soft eye, head down to the ground, tail easily switching flies.

Dogs aren't very stoical. Frightened: they cry, whine, shake, slink, hide. Angry: snarl, growl, snap, show teeth, bite. Calm: probably asleep....

And they can be predictable too. When my wife started giving Timmie the Poodle a bath the other day, Chloe the malti-poo peeked into the bathroom and dropped her tail to the floor. I said, "She's gonna beat it upstairs and hide." Sure enough, when I went up ten minutes later, she was lying in a big box of tee-shirts, almost completely camouflaged--and did not move a muscle when I came into the room. "If we wanted you, we'd take you, little girl. You can't fool a primate. Come on back downstairs."

Out of the box and down the stairs she went.

Then there are the mysteries. When we started on our afternoon walk, Boca was hanging around the cat dishes, scouting stray kibble. I didn't have time or patience for persuasion. Without a word, I walked over, picked her up, all ten pounds of her, and carried her about 25 yards until I could see she was in walk-mode instead of scavenger-mode. But then the damnedest thing happened.

The dogs, all five of them, thought I was doing a dominance display. They figured that they must have screwed up and that I was making some cosmic point about their lowly position in the universe. So, for 20 minutes, for about half the walk, they carefully lined up behind me in single file, alpha dog in the lead, scrupulously taking care not to pass me, not to disrespect my leadership and authority, not to piss off the big ugly primate boss-man.

I was surprised because I had originally intended to do nothing but insure Boca's presence. They saw it differently. I felt honored to receive their silent single-file homage.

May 28. Last week I watched a beginner horsewoman try to bridle a horse. A bridle is the leather thingie that holds the metal bit in the horse's mouth and also has attached the reins the rider uses to put pressure on the bit. Lots of straps, buckles, ways to get things confused and screwed up.

Think about it. The horse weighs a half-ton and it can easily raise its head so that its mouth is seven feet high--and that's where the bit goes, right between those big choppers, and if the mouth is seven feet high, the strap that holds the bit in place behind the horse's ears will have to be lifted eight feet. So, there are potential problems.

It's a process an experienced horse person knows so well, there is no thought involved. No more thought than knowing the technique of steering a car. It's all muscle memory.

But this beginner was having all kinds of troubles. She tried with the bridle inside out. She tried with the reins on the ground instead of over the horse's head. She tried to do the job facing the horse instead of facing forward. Worst of all, she tried the 'please-horsey-open-your-mouth-and-let-me-insert-this-heavy-chunk-of-metal' technique.

I can say without much fear of being proven wrong that in all of horse & human history that technique has worked zero times.

Here's how it's done. Gently put the reins over the horse's head. Stand facing forward with your butt against the horse's near shoulder. With the right hand you lift the bridle and start slipping it over the horse's ears while simultaneously--it has to be simultaneously--you insert your left thumb into the horse's mouth....

Whoa! Stop right there! The beginner horse person says, 'WTF! I stick my tender and soft finger where????'

Into the horse's mouth, pressuring down on the lip and feeling for the so-called 'bar' where there are no teeth. Press thumb on bar and with the rest of your left hand, which is still holding the bit, press the bit home, gently always gently. A few minor adjustments, a buckle or two to deal with and you're done.

It should take about five seconds.

For the beginner, dealing with a few false attempts, coping with the embarrassment and fear and the horse's growing impatience and suspicion, it takes somewhere between a minute and forever.

As she stands there tangled in a bridle and staring at a grumpy horse, the beginner is tempted to blame the horse, the horse's trainer, the first person who ever domesticated horses, the designers of dumb horse equipment, etc, etc. When really her own inexperience, ignorance, and fear have led her here.

What's an experienced horse person to do when faced with someone melting down over something as elementary as bridling a horse? We show them the right way, demonstrate, have them try, coach them through it, offer advice, congratulate them on their success, assure them that the day will soon come when they will not give it a thought. But the experienced horse person knows that in the end only trying over and over, shoving your thumb in the horse's mouth with both firmness and gentleness, will teach the beginner how to do it.

I bring it up because EMCC is developing a policy to make sure that students signing up for online courses can actually do online stuff, write emails with attachments, cruise the internet, find their way around Blackboard. (My students won't be using Blackboard so they have a different set of skills to master.)

Early on, the thing I hear most from my online students is that they are confused. I can help them with that, but one of the things that hurts the most in clearing away confusion is the student repeating over and over, "I'm confused, I'm confused...."

I feel like saying, "Get a grip!" But I show them what to do, sometimes more than once. I have them try it, whatever it is, coach them through it. I offer advice, congratulate them when they get it right, assure them that the day will come when they will not give it a thought. But I know that in the end only trying over and over and dealing with one's own inexperience, ignorance and fear will teach them how to do it.


May 10. I'm not saying that words can't or shouldn't change their meanings. They do, and that's okay, but sometimes in the middle of that process of change what sounds fine to one speaker will sound very odd to another.

For instance, if someone says, "Late blight decimated my tomato crop last year," I reply, "You got off lucky. I lost all my tomatoes, every one."

The person looks at me, puzzled. "Me too. That's what I said. I was decimated."

And I'm thinking, "Technically, 'decimate' means one out of ten died, not a total massacre the way this person is using it. Does he want to hear my wise-ass English teacher lecturette, or should I go with the always-handy, 'Oh sorry, I misunderstood.'?"

The meaning of 'decimate' is changing in English. I'll close the door behind me when I leave the language lab, and then no one will be left who uses it the old way.

And that brings us to language leadership. Who pioneers these changes? In one case, it is possible that Presidents Hedlund and Fitzsimmons are the leaders!

The word is "integral." I believe it is coming to mean "important." But it has an older meaning which is that it is "necessary to the completeness of the whole." (Thanks for the definition, online dictionary!)

So, when I sliced last night's eggplant, mushroom, and anchovy pizza and slipped a spatula under a slice, I was serving an integral part of the pizza. It wasn't that it was an important part of the pizza--after all, there were still seven slices left. But it was integral. What remained on the pan was not a pizza and would never again be a pizza. It was part of a pizza. An integral part was sitting on my plate, contemplating its fate.

Hence, when I read in the Eagle Eye that John Fitzsimmons is quoted as saying that Joyce Hedlund is "integral" to EMCC, I have to shake my head in disagreement. She is important, but she is no pizza slice. Without her, the college is not missing a part that makes it incomplete. It will have a new president, it will be whole.

And when Joyce in the same article is quoted as saying that her new school, WCCC, is "integral" to Calais, again I shake my head. The school is important and a lot of people would be hurting if it closed, but, again, Calais would still be completely Calais even devoid of the smallest jewel in the Maine Community College System crown. Calais would only lose something integral if, say, St. Stephen decided to annex Calais' Main Street....


May 6. I wrote back on April 26 about how a day of reading and grading can turn a man's mind to moosh. I've been at it since 6 this morning, 12 hours (with one big break) and not nearly done yet. So far I've just dealt with the online stuff. Next comes the live.

Suddenly all my sinners have got religion and are giving me papers!

But that's not what this entry is about. It's about horse piss and that one big break I mentioned.

A few years ago, I pulled down a partition between two box stalls to give my big girl more room to stretch. (That's my horse I'm talking about when I say 'big girl', not my missus, who weighs less today than the day I met her in 1963.)

But now we're getting another horse and that double stall has to be repartitioned. So, missus drags me away from my online work for an hour of rough carpentry.

There I am hammering away, my foot slips on a rubber mat soaked with horse piss--and next thing I know I'm sitting in a puddle of it....

But, given how my brain is all moosh these days? I was happy enough to be soaked in horse piss and nailing big spikes--WHAM WHAM WHAM!!! All it took was my eye, hand, and arm. It was loud and dramatic. No words were needed. Any correcting I did I did with a big wrecking bar!

May 6. You have to be careful about this caring business. When I worked at Penobscot Job Corps, there was an RA everyone loved. His voice was soft and warm, he always had a hug for the sad and lonely, and he was forever willing to volunteer his own time for special projects with corpsmembers.

But some of the women eventually got a little spooked by his hugginess. When I say he "always had a hug', I mean he always had a hug. Tick tock hug. Tick tock hug. And some people didn't like it or want it. Some people found it creepy. But how could you be mad at him? He cared so darn much.

I don't want to care that much. I have family, friends, and so on to hug. I'll hug a great essay, how's that? What I care about is not students so much as student writing and student success. But I won't be hugging a student, however sad and lonely.

I don't want students to think I'm a pal, a relative, a counselor, or anything other than an English teacher. I care about my professionalism and--whether I like you or not, whether I'd like to hug you or not--I care about your writing. The world is a better place for every piece of improved prose existing in it--this is my faith! And it requires no hugs whatsoever.

I bring it up because at the meet-the-presidential-candidate breakfast the other day, one of my colleagues got all emotional about how we need another president who "cares."

I have a list of qualities I'm hoping for in a new president: intelligence, decisiveness, flexibility, determination, psychological acuity, ability to communicate, sense of humor, vision...and, down the list, right after 'good tapdancer,' maybe number 16, comes 'caring.'



May 1. My response to a recent freestyle post by a student upset at lack of respect some students show to teachers:

I don't exactly disagree with you, but a certain amount of the disrespect problem the teacher has to own. If you want respect, you have to give it. If you want respect, you have to be teaching in a respectable way (I mean a way I, the instructor, am proud of.) If you want respectful students, part of the job as instructor is to show what respect means in a given classroom.

For example, I don't like it if a student comes in late, but I don't consider it disrespectful to me. But if a student at this point in the semester gives me a paper with no details, full of blah, the kind of paper he'd run by his old hs teacher, that I would consider displaying contempt and disrespect for my standards. The way to show respect to me in my class is not to be on time but to write respectably--not respectfully but respectably. Big difference.

April 28. Next week the beauty pageant starts, but instead of long-legged beauties in bathing suits who smile and tap-dance for the talent section, we will have four educational bureaucrats or decision-makers or adminstrators or whatever they prefer to call themselves these days in their best business attire, heading to 354 Hogan Road to vie for the honor of being crowned Eastern Maine Community College's second president.

The candidates may well tap-dance gracefully through interviews and interrogatories, but they will be wearing sober wing-tips or modest heels as they do their routine.

Our job as students, staff, and faculty is to talk to these people whose leadership will certainly deeply affect our professional lives and conceivably our personal ones as well. We will talk in order to estimate. To estimate what kind of people they are, what sorts of decisions they are likely to make, what ways they will make our jobs harder or easier, how the campus will fare under their leadership, whether they will stand up or fold when the troubles come as they inevitably will, what their graduation speeches will be like, whether their very voices will someday sound like fingernails on a blackboard to us--or be the sweet music of a respected and admired mentor, boss, and friend.

What kind of English comp teacher would I be if I didn't tell you that there are three sorts of questions these presidential candidates will be faced with next week and that these questions have a hierarchical order?

The very lowest sort of question the candidate can be asked is what might be termed a catechism or gotcha question, the sort of question that is designed to elicit a particular answer, and woe betide the candidate who does not know his or her catechism. A faculty member might ask if a candidate has studied TQM. Or believes in shared governance. Or in faculty ranks. Or a student might ask the candidate if they were big boosters of campus sports or of campus parking lots reserved for faculty alone.

Trust me, these questions are quicksand. If the candidate has the wrong answer? SLURP! The quicksand will suck them down never to be seen again. They didn't know the secret handshake and will not pass go.

The next and better kind of question is the information-please question. What's the legislative scene like in your state? Has your school developed interesting new programs? How is the Great Recession affecting your school? Can you picture a school somehow embracing the highway strip it has to coexist with?

People who ask those questions don't have some predetermined answer in mind and are not grinding some weird ax. They really want to know, want to hear the candidate's take on professional questions of interest to everyone. Fair enough. Answer those questions, candidates, but for heavenssake, don't answer them with blah, safe, bureaucratic, jargony, airy, empty, visioneeristic, illiterate b.s., or you will definitely lose at least this English teacher.

Man up, whatever your gender, and answer the damn question!

By the way, asking an information-please about someone's educational philosophy is just a waste of time. Everyone--everyone!-- has a very good educational philosophy but none of them are really worth listening to. The only real answer in my opinion is the one I learned as a newbie at Penobscot Job Corps: "I'd toss every philosophical belief I have in a second if it did not fit and was wrong for the situation I found myself in, and I hope I'd be wise enough to recognize that situation in half a second."

The final type of question for a presidential candidate is the best type of question. It's the conversational question. How was your flight? Did you try Maine lobster last night? Doesn't this rain suck? Those questions are non-threatening, do not ask the candidate to roll out the big guns. The underlying question in a conversation with a stranger always is: what kind of person are you? Are you an egomaniac, a jerk, a bs artist, funny, dull, really present, distant, bored, boring, fascinating, stand-up, fall-down, what? If the candidate says in answer to the questions above, "Fine; no, a steak; yes, the rain certainly is pelting down," then that's one type of person.

But if after tossing out a little conversationsal chum, you find yourself discussing travel, Paul Theroux, solo round the world sailing, trout-fishing, gardening, Michael Pollan....that's another kind.

And your estimation is likely to be much more accurate after a conversation than after a quiz, whatever the important people may say about data-driven decisions.....

April 27. I don't expect my students to feel sorry for me: teaching is very well-paid, considering the lightweight skills it takes and the time off given.

But this end-of-the-semester thing really fries a teacher's brain, and I don't mean cheap drugs either. Saturday I read isearches, prompts, freestyles, essays, and creative non-fiction and, of course, I commented on everything. 5 hours.

Sunday I did more of the same. 9 hours.

Yesterday I dealt with live students, talking to them about isearches.

Today, back at the reading again. 12 hours--with an hour off for a walk with the dogs and a few mini-breaks here and there.

I'll be up at six tomorrow to read for at least an hour to get ready for my live classes.

Here's the thing about a fried brain. The littlest break in the routine of reading and writing hits my mind like a trip to Disney World, like an audience with the Dalai Lama, like making love for the first time, like hitting the snow after an hour in the sauna.

A few minutes ago, I didn't start supper but I decided it was time to start to start supper. I got up from my computer. Then:

I cleared pots and pans from the prep area and cutting board. I could feel the weight of the cast iron pots in my arms and shoulders--I could really feel it. I let myself feel it. I noted it, I thought about it. Then I spun, stepped back one giant step, opened my fridge, and squatted. Oh, my knees--they ached but it was glorious, glorious to feel my own body and to think of nothing at all but my knees. The vegetable drawer came out, crooked as always, but tenderly I straightened it out, my usual impatience with it and its crappy design somewhere else. It is innocent and deserves tenderness!

Out came the spinach, so dark; the mushrooms, so white. Then the mozzarella, so soft; the Romano so hard. I dumped the vegetables in the sink--my god, the same sink I've used since 1973. Imagine the thousands of mushrooms I've washed! A half-spin I long ago gave up having to think about or measure, and I was at my cutting board again. I reached for a jar of olive tapenade in the cupboard, keeping my eye on the corner of the cupboard door because I've bonked my forehead into it a thousand times, but today it looked friendly, familiar.

I did a quarter spin and there in the corner of my eye I saw Boca, not begging, but, out of traffic, resting her chin on the handle of the oven broiler, just as I've taught her. I clicked and treated her, my angel dog. I looked around to see if there were any more of these deeply satisfying prep tasks to do--and I'm not being sarcastic. Just picking things out of the cupboard and mindlessly spinning here and there IS deeply satisfying after reading a dozen isearches.

But, no, nothing to do until it's time to put the pizza together. Time to go back to work.
April 10. Lately I've been telling my students some of my teaching secrets, showing them the reality behind the illusion....

Student was talking about the effects of studying judo on his life, one of which was his increased awareness of his body. I mentioned dance and then described how riders on horseback have to control their bodies in subtle ways, sitting tall in the saddle, as they say, with a lifted sternum.

I had a small audience by then so I said, "You guys are so scary and intimidating that the only way I can bring myself to start class is to move from my usual posture [miming slumped, anxious, fearful] to this [lifted sternum, tall, proud, intense, determined]. You've seen me! Watch for it Monday!"

A student says, "You get a psychological boost with the increased oxygen. You get the command presence."

That's it!

Funny--my wife just told me about meeting a horse in a pasture in England last week. The horse was crowding her a little, so she lifted her sternum, took a deep breath, and froze, fixing the horse with her eyes. Without panic, the horse immediately veered off, saying, "Righty-o--I can see you are far too important a person for me to even think of mugging...."

Earlier in the week I had a student try the same basic trick on me that the horse was trying on my missus--crowding my space a little. "You're going to love this," he said. "It's really funny."

That's a good student tactic because it puts a subtle, coercive pressure on the teacher to see it the student's way. If I don't like it, it becomes a personal thing: 'you don't think I'm funny' instead of a writing thing. It's called advertising; the student is selling the sizzle and hoping I'll overlook any problems with the steak.

So I had to counter. First I said what I just said in the graf above: that's a good student tactic. That put the counter-pressure back on him. Then I told him how writers who try humor take a terrible risk of only getting the great stone face from their readers, and nothing is worse than a flat joke or a stepped-on punchline.

I wasn't ROTFLMAO when I read his piece. But I took it!

Mar. 6. Something about an English teacher!

Yes, there is something not quite right about English teachers. I realize that is hardly late breaking news, but today's BDN lays it out for those who have somehow missed it.

A 41 year-old English teacher lady in a NH high school was arrested after allegedly emailing photos of herself to a student. A 15 year-old student. A guy student.

Yes, photos. Not photos of her feeding her parakeets either! Nude photos! Bare-naked! Stripped to the skin! Nothing held back! Immodest to the extreme! Eve in Eden photos! All the naughtiest of naughty bits.

What was she thinking? What did she imagine a 15 year-old lad was going to do with those photos? (Well, after he did that, I mean. Would he send them to all his buds, just maybe? No, we English teachers are not the suspicious types. )

Maybe, being an English teacher, she wanted her student to understand that the photos were only meant to be taken symbolically! Maybe she wanted him to see that in the never-ending literary struggle to rip down the curtains that separate appearance and reality, sometimes appearance (in living color yet!) is reality!

Anyway, a math teacher would be more likely to stalk a student on line. A science teacher to stake out the student's house using a telescope. A home ec teacher to bake him something. A phys ed teacher to challenge him to arm wrestle. A language teacher to just brood and mutter unintelligibly and drink too much.

Only an English teacher would have the idea for a great multimedia project like this--to advertise, to communicate, to reach across the generation gap and connect.

Only an English teacher!


Feb. 27. Today's BDN has a very interesting article about some Brewer High students who were busted by the high school. Busted for Facebook posts: some hateful, probably racist remarks about student athletes from another town. Those Brewer students are banned from extra-curricular activities indefinitely.

What is wrong in this picture? First of all, nothing the students posted on Facebook amounted to a crime. Second, the Facebook postings were not done at school or on school computers. Third, the postings had no direct effect on school operations. Finally, once the school starts monitoring students outside of school, where does it stop?

Where does it stop? I should have posted a week or so ago about the school district in Pennsylvania that was secretly activating laptop cams and mikes on school-issued laptops at the students' homes. That violation of privacy is enough to make you paranoid! So I have no particular reason to trust a school's good faith or good judgment.

The end of today's BDN article was even more interesting to this instructor. Any teacher who claims never to have been frustrated by students is a liar. Frustration goes with the territory. Back in the day, one might have joked about it along the lines of 'I'd like to wring his neck' or 'That boy is going to come to a bad end, heh heh.'

So, here was a prof at East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania, who (quoting the BDN): "...jokingly referred to looking for a 'discrete' hit man...and said she didn't want to kill any students, but 'Friday was a different story.'"

Administrators at East Stroudburg! I don't ask you to show a sense of humor because this prof was just not a very funny lady. I don't even ask you to show a sense of perspective because I know the lawyers are the ones who really run everything and lawyers are supposed to be jerks.

I just ask you to show a sense of self-preservation. I just ask whether the resultant publicity you got by suspending Professor Gloria Gadsden indefinitely was offset by an increased sense of security on campus? Was the game worth the candle? Was slamming this silly Facebook stuff worth winding up a laughingstock?


Feb. 5. I'd be the world's worst poker player. Deal me a good card, and I'd giggle, smirk, clap my hands, wink, every tell there is. Deal me a stinker, and I'd frown, sigh, grimace, rub my eyes in disbelief, throw the cards down, mutter a curse under my breath, every tell there is.

In life, in conversation, in class, I can't and I don't always say what I want to say, and usually that is indicated by my hand hovering in front of my mouth and then coming in for a soft landing so no words can escape. The say-no-evil monkey. Mr. Oh-So-Hard-To-Read-His-Body-Language.

Very recently I've found that in some cases when there are things I ought not to say to students, I not only hide my mouth but also scrunch my face up, roll my head on my neck, flubber my lips, pound both fists on the table, push my wheelychair across the room, etc.

Things I don't want to say:

* That is a totally outlandish notion.
* I wasn't born yesterday, y'know.
* That's just complete hooey.
* I've never heard such nonsensical gobbledygook in all my years of teaching.
* Listen to yourself!
* I'd like to tell you otherwise in a major way, but it really is none of my business.
* I can't stop you from pursuing this line, but it's bound to end in heartbreak and disaster.

So, students, don't let me walk away with the pot. Just watch for the tell!


Feb 2. I was standing in the hall outside 223, taking a mini-break to clear my head before class, and student N, just inside the door, says, "How come you're always out there before class?"

"Trolling for students. Sometimes they try to sneak past and go to real teachers' classes down the hall."

"They wouldn't dare try that--you're way too intimidating!"

"Oh right, I'm about as intimidating as chocolate eclair. You--" I point my finger at someone. "Are you intimidated?"

She shakes her head. "You?" Another shake.

I say, "I'll show you intimidating. I used to work with a first grade teacher who came to work drunk, only way she could stand it. Around 8:30 every day, I'd hear her lighting into those five and six year olds."

I ask student R if she'd like to do a role play, and she agrees. I point my finger at her, shaking it furiously. Now I'm a drunken first grade teacher! "R, get up here, come here this instant!" My finger is wagging in her face. "You! You're an agitator, R, you're an agitator, aren't you, aren't you?"

The first graders were usually crying by this point, but my college students were either laughing or totally weirded out. Time to start class!


Jan. 30. No one enjoys the sensation of not-knowing, of being confused, of not seeing the way clear. Of course, computers offer a lot of that feeling. There are multiple ways of doing most things, and people who like to find the answer and then steam full ahead are bound to be disappointed in the branching pathways and options of the computer. People who are afraid of breaking something are particularly susceptible to frustration--not because it's really that easy to break stuff on a computer--but because the computer is quite willing to shut down, toss error messages, or sit and refuse to do a thing and that induces helplessness in newbies.

"I told it to go this website, and it says it can't find it. What do I do now?"

The great thing about computers is that if the person has got a little bounce to them, the correct answer to that question is, "Try again, try something different, go back a step or two, check the stuff you put in, google the problem, ask an expert--as long as you are asking the right question." And these are all first class ways to proceed.

The only wrong answer to the question is, "If it won't do what you want, you might as well give up."

I get worried by students who have had success at being helpless and confused. The more helpless and confused they are, the more help they have been given in school, but I would argue that more is learned from a lonely struggle to understand than from Cliff's Notes or from step-by-step failsafe instructions. I would argue that being confused is, after a point, a way of unconsciously avoiding the further trials ahead. I would argue that being confused is like choosing to hang around bad company--you know you can do better but even bad old friends can be reassuring sometimes. At best, being confused is a way of marking time, of catching your breath, but looking to become unconfused probably is not a big educational step forward.

Try something, do something, take a risk, experiment, dare to be ignorant, dare to be wrong, screw up. That's education.


Jan. 23. A few minutes before 11 yesterday, I was standing in the hall outside 223, along with a bunch of students who were waiting for the 10 o'clock in 228 to dismiss.

And there was the woman in the Yamaha sweatshirt.

--Hey, nice Yammy logo. Motorcycle, fourwheeler, snowmobile, guitar, piano?

--Not piano, that's for sure.

--How's classes?

--I wish I had your class again.

--All the crap I gave you?

--It's better than the courses I have now.

--Now you have real teachers, not lame-o's like me.

--I guess so.

--Hey, no, c'mon, I liked that other stuff better. Tell everyone here in the hall how you wished you had me again. (Still quite a few people hanging around.) Hey, (loud) she wishes she had me again! (Speaking through the doorway to my waiting students in 223.) Hey, here's an ex from last semester wishes she was back in good old 223! Listen up!


Jan 18. Last September I wrote: "in class yesterday, I learned that our public school teachers who, presumably, have heard something about diversity and sensitivity to differences, encourage in some of our high schools both a Slave Auction and official cross-dressing days.

I try to imagine how it might seem to a descendant of slaves to have official Slave Auctions at school. I try to imagine how it might seem to a woman a few years into puberty when the guys arrive at school wearing hilarious smeary lipstick, wobbly heels, and bouncing bazoombas.

But my imagination does not run that far, alas."

I bring it up because in today's Bangor Daily News there's an article about a male beauty pageant at Oxford Hills HS, the winner being named 'Miss Womanless,' much like the 'Miss Ugly' contest Eastern Maine Technical College used to hold.

I want to confess that, before my inner puritan kicked in, I'd probably laugh as loudly as anyone at the sight of strapping lads teetering around in heels, dressed in drag, and taking an "exaggerated feminine attitude." But I recognize there are many things that might lift my spirits that I cannot allow myself, if I can possibly resist temptation, because those things are wrong, stupid, hurtful, cruel, selfish, destructive, nasty.

Temptation--it's there to be resisted.

Oxford Hills doesn't see it that way.

Will Oxford Hills hold a reverse pageant? The gals would dress up and act like guys: scratching their crotch, strutting around and showing off anytime they get within a thousand yards of a whiff of estrogen, belching, farting, cursing, unshaven, unwashed, overeating, out of shape, watching football, getting drunk, crying, fighting, forgetting to wash their hands or put the toilet seat down, loud, inconsiderate, insensitive, arrogant, horny, driving to endanger, risk-taking, shouting, angry, cheating, controlling. Typical guys, right?

Guys, does that description of stereotypical male behavior offend you? But that's what the Miss Womanless pageant does to women: it tells us that women are flighty, flirty, lightweight, clothes- and image-obsessed, flamboyant ditzy dames.

Strangely enough, the beauty pageant article shares the page with the obituary of Mary Daly, who refused to let men into her classes at Boston College because "men have nothing to offer but doodoo." She thought that once men were around, women couldn't freely exchange ideas.... In other words, this so-called "first feminist philosopher" pretty much thought women needed to be protected since Everyone Knows they are flighty, flirty, lightweight, clothes- and image-obsessed, flamboyant ditzy dames.


Jan 17. The relationship between student and teacher can be tricky. I certainly don't want or expect to make my students into Mini-Me's. On the other hand, by the end of the semester, there should be a teensy little English teacher growing in the student brain, saying, "There's got to be a better way to put that," or, "I've got a great example for this," or, "Nope, gotta try again, maybe sleep on it...."

So, although I really don't want my students to be like ventriloquist dummies, only saying stuff that's really stuff they get from me (and I don't think of my students as dummies anyway), I can't help what I dream, and I had a school dream the other night.

I'm on a stage in front of a huge audience in a tux and with my tux-clad ventriloquist's dummy. We didn't have time to rehearse and since I'm a ventriloquist, not a telepathist, I don't know how to tell him his lines and what we're supposed to be doing. So, we sit there in embarrassed and difficult silence....

Trust me. It is a school dream!

And, puhleeze, don't bother telling me the dummy will do whatever I tell him to do without instructions. He just didn't seem to be that sort of dummy.



Jan 15. Nice piece in today's BDN about Bangor police officer Rob Angelo. He managed to talk a potential suicide off the Penobscot Bridge....

When I've got a hassle with a student, I always try the oblique approach, the indirect avenue to communication. My classic example used to happen at Job Corps all the time. I'd whip the evildoer out of class and take them to someplace quiet. Then I'd turn to the corpsmember, watch his resistance and anger start to reach the boiling point, but before it boiled over, I'd say, "Well, I suppose you've heard Lecture # 23 a thousand times before from a thousand teachers before me, so let's skip right ahead to the magic trick I want to show you."

The student would be all: huh, wha-, magic trick?

Which was the idea. I wanted to cool off the situation, let the student know what he was doing wasn't good. And I did that. But the rest of the deal is to let the student save face so a permanent problem wasn't created. I wanted to distract him from the whole situation.

And it is a great magic trick!

When I can pull something like that off, just shooting from my hip, letting myself be in the situation but not controlled by it, using myself in a disciplined kind of way, it feels very good, personally and professionally.

...Rob Angelo did something similar in a much tougher situation.

What do you say to a woman who wants to kill herself on the anniversary of her children's death? I'm sure there's a playbook, things the experts tell you to say to this woman. But Rob Angelo did better than the experts. As I say, he let himself be in the situation and tailor his response to the situation, to the woman standing on the wrong side of the railing.

He said to her--and this is interpersonal genius: ""It's my daughter's birthday. You can't do this on my daughter's birthday."

Well, that's not a logical argument and it might have backfired, but it was precisely the right thing to say to this woman (and it really was his daughter's birthday), and she let herself be rescued.

I just choked up reading how Angelo managed to connect personally and professionally in extreme circumstances.


Jan. 15. I'm a coffee fanatic. I buy whole beans and I grind them in a handgrinder, but, you know what? I can never grind them as fine as I really want them. I want them like baby powder and instead, the best I can do is like...coffee grounds. It's still a pretty good cup of French Roast though.

Now, it turns out Bangor High is dealing with the same problem in reverse. Instead of getting a tighter, scrunchier, closer, funkier, groovier, grindier grind--what I guess you could call a heavy grind--they want their students to work on a light grind, the dance that somehow avoids stepping over the line of good clean fun into the dangerous heavy grind, the dance that adults find "inappropriate."

(In fact, this morning's BDN uses the educators' favorite weasel word "inappropriate" three times in a very short update on BHS principal Norris Nickerson's crusade to make the world safe for chaperones whose eyes have taken to falling out of their heads at BHS dances.)

Anyway, students have promised to be good, or at least better, and, as the student government president says, "protect... the community." And now having protected Bangor from sexy dancing, the student council is looking at Bangor's economic stagnation, urban gridlock, and deteriorating infrastructure, some of the other things threatening BHS students in their near future.


Jan. 13. Always reassuring to know the Bangor Daily News has a nose for what news is really important in the world.

Today's Page 1, above the fold, big headline: "A Grinding Halt to BHS Dances?" Yep, those Bangor kids are at it again with the dirty dancing. I wrote all about it in 2008:
Oct. 16. My morning definitely began looking up when I hit page B8 of today's BDN: "2 Southern Maine high schools ban sexually suggestive 'grind' dancing."

Exactly the kind of nonsense I love. I read the headline out loud to my missus three times, putting as much oomph and drool as I could in the words "sexually suggestive 'grind' dancing."


I just knew that the article would have lots of hormones, plenty of pompous administrators who would sound like they'd never heard of such an outrage as s-x, and, of course, as much sexual suggestiveness as the BDN would dare allow. I was not disappointed.



Sure enough, come to find out, when kids dance they rub against each other (male pelvis to female backside, we are told. The missus got up from her breakfast tea and me from my French roast coffee so that we could step out on the dance floor and try various possible ways that might work.... The dogs were not impressed.) And astonishingly enough, neither were the adult school administrators who found themselves with "concerns" about the grind; they actually come right out and call it "inappropriate."


The news story did mention the fact that dance controversies are nothing new, describing how the twist was banned in the swingin' sixties. But that does not go nearly far enough into the history of lewd dance crazes: it's worth remembering that people of my parents' generation knew very well what 'rock 'n' roll' meant and had no intention of letting their children hear wild lyrics like: "We're gonna rock around the clock tonight, We're gonna rock, rock, rock, 'til broad daylight. We're gonna rock, gonna rock, around the clock tonight."


'Rock'--hmm, a four letter word ending in 'ck.' Whaaaaa? NO CHILD OF MINE WILL EVER BE ALLOWED TO ...'ROCK'!


And, of course, the very word 'jazz' means, well...um, "nobody would have dared include jazz in a respectable book or article a century ago because it was decidedly obscene...."


And when I googled 'waltz lewd,' I found nice stuff like this below, stretching back to the 16th Century, though there are plenty more examples going back to the invention of writing of adults dead-sure that the latest dance craze spelled the end of civilization:


"The waltz also sparked a storm of controversy for its lewd and lascivious posture that required men and women to embrace on the dance floor....Other writers of the nineteenth century were equally uncomplimentary of the waltz. In his poem The Waltz: an Apostrophic Hymn, Lord Byron refers to the "lewd grasp and lawless contact...."


"A Viennese ordinance of 1572 warned: "Ladies and maidens are to compose themselves with chastity and modesty and the male persons are to refrain from whirling and other such frivolities. Whichever man or fellow, woman or maiden will turn immodestly in defiance of this prohibition and warning of the city fathers will be brought to jail...." ...A Dresden wedding ordinance of 1595 advised similar decorum: "Several honor dances are to be held, chaste, and without voluptuous turning, jumping, or running hither and yon. The ladies and maidens are to be led to and from the dance by the arm and without holding hands."


Anyway, it's nice to note that our highly-paid Maine school administrators having solved all the big educational problems now have the leisure to join the long line of historical fusspots standing squarely and successfully against juvenile hijinx.



Today's BDN adds little to the story (even repeating the favorite weasel word "inappropriate") but it does have a fascinating photograph of the principal of Bangor High taken by a photographer with a malicious sense of humor that appeals to me.



We see Norris Nickerson standing at the top of a long sunlit ramp stretching away to infinity or the central crossroads of the school, whichever comes sooner. A checkerboard pattern in the linoleum on the floor subtly matches the checkerboard pattern of his plaid sweater, hinting either that the man regularly is walked all over or that he deeply identifies with the school's bricks and mortar. Or both.



Two students shimmer in the sunlight but they are not in his vision at all. He faces the camera but is not looking at the photographer. His eyes are off to his right, suspicious under a wrinkled brow, clearly looking for and expecting trouble.



His arms are crossed, denying all access. Hands are clenched and half-hidden, again denying access. An ID necklace like a giant dog tag hangs around his neck displaying his photograph, no doubt one taken on a happier day. (Inquiring minds always want to know but can not quite see with this level of resolution: was he wearing an older ID tag in the ID photo, one showing an earlier year's ID photo? And, if he was, in that ID photo was he wearing an even earlier ID with an even earlier photo and so on?)



Anyway, there he is patrolling the halls, on the lookout for sex and frivolity, doing the job the anxious parents of Bangor pay him for.



Just as the schools prevent noisy lunchrooms by enforcing total silence and prevent recess problems by abolishing recess, Norris Nickerson has cleaned up the dirty dancing--by seeing to it that the music has died and that no more dances will be held until BHS students promise to be good.






Jan. 8. I've got over a hundred titles in my Netflix queue. On a scale of 1-5 stars, only three even get a nibble of that fifth star (Goodfellas, Jean De Florette, Anne Of Green Gables).

And these movies are rated by the viewers, not by some snooty East Coast la-di-dah film critics.

This Netflix queue has several lessons. First, it means that regular people just like you are stingy with praise. Dozens of movies rate fours, but people don't want to be played for suckers. They say, "Oh yeah, I liked that, I'd recommend that to friends, I gobbled down a lot of Orville Redenbacher watching it. But it's only Very Very Good, not Most High and Excellent!"

Second, there is not a single 1 or 2 star rating in the whole queue. (There is one 2.04 or something for a compilation of silent film comedy segments.) People don't want to be mean or judgmental! The movie may have sucked, but they don't want to hurt anyone's feelings! So, instead of slagging the thing, they ease up, just when the rubber should meet the road.

Almost all the ratings are right up the middle: 3s or 3 and change.

What does this have to do with a blog about school? People who are both my students and Netflix subscribers may get weirded out when it comes to thinking about their grades.

I have very few students in the middle of the queue at the end of the year. Unlike Netflix movies, people in my writing courses either get fives or no stars whatsoever. They either have written--or they haven't.

If you're wondering what your English teacher-to-be prefers most of all, I confess that the actor most represented in my Netflix list is...not Kenneth Branagh or Sir Lawrence Olivier or one of those arty, Shakespearey types.

It's...Clint Eastwood. The Man With No Name. Dirty Harry. Mr. Do You Feel Lucky, Punk. Mr. Go Ahead Make My Day. But I promise to my students: in class I will not apply any sudden impact, magnum force, or put you in the line of fire (three titles in my queue!)


Jan. 2. Where do old politicians go?

Some go on the lecture circuit and make tons of money recycling old speeches and holding hands with sheikhs and shaking hands with despots and founding libraries and charities that honor their own name.

Others get rid of the missus and find fancy new trophy wives while they lobby their former colleagues. Or they make Oscar-winning documentaries. Or they found consulting firms. Or go back to practicing law. Or open think tanks. Or become CEOs of international corporations notorious for their taste for corporate welfare. Or are elected to the boards of businesses with a yen for prestigious names on their letterheads.

But what of the politicians whose names don't move and shake us with shock and awe? Of politicians with no special talents? Of politicians whose speaking style is so dull that no one would willingly listen to them? Of politicians without law degrees or doctorates?

Which brings us to Governor John E. Baldacci, now entering his last year in the Blaine House. One of his post-political plans, we learn in today's BDN, is to do a job that takes no particular skill or talent or ability or training or knowledge. That is to say, he has nominated himself to be a teacher, preferably at Orono.

Never mind that he's never shown any previous interest in teaching. That he has no experience. That his degree (BA in History from UMO) does not qualify him to teach at UMO.

Never mind that his policies have put the University on a starvation budget and that positions have to be cut, not added.

Never mind that, so far as today newspaper report tells us, no one has actually asked him to teach.

How hard could it be? You show up. You sit down. You regale the eager young minds with a few war stories from your decades of distinguished service to the people of the State of Maine. You hand out the A's. You collect your paycheck. You go home.

You are now a teacher, Governor!

Update--courses, syllabuses, and stuff at the emcc address

Dec. 25. Traditions are what you do, over and over.

Our traditional Christmas has very little to do with Santa, Jesus, mangers, gift wrap, mistletoe, holly, little drummer boys.

In the holiday season, my missus goes to nursing homes and churches and sings. I grade papers, and when that is done, I fire up my chainsaw, kill trees, and when I get tired of that, walk my dogs.

Then Christmas Day, a very special tradition: off to Bangor to Hoyt's Cinema 10! (We saw 'Up in the Air.' Give it 4.5 stars.) Then off to Oriental Jade for the holiday meal of eggrolls and moo shoo gai pan.

Sadly, Oriental Jade (whose fryolaters' peanut oil can be smelled all over the EMCC campus when the wind is right) was so crowded we decided not to wait. Instead we found the Chinese buffet on Stillwater (one of these posts I'll describe Thanksgiving at the Epic Buffet at Hollywood Slots--a brand-new family tradition!) Food was fine, price was right, company was perfect.

And, man oh man, were the dogs glad to see us when we got home.

Nov. 18. Back in the day if you were lucky--

and had an infected salivary gland-- swollen, pulsing, and hot, shooting pain over half your face, from burning lips to stinging tongue to aching tooth to aching ear to tender jaw--someone who loved you would put you to bed, read to you quietly, hold warm compresses over your infection and cool ones on your forehead, offer you water (from clean wells you can hope), bring you a little broth and help slide it over your swollen tongue, pray with you. The rest was up to God and your immune system.

Eventually, your fever would break, the infection would be beaten, and you would slowly get better.

Or the fever would get worse, the infection would spread, and you would die.

That was the best.

The worst was that medical help would be called in. Doctors might suggest leeches on the site of infection, bleeding to draw off some of the heat, cold baths, purges to help you vomit, enemas for your bowels, or, really, pretty much anything that seemed dramatic enough to justify their fees.

In class Monday I was quite a few notches south of 100%. By the time noon arrived and I could go home, the pain was such that I could not think of anything except the pain. I called the doc, managed to get my appointment moved up from Wednesday afternoon to a little later Monday.

Got an Rx for antibiotic Augmentin. Visited RiteAid in Belfast (Motto: "We can have that for you after 3 pm tomorrow.")

Visited Hannaford in Belfast (Motto: "We can have that for you in forty minutes.")

Forty-five minutes later, took dose 1. Took dose 2 twelve hours later. About two hours after that, I began feeling...not so bad. Swelling down, fever down, pain going going gone.

When I came into class today, I said, "Thank God for Dr. Alexander Fleming and the invention of penicillin." (One of my students quite rightly corrected me and said, "The discovery of penicillin.")

Other students offered me advice: take the whole course of the antibiotics even if you feel okay; try yogurt to avoid yeast infections. It was great to be back from the half-dead! It beat leeches and cold baths. God bless Dr Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin.


Nov. 18. Thrill a minute in 223!

txt: Tell Goldfine I can't come to class. I forgot my flashdrive in class Monday and someone stole it. I have to stay home and write my isearch from scratch.

stu: X says, "Tell Goldfine I can't come to class." Someone stole his flash drive.

teach: "Goldfine"! Professor Goldfine! Doctor Goldfine! Goldfine???

stu: Blame X.

teach: Tell X I have his flash drive.

stu: You do?

teach: I'm not really a professor or a doctor, but I do really have his flash drive.

(A second later) stu: He wants to know if you can leave it at the desk downstairs.

teach: On its way!



Nov. 12. EMCC student James Blakeman was killed yesterday in Bangor. Apparently, he ran a red light at speeds around 100 mph, crashed into a building, and died instantly.

I had James in ENG 101 in the fall of 2008. I've been thinking all day if I could post here on James, if I could describe what he was like as a student, what kinds of things he wrote about, how he did in the course.

I know a lot about him in some ways. Any student who writes 10 grafs, 15 freestyles, 15 prompt reactions, nine essays, an isearch, and a final exam winds up telling the reader a good deal about his personality, tastes, history, and attitude. I certainly knew (and I'm not telling any secrets here because all this was in today's BDN) that he had many speeding tickets and license suspensions. In fact, his license was suspended for a while during his time in ENG 101, and that was something he talked and wrote about.

I've wondered what duty of confidentiality remains after a student is dead. What consideration of privacy is due his family. What I could say that would be acceptable, what would be tasteless.

I've decided that, beyond ordinary condolences to his friends and family, there's nothing I should say about James Blakeman. A philosopher once said, "Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must not speak."



Nov. 9. Some are born, others are made.

Some teachers have it, are born with it. They have rapport with students, they inspire, amuse, light fires, move mountains. They just are that way. Others of us have our strengths and our virtues, but we are not born teachers. To get a tenth as far as the naturals, we have to sweat it out. It's frustrating to see colleagues do with ease what we can barely do at all, but there you go, that's life.

Missus and I were walking on the road today, and suddenly three toy poodles--one brown, one black, and one white--came racing towards us across their lawn....

Understand that the missus and I are very proud of our dog training. I have dogs who will stand on their hind legs, walk forward, backwards, spin like a ballerina, drop into sitting-pretty, jump up into a full stretch, and then do a deep knee bend back to sitting pretty, all on hand signals. I have dogs who, when I say, "Up against the wall, Yankees fan, spread 'em!" will do exactly that and let me frisk them without moving.

So, these three dogs were charging us, and we both knew to get off the road into the ditch so that the dogs wouldn't be in danger from cars, when suddenly their boss turned around and said completely calmly, though with a touch of disgust, "Hey, get back here."

All three dogs stopped on a dime, wheeled, and raced back to her, leaving the missus and me totally flabbergasted. Those dogs weren't responding to training or a command or shock collars or anything at all except a desire to do exactly what the boss wanted at all times and as quickly as possible. They were overjoyed to have the chance to race back to her.

Some trainers are born, others are made.



Oct. 28. Today's silly moment.

Student: What'd you have for supper last night?

Me: Spaghetti. My colleague gave me a bunch of green tomatoes so I made sauce from scratch.

Student: Your wha-aaa gave you the tomatoes?

Me: My colleague.

Student (relieved): Jeez, "colleague!" I thought you said your collie!

Me: My collie! We don't let her in the garden!



Oct. 26. Silly moment.

Student sees cobweb in 223, slung between two computers, tiny spider hanging around....

"Ewww," she says. "A spider! Don't they clean this place?"

I touch the edge of the web to send a little communication spiderward. Spider goes "Bzzzzzzzzzip!" and drops 12 inches in two seconds, on her nearly invisible line. Then, immediately goes, "!pizzzzzzzzzB" and reverses the process so she is right back where she started.

I put on my most pompous teacher voice and said, "We could all learn a little lesson from that spider. What a work ethic!"

Student rolls her eyes.


Sept. 29. We had a college forum for faculty, administrators, and staff yesterday. Some of my colleagues and associates have gotten confused and deluded and think that we are involved in social work at EMCC.

Perhaps to make their own jobs feel more significant, they imagine they do more than teach classes, shuffle papers, make plans and attend conferences. Oh no, that is not enough and it's not what we really are about....

They think we actually are in the business of helping the poor, weak, and disadvantaged to be happy and successful.

I hate that model--the notion that we are rescuing helpless people.

Every single student at EMCC is already a success story! Every single student at EMCC is a college student! Every single student at EMCC has a hs diploma, GED, or some similar equivalency! Every single student at EMCC has it together enough to navigate the admissions process, the business office, the registration and enrollment process, and find their way to class.

If you think those are not significant achievements, go visit the people who did not graduate hs, who do not have jobs, who are helpless, hopeless, directionless, and despairing.

Dear colleagues and supervisors, those are NOT our students. Our students deserve from us a clear-eyed look, a willingness to teach, to shuffle papers, and to attend conferences and make plans. They do not deserve nor need nor should they have our condescension or our pity.

Sept. 22 An administrator I spoke to in the hall yesterday commented on the young age of this semester's student population, I automatically tried fitting all my student problems into the Very Young category to see if that was a likely explanation.

My biggest problem this semester has been students' unwillingness or inability to focus long enough to read their assignments or to realize that all around them people are doing something they have no clue about--instead of a salutary worry leading to questions and explanations, they just blithely bop along, assuming everything will work out somehow.

With the administrator's hint about youth, my theory today is that many of the students are very used to having teachers organize their academic lives for them through incessant reminders and regular punitive quizes. 'Learned helplessness' is the term that springs to mind.

Their reaction when they find it is fruitless to wait for that kind of help from me is the sulks or the assumption of a supine posture before the inscrutable hand of fate.

I lay the blame for creating this kind of attitude squarely on the schools the students have attended.

Not a completely separate topic: in class yesterday, I learned that our public school teachers who, presumably, have heard something about diversity and sensitivity to differences, encourage in some of our high schools both a Slave Auction and official cross-dressing days.

I try to imagine how it might seem to a descendant of slaves to have official Slave Auctions at school. I try to imagine how it might seem to a woman a few years into puberty when the guys arrive at school wearing hilarious smeary lipstick, wobbly heels, and bouncing bazoombas.

But my imagination does not run that far, alas.



Sept. 5. 'The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good." That's the motto for my writing classes. The road to hell is paved with perfectionism in my opinion.

There are two ways of teaching writing: the sharpshooter approach and the shotgun approach.

The sharpshooter teacher tells his students how to aim for the target and then has them go do it. Then he has the students show their pieces to a peer editing group and afterwards rewrite. Then the students show the rewrite to the peer editing group. And so on until slowly. through rewrites and criticism, the writing is supposed to approach perfection.

When the piece is 'perfect,' the student finally gets his teacher to read it and respond.

The student may do a half-dozen pieces in a semester. The teacher reads a half-dozen times.

But what if perfection is impossible? What if the piece was hamburger to start with and no amount of tinkering is ever going to transform it into steak? All that work...and still it's just ground beef.

I don't believe in any of that. I like the scattershot approach. My students will write a lot, write fast, not spend a lot of time editing and perfecting a piece. Then they move right on to something else.

Naturally, I prefer steak to hamburger, but the huge disadvantage of the sharpshooter approach is that if a student only writes a half-dozen pieces, they only have a half-dozen chances to discover the steak they have been searching for. If they write constantly, at least something for every class, they have much higher chances of suddenly finding themselves writing better than they ever thought they could. A shotgun has more chance of hitting a target, even if it makes a mess doing it.

Of course, a shotgun approach means that instead of reading student writing only a few times a semester, I have to read the way the students write--constantly. But I believe that writers learn by writing, not by editing, polishing, re-writing, agonizing, and perfecting. I believe that teachers who tout perfectionism are rationalizing their own laziness. I believe that students who want to create something perfect should be honored for their ambition but discouraged from wasting the resource of a college instructor in trying to attain that ambition.



Aug. 29. I was watching the second season of 'Mad Men' last night, and there was mean old Duck Phillips who's been trying desperately to stay on the wagon falling right off with a martini. Actually, two martinis.

And the next day we see him going to a very important meeting. We're all wondering: was it just those two? Can he get sober again? Is he messed up?

The writers want to be subtle with the answers to these questions. They could show Duck in his office guzzling an open bottle of gin, but that's too crude. Instead, they show him on the way to his meeting. He takes out of his pocket a package of Lifesavers, pops one, and continues on.

Aha! Say no more. The breath mint tell us all we need to know!

But what if Duck, like me, has a dental problem the dentist is still working on, and it requires a daily dose of Lifesavers, TicTacs, Clorets, and peppermints? And that's the real answer to the Lifesavers?

I have to confess I never go to class without taking a drink beforehand. About 15 hours beforehand in my case--my daily beer with supper, every night at 6 pm or so, like clockwork.

So, when you see me Monday, I'll be the guy who has just been handling alcohol--ethyl alcohol, that is, aka hand sterilizer--with the peppermint in his mouth.


Aug. 24. One week from today, in the immortal words of Chuck Berry I'll be "sweet sixteen and back in class again."

But after only three months of vacation, am I ready? Have I done what I am supposed to do?

Well, I have my syllabuses all updated. I have my school clothes all ready. (I'm too old to be buying 'back-to-school clothes.' Look for the jeans and polo shirt.) I have my motorcycle backpack with school papers and gradebook sitting on my kitchen table. (In all honesty, it hasn't moved or changed since I plopped it down there on May 16.) So, am I really ready?

No, 'fraid not. I'm an English teacher, and if I don't have my teacher vocabulary in order, I'm going to be screwed at 10 am, Monday Aug 31. And my vocabulary is sadly lacking.

Today's Bangor Daily News ran an article on students using cellphones to sext or harass each other, and the adults, naturally, are frantic. Could this article have run without the teacher's favorite weasel word? I think not.

"Inappropriate" and "appropriate" are used nine times in a quite short article. Such helpful words. We teachers are reluctant to be judgmental. It might blight and warp forever the spirits of our students if we used words like 'dumb' and 'stupid' and 'risky' and 'self-indulgent' and even 'bad' to describe sexting. Or 'evil,' 'cruel,' 'hateful,' 'sadistic,' 'dangerous,' and 'really really dumb' to describe harassment.

No, indeed. We need a word that conveys a certain amount of unhappiness without committing ourselves to anything very much. Hence, 'inappropriate.'

Years ago, 'immature' had the same function. Streaking was immature. Mooning was immature. Wedgies were immature. Noogies were immature. Waterbombs and stinkbombs and panty raids and smoking in the boys' room were all immature. Calling your teacher an a-hole and storming out of class was very immature.

Now the descendants of these old-timey mischievous behaviors are styled 'inappropriate.' I used to think 'inappropriate' was for, like, using the salad fork on your steak, but, no, not according to my colleagues.

Until I can really get my tongue around that word, I won't be ready for class.

July 3. In lieu of anything better to do in this crap weather, I took a 3 mile walk down the road. About a quarter mile from the turnaround point, I heard someone screaming.

Sounds like...a child. A girl. Saying (eventually I could hear): "I want my sock! Give me my sock! NOW!!! Give me my sock, my foot is cold, I want my sock. NOW!!!"

Repeat screams for a quarter mile. She was on a trampoline and a male adult was saying with ever-increasing volume: "Stop shouting. First you have to stop. Stop shouting!" On and on the pair of them went, til finally, thank god, she lowered her voice a dite. "I want my sock, give me my sock."

Guess what dad/stepdad/mom's bf said? G'wan, you have to guess! Give up? Did he reward her for doing as he asked? Did he immediately reinforce the behavior he wanted? Did he toss the sock onto the trampoline and praise her?

Or did he say, "Now say please. 'I want my sock please.'"

Naturally the little girl was outraged and began screaming again immediately, and naturally the guy began, again, to tell her to stop shouting.

I turned around and could hear them at it, hammer and tongs for a quarter mile until the road dips down and the voices faded out.

My takeaway is that a) the guy was terminally dumb or b) he was actually enjoying hearing her shout or c) he hated her or d) all of the above.

Do not try these tricks at home on your own kids! And if you are a colleague, don't do the equivalent in class with students--it's not an unknown practice among teachers to nag and nag and never be satisfied with anything you get. You know, there is a philosophy widespread in faculty lounges that you catch more flies with vinegar than honey....

June 6. It must come as a bit of relief to First Lady of the State o' Maine to get the heck out of Augusta and return to Bangor and Vine St School where she used to teach. Friday, she read selections of EB White's 'Trumpet of the Swan' to the kids who were all sitting on the gym floor (don't they have bleachers, folding chairs? why do kids being read to always have to sit on the floor, looking up at the adult?)

Everyone knows about 'acquiring a taste' for something as one ages. A taste for liquor or for cigars, for example. Is there some comparable phrase for losing a taste for something? When I was little I liked EB White's 'Stuart Little,' but by the time I was reading aloud to my own kids (they were not required to sit on the floor!), I didn't like him at all anymore. Too much cruelty, tears, sadness, and misery in 'Trumpet' and 'Charlotte's Web.' I know they're beloved classics, but I don't love them or even like them anymore.

(Whereas I still love the Carl Barks' version of Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge that I also grew up with.... Maybe I just have low tastes.)

But each to her own. Karen Baldacci came prepared to challenge the kids to read on their own this summer. It's important to read, she says, because without practice ("like Dustin Pedroia....") skills deteriorate.

Really? Skills like knowing how to ride a bicycle? Skills like swimming? I think that once someone knows how to read, they know how to read. They can certainly improve but I'd like to see the studies proving the 'Summer Slide.' Or studies not produced by education professors--they are hardly unbiased researchers.

Anyway, the people in the English Department at EMCC are talking about what courses we might want to teach in the future. Usually an English teacher's dream is to get away from teaching writing and into teaching literature. The idea is that it's more fun to get students comparing and contrasting Lennie and George in 'Of Mice and Men' that it is to read a batch of essays entitled 'How I Spent My Summer Vacation.'

But what if a teacher could get a student to talk about their real lives over summer vaykay? What they say, felt, thought, did, suffered, and conquered? What if the teacher could help them write in a way that sounded like them alone instead of everyone else? What if the writing were actually funny, surprising, interesting, sharp, edgy, gutty?

Already I'd rather be reading what that student did over summer vacation than anything John Steinbeck had to say about mice or men.

I don't want to find myself at the twilight of my career trying to pull correct answers out of bored students: "So, why would I want to read it again?" was one of Karen Baldacci's questions.

Kids responded that she must have liked it or was trying to see more by rereading....

In other words, guess what I'm thinking, kids! Guess the two or three 'right' answers. Karen Baldacci said, "Oh, I love those answers."

But what if a kid had said, "Because you don't know how to find new books you like?" Or "Because you have an obsessive and unhealthy relationship with EB White?" Or "Because White lived in Maine and so you, as Governor's wife, need to talk him up?" Or "Because he is a certified classic and you don't have to worry that he might say something that makes you uncomfortable?"

What would she have said then?

Teachers treat literature like it is a puzzle, and it is their job to ask questions to show students how the sneaky author loads on the symbols and the secret meanings and little moral lessons. (You can't read a book without a teacher to explain it to you, you know!) But the answers teachers want are usually so obvious that only the brownnosers would stoop to answer them.

So, no, I don't really have better questions than Karen Baldacci, but that's why I would never want to teach literature.


May 14. When is the best time to have school anxiety dreams? Anytime....

Typically, I have them just before a semester starts. Longtime readers can look back to Augusts and Januarys past to see my typical not-prepared, too-many-students-too-few-computers dreams.

But is it right to have school anxiety dreams just after the end of the semester?

I had an 11 o'clock exam to give. When I woke up, it was still darkish but I checked my watch. It seemed to say about 5:15. No problem. But when I woke up again, the hands had fallen off my watch and were rattling around in there under the crystal. It was nearly noon!

I was back at the Edith C. Baker School in Brookline Massachusetts where it all begin for me in 1950, desperately hunting for 225 Maine Hall EMCC, Bangor Maine, desperately hoping that my students would have waited for me. I hunted and hunted and hunted and hunted....

Students! I will be there at 1 pm today! I will be there at 8 am tomorrow!