This Teacher's Nightmares!!!

There ought to be a word for nightmares that aren't nightmares like Tina gets (she's being chased and her screams come across the pillow as moans born of horror and agony which awaken me, quickly, and so I heroically awaken her and am then assured by her still-asleep and breathless "thank you" which makes me wonder if I entered her dream and thoroughly kicked some assailant's ass (which I can't even do in my dreams so I'm grateful for the possibility of doing it in hers) or . . . did I just obliterate the nightmare altogether by awakening her?. No. No drama in mine like that. Mine are just annoying visitations based upon my own insecurity about what I fear is a presumptuousness going on 20 years, i.e., what business do I have in a classroom full of bright, disciplined kids? I get these two dreams, each is annoying and each attempts to put me in my place about once every six months or so:

I'm scheduled to play a piano concerto with the San Francisco Symphony. I know, but it becomes clear to me that no one else seems to know -- or maybe they do! and they certainly should! -- that I don't play anywhere near well enough to play classical music much less classical music with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra! I don't play classical! I don't sight read very well at all. I have very limited technical fluency or facility on the keyboard so that anything beyond a ballad's tempo or any run up or down the keyboard or any contrapuntal activity requiring a left hand that does anything more than pound chords on the 1 and 3 is wholly beyond me. How did I qualify for this gig? And why do people seem to look forward to my playing? And at what point did I think I could perform with aplomb, fooling everyone? Or did I just go along with whatever ill-founded confidence the music world extended to me? These questions come to me after I awaken, but in the dream they are the inchoate miasma which makes for whatever nightmarish quality the dream imposes upon me.

So . . . here I am, getting ready to go on stage (I guess we have, in fact, rehearsed even!!! and I somehow pulled it off!) in my tux to be greeted by hearty applause, the welcoming smile of MTT, and everyone's happy anticipation of a night of artistry! MTT lifts his baton, the symphony comes in and . . . I play. And sure, I'm a little anxious all the while that I'll be found out, but actually pretty confident, too, and . . . I pull it off! There's applause!

I get the hell off stage . . . .

And there the dream ends.

You might well ask, "Dude, what's wrong with that? That's no nightmare!"

But, of course, it is! Because I know I'm a fake who just succeeded with my fakery . . . and, worse, it will just encourage me to continue with my con and not ever really learn the craft of playing the piano (see "teaching") well. And one day, I will get caught. MTT will step off the podium, look at the music in front of me, look at me, and with both of us scandalized in that moment, he'll point to the f*******ing door.

Who am I to be teaching Shakespeare, Sophocles, Hurston, et al?!!?


And now, for a couple years or so, a new annoyance visits my sleep and in this dream . . . I do get caught:

I'm about to take a final exam in a class for which I have not only not done the work since about the first week of school, I even forgot this class was on my schedule . . . or conveniently forgot . . . up until this moment, the moment when all will become clear as I stare blankly at and leave blank my final exam. And I know that this will mean that I will fail the class; it will mean humiliation.

In this dream, there's no faking it . . . yet anyway. I always wake up, humiliated, before I have to take the final exam. Although I'm not confronted in the dream by any authority, it must be clear to all that I haven't been in class, just about ever, and that I cannot possibly be prepared for this test. I know I don't know and I know that everyone else must know that I don't know . . . anything.

But how is this different from playing with the Symphony? Perhaps one night I will take that final exam and bullshit my way through. I'll hand it in and hang around just long enough to gather my things while noticing the professor leaf through my pages. Yes, in this dream, I can't tell if I'm in high school or in law school (where I was negligent, but not that negligent), and I seem to be a younger man, but with the life experience of the 55 year old that I am. Seems that way anyway.

I wake up mildly disgusted with myself, but then I chuckle because I've escaped the reality, the Truth, represented in the dream and am back in the material world where my smoke and mirrors continue to work wonders.




There must be a name for these dreams. It's not stage fright. As the pianist, and despite my incredulity about being accepted as a classical pianist, in my dream I actually have some confidence that I can do this. Otherwise, I would have run to the nearest exit.

In the final exam dream, I have no intention of "performing" on stage.

I should note that Tina had a somewhat similar recurring dream years ago when she waited tables. She dreamt she had too many tables to wait on. But, you see, in this dream, she didn't create the problem. She's blameless and the injustice of it causes her to scream, a scream of agony that comes across the pillows as moans. So I wake her up. I'm good at that.

Why I Seldom Assign "Creative" Writing

I’m occasionally asked, imploringly, by parents considering my school “if there are creative writing opportunities” in my English class. Kids ask, too.

My flippant response used to be: “All writing is creative.” And then I’d go on to admit that my colleagues in the English department do assign creative writing responses despite the emphasis on the analytical essay. I’d go on to note that there’s also a literary journal. But then, with firm but quiet conviction I’d aver that in my class I tend to shy away from conventional creative writing assignments.

I should be more forthcoming....

I’d guess that nearly every high school English teacher, in nearly every class, has at least one conventional creative writing assignment. Some of us find that a creative writing assignment can respond to texts quite effectively.

I will admit that I am more hesitant than some to assign conventional creative writing, but my misgivings about assigning it are not founded in some overriding College Preparatory ethic. So why don't I assign more? Why doesn't the whole department assign more? For my part -- and this is from someone who has written plays, short stories, and poems -- I have found the following problems:

First, creative writing, done well, is much harder, and far more time consuming, than expository writing. Done well, it requires more revisions. Yet, kids often think their creative writing is easier and better simply because they like it more.

Secondly, while I can teach how to structure a story, a play, or a poem and I can help with revisions, I am not particularly competent at helping kids recognize and create their best creative work. Nor do I have the time in the curriculum. Indeed, the kids who are gifted in creative writing find that they spend far more time on it than they expected to and sometimes don't finish.

So, thirdly, it creates assessment problems. How do I assess a student's creative work? By what criteria? When I assign creative work, I have some guidelines and perhaps a prompt or two which must be addressed, but a bad story can meet the guidelines.

Fourth, the expository essay is a good in itself, not just as a preparation for college. It is countercultural in that it compels us to slow down and sit quietly while observing and unpeeling something for an extended period of time. Multitasking interferes with it. Hurry is its enemy. It's a way of discovering what we really think and how we are capable of thinking more deeply about anything. I tell kids, "We don't write what we think; we write in order to figure out what we think." Expository writing, done well, helps us to learn how to see, discern, and express greater depths. Finally, I very much believe that an essay can be beautiful. I think of Lewis Thomas' Lives of a Cell, Primo Levi's The Periodic Table, Anne Fadiman's essays, Montaigne's, Richard Rorty's, John Updike on art, Jamaica Kincaid on gardening.

If a student is moved to write poems, stories, plays, etc., she will find many willing mentors in most high schools and in the community. Despite my ambivalence about assigning creative writing, I have mentored budding playwrights and two budding poets. And I’m very involved with college essays which can and should be creative and revelatory.

Yes, the expository essay "looms large” in independent schools, as JH says, but not necessarily in its "traditional form" over all four years and not merely because of college prep expectations. We believe in it because capable people can learn to open the world and their own minds with them. It's a good exercise for anyone expecting to use her intellect in text dissection in the future. It is true that some people see the world better through a conventionally creative approach, but I'm quite confident that my school does not blast that out of them. It does require that analysis be mastered, but not that the Muse be dismissed.

Kids and parents point to the unfettered freedom of creative writing. I don't believe that the best creative work is ever "unfettered." I believe that mastering any art form begins with some fettering. Even James Joyce, Ezra Pound, William Faulkner, Ornette Coleman, Mondrian, Pollack, Serra, et al, first had to master the more traditional techniques. Then, even after breaking past traditional boundaries, they still had some self-imposed boundaries.

So if you want more creative writing – don’t wait for a teacher to assign it.

Write.

English Teachers and Rough Drafts

Independent high school English teaching is a great gig without much in the way of drawbacks. The pay isn't really that bad. The kids are great. You can choose where you want to live. Colleagues are usually wonderful. The only drawback, as any English teacher will confirm, is . . . grading papers. By inviting or requiring kids to give us rough drafts, we double the misery.

If you're a student of mine out there, please don't take this as a denegration of your thinking and writing that may have meant so much to you for a variety of reasons. Of course, we enjoy, even delight in your progress as a writer and the revelations that young minds can share. We just don't like a stack of 45 papers to read over a weekend.

Of course, if good pedagogy deems it necessary, then we need to assign rough drafts. But what if good pedagogy doesn't compel it. What if, in fact, good pedagogy militates against it?

It's up to you if my argument is self-serving, but here goes:

We are teachers, not editors preparing essays for publication. Accordingly, no one paper is important. Rather, the progess from paper to paper is important.

As a teacher of writing, I have to help kids maximize their strengths while recognizing and attending to their challenges. That's the real skill, the independence, to be developed. The ethic of assigning rough drafts can be expressed as "now go back and try again given the comments and corrections I've added." But that same ethic applies to the next paper. Correcting what I circle or comment upon, doesn't require as much writerly attentiveness and problem-solving as does anticipating weaknesses in brand new efforts, finding them, and attending to them. This is why I generally assign no drafts, but there are lots of starts.

I'd also argue that when we correct rough drafts, the kids naturally attend to those corrections and comments almost exclusively. The result, I fear, is that they sense that the progress from rough draft to finished product need only be relatively superficial when, in fact, a second shot at a paper should be an opportunity for further, deepening thought, clearer prose, a more confident, supple voice, i.e., more beautiful writing.

So, sure, the students could benefit from rough drafts, but my involvement with them might actually stifle further thought.

Then there's the most unfortunate possible impact of assigning and marking up rough drafts: If a student attends to all the corrections and comments energetically, should she get an A on the paper? Not necessarily, but that may be a hard sell (except at my school where we don't have grades . . . I'll address this on another day). At its best, the rough draft may become a good, not a great paper. However, it may have become great had the student worked beyond the corrections and comments.

A compromise: I will occasionally invite a particularly challenged writer to show me any paragraph of their choosing. Whatever mistakes the student is making in that paragraph are likely to be exhibited in the others. And I tell them so. "Look out for that thing you do . . . " I might say . . . or something to that effect.

"Try again," means on the next assignment.