Getting Sharpened

This is my first day back since the fall semester concluded -- I am overseeing the Writing Center this last week of winter session. I'll be here 8:00 - 5:30 Monday-Thursday. This hasn't exactly been a hub of activity. I was told last Friday during the "in-service" day that the campus had felt like a "ghost town" during these 6-weeks of winter session. That must be because of the recession causing the reduction in the number of classes offered.

So when Hebs Journal came across the screen this afternoon I thought it made a nice compare and contrast with what's sitting here on this campus desk. I slid the cheapie camera from my pocket and tried to capture the moment. She writes an interesting little bit about pencils and sharpeners and students.

We do have a pencil sharpener in this room but it is seldom used and when a student does need it, s/he usually has to ask where we keep the sharpener. It is in plain sight, clamped to the wall. It is interesting the things we look at, but don't see. Students never see the sharpener in this room.

I commented to Hebs that my students are appalled when they are expected to actually use a pen or pencil to write with. A couple times a semester my students must write an in-class essay and they can hardly believe that I expect them to use paper and pencil (or ball-point pen). If we allow them to use their laptops or if we have a classroom filled with computers, they import a previously prepared essay, or even more astounding, they use an essay written by someone else. So at the end of a semester my students report to me that it was the in-class essay writing that caused them to learn the most because they truly had to know the material.

One highlight of today -- sometime mid-morning a former student, Denise, walked-in all bubbly and excited -- hugged me and then sat down to spend the next 90 minutes telling me all about her journey the past year since leaving my class. She was in my autumn of 2008 basic writing class. Since then she has gone to school winter, spring, summer, autumn, and she is now wrapping-up winter session (6 semesters worth). She is 50-something; her first grandbaby will be born in May; she will graduate with her 2-year degree in June; and the following weekend her daughter will get married. She is so excited about education and learning, and she is employed part-time as a teacher's aide working with special-ed pre-school children (3, 4, and 5 year olds). She wants to be a teacher. She is in school because some time ago her job in the world of mortgage banking/realty crashed. Our conversation was the delight of my day. She is thrilled to be a student and you can imagine how much a teacher loves hearing that.

This is the final week of winter session. Some of the students here feel like they don't have enough time to get the work all done. A 16-week semester is crammed into 6 weeks for winter (and same for summer) session. It's crazy; at least that is what I think. I tell my students that I don't think I could learn to play piano in 6-weeks; so I don't recommend that they learn to write academic prose in that short time span. So today I have selected a Ted Kooser Valentine poem especially for those students who are feeling out of time and a little rushed.

FOR YOU, FRIEND,

this Valentine's Day, I intend to stand
for as long as I can on a kitchen stool
and hold back the hands of the clock,
so that wherever you are, you may walk
even more lightly in your loveliness;
so that the weak, mid-February sun
(whose chill I will feel from the face
of the clock) cannot in any way
lessen the lights in your hair, and the wind
(whose subtle insistence I will feel
in the minute hand) cannot tighten
the corners of your smile. People
drearily walking the winter streets
will long remember this day:
how they glanced up to see you
there in a storefront window, glorious,
strolling along on the outside of time.

by Ted Kooser, Valentines: Poems
Presidential Professor of the University of Nebraska
former U.S. poet laureate, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

Good Night from Southern California
Rosie (& Mr. Fun), aka Carol


P.S. To Hebs -- a pencil sharpener might be a thing from the past, but consider this: some of my students do not know how to tell time if the clock or watch has hands. They only know digital!