I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I shan't be gone long. -You come too.
I'm going out to fetch the little calf
That's standing by the mother. It's so young
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I shan't be gone long. -You come too.
-Robert Frost, 1914
Do you remember the best teacher you ever had? I suspect that since everyone reading this is either an educator, or an aspiring educator, you will probably answer some form of yes to that question. I have had a long line of great teachers throughout my education. Perhaps you feel the same. And perhaps like me, you have one that stands above the rest; perhaps that person is part of the reason you ended up reading this blog.
Most of you know a brief version of the story of the best teacher I ever had. Mr. C was my grade 12 English teacher. He was a burly, bearded, tattooed, harley-riding genius, a holder of sundry masters degrees that he collected like Pokemon cards. He introduced me to Plato, and he introduced me to Frost.
"The Pasture" is the first poem I ever enjoyed reading. It was the first poem Mr. C presented to us in his class. Read it again and see what meaning you take from it.
If you are like the 17 year old version of me, you read it again and got nothing more than a quaint pastoral scene. Not a huge turnoff - the writing is undeniably fluid, simple, compelling - all of the hallmarks of Frost. Yet, there isn't much in that farmyard to grab a young man.
Here is where Mr. C started to coax us. He told us to imagine that the poem was in his voice. How did that change the meaning? What was his task? Why was he raking the leaves away, and why was he helping the tottering calf? What did the leaves represent? Who did the calf represent? Mr. C was clearing the leaves from our mind. He was helping his students -the tottering calves- on a journey of poetic discovery. The invitation was overt - "you come too."
This was the first poem that I ever felt I "got". It started a lifelong love affair between myself and the writing of Robert Frost. It also nearly started a fistfight about the value of communism when we read William Carlos William's "The Red Wheelbarrow" next. That was the second poem I ever felt I "got."
The point is that this was a paradigm shift for me. I realized that after years of toiling with Shakespeare that language could be wielded like a weapon. It could knock me out and leave me waking with the sweetest concussion.
This is the kind of "Deeper Reading" that Gallagher speaks about in his book of the same name; the kind of reading that I was unable to do before Mr. C. The reason for my failure was that I was uninterested. To extend Gallagher's metaphor, I had never known the underlying intricacies of baseball. They had never been properly explained, and so when they were brought up in class, I just tuned out.
As both Gallagher and Appleman point out, a good teacher should be able to shift her student's perspectives. She should not only be able to point out that there are different lenses (shifting to Appleman's metaphor) with which to view the world, but she should also be able to teach students how to focus them. This is the intersection of deep reading and literary theory. One reinforces the other in a beautiful symbiotic relationship.
This post is getting long, you have better things to read, and I promised football, so let's get to the point: I want to see if I can use my primitive teacher skills to shift your perspective. I want to use football as an example because professor Balzer has picked on football a little bit, and I would like to come to its defence. This is, of course, all it good fun.
Football is a pretty easy target, especially in the academic world. It consists of testosterone-fueled, large men perpetrating violence against each other for amusement. Our common sense tells us football players are generally rude, misogynistic, and stupid. The game takes money away from more valuable educational programs. What I am particularly interested is how football players fulfill gender stereotypes, so let's put on our gender glasses.
On Sunday morning, Torrey Smith's brother died in a motorcycle accident. Torrey helped raise his younger brother as part older brother, part father. He would change diapers and make simple meals when his overworked single mother was tired or out of the house. After his brother passed away early Sunday morning, Torrey did something many of us would not do: he went to work on Sunday night. Torrey works as a wide receiver for the Baltimore Ravens of the National Football League. That night he caught 6 passes for 127 yards and 2 touchdowns (this is very, very good; the best game of his career), earning the winning score against the mighty New England Patriots. What happened after the game is more important. Watch this video with your gender glasses on (scroll down the page):
If we use the simple tools we developed learning literary theory to brake down this video, our perspective can be changed. We are told that men are not supposed to cry. Certainly not big, muscular men, and certainly not in front of a group of other big, muscular men. Men are not supposed to show affection, yet here are 60 men professing their love for their "brother" out loud for everyone to hear. Where football was seen to be a group of macho men, we see that it actually can be one of the few safe places for men to show emotion and to share love with one another.
One last example: I help coach at an inner city school in Saskatoon. Now that I am a student teacher in the school as well, I see that the interaction in the hallways can be quite segregated. Aboriginal students will hang out in their own groups, kids in the advanced program will hang out in theirs, etc. Sadly, there is little to no overlap between these groups and rarely do they mix. The exception is the football field. Between the white lines there is no race, no class, no cliques, only team. I have seen this time and time again. A common goal can be a powerful deterrent to degeneration into racism. There is a reason that sports have often been ahead of the social curve. There is a reason we tell the stories of Jackie Robinson and Freddie Sasakamoose. The stories we tell have meaning, meaning that is powerful, and meaning that is always, always plural.
I really enjoyed how you incorporated Torrey Smiths story in connection to reading deeper. With literary theory tools we cannot only read text deeper, but also social situations. I also particularly enjoyed how you took Appleman's lens metaphor further by giving attention to how students can further develop their skills by focusing their lenses. Perhaps Appleman will take us through that process throughout the text.
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