Month: April 2013

Sacramentality and the Short Story

April 25, 2013

Here are my rambling (key word: rambling!) thoughts on sacramentality and short stories, inspired by my students.

I just started a unit on short stories with my sophomores. As an introductory lesson, we’ve been learning about the 6 characteristics of a short story according to Edgar Allan Poe:

poe

1. A short story should be able to be read in one sitting. (About one half hour to two hours)

2. A short story should have nothing in it that detracts from the design (no extra or un-necessary stuff).

3. A short story should aim for truth. Although most stories are fiction, and many of them include fantastical elements (e.g. “The Fall of the House of Usher”) they should nevertheless remain “true to the human heart.”

4. A short story should strive for unity of effect – one ambience or mood.

5. A short story’s effect should begin with the very first sentence.

6. A short story should be imaginative, inventive, and experimental – it should be trying to do something.

Then we read “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” by Flannery O’Connor as a class on Tuesday. I encourage you to read it, too. I tried my own unique versions of Southern accents for the voices of Mr. Shiftlet and Mrs. Crater, to help them hear how funny O’Connor is. They loved it.

But they stopped loving it when we got to the end of the story.

“What? That’s it?”

“What’s that random boy doing at the end?”

“You mean he just left her there?”

“That don’t make any sense, Ms. Shea.”

“I don’t get it.”

“What does it mean?”

“It don’t have no meaning.”

“This is stupid.”

I had, of course, tried to warn them beforehand. On our guided notes sheet I had included this interesting quote (below) by O’Connor about the art of storytelling. But it’s one thing to read a quote that challenges traditional notions of “theme” and “message.” It’s another thing to be put through a whole short story–which you enjoy–only to be disappointed at the end by confusion and–gosh darnit–mystery.

Also, they’re in high school. As much as they protest otherwise, they like to be told the meanings of things by authoritative adult sources.

In this quote I gave them, however, O’Connor pretty much dismantles traditional notions of figuring out the “message” lifeyousaveor “theme” of a story, and the very notion that one can simply be told what the meaning of a story is. I can understand why my kids are frustrated, though. Aren’t they expected to explain the message of stuff they read in high school? If the story doesn’t yield that message easily, isn’t it understandable that they be angry or annoyed? After all, we’re talking about my grade in this class, here!

I should just let O’Connor speak:

I prefer to talk about the meaning in a story rather than the theme of a story. People talk about the theme of a story as if the theme were like the string that a sack of chicken feed is tied with. They think that if you can pick out the theme, the way you pick the right thread in the chicken-feed sack, you can rip the story open and feed the chickens. But this is not the way meaning works in fiction.

When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one. The meaning of a story has to be embodied in it, has to be made concrete in it. A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate. When anybody asks what a story is about, the only proper thing is to tell him to read the story. The meaning of fiction is not abstract meaning but experienced meaning, and the purpose of making statements about the meaning of a story is only to help you experience that meaning more fully.

–      Flannery O’Connor

This is, of course, what our beloved Dr. Lowery of the University of Dallas Theology Department would call “the sacramental view of reality”–or, in this case, the sacramental view of storytelling. The meaning of a story is “embodied” and “made concrete” in it, and as such cannot be pulled out of it. For O’Connor, if you can say in a statement or two what a story “means,” then the story probably isn’t “a very good one” to begin with. It’s a mere moral dressed up in fancy garments.

I gave my students the example of the Eucharist. “What’s the Eucharist?”

“The body and blood of Jesus.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“So I can’t just pray and receive his body and blood in a symbolic or ‘spiritual’ way? I have to eat the bread and wine?”

“Yeah you have to eat it.”

“Okay. Well, O’Connor is saying it’s the same with stories. You can’t get the ‘meaning’ or ‘message’ of a story any other way. You have to read the story itself – you have to eat and drink it. That’s where the meaning is. You can’t just pull it out in some abstract way. That’s what O’Connor thinks, anyway.”

For the typical high school student, this is very hard to accept. Like most people these days, they are Gnostics, and they would prefer to separate body and soul, sign from sacrament, story from meaning. It’s easier that way.

life you save 3One of my very best students–a devout Protestant–was particularly offended by O’Connor’s view of stories. Not the Eucharist part, but the meaning part. She (very rightly) pointed out that O’Connor was basically saying that not everyone can figure out the meaning of a story. If the meaning is so embedded in the story itself, then it’s almost impossible to get it out. (O’Connor would say that it IS impossible). My student firmly believes, however, that stories should be accessible to everyone. If the message of the story isn’t clear, then why bother reading the story? Authors should make their messages understandable to us. God and Jesus, of course, make their messages understandable. (Do they?)

I did not say this in class, of course, but I was strongly reminded of sola scriptura and the Evangelical Protestant notion that individual Christians should be able to read the Bible and understand it without the mediation of Magisterial Authority or Tradition.

And then there is this, too. In my students’ essays I have long combated their habitual use of cliches–things that everybody already says or believes, therefore there is no point in saying them again–but I saw the other day that they not only write cliches, they look for them in stories. If a meaning is to be found, then it is most certainly a cliche meaning. Mr. Shiftlet, although he appears to be kind of a nice guy at the beginning, ends up abandoning Lucynell and stealing Mrs. Crater’s car. The high school student says, “This story shows us that you can’t judge a book by it’s cover.”

Well, yes.

But such a trite moral doesn’t justify O’Connor’s story.

And that is what the high school student DOES understand. “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover,” “Don’t steal,” “Don’t be a hypocrite” — all of these things they already get. And they don’t want to be put through the emotional grinder of a Flannery O’Connor story if that’s the only thing they are going to “get out of it” at the end.

The hard task is to get them to see that there is more in the story–much more. It is THE hard task because I don’t fully understand what that”more” is. It’s mystery. It’s–as O’Connor says elsewhere– “pure idiot mystery,” and that’s what the modern gnostic cliche mind cannot stand or understand. The high school student in particular struggles with accepting and entering into mystery. It’s frightening.

I think this story by O’Connor is “true to the human heart” as Edgar Allan Poe would say–and indeed there are lots of images of the actual human heart in this story, being cut out of people’s chests and held by doctors–but I’m not exactly sure how to explain why.

But O’Connor told us it would be that way:

“A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is.”

So, if you haven’t already, you should just go read her story.

lifeyousave2

Thought-Provoking

April 17, 2013

Here are three articles I think everyone interested in Catholic education and society should read:

1. John Jalsevac on Marriage – Controversial, yes. Disturbing, yes. Thought-provoking, yes.

In a provocative but carefully-argued article, Jalsevac seems to get to the heart of the matter about the marriage debate (often a topic of discussion and perplexity in my high school classroom):

After all, huge numbers of heterosexuals are sleeping with whomever they want, are divorcing and remarrying willy nilly, are avoiding children like the plague, or are bringing children into a single parent home or placing them in the unconscionable position of either choosing which parent they like best or being condemned to the permanent impermanence of being shuffled about from one parent to the next for the duration of their childhood. Nobody seems to be particularly bothered by all this, and so, many are beginning to wonder (quite rightly) why we should begrudge gays the right to do the same thing, and to honor it with the same name.

2. Stanley Fish on education, the law, and conscience. Controversial, disturbing, and thought-provoking – yes.

What methods are appropriate to use in the classroom to get our students to really engage with the material in more than a “theoretical” way? Although Fish is describing college education here, I think his thoughts are very helpful to the high school teacher as well:

[…] the brouhaha is not about “material” — books and essays — it’s about the appropriateness of asking students to do something that brings to the surface, out in the open, some of their deepest commitments and anxieties. Whereas in the theater-exercise case you are engaged in a performance that brings with it the distance that attends artifice, in the step-on-Jesus case there is no distance at all between what you are asked to do and who you are; discovering who you really, and not theatrically, are is both the point and goal.

The goal, no doubt, is a worthy one, but is it a pedagogical goal or does it belong more to the therapy session than to the classroom?

3. Dr. Susan Hanssen on religion in public life. Dr. Hanssen is one of the best professors I learned from at the University of Dallas, and her incisive inquiry into the real role of religion in public life is something I think about often as a teacher. I have the privilege of (somewhat) taking for granted the “public” nature of faith, at least in my classroom–but many other teachers in public and charter schools do not.

It takes some real intellectual labor for us in the third millennium to grasp the definition of religion as essentially one of the res-publica, the public things, that ought to concern patriotic men.

Pay close attention, as well, to what Hanssen says about rights and duties–that human rights are intrinsically connected to human duties and responsibilities: what we have a right to do is inseparable from what we ought to do.

It seems to me that all three of these articles suggest important implications for what Catholic teachers should do in the classroom. I thought about my kids a lot while reading them.

English teaching and “The Real World”

April 9, 2013

Circa February 2011:

One of my biggest challenges (and goals) in teaching high school English has been helping my students learn how to write well—not only to write coherently in an organized manner (that is a huge challenge in and of itself!), but also to construct thoughtful arguments that actually help them discover depths in literary works and in themselves that they did not know existed before. This is quite a lofty and somewhat idealistic goal, and I wasn’t sure how successful I could be during my first year of teaching.

I asked some of my former teachers for suggestions, and many of them encouraged me to allow students to write about the “things they are interested in”—their own personal lives, their experiences, the music and/or issues they were concerned with. Such an approach seems in line with the claim that “students perform better in academic settings when they use concrete manipulatives and when they are able to draw on their practical, real-world knowledge” (McNeil Syllabus). You know, the universal “What I Did Over my Summer Break” essay at the beginning of school, or the “What’s My Favorite Sport/Movie/Food/ and Why,” etc. etc.

However, as an English teacher, I often ask myself what really is “real-world knowledge”? Most people don’t think that the sonnets of John Donne or the adventures of the mythic Beowulf really qualify—and that is, at face value, true: students don’t usually relate to such things immediately. (“Ms. Shea, why we gotta read this?” “Yeah why do we always read old stuff?” “It’s too hard for us to understand!” “Can’t we read something modern–like Nicholas Sparks?” “Can I write about a song instead?”)

Presumably, students would relate much better to modern poets or—better yet—modern music artists. But are modern music lyrics any more “real” than the poetry of Donne and Shakespeare? Are they less?

Image

Well, you know.

I have found that instituting a very simple classroom procedure called “In-Class Essay Fridays” has helped me more than any other teaching method or practice. Every Thursday I post the essay prompt for homework—they are responsible for bringing two possible thesis statements to class. I also encourage/require some of the struggling students to bring in an introduction paragraph to give them a head start. Every Friday, my students know they will be writing an in-class essay—an experience that used to cause them a lot of stress and frustration. But it has quickly become part of our weekly routine. I am able to give them a lot of individual help while they are busy writing.  Their writing has improved exponentially—but there is no real secret. The consistent practice has helped all of them.

The essay topics usually consist of a poem or passage to analyze. I have not really given them particularly “relevant” prompts—in the popular sense of the term—but strangely, John Donne, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell and Jane Austen have started to become part of their “real world.” One student said to me, “Ms. Shea, I think I want to write about Marvell instead of Herbert, because Herbert is such a good person! I don’t know if I can completely relate to him.” This student eventually decided to stay with Herbert nonetheless, and she wrote an illuminating essay.

As Mayer explains, “children seem to learn better when they are active and when a teacher helps guide their activity in productive directions” (16). But my in-class essay Fridays do not include many of the often celebrated activities like group work, or fun manipulatives, or even class discussion. Nevertheless, it seems to me that this weekly tradition really stretches, challenges, and engages my students: “the kind of activity that really promotes meaningful learning is cognitive activity (e.g. selecting, organizing, and integrating knowledge)” (Ibid. 17). Klhar and Nigram’s third hypothesis, that what is learned is more important than how it is taught (662), seems to be revealed here. I give my students careful individualized attention and advice on these Fridays, often in the form of direct instruction, and yet I have found it to be the most successful teaching practice I have engaged in thus far.

I’ve felt a lot of pressure as a new teacher to be “cool” and have music playing in my classroom, or use Youtube videos a lot, etc. And sometimes I do these things, and they work, and it’s fun.

But I am beginning to think that sometimes simpler is better, since a large part of my students’ writing success has to do with the ritual or weekly procedure—“In Class Essay Fridays” have become a normal part of these students’ lives. I am more concerned about helping my students feel safe within a context of challenging procedures that, through practice and consistency, will seem far less threatening.

Flannery O’Connor has a comment that seems particularly relevant and incisive here:

flannery

“English teachers come in Good, Bad, and Indifferent, but too frequently in high schools anyone who can speak English is allowed to teach it. Ours is the first age in history which has asked the child what he would tolerate learning. In other ages the attention of children was held by Homer and Virgil, among others, but, by the reverse evolutionary process, that is no longer possible; our children are too stupid now to enter the past imaginatively.”

A little harsh, Flannery–but as usual, you’re probably right. (And she was talking about education back in the 1950’s!)

I think she’d approve of “In-Class Essay Fridays.”

Hopefully, they inspire other procedures that will similarly become part of my students’ “practical, real-world knowledge.” Ultimately, I hope to make English class–including everything from Beowulf to Virgina Woolf–part of the “real world” for them.

Notes from my First Year of Teaching

April 1, 2013

Here are excerpts from notes I wrote during my first full year of teaching (last year).

1. circa September 2011

“Come see Ms. Shea! Come see!”

I remembered that the other ACE teachers at my high school in rural LA had mentioned this verbal phenomenon to me before my first day of school. Instead of saying “Could you come and look at this, Ms. Shea?” or “I need to show you something, Ms. Shea,” or even “I have a question, Ms. Shea,” my sophomores, juniors and seniors consistently say, “Come see!” –even if they don’t actually want to show me something.

As I remember, the theme of the opening April ACE retreat was the invitation of Christ – “Come and see” (John1:39).  Little did I know then how often I would hear that invitation in the classroom from my students! I am not sure if this phrase is particular to the local area or to all of Louisiana, but I think it is a daily gift that reminds me of my purpose as an ACE teacher.

carpetbaggerI came to Louisiana with a lot of ideas about what it would be like—small, rural Southern towns conjure up a lot of Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor-esque images for northern English majors like me. Seeing the ramshackle houses on cinder blocks alongside my school, the black and white neighborhoods distinctly separated by streets, the bizarre Daiquiris drive-through stations, the flat, steamy landscape rich with both sugarcane and humidity was enough to bewilder me the first few days and to make me feel further from my own cultural comfort zone than ever. But one of the most important things I am discovering, with the help of my students, is the simple necessity to come and see—to put aside whatever cultural preconceptions might hinder me from really appreciating this strange, beautiful place and my strange, beautiful students.

2. circa October 2011

“She had observed that the more education they got, the less they could do. Their father had gone to a one-room schoolhouse through the eighth grade and he could do anything.” (Everything that Rises Must Converge, Flannery O’Connor)

            This quote may seem rather discouraging to teachers but I think it describes with painful accuracy the challenge of getting students to take responsibility for their own learning. I have found myself falling into the trap of doing most of the talking, most of the working, most of the thinking in the classroom—and if I continue I will not only burn myself out, I will also have failed to engage my students.

Part of this failure of engaging and providing feedback for my students seems to be the direct results of my efforts find realistic and efficient ways to do both.  I have started to create guided notes for my students so that during direct instruction they don’t just sit and listen passively or (on the opposite end of the spectrum) try to copy down everything from a power point presentation or lecture. Giving them a concrete task to accomplish during direct instruction helps engage them and even encourages their participation since they know what information they need to discover. However, the drawback to these guided notes is that students tend to want to listen only for the right “answer” so that they can copy it down, rather than ask intelligent questions and engage the subject more for its own sake. I have found that students are so focused on getting the right answer that they are not concerned with learning how to think critically and independently—I want to find ways to push them toward that. This is very difficult, however, since many of my students resent the ways that I try to push and challenge them already.

[…] But honestly, I feel overwhelmed standing in front of so many students. Sometimes I feel teacherstresslike I can really see the ones who are struggling or who are disengaged, but I don’t feel as though I have the time or energy to find a way to bring them back in since I feel like I am barely making it through lesson plans. I feel frustrated because I know there are so many things I could be doing better, or so many other “methods” I could try to help my students, but at the same time I still feel like I am in survival mode and I am just trying to get through the day. Unfortunately, I am afraid that this sense of being totally overwhelmed is both caused by and starting to result in the students working less and me working more.

But as O’Connor says, “To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness.” Somehow, I need to set high expectations for myself and for my students while at the same time realizing that teaching is much more about love and consistency than it is about visible success.

3. circa December 2011

Student A said to me a couple of weeks ago, “Ms. Shea, at first I thought you were really scary. You were so serious! But actually you’re very nice.”

I smiled and silently remembered that the reason I looked so serious all the time the first four or five weeks was because I felt sick every morning from being so nervous. Gradually, however, as I got to know the students I found myself smiling more and engaging in conversation with them—I found myself sharing, every once in a while, a little bit about my own past experiences. The fact that I have a second-degree black belt and used to teach marital arts received a particularly enthusiastic (albeit slightly apprehensive) response.

Sharing myself with my students at times (I am still rather shy and hesitant about this) I think has helped them feel more comfortable with me and more willing to take risks in the classroom—good risks, like volunteering when no other hands are raised, or arguing for an unpopular perspective. I think that knowing me better has even helped the students who I sometimes have to keep after class—a part of them sees that I am a real person with a real history; that I care about them, and that my “real” black-belt, Red Sox fan, Texan and twin-sister self is not separate from my identity as the teacher and authority figure.

The wonderful thing about this is that the sacramental view of reality—God communicating Himself to us through created things in tangible, sometimes even mundane ways—means that these simple acts of mutual trust are potentially vehicles of His grace. Occasionally I even see the fruit of this grace—like when Student B was leading prayer and suggested that all of us mention something that we would really like to improve in our lives. The honest and humble responses of each student created a special moment of shared trust and even vulnerability—the answers ranged from “patience” to “improving my attitude at school.” It was a little moment, but I think it really reflected the respect that the members of the class had developed for one another.

4. circa June 2012 (coming full circle)

“Come see, Ms. Shea! Come see!”

This is the second or third time I have written a reflection about this phrase in my spiritual life, but ever since I joined ACE it keeps coming up! As the 12 Steps of ACE mainslide-come-and-seespirituality indicate, this is the first invitation of Christ to his disciples in the Gospel of John—“Where are you staying?” “Come, and you will see!” It is also the first invitation of Christ to all of us ACE teachers on April retreat. There’s a beautiful Providence at work in the fact that “come see” is a daily phrase of my students in rural Louisiana. It can mean many things—but for my students, it usually is their way of saying “I need you!” So it has always been very moving and strange for me to hear similar words coming from the mouth of Christ: “Come and see, I need you.”

In the computer lab as I move across the room from student to student, trying to encourage them and push them along in revising their essays, or in my classrooms amidst the hum (sometimes the chaos) of group activities, or on my way to lunch in the cafeteria, I constantly hear that phrase. “Can you come see, Ms. Shea?” “Ms. Shea, please come see!” And no matter how exhausted or stressed I am, I love hearing those words. They always bring me back to April retreat and my first moments of hopeful enthusiasm in ACE. They have served as a reminder again and again this past year of Christ being somehow in my students. It feels like I keep being nudged or woken up, whenever I fall into the sleep of discouragement or exhaustion or frustration—I’m invited to open my eyes again. “Yes, I’ll come see.”

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