Pedagogy Stew: March 2013

Posted on June 15, 2013 | Leave a comment

I’ve invented the most amazing computer game for my
composition students.

When I comment on their essays, which they’ve turned in online, I use “insert comment” to give feedback. There are pros and cons to this, of course, but one major PRO is that I’m now confident students can read my feedback. (I have handwriting issues. Lowest grade I ever got in my life? Penmanship. Fourth grade. At the time, I was sure Mrs. Cox had it in for me, but on reflection, I
think, no, that “C” was generous.)

Here’s the game: After I’ve finished grading the essays, their next assignment is a short exercise in which they should copy/paste one of the comments I’ve made, and then describe what
resource they looked to for help (online grammar site? our textbook? class notes?) and what
they plan to do to improve before the next essay.

All right, so…not so hot as a game.

It is, however, a fairly good test of their ability to navigate the online environment of digital essays and professorial feedback. Fairly often I have a non-traditional student who struggles online. (Drop-down list? Double-click? What’s that?) It’s not just non-traditional students. We think of Millennials (those born between 1980 and 2000) as being 100 percent wired, but I don’t
find them to be 100 percent proficient in computer usage that helps in the classroom. They can text,but word processing? Maybe not. They all use Google, but they may struggle when online research involves a database that uses Boolean logic or traditional Library of Congress Subject headings.

This round of essays, in each final draft, I am burying a link to an article in Nature
on the subject of “distributed thinking.” In “People Power: Networks of Human Minds Are Taking Citizen Science to a New Level,” Eric Hand describes how a group of scientists came up with Foldit, an online game in which “players compete, collaborate, develop strategies, accumulate game points and move to different playing levels, all while folding proteins.”
Computer models were thorough but slow—when gamers got involved, things went faster because, as Hand points out, “humans[are] blessed with a highly evolved talent for spatial manipulation, [and] can often see the solution intuitively.”

Beyond gamification (which means structuring learning, or anything else, like a game, with rewards—like giving chocolate for correct answers), what distributed thinking makes possible is
turning those skills our students use in gaming (and, um, some of us might possibly, occasionally, use in something girly and ridiculous like “Candy Crush,” a game that reports results on Facebook) into skills that could help solve real-world problems.

It isn’t just that I would like students to bring some of that persistence to their academic tasks. I would. But I would also love to figure out how to translate challenges (inside and outside academia) into the LANGUAGE and CULTURE of gaming, ina deep and serious way. Maybe then, when my son grows up, all his app-addled gaming hours will be a real asset.
______
6/15/13 NOTE: I ended up putting the link to the Nature article inside some Extra Credit directions–three students were very excited to find it. Next semester, I’ll think of more ways to make their hunting & clicking more rewarding.

I was talking about this to a student as we were searching EbscoHost (and online service with multiple databases to find articles) for sources for one of his papers, and told him I wished someone could structure searches like this as a game. He got it instantly: “Well, sure, like EbscoHost is a hallway, and….”

I can’t wait for the iOS version!

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Creative People Say Yes (Sometimes)

Posted on June 12, 2013 | 4 comments

I once came upon my cousin Reid practicing different ways to say “no.” He was 3 or 4 at the time. “No, I couldn’t possibly,” he said. “Absolutely not.”

He was onto something, that little ‘un. At least in my family, saying no takes practice.

Saying no? I’m big on it. Sometimes I’m even good at it. I certainly like the IDEA of saying no.

I’ve written about a fair number of times:
“How do I do that? How do I become the sort of person who says no to things?”

Clitter-Clatter Clutter Time , which references two terrific posts by my favorite tattooed Lutheran blogger, Nadia Bolz Weber, “The Spiritual Practice of Saying No,” and its companion piece, “The Spiritual Practice of Saying Yes!”

The Sarcastic Lutheran says, “The people who are inclined to say yes to everything do all the work and then burn out and become resentful about the people who are inclined to say no to everything. It’s as though the world is divided into martyrs and slackers.”

I don’t make a very good martyr or slacker, either one, not for very long.

I worked enough 50+ hours this spring semester, I worry my slacker credentials are in danger of not being renewed.

Busy as I’ve been, I’m nowhere close to martyrdom. I have some regrets, but I don’t regret all of the times I said yes. (Or came up with something to do that no one even asked me to do.)

Recent things that added to my to do list that I am particularly happy to locate in the land of “yes!”:

  • In addition to volunteering in my son’s classroom at the River Valley Elementary Studio School a couple hours a week, presenting a lesson on storytelling, with a way of talking about narrative arc that was a big hit.
  • Leading the Westby Co-Op Credit Union Board of Directors and branch managers in creativity exercises.
  • Serving as a (paid) reader for writing sample/placement tests for incoming UW-R students, and as a local developmental writing coordinator (unpaid).

In general, I am unrealistic about how the number of things I try to get done will fit into the number of available hours, and I don’t necessarily do things in the right order (which sometimes does and sometimes does not qualify as procrastination).

Thus, some of my commitments (such as returning student work promptly) suffered this spring, and probably, saying “yes” to new stuff impacted the ongoing stuff.

In general, I need to parse, pare, and prune my To Do list.

So, in one way, I totally get Kevin Ashton’s “Creative People Say No.”

He is right that “We do not have enough time as it is. There are groceries to buy, gas tanks to fill, families to love and day jobs to do.”

And he is right that “Time is the raw material of creation.”

Time is a precious resource. It must be guarded. I get it.

But wow did that blog post bug me.

(more on page 2!)

Pages: 1 2

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Posted in Burnout, Creativity, Daring Greatly, Family, Procrastination, Sustainable Chaos, Teaching, Uncategorized, Work Life, Writing

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Something Beyond Cynicism

Posted on June 7, 2013 | 4 comments

On the other side of burnout
there is rest, there is a place
where even my incompetence
has a bucket it fits into.

As I compost all my bitterness,
my misplaced hopefulness,
my misspent hours,
I watch the steam

rise up from what’s rotten.

A wisp of a moist gray ghost,
a sign of moving on,
a sweet portent

there and gone.

What’s done
is done.

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Posted in Bloem or Pog, Burnout, Daring Greatly, Poetry, Searching, Sustainable Chaos, Teaching, Work Life

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Marnie’s Idea Mill–churning out great ideas since…NOW.

Posted on June 3, 2013 | 2 comments

I am pleased, excited, terrified and astonished to be announcing the launch of Marnie’s Idea Mill, a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo.

I’m raising money to replace myself in the classroom, so that I will have time to design and implement workshops on creativity.

Thanks in advance for checking out the site and considering making a contribution!

You can help other ways–posting the link on your own Facebook page or blog, retweeting, or forwarding to people who might make a contribution will help, too.

I also welcome feedback on any and all parts of this project.

Also accepting good wishes and blessings!

Metaphor 1.1

Metaphor 1.1


_____
The perks I’m offering include a shout-out on this blog, a copy of Each Other’s Anodyne (a hand-sewn chapbook, a collection of my poems about teaching), feedback on your own creative writing, customized sonnets, and personalized creativity coaching sessions.

As of today, I’ve raised $10,000 in contributions and pledges toward the $24,000 total I need ($6,000 per course x four courses). My fundraising goal on Indiegogo is $4,000, and the deadline for the online campaign is June 17.

My ultimate deadline is July 1.

When I say I love impossible things, I am not kidding.

But I’m trusting Marnie’s Idea Mill can make some magic and attract some magic and make creativity workshops possible (which will then generate even more magic).
_____

Because I am married to a man who is 1/4 Finn, who has read the Kalevala multiple times and also cheers for Finnish drivers in World Rally racing, I know that the Sampo is a mill that generated an infinite supply of flour, salt, and gold.

It was made by Ilmarinen (using a forge, that, as my husband likes to point out, the Kalevala never mentions being destroyed–so maybe it’s still out there…) for the Mistress of the North, who turned out to be a nasty sort, and after a complicated series of events I couldn’t quite follow as my husband described it, the People of the South decided to steal the Sampo. The boat it was in sank, but pieces of the Sampo washed ashore and prosperity accompanied even those pieces.

There used to be a store in Madison called the Magic Mill, which I loved, but it closed. The Sampo, though–that’s a really potent metaphor.

The Sampo one of the images I had in mind when I decided to call my Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign “Marnie’s Idea Mill.”

Idea generation is a huge part of how we measure creativity, so I wanted a metaphor of something that generates. Mill seemed kindlier than factory somehow….

Plus, we have a wide assortment of Peugeot hand grinders (my husband is also 1/4 French).

Another old, old story I had in mind is from 1 Kings 17. In it, Elijah curses the land of Israel, “there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word.” The Lord sends him to a brook where ravens care for him, and then to a widow, who, when asked for a wee bit of bread by Elijah says, “As the Lord God liveth,” (which I think would now translate to “holy crap, man”). She says she barely has enough to keep herself and her son alive one more day. But Elijah blesses her barrel and says it will not be empty until God sends rain. (I always thought that should be until a few months after the rain showed up, but I’m sure it worked out fine.)

For me, this is a story about living from a place of “enough” rather than a place of “not enough.”

I am trusting there is enough good will and money in the world to help me meet my goal of designing workshops to help people become more creative–more people who can forge amazing mills, more prophets who can see plenty when the rest of us see scarcity….

More where there is currently less.
_____
(You can read more about my creativity research, my fundraising, and my ideas for workshops on various pages here on my blog.)

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Posted in Creativity, Creativity Workshops, Daring Greatly, God Stuff, Sustainable Chaos, Teaching, Uncategorized, Work Life

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If God’s going to all the trouble of sending a tornado after you….

Posted on May 30, 2013 | 4 comments

When I was little, I wasn’t scared of tornadoes.

My Dad always said, “If God’s going to go to all the trouble of sending a tornado after you…” and I actually don’t remember the exact words of what came after that, but the idea was, just give up. If God wants you to die in a tornado and you survive that tornado, he’ll send another tornado. Or a car wreck. Or a brown recluse spider.

I found that profoundly comforting when I was a child and beyond, but I’m sure my Dad’s calm helped, too. (Note to self: try not to freak out ENTIRELY as you’re fleeing your own home, your child in tow, to your parents’ basement across town. When I said, “Get in the car right now!” I’m pretty sure I had the same intonation & volume as “You can’t handle the truth!”)

Back in the 70s, there were watches and warnings pretty much all the time, it seemed, from March through September. We ignored watches entirely, and only grew concerned about warnings if the sky turned green.

Dad and I used to stand in our garage and watch sheets of rain come across the open field northeast of our house. He was probably smoking a pipe. I was probably petting Wooly and Daisy (the best dogs ever in the history of the world).

Regardless.

I now note several problems with Dad’s tornado wisdom.

1. Even if my belief in God had not changed, OH MY GOD. Really? I’m a good Baptist girl and God might just, out of pretty much fucking nowhere, send a tornado to kill me? And I can’t get away no matter what?

2. My belief in God has changed. I have a kind of wacked-out sort of X-Files Mulder/Scully hybrid of beliefs. As in:
a. I want to believe.
b. Maybe God could steer tornadoes in a pinch, but tends not to.

3. The basically impossibly huge question of how a loving God could allow horrible things to happen. (I’m not going to solve that here. Sorry if you’re disappointed.)

When I lived in the second of a series of three trailers I called home as a graduate student at Southern Illinois University, I began to have a recurring nightmare about tornadoes. In it, I would wake up in the middle of a horrible storm, feel the trailer begin to shake, watch the walls suck inward, watch the roof blow away, and then try to hold onto my bed to keep from getting sucked into the sky. Then I would wake up.

I suspect this had to do with being in miscellaneous precarious emotional situations in those years. And also living in a trailer. “God’s bowling alleys,” my brother always called trailer parks.

(So, o.k. What is it with men in my family and tornadoes?)

But during one actual tornado warning, I stayed in Trailer #1 and announced to God, “I’ll just die here with my cats, thank you.” Very green sky. Large branches flying by the window. Trailer rocking in real life, not the dream world. (Oh, that girl. I could just smack my 21-year-old self!)

I think, over the years, I’ve just grown less and less fatalistic. Certainly less suicidal! It is also possible my frontal lobe has developed some.

And then having a husband I love and I son I am OVER THE MOON ABOUT makes storms really stressful.

We’ve had a wacky weather week in Wisconsin. More storms coming.

Is it possible, in what I now called the land of “Zen Baptist” on my faith journey, to take wise precautions and yet be at peace about whatever comes?

Sure hope so.

Because what comforted me as a child, comforts me not at all right now.

_____
Here’s what fun about social media. Someone named Kevin posted this on Channel 3000’s Facebook page. The comments are hilarious. Including: “it’s sunny in beloit” and a whole thread of “don’t take pictures while you’re driving” and “it’s not a tornado.”

So. Probably not a tornado. (No one actually said it was.) And also not my picture. But gracious. I wouldn’t mind some boring weather.

Not a tornado.

Not a tornado.

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Posted in Family, God Stuff, On Wisconsin, Opdyke, Searching, Southern Illinois, Uncategorized

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Driving in a David Cates Novel

Posted on May 29, 2013 | 1 comment

“O beautiful, for spacious skies
But now those skies are threatening”
“The End of the Innocence”

Taking the secret detour, the one the natives use,
I fly down Highway T to Z,
past the Cates family farm but really,
it’s the dips and swales and curves
and hills and valleys and long slopes up
and ridge roads that feel impossibly high
for Wisconsin that let me know I’m in a zone
where fiction could happen and also perhaps
some magic but for me, partly panic–

I get agoraphobic on some of these rises
where all you can see past the crest
is the sky. It reminds me of Eastern Montana
a little (except for more trees on both sides),
where I once drove up a long brown hill for so long,
for an hour, forever, I stopped believing in Canada.
I couldn’t imagine anything north of where I was.
Nothing but a sheer drop-off to Hell, maybe,
over the top, nothingness, a crevasse, the crimp-
edge of the known world, no ditch, just–

The trip up, the torture, doesn’t last that long here.
Just when I’m wanting to pull over,
figure out how to turn around or back up,
which is impossible–the road’s too narrow,
the curve’s too sharp, the hill’s too steep–
well, there we are, around the bend
finally, a stretch of open road, another red barn.

Another falling-down house tucked in behind
a mess of blooming lilacs, under which,
if this really is a David Cates novel, someone’s having sex
RIGHT THIS MOMENT, and probably with someone they shouldn’t.

And later the woman, or maybe she’s a girl,
would take a dandelion and say “make a wish”
as she blew the white seeds everywhere at which point
the man, or maybe he’s still a boy,
would think “tampopo” but not say it, not wanting
the girl to feel bad for not knowing Japanese,
and he might also think, but not say,
some racy, clever thing using the word “blow.”
What he probably would say would be “Great.
Now there are more weeds everywhere,”
but then regret having said anything at all.

Because you have to remember, the moment you think
“Anything can happen,” that something bad could.

Just because it’s almost June and everything’s green,
every shade of green, just because the blue sky
is paint-chip sky-blue right overhead, even when
you’ve got Don Henley cranked on the radio,
you can glance in your rear view mirror and see
how the bright blue turns to pale blue and then haze
and then gray along the horizon.

You can see farms you can’t get to on Highway Z.
The people who live there are happy or sad.
But you’ll never get there. You’ll never know.

Coming home, you’ll stop at the T of Highway T and 23
and you’ll see Frank Lloyd Wright’s wind mill
and it won’t impress you this time. Not at all.
_____

I left Southern Illinois to go to graduate school in Missoula, Montana, and there met David Cates, who’d come from Spring Green, Wisconsin, where I live now.

Freaky.

His latest book is odd and beautiful and haunting and two trips to Dodgeville recently I really have felt as though I entered some sort of parallel universe. If you read the book now, there’s probably a silver station wagon taking a curve a little too fast. I’ll be waving.

The latest novel by David Cates (wonderful to read, odd to drive in)

The latest novel by David Cates (wonderful to read, odd to drive in)

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Posted in Bloem or Pog, Car Sonnets, On Wisconsin, Poetry, Spring Green, Uncategorized, Writing, You Really Oughta Read This

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Teacher Lady! a new magazine for lady teachers!

Posted on May 17, 2013 | 1 comment
I get my best ideas during finals week.

I get my best ideas during finals week.

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Posted in Teaching, Uncategorized, Work Life

Hamlet’s Back at Devil’s Lake

Posted on May 15, 2013 | 1 comment

The actor playing him this summer’s there,
I mean to say. He likes to memorize
while hiking, where the purple quartzite shines
and the T-Rex headed vultures soar.
The rock he’s on is so much older than
the play he’s in. They’re metamorphic mirrors–
hard things from Shakespeare and tectonic shifting–
still shiny, still showing us us after years
and years, hundreds, and millions, a billion years.
It is time and timelessness. And time is time,
not out of joint, not yet, still gracious here.

He is morphing, but the actor is still Matt,
and this Prince of Denmark loves his dog.

(If only poor Ophelia’d had a cat.)

_____
Oh! I can’t wait to see Hamlet this summer–great fun to be had and heartache to be felt and always, always interesting to see a new actor take on the old speeches and give them to us new.

Which reminds me–I need to get all my tickets figured out! To the box office with me, anon!

If you haven’t already made your own plans, you really oughta go to American Players Theatre.

_____

(Apologies for the sprung rhyme scheme above. Once I’d thought of “If only poor Ophelia’d had a cat,” I couldn’t let it go. Fortunately “cat” rhymes with “Matt.” But “dog” is just hanging out there, not rhyming with anything. Yet. I might revise. In any case, I know Matt will take care of his dog. And dogs mostly don’t care about rhymes. Thanks, Matt, for letting me share the pics–especially the puppy one. How could anyone look at that picture and not smile?)

____
462639_10151595624175155_1127254500_o

Matt Schwader, appearing this summer in Hamlet.

Matt Schwader, appearing this summer in Hamlet.

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Posted in American Players Theatre, Bloem or Pog, Car Sonnets, On Wisconsin, Poetry, Spring Green, Uncategorized

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Something I (Seriously) Don’t Have Any More Time For

Posted on May 10, 2013 | 4 comments

Worrying about whether or not people are making fun of me behind my back and I just don’t hear them.

“Pictures of People Who Mock Me” is provocative. It’s a much-read article from Salon.com, a daring idea for a series of photos, and it stuck in my imagination, so I would say it met at least some of the author’s/photographer’s goals. It bothered me, though, in two ways I’m not sure she intended.

My first GENIUS and BRILLIANT and INCREDIBLY WISE response was to think, “OH MY GOD. People probably make fun of me for being fat and I just don’t notice because I am a.)oblivious and b.)not just fat but also hard of hearing.”

That surely wasn’t the intent. That first response didn’t last very long. I just don’t have time to wonder, at least not for very long, if anyone’s response to me has anything to do with how much I weigh.

It occurs to me, of course. Today in the pool, I got there early enough to snag the lane I wanted. Another woman got there just a little later. Typically, people waiting on a lane sit on a bench by the pool. She sat on the side, straddling a lane marker, kicking her legs gently. She wasn’t right next to me, but close by. It occurred to me she might be trying to get those of us in the pool to hurry it up. It occurred to me she might look at me and think she deserved the lane more than me because she was in better shape. It then occurred to me that maybe she just wanted to make sure she was first in line because she really, really wanted to get her laps in. Whatever she was doing probably had absolutely nothing to do with my size, my fitness level, with me at all.

But I swam one more lap than I had planned just to make sure I wasn’t ceding my place in the pool out of insecurity on my part. (And on the off chance she was trying to be intimidating.)

Second, I’m doing lots and lots of difficult, ongoing, hard work in my own head about shame. Did I mention it’s difficult? Everything Brene Brown ever wrote helps me. The people who did indeed mock Haley Morris-Cafeiro were wrong to do it. Mean to do it. If they saw themselves as shaming her in order to motivate her, they were mean and wrong and totally not up on the research that shows shame is not a good motivator for change (cf: everything Brene Brown ever wrote).

But since shame makes everything worse, not better, it made me uncomfortable to watch the photographer shame the shamers.

And then also, I had a whole train of thought about weight and body image and how we stake our place on the planet:

Engine of this train thought: it’s all about attitude. If you believe you’re beautiful and if you’re confident, you pull yourself past anyone who is making fun of you IF they bother to make fun of the Big-Ass Engine Who Could.

Coal car for the Big-Ass Engine Who Could: it’s all about energy. If you’re busy and you got places to go and things to do, people will have a hard time catching up to you to make faces behind your back. And you really don’t have time to spend on people who can’t be bothered to criticize you to your face. Probably don’t have time for people who CAN be bothered to make fun of you to your face.

Freight Car for the Big-Ass Engine Who Could: people who walk around mocking others have a bigger problem that whomever they are mocking. We all have issues. Baggage. Freight. Mocking others is one really ineffective way to deal with our own stuff.

Caboose: Beyonce.

Queen Latifah. Adele. I mean, seriously. It’s not about the pounds.

I know fat-shaming is real. I know it’s a problem. I also know someone who wants to shame has only one part of the equation. If I refuse to be shamed, all the fat-shaming in the world will fall flat. (Not that I’m resilient enough to resist all of it, in all the world. But don’t try to get me out the pool before I’m ready.)

I’m larger than I’d like to be. I’m working on it. I’m not sure reading/looking at “Pictures of People Who Mock Me” helped me, but it’s not her job to help me. It’s mine, and I’m doing it, and in regard to this article, I’ve done it.

And now I’m done.

Besides. Why would I spend any more moments at all on any of the above when I could be hanging out with our new kitten?

Vanessa Quivertail

Vanessa Quivertail

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Posted in Body Image, Daring Greatly, Healthy Health, Sustainable Chaos, Uncategorized

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Bread to the Wise

Posted on May 10, 2013 | Leave a comment

for a friend whose battles are more private than mine

I know it’s not the same.
I’m not saying it’s the same.
It’s just I wear my shame.

It’s a fat suit I can’t take off.
Can’t seem to take off.
Have put back on, after taking off.

And oh, my house–it’s a mess.
In some ways glorious, in all ways,
or almost always, still a mess.

Skinny women with clean houses
are not (necessarily) full up on bliss.
In my head, I know this.

And a woman round as me
who is also a clutter-monkey
might not be a mess like me

inside her head.
She might not dread
the things I dread.

I know what you’re going through is different.
But if it helps, please take this offering
of what I couldn’t if I wanted to keep private.

_____
Ecclesiastes 9:11 “Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favour to the skilful; but time and chance happen to them all.”

Being as I am not particularly swift, not lifting weights regularly at the moment, not as wise as I’d like, not using my intelligence every time I ought, not using the skill-set I do have, lacking the skill-set I need…well then, by golly–this verse sounds like terrific news today.

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Posted in Bloem or Pog, Daring Greatly, God Stuff, Healthy Health, Poetry, Searching, Sustainable Chaos, Uncategorized