Great line

In my Junior English class we are still in the early stages of Fahrenheit 451. Each time I read it I become more interested in Clarisse and her family. I’m interested because that seems to me how our family is now. It is also how Mom, Dad, and I spent much of our time when I was young. This passage from the book really hits home – “Montag heard the voices talking, talking, talking, giving, talking, weaving, reweaving their hypnotic web.” That is how I spent my childhood with my parents. That is how Kristie, Casey, KoKo, and I spend much of our time now. Given the lives some of my students drudge off to when the bell rings, we are blessed.

I have read this novel over a dozen times, and this was the first time that line caught my attention. But maybe it sank in long before that. Here is the opening section of my thesis – (sorry for those of you who have to re-read)




I
I have always lived creative nonfiction. Coming from a family of storytellers, narratives defined us. At our evening dinners, Mom, Dad, and I gathered our stories - new and old. Meals were heaped full of stories more than casseroles and hot dishes. Suppers were so alive with stories that we doled them out between bites, adding our own revisions between helpings. Finally, the average meal would end with Dad telling another tale between sips of Folgers while I would bring up new stories between glances at my homework stacked on top of the refrigerator and Mom chiming in commentary between dishes at the sink.
We loved the stories. But we lived for their inconsistencies. I told your mother to stand back while I was shaking the new can of grapefruit juice, but you know her, she just kept jabbering away about getting a new dryer. Then the darn thing just slipped out of my hand, flew across the kitchen and nicked her little toe, Dad would begin. Now wait just a minute, Kenneth, Mom would interrupt, you never said a word about standing back. You were going on about getting a new starter for the 730 when you lost the grip. Then she would begin nodding her head, And it most certainly did fly all the way across the kitchen. Then she would begin shaking her head and rolling her eyes, correcting Dad’s version, but it landed squarely on my big toe. Eventually they would turn to me and exclaim, You know I’m telling the truth, Kurt. I would add, I just remember getting to take the pick up to Crookston on a school night for Tylenol and a cold pack. Accuracy didn’t really matter. There was an emotional truth to each tale, an emotional truth that often moved Mom to tears from laughing so hard, that often moved Dad to pound his palm on the table in disagreement, and often moved me to shake my head in amazement.
Soon Mom or Dad would say, That’s as bad as the time . . . and they were off on another story. That was our way to connect one story to the next. It was our way to braid our stories together to form the fabric of our lives, of our realities, of ourselves.

I stole that right from Bradbury! Actually, I wish I would have noted that line while writing my thesis. I could have quoted it in the introduction.

Speaking of stealing ideas, another thing that struck me from listening to Carlin’s interview with James Burke was one little story he told about influences and where we get our ideas. Carlin was talking about how much he admired Burke and often found himself in his podcasts using Burke’s ideas. Burke related how he conceived the idea for his “Connections” series from reading a footnote by an American professor who attributed the rise of feudalism to the invention of the stirrup (the stirrup allowed one to stay on a horse while wielding a weapon. This meant you could have much greater force with a weapon, like a lance. This meant that soon your enemies would invent their own stirrups to use the momentum of horses and weapons in battle. This lead to a number of things – armor, better weapons, more horses, riders who had to be trained to wield these weapons more efficiently than ever and to maneuver horses better than ever. Soon you have the knights arising. You need more land for the horses, so you allot land from the church. Dukes are needed to look after this land. And – presto! – Feudalism is born).

So Burke called this professor to see if he could base “Connections” off this footnote. The professor said, “Young man, you may steal the idea. After all, I stole it!”

Burke couldn’t believe it. The professor then told him something that I just love: “Young man, you don’t think people are born with ideas do you?”

This idea, of course, applies perfectly to teaching. My room is a melting pot of ideas I’ve lifted off other teachers over time (okay all of the actions figures and Lego’s are mine. I mean what other teacher would have that in their room?). The same is true for my lessons. If I see a good idea or something that sounds fun – I don’t hesitate to steal it.

In fact, the highlight of my year so far has been the imovie trailers from our Edgar Allen Poe unit. But I stole that from a talk I had last summer with our McDougal-Littell rep.

“You don’t think people are born with ideas do you?” might just have become my favorite education quote, replacing “Teaching is the art of acting like you have known all your life what you just learned that morning.”