Teaching Thoughts for January

Happy start of second semester. Well, at least for us at Lincoln. It is hard to believe that we are at the half way point of the school year. As I was reflecting on what to write about for this message to accompany January’s Teaching Thoughts, I thought of a passage from Matthew Kelly’s Holy Moments, which the Men’s Prayer Group at St. Bernard’s bought copies of for the parish. I have been reading it each time I attend Adoration.

 

Kelly has this story early on –

 

            The Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert in Southern Africa talk about “the Two Hungers.” There is the Great Hunger and the Little Hunger. The Little Hunger yearns for food while the Great Hunger, the greatest hunger of all, is the hunger for meaning.

            “There is ultimately only one thing that makes human beings deeply and profoundly bitter, and that is to have thrust upon them a life without meaning. There is nothing wrong in searching for happiness. But of far more comfort to the soul is something greater than happiness or unhappiness, and that is meaning. Because meaning transfigures all. Once what you are doing has meaning for you, it is irrelevant whether you’re happy or unhappy. You are content.” This was the beautiful and profound observation of the South African author Laurens van der Post.

            We pretend hunger baffles us. We try to feed our hunger in a thousand ways, but still our hunger remains, because it will only be satisfied with meaning. We cannot thrive without meaning. Our need for meaning is as urgent and unceasing as our need for water.

 

It seems to me that this is always a great time to reflect on what gives each of us meaning. In terms of teaching, I always go through this same roller coaster: I start each semester with immense hope, but then about six weeks in, I begin to wonder if I even know what I’m doing. Doubts like these creep in: Am I wasting my students’ time? Am I even making any type of difference? Are they truly prepared for college as a result of my classes? Do I really know what I am doing? Is anything getting through? What if they find out I am a fraud? I have never quite gotten to that ‘content’ stage of meaning when it comes to my teaching.

 

That roller coaster has been going on for the past 25 years now. It never gets easier. However, with about two weeks remaining in each semester, a little bit of hope shines through. A student will make a great comment during a class discussion or they will totally crush a final paper or I will hear two students talking shop during class as they guide each other through an assignment or I will see a student at a game and they will express how excited they are to have my class next semester or they will leave a kind note or text message . . . giving me hope for the new classes coming my way and for who I am as a teacher. 

 

I am reminded of some advice one of the greatest teachers I ever had, Dr. Mark Christianson, gave me: Be present for your students in the time you have with them. Listen to them. Guide them. Be the best you can for them in that time. Then, when they are gone, let it go. Don’t hang on to your frustrations or fears. There is always another class coming in for you to start all over again.

 

I will admit that, especially early on in my career, those words – usually delivered in weekly emails from Mark – brought much needed solace and contentment to me. His advice has been like a life preserver for me over the years. So, what advice helps you through the tough times and what gives you meaning in this crazy profession of ours? I would love to hear.

 

Inside the Teaching Thoughts newsletter for January, you will find –

 

Images – 

 

Check out the image on “The Impact of a Book.” It is amazing. I think one thing that gives me meaning as a teacher is the power of books. It might be seeing the power the book Wonder or The Giver had on my own children when they read them at CES and FMS, respectively, or the times I see students light up when they read a book on my classes. This might be tears at the end of Will Weaver’s Claws in my English 9R class. It might be when a student comes in shocked at the end of Of Mice and Men. Or even when they confess that they stayed up all night to power through the end of The Travelling Vampire Show because it was just that good of an SSR book! I would love to hear how books have impacted you and your students.

 

The World is a Fine Place – 

 

We all need as much positivity as we can, so I included three examples of positive news stories this month. Check out the third one. When I read that, it was the kick in the behind I needed to get motivated. How dare I sleep in, not workout, procrastinate blowing out the driveway when alligators are doing this! As my dear wife said, “Well, you know, there must be a reason they have survived for hundreds of millions of years.” Let their adaptation and perseverance be a lesson to us all.

 

Book of the Month –

 

I Love it Here by Clint Pulver. This was a gift from a friend, and it is just what I needed. The premise of the book is incredible – Clint runs “The Undercover Millennial,” which infiltrates businesses and lets their owners and leaders know what their employees and team members really think of the culture and atmosphere of the organization. Pulver opens the book with this scenario – he and several other leaders are talking with a successful business owner. The man is bragging about how his business model has adapted and evolved to fit the on-line shopping needs of his customers. Pulver then asks a simple question – “How have your employees adapted to this new business model?” This stopped the CEO in his tracks. He said that his employees are great and haven’t missed a bit.

 

Then Pulver decides to see for himself. And that is when the idea for “The Undercover Millennial” is born, for the first five employees he talked to were not happy with their roles and jobs at all. In fact, most were ready to leave the moment they found something better.

 

This was the jolt I needed because how often do we as teachers, coaches, administrators, leaders just assume that everyone is happy because they are showing up and doing the work? That is a massive assumption to make and one that can doom a team, staff, or organization.

 

Teaching Thought for January –

 

Take a look at this. If you are starting new classes, it is a great chance to put this tip into practice. Candidly, this is one of the most enjoyable things about my job and one that gives it so much meaning.

 

What I Love About Teaching –

 

Forging those special moments – even from mistakes – with students over the course of a class. There is nothing like them. You know the kind – these are the moments that when we run into each other five or ten years down the road, we will both grin and say, “Remember when you did . . .” and then share that moment again. I had the pleasure of having that just happen to me a few weeks ago when I ran into a former student at the gym.

 

Podcast of the Month – Remarkable People Podcast by Guy Kawasaki

 

Kawasaki is an amazing thought leader and venture capitalist. In this series of podcasts, he sits down with some legendary (hence the very title of the podcast) leaders to pick their brains. This specific episode features someone I had never heard of before (and isn’t that what is so great about podcasts – it’s so easy to have access to incredible new ideas from people we would never have heard of before) Tom Peters.

 

Article of Interest for the Month – ChatGPT? Will it Doom High School English Classes? Maybe That isn’t Such a Bad Thing.

 

Unless you have been living under a rock, you have heard about the AI bot/program ChatGPT, which basically allows the user to type in some parameters for a paper, poem, short story, article . . . and then the bot/program will write it for you. And it won’t show up on “Turn It In” or other plagiarism detection services.

 

If you are a composition teacher, this is The End of Times. But maybe it doesn’t have to be. How can we use this to our advantage? How can we devise assignments or methods of teaching writing – and I’m not talking about going back to the stone age of having kids write things down on paper with pencils in cursive – that ChatGPT just couldn’t pull off? That’s the kind of thinking we need.

 

And don’t think your students aren’t already exploring this. I just finished up all of my CC 1 final novel research papers. And there is one I highly suspect of using ChatGPT for the last half. I can’t prove this, of course, but I did raise questions to the student asking how could they – in the span of seven pages – go from misspelling the title of their novel and several of the main characters to then using the words “dissipates” and “correlates” correctly to analyze an example of their final theme? Something is fishy to me.

 

Bonus content of the Month –

 

Check out the link to the blog post on the Top 10 Tech Tools for 2023. ChatGPT is on there for sure!

 

Have a great 2023! Keep sending me feedback and ideas and resources. I love them all. 

 

Below is the link to Teaching Thoughts for January 2023 newsletter.