Teaching Bliss

I'm standing by the title of this post, but I can't claim to "teach bliss." I wish I could. I would take a class on learning how to be more blissful, if such a course existed. But no, this is about bliss I experienced as an educator.

Some context will make my exuberance clearer: last semester was one of the hardest for me. At mid-terms I realized that all of the students who earned academic alerts were young men of color. Several Muslim students from the Middle East enrolled in my Cross-Cultural Masculinities course where we talk about challenging subjects related to sex and violence. Many students struggled to turn in assignments in any kind of shape, let alone good shape (thoroughly and thoughtfully done). We talked about slavery, racism, white privilege, prejudice, inequality and sexual assault (among others). Despite my efforts to carefully frame these targets and foster inclusivity, by the end of the semester just about every student had a reason to feel like they belonged in a targeted group. The final projects in two of the three classes were barely average. By May, I vowed to never, ever teach the Interrogating Paris class again.

Fast forward to the end of semester when my favorite class, Monsters and Mayhem in the French-Speaking World, presented projects on Haiti. Specifically, they rewrote a scene from the novel Reflections of Loko-Miwa by Lilas Desquiron. The photos below show the visuals they chose to use to act out the changes.

They really poured themselves into the project. Several were surprised by the drama they were able to channel into their acting. Almost all said it helped them more thoroughly understand the characters and the challenges they experienced due to racism, economic problems, and gender codes.

Taking Stock of the Summer

For a variety of professional reasons, this summer seemed like a rip off. I felt bogged down by unnecessarily dramatic work tasks and didn't have enough time to focus on accomplishing things and savoring the unstructured time of the summer.

I had hoped to accomplish the following:

• tackle the piles of filing in my home office and campus office
• catch up on reading various pleasure books I've amassed
• cook: salade niçoise, strawberry shortcake, homemade ice cream, tomato/mozzarella salad, and test some new recipes
• work out 4-5 times per week
• get a thorough understanding of best practices for using authentic resources in my classes
• revise and resubmit and article I've been working on for...face palm...10 bloody years

Rather than lament what I didn't accomplish, I've tried to be mindful of what I DID which includes:

• catching up on almost all the magazines and journals I've collected over 2 years
• reading 5 books for pleasure including 1 in French and 1 related to parenting
• I made ratatouille, shortcake and ice cream one time each
• I made a lovely rhubarb/almond cake with rhubarb from a stranger at the farmer's market who invited me to her home to have some of hers when there was none to be had at the market

• worked out 2-3 times per week
• learned a ton about comprehensible input
• have a good plan for a repository for a joint project
• had a mini family vacation in Des Moines, trying to make the best of a road trip to western Iowa for a funeral

• had a mini "powerful women" vacation in Minnesota and a quick visit to my favorite alma mater

• celebrated my dad's retirement

• saw 10 beloved friends and all sides of my extended families

• helped J experience French camp (which she LOVED) and swimming lessons (also loved)

• went to an overdue family reunion

• finally got professional family photos taken

Thoughts on Ce que murmurent les collines: Nouvelles rwandaises by Scholastique Mukasonga

As I noted in a previous post, I started my remedial French-language reading this summer with this book because they are short stories and may lend themselves to teaching in the future. I will probably offer a survey of literature class this spring, and want to be sure to include francophone authors in the mix.

Going into this I knew nothing of Mukasonga's biography or her work. I learned quite a bit about the genocide of the 1990s from a cross-cultural persuasion course I taught in 2013, but after this much time, most of the details escape me. That means I was basically a clean slate going in to it.

My overall reaction was that I feel like a better person for reading it. The average person doesn't know much about Rwanda and like me, if they do know something, it's probably something vague related to the genocide. For today's typical college students who are between 18 and 22, they may not even have that much. While my background as a francophoniste has given me a strong foundation in West African literary traditions and to some extent their cultural, political and economic contexts, I don't want to fall into the habit that so many white Westerners do of assuming Africa is some dark, exotic, monolithic place and whatever I do know about it can be applied broadly across the whole continent. Again, reading this was one small step to making sure I personally avoid that.

Below are some of the characteristics I observed about Mukasonga's writing in this collection. These examples are from "La rivière Rukarara." The examples from this one story give a good overview of her writing in general.

oral tradition

• pg 14 le soir, à la veillée, à l'heure des contes

gender roles

• pg 11 mother = nostalgia
• pg 11 mom forbids all kids, mêmes aux garçons intrépides, from playing near the steep banks of a river (there are two different sets of rules, one for boys and another for girls)
• pg 16/122 in Rwanda there is no "nom de famille." Fathers choose names for their kids at birth and pick something that relates to it. Muka is a prefix that signals it is a feminine name. It = femme de... or celle de... so it also means women gain social status through their relationship through a male family member

education and lack of literacy

• pg 13 her mother can't read her father's bible

tension between Catholicism and indigenous religions

• pg 13 le baptême le plus efficace, ce n'était pas celui que nous avions reçu des bons pères mais celui qu'elle nous avait administré...avec l'eau...de la Rukarara (river near her home)

subtle allusions to the ethnic tensions that caused the genocide

• pg 12 her famille, like many other Tutsi were deported and were internal refugees, were exiled
• pg  14 in 1963 her family members still living near the Rukarara were almost all massacred
• pg 29 inventer des êtres tout juste sortis de la Fable, une race quasi primordiale qui réenchanterait l'Afrique avilie par des activités industrielles et mercantiles. Et les Tutsi, si grands, aux traits si fins, à l'allure si imposante, étaient justement là pour tenir le rôle...Là où il n'y avait que des Rwandais, on vit des Egyptiens issue en droite ligne des pharaons... (the language choices emphasize the artifice, the construction, the idealization behind the process of the Tutsis being set apart from the Hutus)
• pg 22 the Tutsis impressed early colonizers. "Leur physique, leur attitude corroborent le portrait qu'en a dressé le premier Européen à pénétrer au Rwanda, le comte von Goetzen..."
• pg 28 colonizers carry themselves with white superiority
• pg 28 le plus grand malheur qui soit arrivé aux Rwandais, c'est d'habiter aux sources du Nil, là où depuis l'Antiquité, s'était déposé le mythe d'une contré originelle, d'un paradis perdu et inaccessible

migration

• pg 15 refugees need mysterious permis de séjour and titres de voyages that opened doors to Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Belgium, France, Germany, US, above all Canada

differentiation between Rwandan culture and W. African traditions

• like griots (which are so central, even sacred, to the francophone [West] African canon).
• pg 16/122 in Rwanda there is no "nom de famille." Fathers choose names for their kids at birth and pick something that relates to it. Muka is a prefix that signals it is a feminine name. It = femme de... or celle de... so it also means women gain social status through their relationship through a male family member
• pg 26 reference to un boy

Writing Style:

• I was struck by the powerful language choices like this one, pg 17 "Comment aurais-je pu oublier la Rukarara? N'était-elle pas comme inscrite dans ma chair?"
• autobiographical-her narrator is herself. Pg 19 references her novel Notre Dame du Nil

Semester Abroad-ing Madison aka Adulting French Camp

I first traveled to France in high school and learned a lot from the experience, but my first major dose of travel, independence and MAJOR adulting occurred a few years later as an undergrad when I did the Semester Abroad program through the University of Wisconsin-River Falls.

This unique program asks students to propose a sizable research project, make preliminary connections to primary sources or individuals in the semester before leaving, and then carry out the research ON THEIR OWN while in Europe in the fall. The group, students from any major you can think of like agriculture, business, marketing, Spanish, or French, travel to Paris with a few faculty members. They spend a week getting acclimated to the time difference, the use of public transportation, and some of the larger cultural differences before embarking BY THEMSELVES to the sites where they will conduct their research. They are totally self-sufficient. Their lodging, travel, eating, health and overall survival and completely their responsibility. They do interviews, they take photos, they explore archives and artifacts, they do what they need to do to learn about the topic from a perspective that is unavailable in any book, article or website. Upon returning home at the end of the semester, students write a LONG paper summarizing their findings on the topic. They receive a full semester of college credit for the experience.

Beyond the knowledge of the chosen topic, the format that puts the student entirely in charge of their survival is invaluable for developing social, problem-solving and time management skills. You learn how to problem-solve and be resourceful as well as flexible.

All of these skills are serving me well this week in Madison, WI where my oldest daughter is doing a French day camp every day from 9am-1pm. This is far enough away from our house that my time is better spent in Madison than it is driving back and forth.

So, I've treated this as my own sort of French camp by Semester Abroad-ing Madison this week.
Among the ways this feels like SA:

• speaking French (real French with real native speakers, not just "teacher" French)
• eating French foods (macarons, quiche, croissant aux amandes, Orangina, café crème)
• eating and drinking some of the above in cafés over a good book or other task

• coping with Bretagne/Loire-Atlantique-esque weather (il pleut, il y a du soleil, du coup il pleut encore, ah non, voilà le soleil...)
• carrying my bitch sack everywhere (term coined on SA by a dear friend who needed a word for the kind of super-useful but somewhat polished daypack you need when traveling, something that holds a book, notebook, pen, etc, but also water, camera, umbrella, etc because you never know what you'll need while you're out exploring your destination and can't go back to the youth hostel yet...or in my case...don't want to schlep back to the car in the parking garage)
• navigating a (somewhat) urban landscape. Il faut s'orienter, marcher partout, et profiter des petits plaisirs. 

• problem-solving challenges like traffic jams due to broken water mains that close down the streets in the neighborhood you're going to but there are lots of one ways and you don't know the area that well and your small child is in the back seat and...(well, I didn't have to worry about THAT variable back in my UWRF SA days.)

In short, I'm thoroughly enjoying my own small taste of "French camp for adults" and I'm gathering lots of ideas for a mini field trip to Madison for my French students. 

Expanding My Francophone Literature Knowledge-Rwanda

During my last trip to France in June of 2014, I bought a bunch of French books-novels, short stories, and plays. I've only managed to actually read one of them until now. 'Ive heard about some other exciting new authors and works, but have been so consumed by teaching tried and true texts, that I haven't been able to actually read them. A key goal this summer is to finally rectify that.

I started with Scholastique Mukasonga's collection, Ce que murmurent les collines: Nouvelles rwandaises.

A big reason I began with this, is I anticipate offering an upper level French survey of literature class in the spring. There is an anthology I'm interested in using as the textbook, but I wanted to round out the readings with others that expand the scope of the francophone world. I know a decent amount about Rwanda's genocide, but not much else and reading this was one small step to fixing that.

Moreover, since these are "nouvelles," they are likely to be relatively easy to integrate into the course. Each is between 15 and 30 pages. Each evokes Rwanda, but often in subtle ways that are perfect for that course. This group has heard about many different francophone countries and knows some of the key issues that impact many of them (colonization, the process of gaining independence, forging their own path, gender codes, racial differences, etc). They are at the point that they need the chance to apply their analytical skills and dig beneath the surface to uncover the issues and explore they ways they are expressed by individual authors.

I will add posts when I finish the book. So far there are intriguing references to the oral tradition, gender roles, education and lack of literacy, subtle allusions to the ethnic tensions that caused the genocide, and a fascinating differentiation between Rwandan culture and W. African traditions like griots (which are so central, even sacred, to the francophone [West] African canon).

High school French teaching ??! (Part 2)

Not long after guest teaching at a Rockford high school, I attended a workshop for my local school district. The goal was to discuss the district's strategic 5 year plan with community stakeholders. Participants included residents, parents, teachers, administrators, school board members, city council members, and the district superintendent. It was eye-opening on many levels.

The last time I'd been in a high school had probably been at least 10 years ago and now I'd found myself in them two times in about a week for two seemingly different reasons. I say "seemingly" because in the first instance I was a professional who put my profession front and center. I expected my role as a resident and parent of a soon to be kindergartner to be central to the experience at the school district workshop. I was surprised to discover how much my profession infused my comments and questions that day. It's made me realize the extent to which my parenting is informed by my teaching.

Identify concerns and actions that can be taken
Identify actions to achieve the district's mission

I took copious notes throughout the day.
I saved the instructions for each of the discussion activities.

A snapshot of some key topics that came up

• our district is de-emphasizing homework (hurray! From what I've read the data on its effectiveness is highly mixed anyway)
• they are gradually building a network to address economic problems and traumas (tons of kids in the district experience trauma and can't function academic without those needs being addressed)
• DOGS-Dads of Great Kids-a program that puts good men in touch with students who may not have strong male role models
• kindergarten inquiry-based model (hurray! The research I've read said play-based and inquiry based learning is far more effective)
• teacher shortage-Quelle surprise. The governor and the Republicans in the state have decimated teacher compensation, increased the emphasis on standardized testing and dismantled union protections. Why tolerate that when you can go elsewhere?
• city leaders have constrained housing development to preserve quaint nature of town but they also want student growth. Young families want good housing near good schools. One part of this equation needs to bend.
• the district needs better PR to publicize the many positive things happening. I absolutely agree with this, but I wonder how to achieve it because PR can sound a lot like boasting which is unacceptable for women. I see the push in recent years for teacher accountability, pay tied to student performance, the need for standardized tests to gauge performance and thus pay, the persistent denigration of the profession and a slow infantilization of teachers. I can't think of a similar male-dominated profession that is as thoroughly degraded. I hypothesize that the scrutiny is possible because so many women work as teachers, and professional women are not taken as seriously as professional men in many cases. So how to do it without sounding pushy and defying other gender codes associated with the field of teaching?

I also networked with:

• the founder of an organization that promotes diversity, World of Change Leaders, Inc
• the director of curriculum in the high school to explore teaching French as part of an extra-curricular enrichment (the district cut French almost 10 years ago and now offers Spanish and German)

Why on earth would the district pick German (spoken in two countries-Germany and Austria, and parts of a third-Switzerland) over French? The director of curriculum aid by cutting it they prioritized music-strings. What politics were in play at the time? If global awareness is a key goal for the district, how do you advance German as the better choice to achieve that when French is FAR more global?

The bright side is, thanks to Governor Scott Walker, in Wisconsin you can teach in the public schools without formal credentials as long as you have experience or expertise in the field. I plan to offer an enrichment experience for high school students next year with the help of the director of curriculum.

Over the course of the day we worked in small groups and then at the end of the day shared them with the whole group. The facilitator listened for commonalities and sought input for grouping similar things together so we could whittle down the list to a manageable number of areas for improvement. At my table were two para-teachers who support ESL students in the district. There was a former middle and high school Spanish teacher (who also speaks Swedish and German, I think). There was a parent who speaks German and wanted her kids to be exposed to languages. Thus, everyone was an advocate for language teaching. 

Someone at a table on the other side of the gymnasium asked if languages could be grouped with arts and computers? Instantly, the four language teachers at the table shouted "NO!!" so forcefully it resonated throughout the large space. Some people chuckled at our response, but we exchanged the knowing looks that come from regularly being asked similar ignorant questions. 

The conversation and negotiation continued. We got stickers to put next to the issues we felt were the most important. They were written on big pads of paper on easels. Several tables, not just ours, talked about the importance of language and culture. But, out of about 100 people only 12 people prioritized multilingualism, only 27 prioritized "language, arts/computers in K-12 ed." (Obviously, we lost the battle over tying languages to computers). 

The most frustrating aspect of the push to group languages with technology is it pits against each other two things that are both necessary in today's society. Americans loathe languages. They love technology. When given a choice for language or a computer class, most are going to choose the former. It presents educational opportunities in a scarcity model that promotes mutual exclusivity. It says, "We only have enough money for one of these things at a time, you the parent and student have to choose one of them. You can't do both." It's part of the much broader trend to constantly demand teachers, especially language teachers, to justify their jobs. If I and other language teachers could just focus on teaching and ignore promotion, recruiting and retention our jobs would be infinitely easier. I long for the day when my job is as readily and reflexively accepted by society as engineering or health care.

Teaching High School French???!! (Part 1)

A few weeks ago I was invited at the behest of a former student, the second to graduate with a French minor since I started at my university and revitalized the French program there, to work with a high school French teacher who was struggling to promote French and keep students interested in the language. He is working on his Master's in Teaching and is fulfilling observation hours in her classroom.

I arrived early and waited for the class to begin, which gave me time to wonder when was the last time I'd set foot in a high school? It's been so long I couldn't conclusively answer. As I waited, an administrator walked the halls querying students in them after classes had begun to gently but firmly guide them to their destinations. Overhearing the short conversations and the glimpses of behavioral and personal problems they offered reaffirmed my satisfaction with teaching at the college level. I have noticed more behavioral problems this semester among my students, and I knew they have personal problems that eclipse what most high school students deal with, but overall, they bring greater maturity and prior knowledge to our classrooms that makes my job easier in some ways.

In the guest teaching I did I shared reasons for learning French, really cool recent job opportunities around the world, and anecdotes about my own language learning and the amazing experiences of some French graduates I know. (Hot air balloon pilot in Chantilly, France; lawyer who started her own organization to fight human trafficking, graduate student in Spanish, to name a few). I created a few activities to get the students engaged while also addressing their perceptions about studying the language. I adapted when the projector initially inverted my PowerPoint and it was illegible for much of the lesson. I felt confident navigating the unfamiliar classroom and trying to connect with unfamiliar students. It was deeply gratifying to realize how far I have come as a teacher.

I once had a passionate discussion with a close friend in college who was majoring in French education to become a high school teacher. He adamantly insisted that knowing pedagogy and methodology was vastly more important than the content. I strenuously disagreed at the time. 20 years later I totally concede the point to him. When I started teaching college French as a teaching assistant 15 years ago I would never have been able to handle that high school classroom environment. Even 10 years ago I would have struggled. I would have foregrounded the cool info I intended to share and wouldn't have thought about how to present it in an engaging, active way that would resonate with the students.

The invitation to guest teach this class was rewarding in 2 key ways:

1. it gave me an invaluable chance to reflect on my trajectory as a teacher
2. it is helping create a pathway between high school and college French (thanks in part to campus visits coordinated with the French teacher at a second high school in Rockford) so the transition can be more seamless and students can apply their language skills sooner and in more satisfying ways