sisters, together

Nearly three thousand miles separate my sister and me, the distance between the two Washingtons. Three thousand miles, a baby, new jobs, and the general busyness of life meant that we hadn't seen each other in two years.

A few weeks ago, we got to spend a few hours together, an afternoon, wandering around downtown Seattle in the sunny and unseasonably warm weather. All too brief, after too long apart, but lovely nonetheless.

re-set

Left to our own devices a few weekends ago, the dogs and I took a route up the Chuckanuts that is known in our family as the “view hike.” Like many such hikes, it’s on an old utility road that winds through second-growth forest and ends at a recent clear cut. Along the way, it passes a small lookout with views of the Salish Sea, the San Juans, and occasionally even the Olympics--hence the “view” in our nickname for the spot.

Although nothing like summer’s glory hikes, it’s a pleasant little five-mile round-trip that’s close to town and offers hill work. The Chuckanuts are full of little gems such as this, and the return to this bit of loveliness always marks the end of fall and the beginning of winter.

Admittedly, winter is not my favorite season in Washington. The monotony of gray can last well into what should by all rights be spring, making the season seem longer than it actually is. Although we’ve learned by now to combat seasonal affective disorder with full-spectrum happy lamps and mega-doses of outside activity, having a name to stick on the moody doldrums does little to ease the symptoms.

On the flip side, summer in the Pacific Northwest is glorious. Unambiguously, gorgeously glorious. But summer also means a madcap rush to squeeze everything in to one short season--the hiking, the house projects, the lounging in the backyard, the luxury of leaving the house dressed in a single layer, and the feel of sun on one’s face and arms and bare legs. As much as I love it, summer leaves me a bit exhausted, and the swings between seasonal extremes at this latitude always seem a bit immoderate to my Midwestern sensibilities.  

This particular outing, though, was a pause, a chance to anticipate the pleasures of the coming season before we tire of them. And it felt entirely right to be once again tucked in among the grays and muted blues, with the loamy smell of deciduous leaves on the ground mixed with the sharper notes of Douglas-fir needles, and the only sound that of the wind in the trees overhead. 

in the company of others

In recent years, our October tradition has been a trip up to Cougar Divide. The road to the top is not good and the trail itself is unmaintained, but persistence yields magical landscapes and a visual feast, from Baker's glaciated slopes to Table Mountain, the High Divide, and the Canadian peaks. When bathed in late-fall sunlight, the spot is incomparably beautiful.

After a summer hiking season truncated by canine health concerns and professional obligations, it was a pleasure to spend an afternoon among friends in the high country, soaking in the sun on one of the last sunny days we'll see for a good long while.

Although our habit has always been to forge ahead and cover as much ground as possible in a single outing, this fall's hikes have been all about the company. More journey and less destination, as the saying goes.

Photo credit

unintended mindfulness

Most professors are required to give course evaluations, and most course evaluations tend to blur together. Nearly every single time I read over the student comments, though, there are one or two that stand out, sometimes for their rancor or their unabashed enthusiasm but more often for the, ahem, rather bracing lack of self-consciousness on the part of their authors. My most recent favorite* belongs decidedly in that category.

The student wrote, and I quote, "When she was having fun and joking with us, I felt like sitting there wasn't that bad and this was fun." 

My first instinct was to laugh, and laugh I did, mightily. Alone in my office. In the faculty workroom as I printed out worksheets for the first day of the new quarter. And again when I got home and told the story to my husband. Oh, sure, I was a little indignant about the backhanded compliment and, you know, that the student presumed that just sitting there was enough.

But then it hit me that the kid was right, not about my Spanish class in particular, but about life and how sometimes it is enough to see the small moments clearly and measure them accurately.   

*This quarter’s runner-up was the tersely worded “She’s legit.”

in defense of widgets

A few weeks ago, I ran across a comment in the Chronicle of Higher Education forums that compared the standard five-paragraph essay foisted upon students everywhere as the academic equivalent of a widget. That is, this kind of essay serves no other purpose than as a thought exercise that bears little relationship to the kinds of thinking and writing students will need to do in the real world. 

While I would agree that the five-paragraph essay rarely leads to inspired writing--let alone reading--I think the comment misses a larger point about the nature of how students learn. So much of what we do in the classroom involves a measure of artificiality simply because, well, we’re in a classroom and we’re dealing with people who are not yet experts in the subject they’re studying. I’m a strong proponent of experiential learning and I try to help students make connections between the topics we talk about in class and life beyond the classroom. But I also use all kinds of classroom activities not because they mimic how students will use Spanish out in the world, but because they are helpful to students in gaining the skills and knowledge they will need out in the world. Just like medical students who start out with CPR dummies and cadavers, it’s OK to let beginning language students talk about a fictional trip to Spain before we ask them to undertake a complicated interpreting task. I’m fine with giving them activities that help them practice a specific vocabulary set or work on their verb conjugations, as long as they’re also learning how to convey relevant information despite limited language skills or to organize their thoughts in a meaningful way.

Which brings me back to the dreaded five-paragraph essay. Depending upon the kind of class I’m teaching, I’ve had students do all kinds of writing, from movie reviews to autobiographical essays. But I’ve also found the five-paragraph essay to be helpful in teaching students how to organize their thoughts around a central topic and then to marshall evidence that supports their interpretation of that topic. The ability to advance an idea and give valid reasons for supporting it is a really valuable skill, and it’s one that in very practical terms can help students convince employers to hire them or persuade future coworkers to join them in a project. And it’s a skill that carries over from writing into other realms, including the ability to evaluate the arguments of others, rather than accepting a proposition at face value.


I don’t doubt that there are other, and perhaps better, ways of teaching these skills, but I’m willing to cop to a certain amount of artificiality in the classroom because our job as teachers is to provide scaffolding that lets students try and fail and do better the next time. We give them tasks they can learn from until they’ve acquired enough skills and knowledge to do it on their own.

Now I just need to remember all this when the next round of essays is due and I'm cursing the idiot who assigned so much freaking writing.

las muditas

This description of one professor’s efforts to help shy students find a voice in her classroom resonated with me because I was also one of those quiet students. I remember all too well that queasy feeling in my stomach, the flush that came over my face when I knew I was going to have to talk in class. Although I learned to manage it with time, it stuck with me even through grad school, so much so that a more outgoing classmate dubbed my friend and me “las muditas”* for our reticence in class. The nickname infuriated me, in large part because it reminded me of how frustrated I was with my own shyness. Eventually, I set myself a quota for speaking in class and just forced myself to do it.

In this article, the author describes setting students up for success in class discussions by letting them test out their comments via email before class, then calling on them at an appropriate moment during the discussion. This is such a brilliant strategy because it goes right to the heart of the fear and lets students manage that anxiety in small steps and on their own terms, with the teacher’s support. In my own classes, my goal is to create a classroom dynamic in which anyone who wants to can voice an opinion in some capacity during the class session. To that end, other strategies I’ve tried include giving students brief, in-class writing exercises--that I usually count on a completion basis toward a participation grade--so that no matter who I call on, most of them will have at least something to say and they will have gotten to process it in writing before having to say it aloud. I also do a lot of small-group activities before leading into a large-group discussion, so that students have a chance to bounce ideas off of one another and try them out without the pressure of speaking in front of the entire class. It’s a tricky balance, though, especially when weighed against the very real need to move through the course material. 

Creating a classroom that invites participation is important pedagogically, because hearing from a variety of perspectives enriches learning for all students even as articulating one’s own ideas verbally reinforces individual student learning. But it’s also important politically, especially when students don’t speak up because they feel their age, their gender, or their socioeconomic background are at odds with perceived--or actual--norms in the university community. I want students to tackle tough questions and respect different experiences and opinions and find ways to resolve conflicts because these are life skills that I want them to take with them. And I emphasize mutual respect in the classroom because, ultimately, that’s the kind of society I want to live in.

*the little mute ones

sunset in the Blue Mountains

That moment at dusk when haze blankets the horizon and obscures the boundary between earth and sky. And then, as the lights from distant houses come on, the contours of the land are again briefly revealed, before the stars make their slow appearance. 

Photo credit.