Eight Long Hours

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Well, I nearly killed my students from boredom yesterday. Honestly, why would a teacher be scheduled to lecture for eight hours in one day? It was almost non-stop. From 8:00 - noon, the topic was research; 12:00 - 2:00 was E-Learning I, and 4:00 - 6:00 was Sex Therapy. It was a very long and exhausting day.

People were barely hanging on by the time we got to the end of our research lecture about cost-effectiveness studies. Students were reading emails on their laptops and were having a hard time paying attention to my parting shots. Willis had eyes that were at half-mast. Sherry had a frozen grin on her face. She was trying not to drift off. I was bored with myself, so it would have been surprising for them to be paying attention to me.

"Now I'd like this side of the room to get into a group and plan a formative program evaluation of the Student Counseling Services here, and the other side of the room will plan a summative program evaluation." 10 sets of unblinking eyes looked at me. "What kinds of questions would you ask, with whom will you speak, and what kind of information will you need to get? Get into groups, make a plan, and in 15 minutes be prepared to share it with the class."
Slower than molasses flowing uphill in January, I think we used to say to describe the type of motion that followed.


It was a challenge, but they did finally get moving and came up with very good evaluation plans. I was relieved to see new energy take over the room. Effective teaching for adult students requires changes in presentation or activities every 20-30 minutes. That means we need to have debates, student presentations, article reviews, whole group planning activities, YouTube video analyses, small group activities, and discussions. Oh yes--and breaks. And for students who are first told that the topic of this required class is "Overview and Critique of Research in Marriage and Family Therapy," it is almost overwhelming. When the gagging dies down and the white knuckles begin to relax, we actually have a fairly good time in there. But not every single week; not every single issue that is under examination.

Willard loudly declared last week that he disdains qualitative research methods. That was what we were discussing at the moment. The week before that, Cherise, a social constructionist, shared her perjorative views with the class about quantitative research. "It just seems that what is of importance to the majority might not be the best for the marginalized groups who do not have a voice," she lamented. "What happens in the kitchen and bedroom is just as important as what occurs in the board room, so the truths of each domain can only enlighten those who are in those settings." My brain sagged under this comment. Fortunately, Dilbert, at the back of the room, piped up with a non sequitor about what occurs in bedrooms and the conversation lurched off into an exploration of standards of ethical behavior in sex research. Cherise later told me, with a knowing look, that it was interesting to hear how Dilbert storied his sexual issues in his questions. In that moment, I was thinking, "What a lark it is to teach a bunch of mini-Freuds!" I love it.

But I have to say, these four-hour class periods are killers. I was filled with panic when I realized that I'd have to teach this class without having any teaching pedagogy courses myself. Most people think that everyone holding a PhD has been taught how to effectively teach, keep order in the classroom, and create good lesson plans. It ain't necessarily so! Therefore, most teachers become a "Sage on the Stage" or follow the example cited in the Old Testament books: "Every man did what was right in his own eyes." It can be a crap shoot for students in regards to what they get in the classroom. Particularly when the teachers are trained therapists or sociologists. Long drawn out group process-type discussions that impassion the teacher and drain the students can ensue. Or esoteric postulations about theoretical aspects of reality and perception. It is days like this that I wonder what on earth I've done in taking a teaching job. But then students in other classes approach me and say they wish they could be in such a fun class as mine because they're dying in the courses they've signed up for. It's a marvel to me. I suppose one can never feel that they've arrived as a teacher--there is always much more to achieve.

It's probably like being a parent: you're never sure if what you're doing is what you should do, or the correct way of doing it, or if your kids even understand what you're talking about. But then down the road they'll recall some remark you made about something halfway insightful (and they gratefully share this with you as being a turning point for them) and the sun comes through the clouds. Perhaps we are on the mark some of the time. We might just be too close to it all to be objective about it.

I hope this is what is happening with my students. For now, I'm just aiming for "good-enough" teaching and a fair degree of understanding and positive feedback from these folks. They know I'm worn out by these marathon classes, too. We just keep hanging in there with one another and hope to live through another class period. One day when I'm very old and they are the teachers here, maybe something I said or did in class will have been helpful. And I shall be ready for a long rest.

Gifts Galore!

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On my livingroom coffee table rests a package of baby bibs and a set of stackable musical instruments for babies. It is a gift for my nephew whose girlfriend will soon have a baby. I don't know what they need so this gift is one of those generic baby gifts. You know what I mean: soft little socks, bibs, baby blankets, and pastel picture frames--nothing that has to match a predetermined color scheme or name brand set of towels, sheets, or clothes. This is probably the 40th gift I've purchased and wrapped for family members. Not just for their babies, but for their engagements, weddings, and housewarming parties.

Speaking with an always single friend of mine this weekend, we commiserated on the hundreds of dollars we've spent on our friends and family members, celebrating the phases of their lives. Meanwhile, neither of us have ever had an event shower of our own. When she does marry I suspect she will have several bridal showers, given the numerous friends she has.

But I had a private wedding without family members present, and never did have a bridal shower. My friends wanted to give me a shower, but I was rather intent on flying into California for my wedding and flying back home to Indiana. There was no time for a shower. My wedding had to be kept very small because with the feud that split the family down the middle, it would not have been the happiest day of my life to have everyone in one place at one time. Thus, my father, who learned bagpipes just to pipe me down the aisle, never got to do so. If I had invited my parents, my siblings would have been vexed and miserable. If I failed to invite my parents, they would have been devastated. But if everyone had both been present, there would have been A Big Scene, which was not on my wedding agenda. So after my dear friend treated us to a wonderful wedding reception at an Italian restaurant, complete with raspberry chocolate ganache cake, we took off out of California, sans shower.

Celebratory showers have typically been outside of my experience. A secret engagement, quiet wedding, and being childless does not bode well for celebrations with friends or family.

Partly, this suits me. I tend to push people out of my experience because I want privacy and non-interference in my choices. Some people want to talk over every facet of their experience in advance of making crucial life decisions. I used to, but typically, I don't now. There are enough reasons for this that could keep a therapist going for months, but the bottom line is that many life experiences have underscored the fact that not everyone who weighs in on my life is attuned to me or my best interests. I don't feel badly about not having a shower (and this post is assuredly not a request for one!) But it is interesting to note that there are different milestones for people like me than for people like my mother, for example. She had six baby showers for four children and three bridal showers. Not bad, eh?

I, on the other hand, have had most important passages in my life marked by things that have been very meaningful to me but perhaps wouldn't be noticed by other people: Writing an autobiographical petit histoire about my young years; getting my first scholarly article published; pulling off a Thanksgiving dinner for 12 people all by myself; tramping around Europe alone; figuring out my modus operandi as a therapist; coming to terms with the fact that I don't like everyone and don't have to. These are my milestones that have yielded unbelieveably rich results for my personal life. They just contribute to my life quite differently. Each event has somehow helped me to understand and define myself. So I suppose that these are excellent offsets to having never had event showers. But my celebrations have been internal and in private, with myself as witness, celebrant, guest. These are intimate, solitary passages. Because I finally reached unspoken goals of many years. With whom could I share a cake and a gift because now, I can think objectively about some of the harsher realities of living at the vortex of a family feud, not of my making, but being at peace for the most part? It's not a have-a-dish-of-ice-cream kind of celebration, but rather a deep, peaceful contentment. Something to share quietly, reverently, with gratitude, and alone.

Every so often, a true friend who is so attuned to me that they realize the impact of some of these life events help to mark an internal milestone. Once I bought a beautiful pearl ring for myself to wear as a symbol that I finally had been able to get through some very tough personal work. After a year of therapy I was able to say that I liked who I was. It was a great feeling. My friend made me a special dinner and gifted me with a beautiful silver box to store my ring in, and whose engraved lid reads, "And I like her." No one else would have understood, but she did. How rich and what a gift to have someone who "gets me" to celebrate with me.

Still, these bows and pretty wrapping paper, the excitement of friends--they're all so nice, feminine, and exciting in a different kind of way. A shower is not the stuff of dreams for me, because my dreams have usually been kept inside of my head--to myself. Perhaps one day, if Sam and I decide to renew our vows in a few years, I'll be less of a curmudgeon and will be ready for a renewal party or something like that. In the meantime, I eye these pale green packages with white and yellow bows and wonder what it might be like to mark life's passages in public.

Ginger Haired Strumpet

Otis went wild the other day, when I was sitting on the couch dozing through a spate of paper grading. He was meowing plaintively, his nose pressed against the screen door. There was a begging quality to his little castrati voice. And I could see why. Just beyond his reach, on the doormat out back, lay the Ginger-Haired Strumpet. I don't know what her name is, but there she was, her back to the door, her tail flicking back and forth flirtatiously.
I've seen this cat out and about in the neighborhood. No one seems to know to whom she belongs. But she runs to greet me sometimes when I get home late. She throws herself down on her back and rolls around in a tantalizing way, just begging for me to rub her tummy. There was something rather sensuous about that and if I were Otis, I'd have gone nuts, too.

But here is Otis begging her to please-oh-please come closer to the screen door so I can sniff you. Or something else. She is of the ilk of females who don't feel valuable unless someone is hotly pursuing them. My attempts to comfort Otis was to no avail.

She slowly raised up, stretched one back leg at a time, before arching her back and stretching languidly. Off she trotted then, across the back yard and up to the garden. Otis tore through the dining room and up onto the back of the couch where he peered through the blinds into the garden. Little Strumpet then began nibbling on one of the two clumps of catnip that I have out there for Otis. It dawned on me then, why I'd seen so many yellow hairs on the pieces I'd brought in for him. Guess Who had found it. She daintily nibbled on a few leaves before crouching down next to it. She eyed a bird on a branch above her and as she turned back to taste another leaf I could see that her eyes were getting a wild glare in them. Pretty soon she was rubbing her face vigorously on the catnip. That gave away to abandoned rolling around in it, her face a vision of bliss, her body a writhing mass of yellow. Finally, physically spent, she closed her eyes and drifted off. This was too much for Otis, who began throwing himself at the window, calling to her and pledging his undying love for her. She was nearly comatose.

Finally, after about 10 minutes of sleep, she sat up, shook off the dirt from the garden, and gave herself a good bath. It was a bright garden spot and the warmth of the sun must have felt good to her. She soaked it up a few moments before glancing toward Otis--to see if he was still watching her. He was. Off she sauntered, satisfied with the uproar she had created with her feminine charm. And thus it has always been for ginger-haired strumpets.

Bloom's Taxonomy

I'm up to my eyes, trying to teach an online class about how to construct and teach online courses. It has been fun, if not overwhelming at times. One of the class assignments is to construct a quiz based on Bloom's Taxonomy--a set of levels of learning that informs the kinds of questions and assignments we create for students. In my search, I came across this delightful video that explains it all quite well.
Enjoy!

Vacation

It has been a very challenging summer. I haven't been freed up to be able to post anything here for a long time. It will probably be awhile before I can have time to write anything substantial here for awhile. School has started amidst quite a hurry and flurry. Stepdaughter #3 had to be flown back from Puerto Rico for a breast biopsy and lumpectomy while we were on vacation. Gratefully, it was only a fibroid, but frightening for us all. Then the day after we returned to Fort Worth from spending several days in Branson, Missouri, we had to take Dad to the ER for heart problems. We flew out while he was still hospitalized. He had a pacemaker placed the day after we left (and is doing fine).

These are all pleasant visits--time with family and being away to see new things. But all of these unexpected issues have been quite taxing. I am really thankful for the fun times and am now just collecting myself for the new school year. It started last week, but I just got back from presenting a paper at a national conference in Sacrament. I just flew up for less than 24 hours and returned after the presentation. Needless to say, I've been lazing around in bed all day today, hoping to get my feet back under me. I think Sam's cooking and care today really helped. There will be time for posts another day in the future. So stay tuned. I might post some pictures but for at least a couple more weeks there won't be anything here.
Ya'll come back now, ya hear?

Fire, Fire!

I was getting ready to leave work the other day when my phone rang. "Are you on your way home, Honey?" Sam asked.
"Just leaving now. Why?"
"Our hills are on fire. You might not be able to get up our street, so you'd better hurry home."
"Okay."
"But be careful."
"Otis' cat carrier is on the top shelf of the garage, if you are going to be evacuated in a hurry."
"Okay."
"I'm on my way."
"Right."
So this is what I saw as I turned off the freeway and headed up the boulevard toward our house.

About eight fire trucks passed me on the way up the street, sirens blaring. Indeed our hills were on fire. The wind had turned to the northwest and the fire had already eaten up all the vegetation on the hills behind our house. It was now moving toward the community college at the end of our subdivision.



The Channel 9 News van was at the corner of our street and helicopters raced back and forth over our house: down to the pond in the golf course where they sucked up water, and then up to the fire to pour it over the flames. Kids and parents lined the golf course, watching the helicopters lower the spickets into the water. I was just worried that they might suck up an unsuspecting duck that lives down there on the water's edge.


As it got dark, the sky looked ominous. It would have been much worse had the wind been blowing the smoke toward us. But it was a clear evening and I could sit on our balcony and watch the planes dropping flame retardant on the fire, and the busy helicopters buzzing back and forth. It sounded like a war zone. Heavy equipment droned up the hill toward the fire where firemen dug up a 20 foot wide swatch of fresh dirt to impede the spread of the flames. We could see sillouttes of firemen up on the ridge. People lined our street watching the fire and taking pictures of the odd colors in the sky.


In Southern California, so many people have lost their homes or have been evacuated in the dead of night. We are thankful that "our" fire was contained by nightfall. The next morning there was a layer of fine ash over our cars in the driveway. A few areas on the hill had ethereal smoke patches, but that was all.

This is what our hills look like today. Poor, baren, charred things.
Authorities caught the 16-year old who set the fire, and incidentally, two or three other area fires that resulted in considerable loss of property. I hope he is dealt with properly and swiftly. Meanwhile, our neighborhood is peaceful once again. We are very grateful, even while another fire just got started up on Cajon Pass tonight, about 20 miles from us. It is all part and parcel of living where we do.

Bienvenido Maestro!

The Los Angeles Philharmonic has a new conductor, whose innaugural concert is playing as I write these words. He is a 28 year-old Venezuelan Gee-whiz kid. Another Mozart type. But most engaging and entertaining to watch. He started out his career in Los Angeles by conducting a group of young inner city children playing in an orchestra formed only two years ago. They screeched and sawed, a bit out of tune. The parents were straining to see and hear their little ones, and you could see lots of tired hard working faces of laborers in the front section where they were seated as guests of honor. Most of the children were Latino, and the fact that Gustavo is, too, made the crowd go wild. Particularly that he would give his first attention to the inner city children of Los Angeles. The place went wild when he walked onto the stage of the Hollywood Bowl.

Then, Gustavo conducted the L.A. Philharmonic performing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. From memory. It is one of the best renditions I"ve ever heard, and certainly one of the most excitingt ones. He tends to play with the orchestra as he conducts, bowing and mincing at times when the orchestra plays marching tune portions. Other times, he looks a bit spastic as he conducts with short shaky jabs of his baton. But as I commented to Sam, his hair is what makes him a fabulous conductor. It bobs and shakes long after his body stops moving. To see a bald conductor isn't terribly exciting, but what this guy's hair does as he gesticulates and weaves back and forth. Particularly during the loud sections with drums and loud chorale passages, and of course, Beethoven's Ninth has plenty of this!
At the end, he addressed the crowd first in English, then said in Spanish, "I understand that some of you here speak Spanish." The crowd went wild. He continued in English and said that he was so proud to be an American. It was terrific. At the end of the concert, the applause went on for a good 10 minutes, bringing him and the soloists back to the stage time and time again. As he left the stage for the last time, he stooped down to greet some of the young kids he had conducted earlier in the program. What a role model, and what a thrill to have him recognize them. You know that the inner city of Los Angeles will be pressing over into the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and the Disney Concert Center to hear him every time they can.
Let Los Angeles have music!