Thoughts on the official first week of book-writing

Monday night, I had that breakthrough moment (driving home from DeKalb at 9 p.m., headlights, brain churning, radio off, insulated in the Hyundai) where you go from two years of best buds saying to each other "We should write a book together!" to deciding to do it and narrowing your focus enough to make a plan. I left myself voicemails (safer than trying to write in the car). I went home and took notes, made two pages of outlines, and emailed my friend my ideas.

Throughout the week, we kept it going. She opened a google account; we began sharing documents through Google Docs. She asked me who my dream publisher would be, then went to their homepage and found all the submission guidelines for authors. I feel like we're on our way.

Since it's going to be a book for English teachers, we're keeping careful track of everything we do in the classroom this year, making lists of copyrighted stuff we'll need permissions for, noting what works and what doesn't, and hopefully finally trying all the stuff that might really work even better.

Surprising to me is that this is the way a book starts - voicemails and emails - not by opening a laptop and typing. And I'm surprised that I'm surprised. Maybe it's just surprising to me that after all this time I'm actually doing it. And I really think we have something here.

On Truth

"The truth of poetry is to paint the human soul truly: the truth of fiction is to give a true picture of life." -John Stuart Mill

"Gonzo journalism . . . is a style of 'reporting' based on William Faulkner's idea that the best fiction is far more true than any kind of journalism--and the best journalists have always known this . . ." -Hunter S. Thompson

It takes awhile to come to the idea that literature is "truth" - my husband once reported to me that when he was in grade school, he remembered the difference between fiction and non-fiction as being "fake" and "not-fake." How do we bridge that distinction in a child's mind and the place of literature in the adult mind? Maybe is this what sets apart "literary" fiction from other types of fiction? (I'm thinking of the great Franzen debacle of the past few weeks.) 

If books like Beloved are so disturbing to me, is that party because I'm uncomfortable with the truths therein? Is there one truth or many truths? What can I teach students about truth? (It's party an argument for canonical teaching, if in fact the "best" fiction is "more true" than journalism - put down the Jodi Picault and pick up Bleak House.)

Radioworks Documentary and The Turn of the Screw

This is becoming a linkdump, but this is the afore-mentioned "Testing Teachers" radio documentary:

http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/testing_teachers/index.html

Diane Rehm is discussing this topic tomorrow. It's suddenly getting so much attention that my blog is in danger of becoming entirely devoted to rounding up stories on the topic of teacher effectiveness. Is it because of Malcolm Gladwell? NCLB? I'm glad for the scrutiny and certainly the pitch can only become higher as the wave catches on in non-urban areas.

Also, many questions re: The Turn of the Screw (via today's entry at 750words.com) -

Is it a ghost story?
Why did Miles die?
Will Flora die too?
Did Miles ever really see Quint?
Did he see Miss Jessup all along?
Did Flora ever see any ghosts?
If no, did she get feverish and have to leave because of her governess saying that she saw the ghost?
If there were no ghosts, why did the governess have Quint and Miss Jessup's descriptions so precisely?
If the kids were playing a trick on her, how did they do it?

Looking forward to having someone to discuss this with. Still mulling it all over in my head: not ready to spout opinions yet.

Even more on teacher effectiveness

I may be a bit obsessed with this theme, but it touches upon such bedrock issues as "Should I be in the career I'm in?", "How do we improve public education?", and "What is best for the students?" that I find it hard to ignore.

There will be a public radio documentary on this theme airing tomorrow night at 6 p.m. I don't know if I'll catch it, because I plan to be soaking up the last warm rays of the waning summer with my family, a beer, and nature around me. But I love that NPR makes it easy to find transcripts and/or recordings of almost anything you miss, so I will definitely be looking it up.

More on teacher effectiveness

"An L.A. Times analysis, using data largely ignored by LAUSD, looks at which educators help students learn, and which hold them back."

I haven't read the whole series yet, but the premise strikes me as so level-headed it's almost crazy. If we know that the quality of the teacher in the front of the room is the single greatest factor affecting student progress,* and we have the data to see how students progress from year-to-year,** and we don't look at it,*** what does that say about how much we care about student progress?

*and we do.
**ditto.
***ditto again.

Tenure

Some thoughts:

Christopher Beam at Slate, on tenure in higher education

Malcolm Gladwell at the New Yorker, on teachers and classroom success

Pip's progress

"We changed again, and yet again, and it was now too late and too far to go back, and I went on. And the mists had all solemnly risen now, and the world lay spread before me." -Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

Dickens captures the fundamental themes with passages that are simultaneously sad and funny. It's a bizarre experience to be reading and suddenly find yourself laughing with a sob catching in your throat. He takes what makes us human and captures it with language. It's what made me choose the title for this blog (which is borrowed from a Melissa Bank novel, but aptly describes so many passages in Dickens). I'm not sure if pulling one of the B, F, S & T passages and posting it would do it justice. Dickens builds to his moments. Losing the context would present you with a pretty, eloquent pair of lines, like above, but you wouldn't have the emotional commitment to the moment like you would if you were reading the novel.

I'll try to find more examples of what I'm talking about. But again, this might not be the medium for it.