Grateful Note: Gratitude for a Motorcycle-Fixing Philosopher Who Helps Us Repair Some Knowledge and Reality Problems

This evening, I'm grateful for the insights of Matthew Crawford. His influence has helped me integrate the hands-on and classroom teaching parts of my life, while also helping me see the shortcomings of knowledge work and and philosophical abstractions that often leave us untethered from reality and responsible relationships. 

Grateful Note: Rest Is a Much Needed Idea to Practice

This evening, I am grateful for the idea of rest. It sounds so simple to rest, yet it can be so difficult. I find myself sometimes bristling a little bit when my loved one suggests that I take some time to relax. 

Both common sense and spiritual wisdom from many traditions admonish us to rest, for our good and the good of those around us. We actually get more done by taking more time to rest, in intervals during the day, at night through sleep, and through some sort of weekly version of a rest day. 

Grateful Note: The Grace of Great Things with Rilke and Palmer

This morning I'm grateful for the grace of great things. I've reworked this post from a previous pandemic-era posting years ago from my now defunct blog site.

"'And thou wilt have the grace of the great things.' For it was just that which Rodin was seeking: the grace of the great things." --from Rainer Maria Rilke's "Auguste Rodin"

As educators and thoughtful human beings, we often should be subject-centered and thereby more relationally-minded in our teaching, living, and pursuit of long-term flourishing. Being subject-centered sounds counterintuitive, but it's true and helpful. Under the influence of poet Rainer Maria Rilke, Parker Palmer explains in The Courage to Teach that subject-centered teaching is the best way to approach teaching and learning. Rilke and Palmer are just a few of the many thoughtful writers who compel me to assert that good subject-centered knowledge rightly guides better relationships--and better ways of knowing.

Grateful Note: Labor Day and Various Thinkers on Work

This evening, I'm grateful for the varieties of work that keep human life going in all it's dimensions. With Walt Whitman, we can still "Hear America Singing" our various songs while we work. Some of the songs may have become edgy and cynical, but guys like Mike Rowe do much to remind us of the goodness of hands-on work and how it is more important than ever. 

Despite the absurd satire around The Office concerning so-called knowledge work, there's still a lot to be gained from working on all kinds of work. 

Grateful Note: The Poetry of Hopkins for Our Spring and Fall

This morning, I'm grateful for the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins with his sounds and sights of splendid splotches of imagination and visualization in poems such as "Pied Beauty": 

   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

   Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;

      And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

My first encounter with Hopkins was in a college course with Dr. Gilbert Findlay at CSU, a professor who I am also grateful for, for so many reasons. Dr. Findlay's frequent go-to approach to poetry was to "stick the poem in your ear," reading it dramatically with his animated Scottish accent, and to further challenge us to "take this poem and look at it," and to often look at it again, and again. The rhythms of close reading, reader-response discussions, and more independent close reading challenges did much to coach my attention span and appreciation of poetry, poetic craft, and various and sundry poets. 

Grateful Note: Bill Moyers Was (and Is) a Great Guide to Better Conversations, Relationships, and Ideas

This morning, I'm grateful for the life and work of Bill Moyers. Back in June of this year, Moyers moved on to join the Undiscovered Conversation after his earthly life ended, thereby wrapping up his life's calling of being a charitable, thoughtful, conversant journalist and all-around decent human being. 

My first encounter with Moyers was via my senior English class back in the mid 80s when our teacher showed video recordings of Moyers interviewing philosopher Mortimer Adler about Six Great Ideas (truth, goodness, beauty, liberty, equality, and justice). I was intrigued by Adler's rough and tumble approach to conversation and philosophy; I probably soaked up a little too much of that approach and attitude over the years of watching, listening to, and reading Adler. The much better influence was actually Bill Moyers, who artfully asked questions about ideas, relationships, flourishing, society, and self-development, inviting all sorts of people into conversations, questions, and relationships. Those weren't the sort of conversations I was used to at home, at school, or elsewhere in public. Although they're both good to emulate as stewards and curators of ideas, I often find myself needing to be a lot more like Moyers and a little less like Adler in terms of engaging others and ideas. (My lovely wife's cue for this has been variations on, "You might want to soften that...")

Grateful Note: Many Students Really Do Want to Learn, Even in an AI Age

This morning, I'm grateful for how my three sections of English composition at our community college this semester are packed with students who want to learn. 

Despite the hysteria I sometimes hear from columnists, news commentaries, and some educators, most of my students seem interested in learning how to use AI tools responsibly for learning and writing, as well as how to work and learn well without the tools. 

Three Long-term Flourishing Takeaways from Death of a Salesman

This is slightly reworked from a backup copy of one of my blog post a few years back, during the pandemic. The original blog site is now defunct. 

"...I thank Almighty God you're both built like Adonises. Because the man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead. Be liked and you will never want." -- Willy to his sons Biff and Happy in Death of a Salesman

Why must everybody like you? ….Now listen, Willy, I know you don't like me, and nobody can say I'm in love with you…" --Charlie in Death of a Salesman

Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman stirs my thinking about education and long-term flourishing in fresh ways. The play has been a close companion from my first reading in college and through much of my teaching career. I enjoy the challenges of teaching English Composition at the introductory college level these days, but I do miss discussing Death of a Salesman with students. Although it's a tragedy, it makes us keep thinking about the problems that can get in the way of pursuing the grace of everyday experiences and relationships. So, here are three takeaways from several rounds of reading the play with high school students. 

Notes from a Reluctant Blogger: Why Write It If Nobody Will Read It?

This morning, a local pastor was sharing a reference to Clive James' Substack titled "Diary of a Failed Comedian." Part of the pastor's application was about how hungry we all are for various versions of "likes," via social media or other venues. 

That got me thinking of the previous pandemic-era blog that I maintained for about two years with over 100 posts. To borrow a line from a famous western, "It seemed like a good idea at the time." I think some posts were good and some where duds, and I might have helped or encouraged a few people in the process. In a reckless moment of resignation as the cha-cha of my high school teaching routine returned to "normal" levels of busyness, I deleted the blog and didn't save all of my posts. Did that action make me a failed blogger? With the everpresent deluge of Substack posts and blogs, I've become a reluctant blogger. 

Developing Rigor AND Mental Health Support in the College Classroom

Preparing essential discussions about post-pandemic education with first-year college students... 

July 2024 Update: These sessions did go well. Additionally, those three questions have related well to discussions about AI in our courses and what sort of appropriate "friction" (a.k.a. difficulty or struggle) students should encounter when learning at the college level in order to flourish academically, socially, and personally. All sorts of discussions have connected to this book and issues of growth, challenge, grit, motivation, purpose, and more.

In preparation for February and March (2024), I'll be leading an interactive book review with local community college instructors and professors in different disciplines. The topic is rigorous learning and mental health in the college classroom. The book is Improving Learning and Mental Health in The College Classroom by Robert Eaton, Steven V. Hunsaker, and Bonnie Moon. I've been reading, rereading, side-researching, and discussing the book with others since I stumbled across it in our local library last fall. The book is a timely, humble, and helpful contribution to discussing an elephant in the room: How do we maintain expectations for what rightly should be college-level learning while recognizing and realistically responding to the mental health challenges of our first-year students? 

Better Thinking as Thanking

 Happy Thanksgiving! 

I never realized how controversial that greeting could be until I entered the world of contentious grownups. Details aside about those controversies and contentions,  I'm thinking of my own bent toward grumbling, quarreling, discontentment, and occasionally all-out-despair. I'm thankful for writers from previous generations who return us to being thankful for just existing. G.K. Chesterton comes to mind for lifting up my thoughts and affections: “I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder." 

May you enjoy that highest form of thought in the days and months and years to come!

Life after High School English Teaching: Phasing through Semi-retirement

For high school teachers who are "midway in our life's journey" or nearing the end of your teaching career, I encourage you to watch Riley Moynes' TEDTalk on "How to squeeze all the juice out of retirement." This talk can prepare you for some retirement transitions that aren't always so pleasant yet hold much potential for growth and flourishing. Even if so-called retirement seems far away, there are some good things to start thinking about in terms of how you can flourish in these later years.

Moynes sets up the following (not-always-sequential) four phases of retirement:

1. Vacation

2. Grief & loss

3. Trial & error 

4. Renewal 

Is Rhetoric Helpful?

Is rhetoric helpful? Well, that depends on what kind of rhetoric and what kind of approach to rhetoric we take. Everything that I have read from the late Wayne Booth's works leads me to say that rhetoric can not only helpful but essential to long-term flourishing in our relationships. Likewise, good rhetoric can benefit our communities and society at large. Booth is especially helpful for understanding rhetoric because he can clearly distinguish between good and bad versions of rhetoric. 

Developing a Rhetoric of Rhetorics

Wayne Booth's The Rhetoric of RHETORIC continues to serve me well by challenging me to become a more thoughtful communicator, teacher, learner, and human being. We all need that challenge. Likewise, we need to consider thoughtfulness as more than mere intellectual activity but also as the well-intentioned consideration of others. Booth was not only a rhetorician who focused on ways to communicate well but also an ethicist who sought ways to treat others well, especially through thoughtful listening as well as speaking and writing. Basically, Booth wanted his students, readers, colleagues, and conversational partners to feel valued as human beings. With such an aim, he invites us all to seek better understandings of rhetoric.