Anne Doelman
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The Dark Sycamore Tree: To Teach or Not To Teach the Five Paragraph Essay

3/11/2012

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The day is come when I again repose 
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view 
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts, 
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
'Mid groves and copses.

Picture

In the poem "Lines", Wordsworth is revisiting a place he had been five years before. In his opening description, he draws a picture while he is retracing his steps: the rolling rivers, the "lofty" cliffs, the cottages, the orchards and a "dark sycamore" tree where he takes a rest.

On my most recent read in getting ready for this blog, the "dark sycamore" jumped out of the text. Is that a symbol of something? I thought. I am missing some obvious cultural references? Like any good English teacher now living in the internet age, I did a google search to find out the following questions.  They are linked to my answers:
  • What does a sycamore tree look like?  (Leafs on. From underneath)
  • Is it native to England?  (Not strictly but grows everywhere.)
  • Is it the same tree as the one in the Bible story with Zachheus? (Yes but the one in the Bible is probably a fig tree)
  • What are other cultural references? (Lots of references but mostly after the poem was written: Sycamore Tree lyrics for Twin Peaks, The Tolpuddle Martyrs' tree, restorative justice program in New Zealand)

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To spam: I spam, you spam, he spams, she spams, we spam, you spam, they spam

3/4/2012

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I fell for it. Hook, line and sinker. My twitter account was hacked or hijacked or taken over -whatever you call it--and I let out a few dozen nasty little messages that sounded like this:
                                       
                                                Someone is saying some real horrible things about you, seen this?

And then a shortened url link.
And I could have stopped.
But I didn't.
I clicked.
Why?


I almost didn't.  The initial direct message came from one of my students.  After a lazy Saturday afternoon at the market with my family, I checked my phone on the drive home.  I was in the middle of telling a story to my husband (the driver) when I read this little insidious message. I stopped talking in mid sentence.  I couldn't quite compute.  Why would he send this to me?  Was it a Rate Your Teacher posting?  I had promised myself never to look at those.  Who cares? So I typed out my first response "Why would you send me this..." but then I deleted it.  It looked too harsh to send back to a student.

I sat mulling it over.  Why should I care?  What could it be about? I kept thinking about celebrities who claim not to read their bad reviews.  They claim to be at peace that not everyone will love them so why torture themselves. Maybe teachers could learn something from this.  But then I went the other direction of thinking: maybe I should know? Maybe I have an unhappy student who is crying out for help or attention? Or revenge?

I did a search of my name in Twitter.  Nothing showed up.  I did variations of my name in Twitter. Again nothing showed up.  We were almost home.  I decided to wait until to check my computer rather than frustrate myself doing web searches with my phone.

That's when I hit my reflective response.  I came to the conclusion that I should know what 'horrible' things were being said about me but be prepared not to care and remember everything that I have and be happy with that.  I can take criticism.  I am strong. This won't shake me.  It's not like I am in grade six anymore with girls whispering mean things about you in the playground. Whatever.

So I went to my computer and clicked on the link. It went to the Twitter home page.  Or what I thought was the Twitter home page. I should have picked up on this but I didn't.  I was confused. I was unguarded. So just like that I entered my username, entered my password and fell for oldest spam trick in the book. I opened up my account.

And that, my friends, my students, my twitter followers, is why you received a direct message from me that said:

                                Someone is saying some real horrible things about you, seen this?

I am so sorry.

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Cliffs

3/3/2012

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                                        --Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.


It's 6:43 on a Saturday morning.  I have been up since 2am, banging around on the computer, sorting out ideas, getting lost on the internet, reading student blogs and mulling over learning goals and success criteria.  The wind has been howling all night and now I hear my children, O. and O., starting to talk to each other. They are in bunk beds now and like to chatter to each other before they go to sleep and when they wake up.  I expect footsteps any minute.

I was going to write on learning goals but then I went back to the poem I want to have running through this blog and went off in a different direction.

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ReCivilization

2/20/2012

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I often have a whole bunch of free floating facts in my brain and most of it comes from listening to CBC Radio.  I have been listening since I was a zygote and if I had my way, I would listen to CBC for at least 8 hours a day.  As a result, I find many things that would be a fit in the FFP classroom through the radio. 

Here is the latest: a 5 episode series called ReCivilization hosted by Don Tapscott.  It explores the impact and possibility of collaborative technology in several different areas.  I think it ties right into Civics.  Maybe too heady for some but I find it fascinating.  In episode 5, there is an interview with Mitchell Baker, the Chairperson of the Mozilla Foundation. Her interview inspires me to use more open source software.


http://www.cbc.ca/recivilization/
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Welcome to my beginning blog FFP

2/12/2012

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Dear FFP 2012-

Welcome to my first attempts at a blog.  If you look carefully it has been sadly neglected the last six months but I hope, with the renewed energy that FFP gives me, that you will watch me write on a regular basis.  Besides that is what I will be asking you to do so why should I expect less of myself?

I had an idea for this blog several years ago and the first couple entries explain what I was going for.  I want to weave the poem “Lines” by William Wordsworth throughout the entries as a kind of theme or motif.  I have actually memorized a large portion of this poem.  It needs to be dusted off but I am a huge fan of memorizing poems, plays, monologues, quotations. Mrs. Marr, my grade four teacher used to make us memorize one poem a month. I also went to Sunday School and in order to get a sticker you needed to memorize verses from the Bible. I was quite competitive so I had my verses memorized. I credit these earlier experiences to why I fell in love with Shakespeare and theatre in general. In grade nine, for the fun of it, I memorized Shylock’s monologue “Hath not a Jew eyes? from the Merchant of Venice.  Especially with Shakespeare, when the language seems slightly distant from our own way of speaking, memorizing helps break open the thoughts of the character because you internalize the words into a more natural speaking pattern.  I love nothing more than walking and reciting monologues.

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Five years have past

8/18/2011

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Five years have past; five summers with the length
Of five long winters! again I hear 
these waters, rolling from their mountain-springs 
with a soft inland murmur.


I have been thinking about the beginning lines of Wordsworth's poem Lines and how I might reflect on these for my second entry.  I can imagine him hiking in the Lake District coming across Tintern Abbey and realizing that five years had passed since he had last been there and thinking the thoughts of how much life can change in five years.  I have reached my five year mark as  a teacher and I find myself looking back and looking forward.

I often heard veteran teachers remark that the first five years were the hardest and that after that it gets better.  And although I tried hard to make my learning curve as quick as possible, there is something to teaching for five years.  This past year I felt my teaching shift into a different gear and being able to manage things much more easily than before.  

I also like looking forward to the next five years and thinking about setting new goals. My last practicum teacher had said to me that he was more interested in what teachers were going to do five years after they were hired rather than the first five years. He was just becoming a VP at the time and was aware that in interviews we often stress the first five years and not the career.

Well, children are crying, its taken me a week to get back to this blog so I am going to cut the "prosy part" short and come to this.  What I want to achieve in the next five years is consistency of approach. A more intentional refinement of strategy and expectation. The ability to set long term goals and the consistency to work towards the goals 





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Joy of Elevated Thought

8/4/2011

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The idea for this blog has been kicking around in my head for some time.  The phrase " Joy of Elevated Thought" comes from William Wordworth's poem Lines Written above Tintern Abbey.  The full line is "Disturbed by the Joy of Elevated Thought."

The round about story of how I came to love this line is also a round about story of my learning path and learning to learn - a concept I have become increasingly more passionate about and a topic that will be explored through this blog.  Here is the round about story:

1995
I first encountered this poem in first year English.  I wrote the worst English essay of my life on it.  It was the night before. I had waited till the last moment.  I had no idea what was going on in the poem let alone the course.  All the poets from Chaucer to T.S. Eliot were in one milky mess in my brain. Our professor kept harping on that our high school education hadn't prepared us. "What were they teaching you?"  From being one of the top English students in my high school, I quickly found myself hating the subject that I thought should be my major. I had entered university thinking I could be the next Margaret Atwood. I felt like a failure.

1995 - 2005
In the intervening years a lot happens - I study abroad and realize English can be taught in many ways.  Thank you Dr. Wilcox and Dr. Verhoven. I take a literary criticism course that leads me discover how political education theory can be - reader response, formalism, new criticism. Thank you Dr. Rae.  I withdraw from concurrent education program. Thank you Julia Blackstock. A few years later take a master's in communication and culture. In this course, I am exposed to great teachers who were also great learners and  I realize that learning is something I am in charge of. (Thank you to all professors...too many to name.)  I discover that I love making films and teach myself everything I need to know for production through textbooks and experiments.  I work in independent media sector. And then I discover mortgages are a good thing and reapply to become a teacher. And of course oodles more in between.

November 2007
In Europe for a friend's wedding, there is a book on the bedside table in the guest room edited by Ted Hughes. It is called By Heart: 101 Poems to Remember.  And in this book is Wordsworth's Lines.  By now I had a much better perspective on English Literature.  Living longer really helps with that.  I could read the poem and understand it so much more.  Living longer helps with that too. In fact, the poem, in my mind, was very much about the experiencing of living and reflecting back on who you were and how you got to be the person you are. I fell in love with it.

January 2008
My family was going through a major crisis because of my little brother's health.  We had all moved back to the farm from various places across Canada. Death was a real possibility.  I also had a 4 month old baby who was colicky and didn't nap or sleep very well.  And it was during this time, that I decided to memorize this poem.  I would eek out 20 minutes a day to walk the road with a print out and memorize the poem line by line.  There are 159 lines.  It was through repetition and memorization - a mode of earning not stressed as much these days - that I came upon Disturbed by the Joy of Elevated Thought. And I felt that this had captured what I longed for in my education and teaching practice.  To be disturbed or shaken by the joy or thrill of learning and achieving.   And so that's why this blog is called the Joy of Elevated Thought.  Keep reading more soon.



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    About This Blog


    This blog began when I asked my Grade 10 students to blog for an English class in 2011.  I chose to focus on an exploration of Wordworth's poem "Lines above Tintern Abbey". 

     Why? I wrote a very bad essay about this poem in first year university and in my own way, I am trying to make amends with that failed attempt.

    Its evolving into a reflection on my adventures in education, motherhood, life and most recently as a student in  UBC's Optional- Residency MFA Creative Writing program and WRDSB's 1:1 Chromebook Pilot Project.

    Currently, I am teaching with the Waterloo Region District School Board in Ontario, Canada. Opinions are my own.

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