Talking Gatsby with my AP LA class

              All right everyone. I’m so excited to be talking about this book with you all. How many of you read and took notes on the first chapter of The Great Gatsby? Looks like about four fifths of you. We can work with that. Did you find quotes and questions you want to discuss? Good, good. Let’s get this warmed up. Oral quiz! Who said, “I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful fool.” No hands. Oh, yeah. I forgot. Don’t be shy. I’m sure you know this. Biff?
              I don’t know.
              Bop?
              I’m not good with quotes.
              Ben?
              Don’t know.
              Bessy? Come on, Bessy: I hope she’ll be a fool. A beautiful fool. Who of the very few characters we meet in the first chapter might have said that?
              Gatsby?
              No. Gatsby hardly even's in the first chapter. Beau?
              Is it Gatsby?
              NO! Does ANYONE know who said I hope she’ll be a fool? Yes. Belle.
              Daisy.
              YES! Daisy. Thank you. Daisy is essential to this narrative, and that voice that makes Nick lean forward—maybe flirtatious, maybe hushed… Let’s get a sense of our characters before we go to your quotes and questions, and call out if you’ve got something that pertains. And let’s start with Daisy. What do you notice about her, or think about the way she’s portrayed? Anyone. Come on. How about it, Brenda?
              What did I think of Daisy?
              Yes, what'd you think of Daisy.
              I don’t know.
              Okay, well, what did you notice about Daisy, or what do you learn or know about her.
              What do we know about Daisy?
              Yes.
              I don’t know.
              Anything.
              …
              Okay, Brian, how about you? What do you know about Daisy?
              Um.
              Try this. Is she rich, poor? Is she shy, outgoing? Is she married, single?
              Is she rich?
              YES! She is fabulously rich, and comes from generations of Midwest wealth. What else do you know?
              She lives in the Midwest?
              No! Where does she live? Anyone. I introduced the geography yesterday. We looked at West Egg and East Egg. We looked at Gilded Age architecture, specifically from this region—from where?
              New York?
              YES! Daisy lives on Long Island. Let’s just move on. Who does she live with? Brock?
              With her family?
              Yes, can you name anyone in her family?
              I’m not good with names.
              All right, anyone. What’s the name of Daisy’s husband, Mr. Buchanan?
              Oh, I remember!
              His first name, please.
              Oh.
              It’s Tom! Tom Buchanan.
              Oh yeah.
              Brianna, what do you know about Tom?
              He’s married to Daisy…
              Yes...
              Is he rich?
              YES! They live in a huge palatial villa on Long Island Sound. What else?
              …
              Brassy, what’s something you know about Tom, in addition to him being married and rich?
              Is he a businessman?
              You’re guessing! Come on, all. I’ve only been calling on people who raised their hands to show they’d done the reading and note-taking. We have something here you can’t get anywhere else. We have a group of people who all read a rich piece of literature and history, together, and who got to assemble here in a way that just doesn’t get replicated easily for the rest of your lives, all our thoughts and curiosity and the energy and richness of so many minds attuned through the lens of a piece of art, a piece of magic, building on our own thoughts with an experienced guide to the book in front of you, and all of you, unpacking together, turning things over, nudging thoughts and observations you'd never have had on your own without that friction of many minds in a concentration of time and purpose coming together. This is so precious. But you have to do the reading, which means more than putting your eyes onto a page, but visualizing, thinking, feeling. Come on. Let’s stay with Tom. What do you know or sense about him? Yes, Benny, thank you.
              He’s pushy and entitled. He’s aggressive, and kind of a jerk.
              YES! He’s pushy, aggressive, so entitled, and absolutely. A jerk. And he's racist.
              Whoa, Mr. Grosskopf, you can’t call him that!
              Yeah, where do you get that?
              You’re just going to just call him a racist?
              Page 17. Open your books. Look! Open them. “Civilization’s going to pieces. Have you read The Rise of the Coloured Empires by this man Goddard? Well, it’s a fine book and everybody ought to read it.”
              He’s racist because he liked a book? That's kind of a stretch.
              “The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved. It’s up to the dominant race to watch out or these other races will have control.”
              That’s just a couple lines. I don't know how you expected us to catch that.
              “The idea is we’re Nordics. We’ve produced all the things that go to make civilization. Do you see?”
              …
              Okay, all; let’s move on. How about Jordan. What do you remember about Jordan Baker? I’ll give you a hint: Nick realizes he recognizes her face because he’s seen her in pictures before. She’s a little famous.
              Oh, I remember. She’s a model.
              No! Another hint. She’s an athlete.
              Volleyball.
              No. Another hint. Who are these people? It’s a country club sport.
              Tennis!
              Polo!
              Golf!
              Yes, golf. When we first see Jordan, she’s strangely balancing like a statue on an enormous couch. It’s a very weird, static image, very clearly observed as the tension of a pose. 

              Now, what about Gatsby? Do we see him in this chapter, any of that something-gorgeous-about-him-ness, any of that romantic-readiness? Do we glimpse him at all?

              We see him in his house.
              Yes, we see a figure in his house. Any other time? Yes, Belle.
              We see him standing at the end of his dock, with his arms outstretched.
              Yes, it’s the very last image of the chapter. Let’s read it together: “He stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been at the end of a dock.” What does that look like? Is it like this? That doesn’t seem right. Someone show me. Okay, now get some trembling in it. That’s so weird looking! Is that what the reaching out looked like? Brian’s got an interpretation: Get that green light, Gatsby! Does that look more normal? No, it doesn’t! This is such an unfathomable description to me, I can’t make sense of it in my head! Anyone else? Still looks weird. You all look like a bunch of zombies! What is he reaching for? What is Gatsby feeling? I know from this description he’s experiencing something there in his solitude, arms out towards the sea like a symbol, but we don’t know what yet.
              Let’s go to that final fifth character of the chapter, our narrator. What do you know or sense about him? He says, in the very first lines of the book, not to pre-judge: “Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” We’ve been inside his brain this entire time, looking out at these wild and strange posed characters, so we should be able to tell if he’s been judge-y or not. Have his observations reflected lack of judgment? Is he just describing? Do you have hints of judgment?
              The first few pages, when he makes this statement, are full of overt pronouncements, but when he first meets Tom, Daisy, and Jordan, do you see it then too? These are quiet, sometimes just in the adjectives and adverbs. In tonight’s reading about a small party in Manhattan, watch for it: What do you notice about Nick as an observer? Does he judge or not? What and how is he taking in the world around him, and is he participating in these riotous excursions? Is he an insider, an outsider, and who is he talking to—is he talking to us as insiders, outsiders? See what you notice. And at some point, we need to consider why our narrative starts with Nick’s father’s advice about criticizing others.
              But really read, please.

              (Belle. Benny. I'm going to try.)

 

Students spent three weeks reading and doing nothing else: Results

               For three weeks in December, two of my eleventh-grade classes read physical books in class, whatever they wanted, and had no other homework beyond writing a page a day in physical journals, about whatever they wanted. There was no project attached, no standards about what they read or wrote. My only role during these three weeks was to enforce the routine—observe they were indeed reading, check off their accretion of writing. 

Query: What will happen if you, students, get to choose your own book for school and you have a routine of reading, unplugged, together in a community every day for a few weeks? What will happen if you enter into a routine of free writing daily by hand?

Theory: You will increase your stamina and pleasure reading, and also become better observers of your day, eventually taking pleasure in getting down thoughts, ideas, observations and experiences; these improvements will, in turn, position you to heighten your concentration, curiosity, empathy, and critical precision.

Methods: Daily reading in class, daily writing at home.

               I wanted to see students getting absorbed in the reading of physical books, improving stamina and concentration and quietude, sharpening curiosity and empathic generosity for other points of view.
               I wanted to see students writing in physical journals, gathering and training the swarm of daily thoughts and observations, deepening how they move through the world and building upon thoughts and feelings. 

               And I wanted students to be free of those layered demands an assignment or audience evokes—to get as far away from grades as possible, experience themselves in relation to imaginative-ness and creativity and story and reflection with no one looking over their shoulder, checking if they were reading or thinking right or getting what they needed for a deliverable product.

              Here’s how it went.

              Fifth period was better at it—more interested, more involved, more engaged. After amiable socializing at the start, I’d feel them every day settle in and get absorbed.

              In sixth period, that never happened long. They remained hyper-aware of who had the bathroom pass and of my location in the room and if I was watching them. They’d sneak conversations and homework and even toys like a Rubik’s Cube I saw discretely passed around.

              And what did they think? When we returned to school this week after the three weeks of reading, we took a full period to reflect on the experiment.

              About half in each class finished the book they’d started, even though there was no requirement to do so. In fifth period, many additionally spoke of how they found the reading sessions a time to slow down and take a break from the grind of the day, to relax and make time for reading they wouldn’t find otherwise. About 80% of them looked forward to it; 90% really enjoyed the books they’d chosen. And most telling of all, about 55% continued reading into the holiday break when it was no longer required. There was some restlessness there: Some said they just didn’t like holding still and reading with others, and a couple students in fifth period said they hated reading and didn't stop. But mostly fifth period liked the experience, and some reported real change: “It helped me start reading again.” “I’m not a good reader, so I’m surprised how much I got into it.” “I went from looking at words to visualizing story in my mind.” “This reminded me how much I like reading.” “I realized books are an entertainment outside my phone I want to make time for.”

              In sixth period, meanwhile, I encountered more anger, resistance, and attempts to work the system from the start. Only 30% looked forward to reading sessions, and 60%, not 90, liked the books they’d chosen; only 20% continued reading over the ungraded holiday break. There were those who liked ending their school day this way, but most reported the discomfort of their chairs, the dryness of the reading, the awkwardness of silence, the boredom.

              So what do the disparities between class mean? Are the types of students in the class so different? Here’s what I say to that: It’s the typical difference between classes that happen, as any teacher might describe. No matter how a teacher shifts and plans, some groups are in it and some aren’t, as a group culture burns from many interactive dynamics made up of many social and academic histories and more.

              It does seem very much in the nature of truth and messiness that both experiences happened. I launched the whole experience as a reaction to my anger at what I perceived to be sixth period’s lack of curiosity and focus and the phones and shifting academic and leisure experiences I blamed for them. The fact that sixth period more than fifth continued in restless mercenary reaction to the experiment does not make the results ironic but earns a sigh. The lesson is I need to play this differently with sixth period, or, what may be wiser and more sustainable for a teacher: sometimes intentions click, and sometimes they’re frustrated.

              As for the experiment with writing, it failed. What I hoped was that students given no prompts would, if minds already churned, start noticing details throughout the day or generate ideas while writing; or, for more phone-addled minds, I hoped they’d get bored and then become resourceful or creative and find another gear, turning to internet prompts and poetry and story, and so discover new creativity and energy. But that didn’t happen. Writing remained a chore for most. This is less interesting to me. Students can use prompts and more guidance for better results, and I can offer that.

              But the experiment in reading poses much larger challenges and questions. I do think internet and then smart phones have changed relationships to reading, to knowledge, to learning, to concentration, to entertainment, as with so many other aspects of our economic and social world. As a teacher, I mourn some of the deep changes I have observed over time. But I don’t blame the technological revolutions alone: I blame growing class inequality in America, and the escalating costs of universities that have created conditions for the anxious resumé-padding in which families engage from the time kids are little-little. One possible conclusion, especially from results in my fifth period class, is that a lot of these kids even now would likely be reading if they weren’t grinding it all day and after school, competing in select team sports, etc. School is getting in the way of their learning and curiosity and concentration, because it’s all day and so exhausting that down-time is an experience streaming and scrolling-scrolling-scrolling rather than the sustained, broad, imaginative and reflectively thoughtful, quiet experience of a book.

Think Feelingly

               A standard 11^th grade writing task is to write a rhetorical analysis of Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” King’s writing craft is so slyly attuned to his balking white audience, even as his cramped 7,000 words were drafted on bits of newspaper and writing pads in the confines of his cell, that his letter is repeatedly anthologized and studied as a masterwork of persuasion. But it is certainly more, too, because its pleading message to complacent white citizens, in its grief, anger, and biting urgency, now carries the weight of half a century with too little changed: police still brutalizing Black bodies, social and economic realities tenaciously holding, and, when any who object to such realities do anything, almost anything at all, besides calmy and solitarily litigate or write an ignorable op-ed, still the angry protestations and accusations of division.

              A rhetorical analysis—showing what a writer, speaker, or artist does to achieve a textual purpose—can be a formulaic exercise, and that’s how we generally teach it: a version of a five-paragraph essay with its three-pronged thesis suffocating every chance at intuitive and intellectual connection, often turning to a recipe of the Aristotelean appeals of pathos, logos, and ethos to do the work.
              The task is about understanding how we reach each other, and all too often—given a sharpening of tribalized community and cyber-noise—our desperate need to do so. This is where I go. I have become deliberate in my teaching of sincerity.
              But our students have been so well trained.
              Here is a typical response focusing on King’s most heart-rending paragraphs—a litany of horrors that suddenly erupt after seven paragraphs of deferential reasoning:

• King also appealed to emotion by using personal examples and creating empathy. While explaining the problem with asking black people to wait a little bit longer before taking action against segregation, King says, “When you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she cannot go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eye” (King 2). Caring deeply about children is a universal experience, as is the belief that children are innocent and pure and shouldn’t have to suffer. By talking about the impacts of segregation on his children, the audience is able to relate and imagine being in the same scenario with their own children, and they become more empathetic than if he had only talked about himself. By using relatable examples and emotion-provoking language, King caused them to empathize more with him and the anti-segregation movement and better understand the urgency and importance.

              Clinical, earning an A, and a so-what.
              But I had a good week this week, because in addition to essays that include the one above, another of my students took me at my word. Here is a portion of her essay in response to the same passage:

• He is not so elegant with this letter through the whole thing. He is vulgar. He creates this tension between him, his situation, the mess of which racism was, and the arrogance of the clergy. His impatience is loud. He makes this evident without even having to use descriptive words. When he is addressing the clergy telling him his manner was “untimely,” this heated paragraph had the strongest run-on sentences. It feels as though one cannot stop halfway through, they must finish and be forced to read his words. It is almost tiring. Word after word, bullet after bullet, emotion just bursting in these sentences. One that is the most passionate is when he was talking about how they have never felt the way his people do. “But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will…when you have seen hate filled policemen curse kick brutalize…when you see the vast majority of your 20 million brothers…in an airtight cage of poverty” (pg. 2), and the sentence goes on. The way in which he writes this is so passionate. He creates this swirl of tension. With these long trains of words, he is firing at the clergy. The way he does not stop speaking and is almost telling them to wait until he does, it hurts.

The author is not a top writer and she was shocked when I liked her essay at all.
              Wow, I didn’t put much time into writing that paragraph; it was just stream-of-consciousness, she said. I told her that this allowed her to unleash: She intuitively tried to capture the feeling she had, of King’s utter rage and sorrow as he’s trying to move white men to feel what they’ve never had to feel, and she captured it like a poet, turning to metaphors and sonic devices because she needed to tap the heart as well as the mind to get at it.
              How do I convince others what their emotionality is to their thinking and engagement in all things?
              When we were reading Dr. King’s letter, I took the time to go to the era and the place, to discuss the Children’s Crusade there, and of Bull Connor’s response, and to show them pictures I took while I visited Birmingham; I sang “Birmingham Sunday” about the four girls killed in a bombing of the 16^th Street Baptist Church on Easter Sunday, which I heard first through Joan Baez, and showed them my interview of a man in the park by the church, whose anger was still palpable. Absolute silence followed my singing. I said, I’m taking you through all of this because reading King’s letter is not just an intellectual exercise. And a plea to see and respond to another’s human dignity is not a game. I’m going through the history, I’m laying my vulnerability before you, because I want you reading and feeling his words with your hearts, all through your skin; if you’ve got analytical writing under control, I want you also to try reflecting King’s pain in your own description and discussion. 

               You will do fine just doing the tasks of a rhetorical analysis; but you will see how much more is available to you, in dialogue, in connection, in meaning, in activism, if, as a writer, as an audience, as a citizen and neighbor, you invest feeling with curiosity and fact and can think feelingly. 

Hardened Schools, Hardened Hopes

               A few days ago, vice presidential candidate JD Vance upset many parents by conceding school shootings to be a “fact of life,” and suggesting there’s nothing to do about guns, and that we must instead bolster the security in what are otherwise the tempting, soft targets of our schools.

              Last Spring, after another shooting outside Garfield High, Seattle Schools began to discuss the return of uniformed resource officers, who’d been unwelcome since the de-policing energy following George Floyd’s death in 2020.

              As officials were debating, students in my Roosevelt English class wanted to talk about how they felt about police in the schools—addressing race, profiling, school-to-prison pipelines, but focusing especially on how much such a person could help in the face of an armed threat. Finally, students turned to me for my thoughts.

              And to my dear students, I said: I am sorry. I don’t have a solution. I have grief.

              We now have cameras at every corner in every hallway. All doors are locked and we video-buzz the main office to let us in. Classrooms have interior locks and black-out shades and we practice huddling together quietly on the floor away from windows and doors. Fire doors close off hallways soon after most students go home. Field trips require huge teams to approve all the security measures we must prove are in place. We’re looking to build a perimeter fence.

              Schools are supposed to be places where we grow and inspire our children, teach them to be citizens and neighbors. Schools have been the gathering hubs for surrounding community that’s usually named after the very schools that have always been their beating heart.

              I want school to be a place that speaks to our curiosities rather than our fears.

              Why must our best solution to school shootings be locking up our children?