This morning, my cat Sophie woke me up. She thinks it is fun to bring a toy onto the bed at around 6:30 and to play with it. This morning, it was her new catnip mouse – the toy du jour. Often, it is a crinkly foil ball. She likes crinkly things. Sometimes, I am the toy she plays with, although the noises I make are more yelps than crinkles. Recently, she has taken to lunging at whatever necklace I have on. With no warning. Earrings are also popular.
But, this particular morning, it was the catnip mouse that got things rolling. I lounged in bed later than I meant to, patting happy purring Sophie, rolling my eyes at Andy Barrie, drifting in and out of consciousness, before finally getting up. This is a “non-contact” day for me, meaning that my presence is not required on campus. I have a series of projects that require my attention but that can be worked on from home. I did, however, need to take Sophie to the vet first thing. The vet won’t prescribe standard flea stuff without seeing Sophie first, and weighing her. Which, personally, I think is a cash grab, but … whatever. Sophie was deeply unhappy about this adventure, meowing all the way there, and all the way home in the car. There was parking right outside the vet clinic so, round trip, we were gone less than 25 minutes. I released a relieved Sophie back into her habitat, and unloaded clean laundry out of the dryer. My laundry machines are in the “powder room” on the main floor which is also where Sophie’s litter box is, so I mumbled about the one thing that I wasn’t looking forward to when I considered getting a cat – tramping over cat litter on the floor in my bare feet. I really am not a fan of treading on cat litter.
I made some breakfast, mid-morning. I’m reducing carbs, especially after Cate forced me to eat extra potatoes last night at dinner, so I skipped toast. I fried onions, mushrooms, red peppers together and then threw in beaten eggs with low-fat cottage cheese as well as a tiny lump of bleu cheese crumbled in. I sliced a tomato on the plate and fetched some fresh basil from my window box while the eggs were setting. Chopped the basil, sprinkled it on the tomato and drizzled some balsamic over top, and finished with a tiny flourish of kosher salt. Stirred the eggs and then plopped the eggs on the plate beside the tomato/basil garnish. Needless to say, the coffee was excellent.
I sat with my breakfast and coffee at the computer, fetching also my schedule and lists of things that need to happen today, tomorrow and for the rest of the week. I had a momentary brain fart in terms of remembering what I’m up to this week in the evenings, but between Outlook and my homemade paper schedule, it all came flooding back. I ate my breakfast, and started to review my projects, opening files on the computer and reviewing them. I answered e-mails. I sipped yummy coffee and checked in with Facebook. Sophie, having forgiven me for hauling her off to the vet for no apparent reason, assumed one of her favourite vantage points, at my right elbow on the computer desk. She sits there, her fur just lightly touching my arm, purring softly as she looks out into the living room, keeping watch in case anything unusual should happen. I spoke with a friend on the phone about some plans we have for later this week. I texted my lover. OK, perhaps I texted her several times. I thought about my projects and did some planning and organizing.
All this time, this morning, I’ve been anticipating the conversation I knew would come, and that I knew would put all this in some kind of perspective. A dear friend, someone I’ve known for a long time, has had a tragic death in her family. A suicide. There are so few words of comfort or solace as my friend and her husband re-enter their lives and attempt to find some sense of normalcy and balance. I am humbled at the courage and strength her family will need to get through the shockwaves of grief and mourning that are bound to reverberate for a long time. I am sad that someone so loved, so intelligent, so skilled, would see no other options before him.
I am guilty, as we all are, of taking so much in my life for granted on a day-to-day basis, starting with my health in all its aspects: mental, physical and spiritual. It is true that I’ve done a better job of looking after myself physically in the past few years, paying more attention to what I eat and to my general level of physical activity. But, I wouldn’t be motivated to do that if I didn’t think my life was worth living. Thus, really, that effort begins with giving a damn, and understanding that my existence has value of some kind. I’m grateful that I have sufficient mental and cognitive fortitude to grasp some sense of my own value, and my extreme good fortune, and enough spiritual awareness to be occasionally reflective about it all.
It is true that I have struggled with a lurking sadness that sometimes dips into depression. I have known a lonely, valueless desperation and, in a sense, I’m grateful for that experience, too. It taught me a lot, including an understanding of what it takes to steer my emotional ship to safer, healthier waters. I’ve been able to keep a steady hand on the rudder for some time now.
I’m grateful for being employed in a job that allows me to do good in the world, and that, miraculously, pays well enough for me to afford to live in a comfortable, safe, kinda funky home, drive an outrageously nice car, and shrug off the occasionally ridiculous vet’s bill. I’m grateful that I have clients who find my skills worthy of remuneration and who understand my need to work around a teaching schedule. I have a comfortable bed, my own laundry facilities, and a refrigerator that is never empty. Every three weeks, a nice young lesbian brings me organic vegetables that I then have to figure out how to eat before they go off. I can afford flea prevention medication for my cat, hockey fees, gym fees, and prime rib dinner from time to time. I can afford fistfuls of supplements that fill in my nutritional gaps and keep me healthy. I have a clean stove to cook on, with gas supplied from who knows where. Clean water comes out of my tap and my computer turns on (usually) when I ask it to. The water goes into making my coffee, and my computer helps me source out new fair trade coffee beans – which I can afford to order, have delivered, and can grind in my Italian burr grinder. It is ridiculous, really, how abundant my life is at times.
I have a broom to sweep up the cat litter, and the musculature and coordination to achieve such a task.
I have the ability to appreciate good music and to allow it to lift me up and take me to new places. I can afford the occasional film that also transports me, and am determined to put one new piece of original Canadian art on my wall annually.
I have a multitude of friends to eat with, cook for, laugh with, cry with and play with – hockey and music, usually, but also Scrabble. Old friends, new friends, close friends, fun friends, oddball friends, long-distance friends, neighbour friends, sometimes friends, always friends. I’m grateful for all they show me of themselves, and for what they reflect back to me, of me.
I have a lover whose heart is even more beautiful than her arms, if that is at all possible. Together, we have plans that make me look ahead with eagerness in a way I haven’t done for so long, if at all. If now is this wonderful, I can hardly fathom how fabulous later will be.
It is abundantly clear to me, as I deal with my students each week, as I turn on the news and see strife both close to home and far away, and as I hear of tragedies such as the one my friend is confronting in her life right now, that not everyone has it this good. Even if a person has the trappings of a life of abundance, it isn’t a given that they have the capacity to appreciate it, to savour it. For whatever reason, what looks like a rich, colourful life on the outside may look grey and shadowed to the person living it. It is also true that it is almost impossible to show someone the colour and beauty within their own life if they are not able to see it themselves. Sometimes, I wonder if we nursed this single capacity in our children – the ability to not take even the simplest beautiful life-giving things for granted – if we’d have less aggression and strife in all aspects on this planet. If we knew we had all we need, already, I wonder if we’d be so anxious about acquiring more?
That does seem an over-simplification, doesn’t it? I know. Wishful thinking, I’m sure. But, if you would indulge me, please, give a few minutes to this exercise yourself. Today. Think of what you have to be grateful for. Hug someone you love.
Or, in my case … shrug, sweep up the cat litter … hug the cat. Can’t hurt. And, you never know, it might help.
(I wrote this for a blog several blog generations ago, in October 2006. Just stumbled on it again. Given that tomorrow is Day One of a new semester, it seemed particularly timely. So here it is, recycled. 
)
In 1965, Tom Lehrer released an album called That Was The Year That Was
. Mr. Lehrer, one of my heroes, is a brilliant man – a Harvard mathematician – and a comic musical genius. This is a live album and each song has a witty introduction. In his intro to the amazing patter song New Math, Mr. Lehrer concludes that in the new way of doing things, “the important thing is to understand what you’re doing rather than to get the right answer.”
I must admit that in my current role as an instructor at a community college, I’m feeling a bit like Mr. Lehrer. It seems that getting the right answer is no longer important. Let me put it in “ed biz” lingo … we – as a college system collectively – have become more concerned about the process of education than in the outcome of that education.
I have rather more sympathy for this position than one might suspect, me with my hard-ass MBA ‘n’ all. There are students who have overcome profound obstacles just to be sitting in that classroom. In some cases, these may include civil wars and other horrible conflicts, famine, being severed by distance from one’s family, and who knows what else. There are students with learning disabilities, physical challenges, and children who require their attention, too. There are students who, for whatever reason, simply have never learned how to learn, or who do not realize that the ability to learn is, itself, a skill. If you layer on top of this that most of my students do not speak English as a first (or second, or third …) language, then the challenges become quite enormous.
Learning is hard. I have heard the process of learning being related to change, and this makes a great deal of sense to me. Change requires that a person get out of their “comfort zone” and take risks, try new things, operate in a manner in which they have zero confidence. Anytime one is taken from their comfort zone, resistance is a natural thing. From time to time, failure will occur. Learning is like that. To learn a new concept or acquire a new skill, you have to leave behind the safe space of what you already “know” and try on a new idea. It may not fit or even make sense for a while until you wear it around. Or, in the case of a skill, until you practice it quite a lot. At the beginning, you’ll get it wrong far more often than you will get it right and then, as you practice, this should change. You need to question, to probe, to experiment until a new comfort zone that includes the new idea or new skill is reached. Then, along comes a new challenge, a new thing to be learned, and you get yanked out of your comfort zone again.
Every day that I am in the classroom, I am asking people who are already deeply uncomfortable operating in a foreign language to step even further out of their comfort zones.
So I guess my question is this: as an institution, should we be paying more attention to relieving the deep discomfort we cause people, or should we still be focused on “getting the right answer”?
Let me give an example of what I am talking about. I have 16 students in one of my graduate classes. Of the 16, 15 students are not native English speakers. Of those 15, I’d say 10 have real difficulty with the language, to the point of struggling with the clearly written instructions I give them for their assignments. Last week, this class gave their major presentations, in teams of four. Each team got up and made a presentation based on cases I had assigned to them weeks earlier. (I offered to review their powerpoint materials ahead of time, in the days leading up to the presentation, but no one took me up on this.)
After the presentations were over, I told them the same thing I’ve told many classes recently who nervously get up to present their work. I cannot imagine going to a country where my own language is not spoken, and getting up and making a detailed business presentation in some other language. Even in French, a language I have merely passing familiarity with at this point, I would not be brave enough. So I make a point of complimenting them on their courage – and I mean it. They have also worked hard to try to adopt their analysis of the case to a particular presentation format. Many have worked hard just to understand the nuts and bolts of the case. I picture them with two books in front of them at 2:00 a.m. – the textbook with the cases, and an English- dictionary.
They appreciated my words of support and acknowledgement of the level of difficulty for what they just did. And I meant the words. Several students told me what a great thing it was to have an opportunity to practice making a presentation in a “safe” environment. It was a warm and fuzzy moment.
But … did they get the right answers?
I’m not finished marking these, based on my notes, their powerpoints, and their two page summary essays. Some of the content elements and analyses were way off the mark. Every single powerpoint, almost down to every single powerpoint slide within each presentation, had really terrible, in some cases completely incoherent, English usage. Granted, we have six and a half more months with this group, but I doubt we are going to see a dramatic turn-around in English skills in that time period.
My argument is not with these students, it is with an administrative process that would allow students to arrive in my class ill-equipped with the basic language tools they require in order to succeed. I cannot teach English AND business/technology simultaneously. No one would be well-served by this. Similarly, our institutions – by which I mean both universities and colleges – seem willing to turn a blind eye to faculty concerns about “getting the right answer” and seem quite willing to focus on relieving student discomfort. A discomfort, I might add, that the administrative processes have largely created. It would be frowned upon for me to give failing grades to the students who are unable to formulate a coherent English sentence to describe a business problem and yet “defining a business problem” is one of the key outcomes of our program. How can I even evaluate this if a student cannot make themselves clearly understood?
We have one student in particular who is giving us all fits. This person is clearly intelligent, mature, disciplined, well-read, and able to learn. This person has very good social skills and is well-liked by their class-mates. While this student may have some language challenges, this person is also completely unfamiliar with using a computer. Completely and utterly. There also seem to be some cultural issues around education with this person. When we teach a tech section, it goes something like this: Open this data file which you will find here. (wait for all the students to open the file) Open your textbooks to page xx. (wait) Let’s go through this exercise, steps 1-14, together to modify this data file. Please stop me if you have any questions. Of course, each step brings a new interaction with the program or the file and there is much stopping and starting, coaching, and asking of questions. Some students work ahead, some follow on exactly with what the teacher is doing. However, our friend the struggling student does not find or open the file when instructed to do so. In fact, there is some question as to whether this person understands that this is what they are supposed to do. Instead, this student simply watches and then asks for one-on-one help after class. For hours at a time. This student has been shown, in class, by the instructors and by fellow students, where to find the data files and how to open them, but still this student has a sense that they are attending a lecture rather than needing to follow along and DO skill practice/acquisition with the entire group. I can’t describe to you how much time and effort all the instructors have invested here, gently prodding, supporting, and coaching and staying after class and coming in early to class. Still, this student will arrive at the next class once again at square one.
Here is my particular bone to pick: with this student, we are WAY far away from getting the right answer. We are in the zone of “do you understand when you are being instructed to do something”? Can you imagine graduating someone from this GRADUATE program who cannot discern when a future employer is asking something of them, or giving them a particular instruction? This person will not last a day at any internship or employment situation that I can picture. Not because of their lack of computer skills, but because of their inability to take direction. Not from obstinence, but from a combination of language and mis-placed cultural norms.
These students require more of me, of us, than our sympathy. They will not succeed in whatever they have chosen to study simply because we were nice to them. They are in front of us because they want the tools they will need to move forward, to move on, with their lives. When a person is studying topics related to business, it really is important that you get the right answer, not just that you felt good while you were learning it.
Meet Sophie. Isn’t she adorable?
There should be red carpet for me to pose on.
Bags-r-Us. Especially crinkly ones.
My PlayCat pose.
All in a day's play
Having Sophie around takes me back to two other times in my life. First, when I was little, I remember being “in charge” of the barn cats on our farm. This was a self-appointed position. I was probably four or five when I became kitty maven. I adored the semi-feral creatures and routinely spirited saucers of Mom’s precious Carnation Evaporated Milk, normally reserved for use in coffee, out to the shed for my furry friends. My Dad and brothers tried to discourage this, saying that hungry cats could catch more mice and rats in the barns, but I paid no mind to this absurd perspective.
There were usually between 10-20 cats at a time on the farm. The population would fluctuate. Cat Matriarch at the time was Sandy, an orangey-ginger cat who was likely mama to many of the others. She was pretty ragged around the edges, often appearing in the mornings with a chunk of fur missing, or a kink in her tail, or another scar on her ear. As rough as her non-domesticated life appeared to be, she was always, always, gentle and sweet with me. Immeasurably patient, never scratching or hissng or behaving aggressively, even if I got too close to any of her newborns. My main visual memory of Sandy is of her looking at me, sighing, and sort of half closing her eyes with a combination of exhaustion and resignation. She could always manage a purr for me, and some kneading.
Every year, there were several batches of kittens to be ooh’d and aah’d over. They would be born in the hay mow, well-hidden by clever cat mamas, to be discovered only after hours of patiently following the distressed-sounding mews. Or, sometimes, they would be born in a tool shed or implement shed, or in the garage behind the house. I was always on a mission to find the kittens, somehow thinking, god-like, that they needed my intervention. Not surprisingly, I also have very clear memories of cat mamas carrying their babies to and fro by the scruff of their necks, moving the latest kitten batch to a more secure hiding place, away from all self-appointed god-like creatures.
I decided, when I was five, that little wee tiny kittens don’t “meow”. They squeak out a syllable that sounds like”at”, like they are trying to say “cat” but can’t quite get the whole word out. If you listen to a wee kitten, you’ll hear it, perhaps – or maybe your inner five year old will be able to. I sat with multitudes of cats and kittens, for hours. They were my friends, out there on the farm, miles from other five year olds. I adored their serious expressions, their oddly squared-off noses. How some cats always look shocked or surprised or vaguely scandalized by the activity around them. Some will relax, some never do. The behaviour that I interpreted, as a child, as “playing” is really “learning how to stalk and kill things.” I liked being greeted by a flurry of upright tails. Watching a kitten transform from a cumbersome, innocent, slightly stupid fluffy ball into a sleek hunting machine was an amazing thing.
My Mom was very clear – farm animals, like cats and dogs, are not allowed in the house. Ever. Period. This wasn’t even up for discussion. The closest the cats and kittens got was the attached rickety garage out the back door of our house.
Some kittens lived, and some did not. Some were born strong, some were not. Some cat mamas were very good at raising their young. Some were not. I’ve buried a lot of cats, from new born to very aged. One of our cats, JB, a calico, got hit by a car. My Mom and I discovered this at twilight one summer’s evening as we returned from a dip in the pool at the local conservation area. Her body was intact and had stiffened but her face had contorted into a grotesque almost aggressive expression before she died. I felt responsible for getting her off the road and buried, so I forced myself from my state of shock and sadness into action, fetching a sheet of plywood veneer from the shed, sliding it under her body and carrying it carefully to a hole I’d dug behind the garage. It felt necessary, respectful, dutiful, sad … I remember I also felt scared, a bit, this one time. Something about the unexpected sudden death and the painful last look on her face.
I saw that same look again, some 20+ years later, when I had to have my beloved cat soulmate, Sid, euthanized. I understood, then, that this is just what happens to muscle structures in death and that it was my own anthropomorphizing that projected unwarranted meaning onto the expression.
Sid, like Sophie, was a child of the streets. A kitten foundling from my first summer in St. Catharines, we bonded. Our initial bonding probably had to do with me tucking him into my shirt to take him to work with me on my moped. (I was trying, unsuccessfully, to conceal from my university roomies that I had taken a kitten in.) He would peek out, just under my neck. He was an ornery guy, a sort of one-person cat. He grew from a tiny kitten into a 21 lb behemoth. It should be noted that at 21 lbs, he was not “obese”, just very large. A huge tom-cat head, giant paws. An industrial strength purr that could be heard throughout two floors of almost any house. The many adventures of Sid probably deserve their own blog posting, but safe to say that once he was gone, I found it really hard to imagine having another cat. He died in 1998, after we spent almost a year battling feline diabetes. He was quite done with the insulin shots and dietary restrictions, I think. He was 15.
Sid, wondering when I am going to take that stupid Christmas bell off his collar
In the intervening 11 years, I think I’d forgotten much about these creatures. I also think that my tendency to excess analysis and thought needs to be reined in by the presence of a creature whose needs are more clear, immediate and lacking in alternative agendas entirely. Needs for food, water, cleanliness, affection, attention and stimulation. These needs snap me back into a concrete reality because, suddenly, I am the sole source of these for this one fur-person. No analysis required.
I think Sophie is part dog. Last night, after falling into bed exhausted and turning out the light, I heard quite the commotion downstairs. None of it sounded damaging in a permanent way and I was too tired to get up to investigate. There were some crinkling sounds which I presumed originated from the crinkly bag I put on the floor for Sophie to enjoy. Then I heard some bounding up the steps and felt her land on the bed, still making crinkling sounds. “Whaa …?” On went the light. There she sat with her bag of treats in her mouth which she then dropped, pointedly, in front of me. The messaging was clear and unambiguous. “WANT TREAT NOW – PAY ATTENTION – PLAY WITH ME”. I wish all the humans in my life were this clear!
Classes start in seven days and, as one does, I’ve started to imagine that first week of classes. What I will say. New ways to present information. Improvements on ways I can connect with students.
Each year, the age demographic shifts. The students stay roughly the same age. I get older. However, as a demographic element, age is not homogeneous in the post-secondary college population. There will be, roughly, 70% of the students in the age range you would expect for second year college: 18-20. The rest will be “mature” or “returning” students who tend to be, I’d say, anywhere from 32 – 50 years old.
The vast majority are first or second generation Canadians. Many have very real challenges with English as a Second Language, the challenge being they are trying to do too much too fast. It is my job to teach them “Business Communications” from a Canadian business perspective. This is to be delivered at a second year college level. Everything from business etiquette to written communications (hard copy and electronic) to interpersonal communications to presentations skills.
Regardless of age, many of these students identify with social, cultural or religious communities that are out of my realm of direct experience. Many are visible minorities in other parts of the city, although typically not in the part of the city where my college is located.
As I’m sure you can picture, it is nice to just have an informal chatty few minutes at the beginning of the first class, as students arrive. Build some initial rapport. Smile. Help students feel welcome and a bit less afraid of the course that is going to make them Stand Up And Speak In Front Of Others. So I try to come up with innocuous, inoffensive, chatty things to say. Here are some examples of “things not to say” at the opening of the first class:
Did you have a good summer?
Couple of problems with this one. First, within the Sri Lankan Tamil community, a two young men were murdered, brutally, over the summer. Right here in Toronto. At least one of them was a student at our college. A significant percentage of our student population is Tamil, a relatively close-knit group.
Furthermore, many of these students will have studied through the summer to make up for missing courses, or to get through faster. As I found out last year, many of these students don’t take a summer break.
Moving on …
What did you do on your summer vacation?
Same problems as the first question, with one additional problem. A person educated in North America asks this question with a small sense of fun or play or irony. You know, the implied reference to that essay we were asked to write, or joked about writing, in elementary school. A person who did not receive their primary education in Canada will not understand this subtext.
How do you like being back in class, back in a routine schedule?
Some didn’t leave, having attended class all summer. Many are single moms, or have part-time jobs, or more than one part-time job, or full-time jobs, or other family-related responsibilities. For some, adding a class schedule is yet another layer of responsibility. Granted, for others, it is their ONLY responsibility. Our classes are a real mixed bag this way. I’ve seen this sort of question start long, argumentative discussions about who has more responsibility and who has to work harder … which sort of sets the wrong tone for the opening of this class.
The main point to remember in all my casual conversations with this non-homogeneous student body is that their life experience up to the point in time that they walk into the classroom is likely to have been vastly different than mine. Any questions that I ask, any examples that I use in the classroom, that reinforce that distance, or reveal my erroneous assumptions, create a new teaching problem for me to overcome. Any questions I ask, or examples I use, that reinforce commonality will usually make my job easier.
Under these circumstances, on day one, I think I’ll stick with the old reliable stand-by that always seems to work in Canada. “How do you like this weather?”
