Category: Thoughts on Teaching and Learning

The End of the English Teacher?

March 4, 2023

The recent New Yorker article on “The End of the English Major” is grief-inducing for many reasons, one of which might be that perhaps President Joyner was right all along to pursue the ruinous path of program closure she put us on.

Side Point: I don’t really believe that, as Joyner’s canned administrator-speak about national trends, and the demographic cliff, and the SXU brand, and distinctive value, etc. did not take into account our local conditions, our demographics, our market, our traditions, and our record of success in a variety of areas that she chose to disregard.

Whatever. It’s time to move on from Joyner—more on this later. The English major and the humanities might be destined for death—but even if they are, it won’t be an immediate death—and, in the interval, we have an opportunity to reconnoiter with fellow humanists in order to package and promote new versions of our studies that achieve some of the objectives of interdisciplinarity and critical thinking and contextualization in traditions, and … well, all the stuff and values we preach (and truly believe in, and not without cause). The pendulum swing away from the traditional disciplinary categories might swing back leaving some new combinations of categories. We may well create the innovative programs that our administration (along with many other administrations across higher education) has been clamoring for, (despite neglecting to provide support for such developments). The larger forces of the pendulum swing may offer a needed catalyst. Suspicions may arise, perhaps, that, in our (over-)reactions and (over-)adjustments to the phone/social-media/Internet era of the early 21st century, the baby is being thrown out with the bathwater.

In his New Yorker article, Nathan Heller describes the contemporary moment as a time when, “by most appearances, the appetite for public contemplation of language, identity, historiography, and other longtime concerns of the seminar table is at a peak.” Perhaps the disruptive and seismic shifts in knowledge making and sharing brought on by the smart phone are temporary or transitional, and once we’ve survived the attendant growing pains, we will recover our collective recognition of the value of reading and theorizing about the past as a way of improving our understanding of the present.

The humanities may come back, since, clearly there is an interest in discourse on ethics and culture and art, and when there is an interest in such things, it stands to reason that there is a place for sophistication and beauty and rigor and context for such discussions and the methods of holding them. The pushing ever on in pursuit of a “perfection” is our compulsive nature as language-using humans, right? (I’m looking at you, Kenneth Burke, for flank support in this “perfection motive” argument—all such motivation deriving “naturally” from our condition of being language-using animals.)

But even if the humanities don’t come back, it’s going to take some years for English studies to evaporate at the high school level the way they have evaporated in higher education in the past ten years.

Here’s where I must pivot from the lofty and depressing concerns of the New Yorker article to the local and depressing concerns of restructuring at Saint Xavier University. The current move by our Administration—and by their collaborators in the university’s Department of Education—to relocate all secondary education programs into the Department of Education appears, on its surface to be a rational and defensible course of action, at least to judge by the sobering context of the New Yorker article. If the English major and humanities are dead, why not eliminate disciplinary content requirements for prospective teachers, and simply focus on skill development and pedagogical formation, with, as needed, some nods to subject area expertise?

But this is going too far. My complaint about President Joyner all along was that she exploited a rationale that had a basis in truth and good reasoning, but that she pushed things too far. She took a national trend in higher ed—she fomented attendant fears and insecurities—and, powered by a lot of gibberish and true-believing sycophants and opportunists, she ruthlessly ramrodded an agenda that was equally out of balance as it was self-serving. The bellwether was the elimination of the religious studies and philosophy programs. Prior to the closure of these programs, their faculty made compelling arguments for 1) the programs’ efficiencies in course hour generation; 2) the synergistic support between major and gen ed course offerings; and 3) the value added to brand and mission by supporting majors in areas that provided graduates roles in local, national, and international religious communities, as well as preparation for graduate studies in various humanistic areas. The arguments fell on deaf ears all around—except for Senate which voted down the program closures. Despite Senate’s objection, the Administration could claim, gaslight fashion, that the shared governance box was checked, and the programs were closed under proper authority of the Board of Trustees.

In general, Joyner encouraged an approach to program contraction or closure that resulted in cutting to and through the bone, while maintaining a veneer of compassion by not firing individuals or cutting specific positions (though she did do both). In the post-Joyner period, we can all agree that some contraction was called for—but not the wholesale starving of humanities programs that we have seen.

What I propose for the mid-term transition into whatever the future holds for higher ed, is for all secondary programs to lean into current disciplinary content standards as necessities for compliance with basic teacher preparation requirements. I have been shouting in a well, it seems, about the 2019 move by the State of Illinois to align secondary State standards to national standards. This recognition of professional disciplinary scholarly organizations may be, in the context of the New Yorker article, the last, best gasp of recognized valuation of humanistic knowledge and standards. But in any case, does anyone predict that, in the next generation or so, there will be an abandonment of the more or less traditional education required for teachers at the middle and high school levels? Will there not be a need for teachers—with some version of formation along the lines that we have always provided?

I’m not calling for teacher educators to dig in and insist on perpetuating a version of our studies as they have always existed. Rather, I’m saying there is a strong market and a growing market for secondary teachers in humanities-related disciplines who can adapt their skills-based, or content-based, or Internet-based approaches to the evolving and recurring needs of the teaching of language, culture, and rhetoric.

In preparing disciplinary experts, SXU could take the lead in helping to meet the urgent need for new teachers. The teacher shortage across the nation and in Illinois is reaching crisis status. Just yesterday (3/3/2023), Governor Pritzker announced the Teacher Pipeline Grant, a new package of financial incentives to recruit new teachers to address the chronic shortage that is predicted to worsen in upcoming years. Given the shortage, we may expect an eventual reduction of standards for teacher quality—all the more reason for an institution like SXU to brand itself as distinctive in offering programs that produce the highest quality teachers, who have mastered not only best practices in pedagogy, but also the rigorous standards for content knowledge required by the State and disciplinary professional experts.

At SXU we may not save the humanities across the board. But we have an obligation to preserve the humanities that are foundational to our secondary education programs. It’s not a total answer, and in doing so, we may be swimming against the current of gloomy trends outlined in the New Yorker article. 

But there are other trends: Our record of preparing effective teachers in secondary programs is strong. It will remain strong only if we lean in harder to our tradition of housing our programs in disciplinary areas—something the State of Illinois, finally, has codified in its move to accredit programs according to their alignment to national standards.

Launching “True Saint Xavier”

This Thanksgiving, when the upheavals of our recent years still sting us and bring sadness, I find myself being thankful for an old colleague, gone now for several years. His spirit is needed. He harkens back to (what now seems to be) a make-believe time of hope and camaraderie.

A group of us is launching a new website, “truesaintxavier.org,” as yet another effort to fight the good fight for the welfare of our students, our programs, our heritage, and our legacy. We think Saint Xavier has lost its way, (or has been hijacked), and we hold out hope that we still have time to right the balance, adjust our waywardness, and step into a more secure future.

In looking through my files for material to include at the new site, I came across an email from Richard Fritz from 2010. He shared his message with the “Faculty Only” listserv. It’s a response to the crisis of 2010, which led to the University’s reduction of its retirement match by 50%. SXU had had a rather generous match—10% (or was it 11%?)—but as a result of the financial crisis of the Dwyer-Piros administration, the University asked faculty to sacrifice—temporarily, as understood by many—so as to tide over the institution in a difficult time.

Richard died in 2017 after a devastating illness that gave him some time to prepare, but not enough, and not the right kind, and not with the right kind of leave taking. As if there could be such a thing.

Though Richard and I were colleagues for two decades, I really didn’t get to know him until his final years at SXU when we served together on the Faculty Affairs Committee. Richard had always intimidated me somewhat. He was tall, with a piercing intellect and passionate commitments, a good beard and sports coat, a born academic. He was one of those persons who seemed to stand for so much more than a single faculty colleague could stand for, and he was prone to lecturing (if I could say such a thing in a positive sense).

I thought I might break through in my intimidation after I found out he was close friends with one of my close friends from college days, Anne Marie. They were neighbors, and to hear Anne Marie speak of him as a friend and neighbor was disconcerting to me, and even when I worked with him on FAC, I only rarely mustered the courage to have one-on-ones with him. But we did have those conversations, and I grew to love him—both for himself, and for the way he epitomized for me the “long-term associate professor” who made it his mission to care for his students, above all else, as his “love language,” or more, his raison d’etre for being an academic. 

There was something stentorian about Richard—but often with a quaver in his voice in public speaking. Whatever it was, when he spoke, it was important. At faculty meetings, there would occasionally be a Richard speech. In elegant sentences, with rising emotion, he put the focus on students. No one could gainsay he was an excellent teacher. I had a little more—or different—insight to his teaching than most others at SXU, since my daughter Genevieve was a sociology major, and she had discovered that Dr. Fritz was “that professor” who was to be the influence, the guide for her academic journey, a mentor she could respect and appreciate her whole life. 

She had more Richard stories than I. And she had that kind of context that encapsulates, I would argue, the “true Saint Xavier.” When she would begin a sentence with “Dr. Fritz says…” we knew some insight … and a lot of heart would be shared. Richard always spoke highly of nurses and teachers, and so he scored points with both my wife (a nurse) and me in these moments when he was quoted back to us during family dinners, debates, and just being together.

So, as we launch “True Saint Xavier,” I want to invoke Richard’s spirit. But I have another layer to add on first. That additional layer is an email message I wrote and sent to a group of colleagues about 18 months ago, just after the SXU administration withdrew their recognition of the faculty union. That was when I first rediscovered Richard’s email of January 5, 2010:

From: Angelo Bonadonna <abonadon@sbcglobal.net>
Subject: A Voice and a Message, Both Lost
Date: July 24, 2020 at 11:46:48 AM CDT
To: ***
 
Dear Colleagues—Yesterday, when searching my records for the year of the retirement match reduction (it was 10 years ago(!)—in 2010), I came across this email from Richard Fritz. It’s Richard at his best, and in telling the story of past sacrifice, he captured a bit of the soul of the SXU faculty, administration, and community—all in a way that seems so other-worldly these days.
 
I’m not sure what can be done with a message like this one. It’s more than just nostalgia that prompts me to share it now and ask you to consider what might be done with it, as we move forward to mobilize our colleagues. Richard’s is one of the voices that has been silenced—not directly by this administration, of course. But I worked closely with Richard in his last years at SXU, and it was clear to me that the institution was breaking his heart. Much, I’m sure, can be said about current conditions and leadership approaches—how they make the attitude and rhetoric that came so readily and naturally to Richard ten years ago impossible to conceive today.
 
The video documentary that Genevieve will be distributing in draft form in a few days has, as one of its themes, “the silencing of faculty voice.” I’d like to ask Gen (who revered Dr. Fritz) to consider dedicating the video “to the memory and mission of Richard Fritz, and all the lost voices of SXU…”
 
In the meantime, this Friday afternoon, take a moment to be with Richard a bit!  —Angelo
From: Fritz, Richard B.
Sent: Tue 1/5/2010 3:42 PM
To: Appel, Florence A.; Faculty-Only List
Subject: Dire Circumstances Redux
 
Dear Colleagues:
 
In the early 1990s (I believe it was 1993), the university found itself with an unexpected debt.  We were between two to three million dollars short of the amount required to pay our bills.  The situation was serious.  Several staff members were laid off and the administration scrambled to find ways to fill the gap.  There was talk of the university folding.  They were very unsettled times.  Scary and disheartening.
 
Several faculty meetings were convened; all were very well attended.  Numerous faculty members spoke up to discuss our role in solving the problem.  Dozens and dozens of ideas were proposed, every single one of which involved financial sacrifices on our part.  It was clear that the faculty understood the gravity of the situation.  It was also apparent that each and every one of us loved the university and were willing to go to great lengths to save it.
 
A solution was found.  In consultation with the administration, the Board of Trustees, and their faculty colleagues, the Faculty Affairs Committee created a voluntary “give back” program in which faculty members could reduce their salary by a certain percentage (I think it was 7%, but I’m not sure) for the remainder of the year (roughly seven or eight months).  Those who accepted the voluntary reduction would have a matching amount added to their pay check the following year.  As I remember, over 70% of the faculty participated.  It is not an exaggeration to say that this simple remedy saved the university.  Everyone, including the administration and Board of Trustees, acknowledged that the salary reduction program was the key factor in returning to economic stability.
 
The beauty of the program was that it did not require opening up the contract.  The program was voluntary, and therefore was not a “collectively bargained” agreement in the formal meaning. It was, in a sense, a collective faculty offer to pitch in.  The program did not impose universal participation.  There was no praise for participating, no stigma for not participating.  In fact, most people didn’t know who participated and who did not.  People gave back because they thought it was necessary and because they thought it would help.
 
Here we are again.  We didn’t ask for this (we didn’t the first time, either).  But we will help.  There is absolutely no doubt of that.  We, the faculty, love Saint Xavier.  It is more than just a job.  It is a place that transforms our students lives and gives meaning to our careers.  You all know what I’m saying, and could probably say it better.  The point is, we will not let the university fail.  We will do our part.
 
But as in the past, we must make our contributions wisely.  We must know what we are doing so that we can ensure that it will  work.  We must know the extent of the problem and the exact nature of the salutary effects of our contribution.  Will it be enough?  Too much?  Will it stabilize the institution?  And what assurances will we have that this problem won’t happen again?
 
Also, anything we do must be done in full concert with the Board of Trustees.  They are responsible for the financial well being of the university. Any contribution we make is virtually meaningless unless it is coordinated with their master plan.
 
In the past, FAC generated a solution that saved the university.  The current Faculty Affairs Committee has members who are both experienced and creative.  One member, Brian McKenna, served as a faculty representative to the Board of Trustees for many, many years.  He knows how they think and how they function.  Others, including Flo Appel, Norm Boyer, Suzanne Kimble, and Peter Hilton were here the last time we went through this.  Their leadership, in collaboration with Interim President Durante and the Board of Trustees, is central to solving this problem. I don’t know what kind of solution will be offered.  Perhaps it will involve reductions in retirement contributions or perhaps salary paybacks.  Whatever they decide, I trust Interim President Durante and our Faculty leaders to guide us to a solution in a collaborative, equitable, and timely fashion.
 
Richard Fritz
Sociology Dept.

January 23, 2020

[Note:  This entry is an example of an SSW session written during workshop with my freshman writing class at the start of Spring Semester, 2020.  SSW stands for “silent sustained writing,” a weekly practice of 40-minute writing sessions conducted throughout the semester where the entire class, including the instructor, “looks at the world as a writer,” selects genres and topics of the author’s interest, and writes.  The weekly sessions build into a “writer’s notebook,” that explores what Nancie Atwell calls an author’s “writing territories,” and that approaches the task of “teaching” writing through a process of “cultivation” of a writer’s identity, rather than through specific instruction in teacher-chosen skills.  Early in each semester, I try to model how the process works for me–and how it has evolved for me as a writer over time.  It’s about writing as a way of being, rather than something learned, mastered, and checked off….]

So it begins again.  Another writing notebook.  Today is a special day.  You can tell so much about a semester’s writing from how it starts.  I hope my students can grow into this routine … I feel I need to help it work for them, to model, to get them started.  But today is special for other reasons, or rather one big reason.  Today is Ang’s birthday, and there’s so much to remember—so much to think about.  Loretta will be going to All Saints cemetery this morning to be close to him.  It’s her tradition on January 23rd, one that was never quite right for me, and as she says, we all grieve in our own ways.  For me, one of the most healing things I could do, one of the best ways for me to “be with” Ang is to write about him, and so the two worlds meld.  I’ve had so many SSW sessions thinking about Ang, being with him.  I look forward to today’s.

Thirty four, and just under nine years since he left us.  That other anniversary, February 5, is in two weeks, and so I’ll need to power through till then, and then start breathing again.  Is it this time of year—the doldrums of late January?  Or is it the need to reach 10 years beyond losing Ang—that theory of mine that there would be a 10 year adjustment to the loss of him, whereby my life could slow down, stop, turn, and then slowly start up again—with new memories, new foundations, new hopes….  One more year, and I’m feeling that my suspicion was right—the time was needed, is needed.  Ten years is about right, at least as a minimum.

On Ang’s birthday the past few years I find myself going back to 1986 and that experience of childbirth, or rather witnessing childbirth, for the first time.  That was an eye-opener.  But then, everything about Ang was an eye-opener.  I feel a need to convey something of Ang to my beloved students.  He was so special to me, and they are all special, or becoming special to me, the way students always do.  I hope they let themselves go places today that surprise them, touch them, and open up new possibilities.

That day in 1986 was about five days before the Bears played in and won their first Super Bowl.  I was a huge fan that year—as was just about everyone in Chicago.  I was scheduled to work my security job that Sunday and miss the game … but Ang was born and so I was able to take off.  That was his first gift to me, and it was a good one.  On the day of his birth, while I was at Walgreens picking up some needed things (diapers?), I saw in the checkout lane a very expensive (to me, at that time) commemorative magazine previewing the big game.  It was $5.00.  I was very poor at the time and couldn’t justify spending that much on a frivolous thing like a Bears magazine.  But Ang gave me the excuse!  It was a present for him.  And it was, and when I told him about it when he reached the age of reason, he cherished it, he read it, and he kept it close (till it became tattered and lost).  But really, standing there in Walgreens, I just wanted that magazine.  On Super Bowl Sunday, I placed him in his baby seat, put him in front of the TV, and told him, “Ang, you’re about to see something that no living person has seen, or could appreciate.  You’re starting out life well, young man.”  And he continued well, becoming a huge Bears fan and sports fanatic, in the healthiest way.  He died on February 5, 2011, the day before the Packers won their last Super Bowl, and I thought, wryly, what Ang would do to avoid seeing the Packers win….

But that was not really true.  Though he did have a healthy and playful sense of rivalry with the Packers, he wasn’t bitter about their success.  Terry reported grousing to Ang about the Packers in one of his last conversations with him.  Not only had the Bears missed a very easy late-season opportunity to eliminate the Packers, but they proceeded to be eliminated by them in the first round of the playoffs.   As he often did, Angelo transcended the dynamic saying, “Yeah, it sucks that the Bears aren’t in it, but it’s the Super Bowl!”  And so, on he moved, with joy and purpose, commencing one of his last organizational acts, collecting baht, and running a pool for the Super Bowl for his friends in Thailand.  (We got the winnings the next week when we traveled to Thailand to bring Ang home.)  We have pictures of him running the show, organizing things, at a bar, of course, looking as though he were conducting significant business, but really just making squares.

I wish I could create a picture of Ang for my students.  I think of my longstanding reflection of “no explanation needed”—the great comfort in there being so many people who knew Ang intimately, and who “got him”—who would remember actions and gestures and stories and tone of voice—immediately, instantaneously—deeply and expansively, without any words.  Angelo was a landscape, and the memories of him are the flash of lightning that illuminates the entire territory in an instant, giving you a view of more and more dazzling imagery than you could imagine unless you had first seen it.

In so many ways, he was just an ordinary college-type kid—funny, self-absorbed, conscientious, concerned about social justice, concerned about social outings, tireless, indulgent, generous, the center of attention, the guy in the background, the bursting through life of life itself.

His friends still visit him on Facebook, posting links to news and culture that remind them of him.  Sometimes they just call out to him in longing for him.  I don’t visit the page much, just as I don’t visit the cemetery, I guess.  I’ve been fearful of locking down on one experience of him, becoming dependent on it, and then having it go away.  The part that doesn’t go away is my own memories….  The store is limited … but he’s still so alive in those moments.  He speaks through them, in a way that seems new and changing.  He was such a presence for me, and he always surprised me—so I’m missing those surprises—but I still have the smile, the wryness, the energy, and the illuminated landscape that makes me feel “wow.”

We’ll celebrate tonight, with cake, and one of his favorite meals, probably pizza—though we’ve been debating what he would choose, since his diet changed so much in the last few years.  We will gather and be the normal, well-adjusted family we always are.  We might tell some Ang stories, but maybe not.  We all will continue grieving for this lost landscape—so known, so understood, so appreciated—in our own ways.

S.O.S. Times Two: Wry Reflections on/in Ethan Frome

This is a novel of cold and reflections of the cold. There is the surface and the sub-surface, “inner needs” and “outer situation” (8), the desolate landscape of the soul and the desolate landscape of winter, and and each doubles the other. Chill is heaped on chill, in an endless winter, the same as all other winters, all inexorable, silent, and deadening.

Perhaps the most succinct analysis of Ethan Frome’s fate comes from the novel’s garrulous coachmen, Harmon Gow, “Guess he’s been in Starkfield too many winters” (2-3). To no little extent, the villain of this tale is the landscape and its influences, its bitterness, the “hypnotizing effect of [its] routine” (3)—the inexorable will of winter to penetrate and reproduce itself in all it touches.

The lives of the Frome household are grimly doubled outside the house, in the “shaded knoll where, enclosed in a low fence, the Frome grave-stones slanted at crazy angles through the snow” (26). The novel ends with Mrs. Hale’s comment, “I don’t see there’s much difference between the Fromes up at the farm and the Fromes down in the graveyard” (99), an insight that reverberates quietly and insistently throughout the novel. Ethan himself resonates with it, as he looks at the gravestones with full realization of their reflective power. In their silence, they speak to him, and he to them, about the possibility of change:

Ethan looked at them curiously. For years that quiet company had mocked his restlessness, his desire for change and freedom. “We never got away—how should you?” seemed to be written on every headstone; and whenever he went in or out of his gate he thought with a shiver: “I shall just go on living here till I join them.” (26)

Ethan’s “living” was a mode of intensifying withdrawal and silence. His early hope of escape at school failed him, and he was propelled into his desolate spiral of being. By nature, Ethan is “grave and inarticulate,” even before the misfortunes of experience and landscape produced their doubles in him. But there are pointings toward other possibilities in the brief, fleeting vision of Ethan at school:

There was in him a slumbering spark of sociability which the long Starkfield winters had not yet extinguished. By nature grave and inarticulate, he admired recklessness and gaiety in others and was warmed to the marrow by friendly human intercourse. At Worcester, though he had the name of keeping to himself and not being much of a hand at good time, he had secretly gloried in being clapped on the back and hailed as “Old Ethe” or “Old Stiff”; and the cessation of such familiarities had increased the chill of his return to Starkfield.

There the silence had deepened about him year by year. (37)

One might say, with sardonic whimsy, that the doubling theme of Ethan Frome points to some moralistic exploration of the ill effects of the “double-cross” of infidelity. But this is not a novel to condemn the love that grows in this barren environment. The tender romance of Ethan and Mattie is delicate to excruciating extremes. The two kiss, and there are satisfactions there, but most of this romance is left to the ethereal realm of possibility (and impossibility):

. . . all their intercourse [pun intended?] had been made up of such inarticulate flashes, when they seemed to come suddenly upon happiness as if they had surprised a butterfly in the wintry woods . . . .
(84)

But there are no butterflies in winter, certainly not in a Starkfield winter. Even so, the doubling theme re-doubles back to something positive in the context of Mattie and Ethan’s love. The height—or depth—of their love is conveyed in terms of reflecting back—echoing—lover-to-lover and lover-within-lover:

She had an eye to see and an ear to hear: he could show her things and tell her things, and taste the bliss of feeling that all he imparted left long reverberations and echoes he could wake at will. (16-17)

One of the more chilling echoes (in this most wintry novel) occurs the night of Ethan and Mattie’s “date,” they’re one night together. Ethan’s anticipation for the evening can only but mildly match the reader’s, and Wharton’s description of Ethan’s approach to Mattie is tantalizing for its delays and complications. The narration here is at once archetypal (the “expectant lover,” who must court ritualistically, must practice restraint, and must follow proprieties despite the motives calling for intense and sudden action), suspenseful (is Mattie there?), passionate (Ethan, locked out, “rattled the handle violently”), and, most of all, eerily foreshadowing of the most poignant and ultimate doubling of the story, the doubling of Zeena’s soul into Mattie:

He reached the kitchen-porch and turned the door-handle; but the door did not yield to his touch.

Startled at finding it locked he rattled the handle violently; then he reflected that Mattie was alone and that it was natural she should barricade herself at nightfall. He stood in the darkness expecting to hear her step. It did not come, and after vainly straining his ears he called out in a voice that shook with joy: “Hello, Matt!”

Silence answered; but in a minute or two he caught a sound on the stairs and saw a line of light about the door-frame, as he had seen it the night before. So strange was the precision with which the incidents of the previous evening were repeating themselves that he half expected, when he heard the key turn, to see his wife before him on the threshold; but the door opened, and Mattie faced him. (43)

After dinner, another doubling occurrence caused Ethan to confuse Mattie and Zeena:

Zeena’s empty rocking-chair stood facing him. Mattie rose [. . .] and seated herself in it. As her young brown head detached itself against the patch-work cushion that habitually framed his wife’s gaunt countenance, Ethan had a momentary shock. It was almost as if the other face, the face of the superseded woman, had obliterated that of the intruder. (48)

One might easily list other instances of the doubling theme: Ethan’s laughter “echoes” Mattie’s laughter; the naming of Zeena causes “repercussions of sound” that cause Mattie to wait “to give the echo time to drop” (51), a momentary blush arises in Mattie “like the reflection of a thought stealing slowly across her heart” (51).

In all, the doubling brings Zeena and Mattie together, in a way not fully consummated until the novel’s end when we discover Mattie has become Zeena in the most awful intensification of the dull “smash up” of Ethan Frome’s life.

Before that, Wharton’s narrator characterizes Zeena, at her ugliest moment when she sends Mattie away, as the incarnation of, the reflection of, the doubling of all the misfortune, failure, and silent death of Ethan’s life: “All the long misery of his baffled past, of his youth of failure, hardship and vain effort, rose up in his soul in bitterness and seemed to take shape before him in the woman who at every turn had barred his way” (65). The ultimate doubling of this incarnation is Ethan Frome’s fate—horrible enough under any circumstances, but unthinkable in its zero-sum effect of negating all the possibility, light, charm, warmth, and freedom that Mattie had presented to Ethan.

Pedagogical Uses of Social Networking Systems

The Context: The following entry was written in response to a colleague’s question to the general faculty about the possibilities of using social networking systems like Myspace and Facebook in teaching:

I could envision lessons and activities that explore or study various aspects of social networking, but as far as actually using a social network environment to host class work, I tend to agree with my colleague Laurence: “there are some web platforms that may be better left to non-academic uses.” The social networks are where the “kids” hang out; there seems something invasive about “going there” as a class—kinda like bringing a class, uninvited, to someone’s party; it could work out okay, but it’s just . . . weird).

Aside from the question of how to use social networking tools in one’s teaching, I think the bigger pedagogical issue here has to do with broad matters of communication and rhetoric brought to the fore by the social networking phenomenon. Many media reports have sounded the alarm bell about the dangers kids expose themselves to in putting too much of their lives out there on the Web. We’ve long known of the danger of the Internet in terms of predators and children. Now, however, with young adults voluntarily publishing information about themselves (photos of drinking exploits at parties, for instance), the dangers have shifted somewhat from those involving personal safety to those involving professional liabilities (in presenting personal info that might make an individual less attractive to a potential employer, school admissions office, etc.).

What’s our role as educators in all this? Rather than foment the concern, I’d prefer educators show leadership and wisdom on this issue.

Specifically, I think educators—at all levels—should teach communicators (all students) the principles and practices of “effective communication.” Myspace/Facebook/etc. is giving us a marvelous “teachable moment.” I think we should take the lead and promote the study—and perhaps even the use of—social networking technologies (even if we don’t use such tools in our teaching). We should support and coach the responsible use of such technologies. In essence we should teach students how “to Myspace”—or at least help them build awareness of the range of communicative/social/personal/professional issues involved in putting one’s oar into the deep and sometimes turbulent waters of public discourse.

I make this proposal, in part, in response to the strong and growing move to curtail and control social networking—especially in high school environments. I’ve heard several reports by our student teachers and first-year teachers about (understandably) skittish administrators whose first impulse in such dangerous situations is one of censorship. It’s ironic; in higher ed, our goal is to stimulate discussion and critical thinking; we often lament our students’ inabilities in this regard—but, to be blunt, so much of the goal in earlier schooling centers on keeping the lid on “inappropriate” communication and critique; is it any wonder the kids come to us communicatively straight-jacketed?

But anyway, thanks for initiating this stimulating discussion [on the faculty listserv]. I see many ways the issues involved “connect.” I’m encouraged to think how a more open attitude about communication possibilities can empower us (the collective “us,” as scholars, as society’s experts in various types of communication)—and play to our strengths in terms of our potential leadership. Conversely, such openness may expose us to new situations where we will learn from our students. Some of us welcome such dynamics while others may be less comfortable with them.

In any event, whenever new technologies are involved, there will undoubtedly be “unexpected by-products.” I have a positive example of such a by-product from one of our student teachers last semester. The incident involved a student teacher who used Myspace to collect and share information about a high school student in her class who had died in a car accident over the Christmas break. The student teacher was able to gather many compelling artifacts from the student’s Myspace site. The student was a poet and artist. The student teacher was able to put together a soundtrack of music from the student’s favorite music, and create a slide show of words and images to celebrate the student’s life and help her classmates through the rough, early stages of grief.

I think there are various ways we in higher education can show leadership in “teaching how-to-Myspace” (if I may be excused using “Myspace” as a verb), but it starts with an open attitude and a confidence in/realization of our credentials to be the leaders. . . .