(or, Framing Concepts with the Sample)1
“If learning is to do us any good, we must not merely lodge it within us,
we must espouse it.”
-- Montaigne, “Of the Education of Children”
Alas, it seems I’ve neared the end of my Sample.
You’ll say, perhaps, it’s overly ample…
or overly full, that is, and crammed with detail
collected in search of some educative grail
which, of course, has eluded the author,
who’s emptied out his intellectual coffer.
Well, I’m thoroughly exhausted, I will say that.
And now I’m stuck with this coffer, this vat,
which, so it seems, I’m constrained to fill right back up
without once more overbrimming this vat, this cup…
this coffer, this vat, this cup, this framework.
An onus upon me! From it, I will not shirk.
A conceptual framework. Well, just what is that?
I won’t pen an answer that’s merely pat.
Let’s define our terms, so we know what we’re saying
(just where’s he going with this, you’re likely praying!).
Concept comes from conceive, which means to start…
but hold on, that’s not quite it. Get it off the cart.
To become pregnant with…or, to cause to begin.
(The Greeks didn’t know original sin.
These words, of course, go back to pre-Christian ages.
They first took shape in the mouths of antique sages.)
In addition, to take into one’s mind
(or so says Britannica…the best of its kind).
We cause something to begin or take shape upstairs,
to gather into various layers.
That’s about what we do, I guess, when we conceive.
And the mind’s where we go when we want to retrieve
what’s thus begun in a pill called concept.
At times things get cluttered and the mind must be swept.
Here, as you might guess, is where the framework comes in –
a structure, of sorts, of concepts. A bin.
And a frame? It’s something composed of fitted parts,
so that concepts don’t fall apart in fits and starts.
That’s vague, it seems, so I’ll have to restate:
We’ve got to put them somewhere, these things we create…
Hold on…create goes back to the Latin for grow
(in etymology I am no pro).
Remember, we don’t create, we cause to begin.
And the mind is a repository, a bin.
But here, however, comes the tricky part,
to express which requires a bit of taste and art:
Is the frame something other than what it contains?
Or is it itself the links in the chains
of whatever it is we so cause to begin?
But at this point the air becomes rarified, thin.
Suffice it to say that these marching lines,
which I’m taking great pains to pair in matching twines,
are stacking up to something I will call my frame.
(Remove the “r” from that and you’ve got “fame”.
If this hundred-twenty-page hippopotamus
is ever read, it will likely be posthumous…
meaning no one will read it ere I’m dead
save for you who are grading it. Well, enough said.)
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1Author’s Note: This is the final section from a Teacher Work Sample submitted to the Institute for Teacher Education at the University of Hawai‘i for certification in Secondary Education – a research paper conducted in six steps by teachers in residency during their final semester. In this final step, I was to provide evidence in my work of “knowledge, effectiveness, caring, justice, and democracy.” As stated in the Step VI Guidelines: “The teaching resident…provides evidence…to explain how [he or she] has met the College of Education vision to prepare educators to contribute to a just and democratic society [and] to explain how [he or she] has met the College of Education conceptual framework in becoming a knowledgeable, effective, and caring teacher” [my italics]. Finding the university’s said “conceptual framework” rather too thickly (not to mention awkwardly) meshed to catch much in the way of finer fish, I decided to do a bit of sleuth work on the etymological conceits of the five dread knots italicized above and to end my 120-page sample with some light verse as a restorative to miles and miles of ponderous prose. I had intended to write in terza rima, but found that the couplets came faster and freer.
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But it seems that now it’s time to be moving on.
This first bit stretches well across the lawn.
The Manoa conceptual framework requires
that I test the tread of the following five tires:
Democracy. Disposition. Knowledge.
Effectiveness. Justice. Things we learn in college.
(I borrow that couplet from Gordon Sumner – “Sting”.
One brings to poetry what one can bring.)
To be honest, I don’t know how they were chosen.
They’re somewhat starchy and stiff, like Lederhosen.
(Don’t think I’m just trying to make you laugh;
the inebriating nectar in my carafe
is designed to render you merry while you think.
Confused with laughter? Have another drink.
This parenthetical aside’s an allusion
to Dickinson’s poem on the tippler’s confusion…
see the Complete Poems, number 214.)2
Five tips on a gaudy parrot that likes to preen.
Disposition entails a trope; its name is care.
I’m bringing that one down first from the air.
Care includes interest, inclination, concern.
The latter’s the pivot on which the word doth turn
back to its ancient meaning – to mingle,
via which the plural sifts into the single.
Here I am, dear Reader! I’ve finally arrived
at Thesis One; may it not seem contrived:
Teaching involves an attempt to wrest unity
from what initially is plural, disparate…
from individual plurality
to collective unity, singularity.
Care is the venerated name for this attempt.
There. We’ve located the lusty kernel
at the vanguard of disposition supernal.
Disposition comes from disponere – “arrange.”
Hence, just how do we unite what’s estranged?
Look at all those scrappy kids in Period 3 –
from those who want good grades to recalcitrant Z.3
Just how do we get them to coalesce?
Ah! It’s a question bigger than us, we’ll confess.
Let’s put it to one side and think of what we know;
for knowledge is what must come next, I trow.
And here our philologists don’t have much to say;
knowledge is “all that is known” (or “know what we may”).
How do we get from Thesis One to Two?
I’ll make an attempt…it’s about all I can do:
Knowledge, or what is known, involves the memory.
We do not know what we don’t remember
(although memory may, indeed, be unconscious –
which Freud and psychoanalysis demonstrate).
We have more memories than our students
for the very simple reason that we’re older –
which is as much to say that we’ve been here longer.
Through our concern we instigate their own;
they sift through our memories and recombine them.
Hey! That’s not half bad, if I must say so myself.
It partakes of clarity and good health.
Period 3. Did they make my memories theirs?
(I think of them looking at me with bright-eyed stares.)
A few of them. I’m certain that they did.
They return them to me, indeed, with batting lid.
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2Read: “two fourteen”.
3See my description of the obsessive reader with failing grades in Step V.
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Okay.
The next in line, it seems to me, is skill.
It involves a bit more than “drill and kill.”
Skill, I’ll begin, means distinction in the Old Norse –
itself quite a venerable cognitive horse.
Further, it seems to touch on separate.39
Thus, what is known is isolated trait by trait.
Did I mention that skill relates to effective?
(I must say, my logic’s not defective.)
Effective’s from efficare – “to bring about.”
It’s here that Thesis Three doth emerge from its spout:
Skill involves distinction, separation –
separation of what is known from the unknown,
and separation of the known into its parts.
It’s part and parcel of what’s effective –
of that which brings about what’s known, what’s remembered.
Our students learn, from our sample or example,40
how knowledge has been mingled or sifted.
I’ve written so much that I’ve earned the write to brag,
so I’ll pull the following conceit from my bag:
I’m good at demonstrating what I know
and how I’ve come to know it – “like this and just so.”
I think that’s why my students like to hear me talk
(like Aristotle, I talk as I walk).
It helps them reflect on what goes on in their minds
and on how best to break their thoughts up into kinds.
“I like listening to you, Mr. Jones!”
It’s gratifying to learn, after weeks of groans.
For to my mode of thought they have to acclimate…
my refractory thoughts on love and fate.
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39Read in its verbal, not adjectival, form.
40Sample is related to an ancient word for example – “to take out”. A play on words: I have effectively “brought out” this Sample, which should appear to the reader as something that has been “taken out.” Between effect and example the agency has been rendered ambiguous, for the simple reason that you, the reader, cannot look into my mind, howsoever I may try to render my thoughts, my procedures, transparent.
___________________________________________________________
Next is justice, having to do with right and law.
As old as Aesop’s lion – the mouse and the paw.
It hearkens back to Sanskrit for welfare –
although the original meaning fades to air,
as justice gets wound up with everything legal
and emerges as a wounded beagle.
It’s now thought more in terms of fact and reason;
without the law, mere justice might seem like treason.
We’ve got to look to right, which comes from straight,
so our knowledge won’t be crooked, nor will our fate.
Remembering this, we arrive at Thesis Four
(the fourth of five; the penultimate door):
Knowledge is transmitted only imperfectly.
Straightness, which relates to the Greek for “stretching out,”
is an ancient metaphor for correct
remembrance, for clarity of recollection.
Our memories, insofar as they’re imparted,
turn into memories of memories
and are susceptible to thorough distortion.
Our task as educators is to impart them
in a way that accounts for distortion.
Justice is meted out through the cultivation
of uncertainty based on such shared memories
that are secondary, not primary.
We teach our students to suspend judgment, action…
the primordial basis of right and of law.
Have I succeeded? I’ve certainly tried.
Teenagers look for Truth in their uncertain guide.
Uncertainty’s merely a faded shade of green.
I know what it was to have been a teen.
I’m sure my elders thought I thought I knew it all.
Teenage self-confidence talks big, although it’s small.
It’s easy to forget they’re not so smug.
It’s just that they’ve recently learned that Man’s a bug
on the arse of an unlistening universe.
Their smugness is their blanket and their nurse.
Uncertainty must be introduced as a seed
and lodged in their skin in a way that it won’t bleed.
I doubt I’ve a measure for my success.
I’d be a liar if I did not so confess.
Finally, the biggie – the one about people
who build their own church – its nave, its steeple.
Well, what can I say that everyone else hasn’t?
But I don’t want my ending to be unpleasant.
So I’ll toss it out, Thesis Number Five –
the last of the conceptual bees in my hive
(and one final comment before I say goodbye:
I won’t say how I fared, though I could try;
democracy’s great, but it happens on the sly):
Our students, like ourselves, are repositories
of shared memory, of knowledge and thought.
Memories and thoughts vary, but only somewhat,
from language to language, from era to era,
from person to person, from place to place.
With democracy, we come full circle to care –
in which the disparate becomes the singular,
in which plurality is united.
E pluribus unum, it says on the quarter.
As You Walk Through Your Play
You can keep this in mind, as you walk through your play:
at least the kids appreciate your wit.
It’s something for you to hold onto through the day,
struggling with what usage does and doesn’t permit.
You’re sure to get a laugh, so don’t worry
if they understand you in any other sense.
It’s enough to us that they’re all making merry
as the now continues to build its fence,
obscuring what were our more particular points.
We all thought it a matter of timeless yearning.
But look at ‘em down there, passing their joints.
They all appear bound upon a keener turning.
Once more it’s the perennially changing temper
of the times. Anyway, just remember:
as long as the children are laughing, they’re learning.
* * *
I conclude by mentioning that I am
indebted to my mentor-teacher, Karen Tam.
April, 2007
Honolulu
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