Culture: July 2004 Archive Page

Teaching the Gifted Student (PILOT Reflections)

I was a little surprised to find "gifted students" on the list of subjects to discuss in an accessibility and inclusion workshop.

On the one hand, gifted students are a joy. They do the readings. They participate in class. They ask thoughtful questions.

On the other hand, gifted students can be a burden. They can monopolize class discussions. They might expect that simply being bright ought to be enough to earn them an A. They might send you multiple e-mails arguing over the half point they missed on a quiz. They demand that you justify the A- they got on a reflection paper, and insist that you list all the things they did "wrong". They never had to work this hard in high school, so you're obviously out to get them. Heaven help you if you should have to give them a B!

Gifted students aren't necessarily more mature than their peers. Sometimes high-achieving students hold scholarships that require them to keep extremely high GPAs, so it's not fair to dismiss hyper-awareness of grades as if it were motivated by pride and pettiness. It's very likely that they really do have a lot of additional pressure, beyond a desire for perfectionism or a competitive streak, to maintain the high grades they see as a sign of success.

One of the first classes I took in my Ph.D program was on the history of the English language. I knew I was learning a lot, so I was shocked when I found myself getting grades like 83 and 85. I made an appointment with the professor, and while I hope I didn't come off as belligerent or rude, I was eager to know what I was doing wrong. Little did I know that in the marking scheme at the University of Toronto, a grade from 80-89 is considered an "A", and 90-100 is an A+.

I sure felt like a grade-grubbing dweeb.

In school, I know I hated being put into groups with deadbeats who didn't carry their weight. Gifted students need additional challenges, but I think they rightly object to doing additional work simply because they are gifted. In a composition or literature class, I don't think I need to provide extra assignments to challenge gifted students. Writing is never finished the way a mathematical equation is solved or a list of anatomical terms is memorized.

While grade compression has diluted the meaning of an "A" from "top-notch, outstanding work" to "You didn't make any significant mistakes", for short assignments and exercise, I will single out the exceptional work of gifted students, to let them know I am paying attention. I grade most exercises on a four-point scale, and tell students that a 4 counts as an A, but I return their grades on slips of paper that include numbers from zero to five. It is possible to get a grade higher than a 4, but I give out 4.5s and 4s only very rarely. A few students will end up with quiz averages higher than a 4.0, but if they do, they've worked for it, and their other work is probably top-notch, too.

In the spring semester I changed the way I enforced late penalties for papers. If a student hands me a completed, properly-formatted and stapled paper at the beginning of the class period, I add a "decorum bonus" of 1/3 of a letter grade. If the paper is crumpled, unstapled, or unpaginated; if the student bursts into class 10 minutes late, with the pages still warm from the printer; if I find the paper slipped under my door a few hours after class, then the student loses the 1/3 decorum bonus.

It's kind of like doubling the price of your wall-to-wall carpet one week so that you can advertise a 50% price cut the next week, but this method permits me to grade a little more realistically. A student who is used to a 4.0 average might make some mistakes in an otherwise good paper. I can give it an A-, knowing that the true perfectionist will have turned it on time and in the proper format, and thus the grade will be bumped to an A. I don't appear to be an overly harsh grader, and the student who feels the world owes him or her a 4.0 doesn't burst into tears, yet the A- reinforces the message that the student could be doing better work.

After I've marked the first few freshman composition papers, it's usually pretty clear who the gifted writers are. Last year, when my Seminar in Thinking and Writing class had settled into a pattern that involved the five or six most active students doing all the talking while the rest listened, I told the core group of active participants that they had already distinguished themselves as active students who would probably get great class participation grades, and pointed out that if they keep raising their hands or talking among themselves, the whole class will stagnate.

I tell students who have already distinguished themselves as active participants that I will henceforth evaluate them on their ability to get the other students in the class to participate. That strategy has worked to a point, but whenever the gifted student gets excited about something, the old pattern returns. When my dean visited my classroom last term, she approvingly noted the teacher-student dynamic, but indicated that she would like to see more peer-to-peer interaction. My colleague Terry Brino-Dean asks students to fill out a self-assessment form every few weeks, which gets the students to focus on their efforts to foster classroom discussion.

My "Writing for the Internet" course has to accommodate students who are experienced bloggers and HTML authors, as well as students who can barely e-mail. While a student who is experienced with HTML is not necessarily gifted, and while a student who is not comfortable with technology may still be gifted, the diversity of opinion makes me realize I'll have to add more self-paced modules.

My last batch of student evaluations included complaints from students who thought the course moved too fast, as well as students who thought the course moved too slowly. I've asked a student who has already taken the course to serve as a mentor, which should help me give more specialized attention during labs.

In addition, I can ask the students who already know the material to help me teach it to those who don't. They'll have to cultivate a significant sense of ownership over the material if they are responsible for their peers's learning. (Of course, I'll help the student prepare, and I'll be ready to step in if the student stumbles.)

Teaching Students with Psychiatric Disabilities (PILOT Reflections)

When I was a grad student teaching a freshman writing class, a student wearing a leather jacket and miniskirt put her fishnet-stocking-clad leg up on the table and blew spit bubbles through her front teeth, popping them with her finger while talking to me about her assignment.

Maybe that was some sort of sorority initiation, but I still have nightmares about it. Another time, again while I was a grad student, on the final day of a class that I found very enjoyable, just when a small group of about four or five students were lining up to say good-bye to me, a student who had missed six of the last seven classes started screaming in my face because I wouldn't accept a paper that was four weeks late.

Student (holding hand knee-high): "I have a son!"

Jerz (cautiously): "Congratulations?"

Student: "It doesn't matter whether I have a son or not!"

Due to advances in medicine and a shift in attitudes towards institutionalization, more people with psychiatric disorders are attending college. I have had students walk out of the room when it was their turn to give an oral presentation and attack me verbally during class for my alleged slowness in solving the individual student's advising problem (something that had no relation to what the other 24 people in the room needed to hear).

Sometimes a student will gripe, or slam a fist on the desk, or stop out of the room. While it's never pleasant to be on the receiving end of such misbehavior, most students in the class can recognize when their peers step out of line. All I have to do is remind myself that this is crunch week, and I'm much less likely to take such crabbiness personally.

I don't mean to suggest that all students are psychotic and all instructors are helpless victims. Instructors do sometimes use their position of power in unethical or at least morally questionable ways. But in this post I'm reflecting on my own experience with students who seem mentally unbalanced.

I twice taught a student with a severe speech disfluency (the latest, or perhaps simply more accurate, term for what I would have otherwise called a "speech impediment), once in a lit class and once in an advanced tech writing class. The student was mostly fine speaking one-on-one, and often spoke up in class. I once asked her (in private) if she found herself stuck in a stutter, and I thought I knew what word she was trying to say, should I say it for her? She said no, just let her work her way through it. In the lit class, she was supposed to give a five-minute oral presentation. She asked whether she could use a computer to present something instead. I said yes. I imagined she would have handouts with activities for small groups, tied together with a slide show presenting the major themes, and then at the end of her oral presentation sum up what happened. Instead, she clicked through a small number of slides, then sat down.

It was really my fault. I completely misunderstood the nature of her speech disfluency.

Although she wasn't actually talking during her presentation, she was still nervous, and thus she couldn't manage a computer-based classroom activity, which is even more psychologically demanding than reading from a script. The next time she had to give an oral presentation, we spent more time planning an acceptable alternative.

When a student asks me to make an accommodation, I don't mind being a little flexible. I see nothing wrong with permitting an alternative format or giving extra assistance, as long as the student gives me reasonable lead time. But when it comes to excusing students from the consequences of late papers and bombed assignments, I have to be on guard. I don't want to reward a bright smooth-talker who has coasted on a talent for charming him or herself out of hard work. At the same time, I don't want to put up a barrier to block a student who finds it difficult to ask for help.

If the student claims to be in a crisis, I always respond as if I believe the student 100%, even if I secretly have doubts. I let the student know that whatever caused them to miss the deadline on that paper that was worth 20% of their final grade has got to be serious. Their first priority is to take care of that problem. Since I'm eager to accommodate students with legitimate excuses, the grade they get in my class should be the least of their worries.

A student who is really in a crisis will usually be relieved when I tell them that, once the current crisis is over, they can contact the dean or a university counselor, who can contact me so that the three of us can figure out what steps to take.

If the student continues to press me for specifics ("Can I reschedule the oral presentation I missed two weeks ago?"), then I'm generally less convinced the student is really in a crisis. A student who knows he or she has no good reason for requesting help will probably give up at this point. But a student with very low self-esteem, who blames him or herself unnecessarily, might also give up.

I do remind students that the university wants to keep taking their tuition money, so it's in our best interest to offer all sorts of services to keep students in school. If staying healthy means dropping a class or taking an incomplete, then so be it. If the student says he or she would rather not get anyone from the university involved, I point out that their problem (whatever it is) has already affected their grade in my class, and they're asking me to be involved by adjusting their workload somehow. When a problem starts affecting your education, that's a pretty good indicator that you're not handling it on your own.

When the student expresses reluctance to get the university involved, I point out that by missing work and coming to me to ask for an exception, they have already asked the university to become involved.

Since I'm not a trained therapist or counselor, and can't diagnose or treat their problems, I want assurance that the student is talking to somebody with the necessary knowledge.

It occurs to me that I don't want the dean to perceive me as passing the buck to her in order to avoid making a judgment call. Perhaps I should leave the dean out of it until I really need her input. I should ask the student to consult with an academic services counselor before approaching the dean.

Dyslexia in Freshman Composition Courses (PILOT Reflections)

While Seton Hill does offer an Honors section of "Seminar in Thinking and Writing" (the two-semester freshman comp and "welcome to college life" course), its other students of various abilities are mainstreamed. Students take a test during orientation, and may be placed in a one-credit lab course or a three-credit developmental course, either of which they take along with the regular STW course.

I've taught technical writing to students who were very shaky in their knowledge of English, so I do have some experience recognizing ESL issues. That means I am able to help work with students on their higher-level thinking processes, even though the drafts they give me may have small word-level errors.

But a student with dyslexia in a freshman composition course faces a difficult challenge. We can provide the student with a peer note-taker, we can audiotape lectures and discussions, and the writing center can offer one-to-one tutoring. But plenty students whose education is affected by dyslexia don't identify themselves as dyslexic, and thus don't seek out help.

A few years ago, I had a pair of exchange students in a literature class. Both participated ardently in classroom discussions, but one crashed and burned with every writing assignment. She was in tears in my office, when I noted that I am not an expert at diagnosing LD, but that I noticed what looked like coping mechanisms -- a fluency at talking through her ideas, a reluctance to draft and revise, a reluctance to stick to an outline, a resistance to structure. She wanted to think of herself as a free spirit who thrives on adrenaline and inspiration, rather than someone who has serious difficulty concentrating and planning. Since she didn't identify herself as LD, I told her that my hands were pretty much tied -- I couldn't excuse her from the work or change the criteria I used to judge her.

A few months after the class ended, I got an e-mail saying that when she was back in her home country, she did in fact get tested, and was diagnosed with dyslexia. A counselor showed her a whole new bag of coping mechanisms that were making school much easier for her.

It was one of those e-mails that you save in your "Why I Became a Teacher" file, to consult whenever you feel your enthusiasm flagging.

On the other hand, one student who relied upon an in-class note-taker started skipping way too many classes. I got a note from his academic tutor, informing me that he was having difficulty following my verbal instructions, and asking me to type them all out. This was during a period in class when we were going over student writing samples that I hadn't seen before, so there was no script that I could write out in advance. I wrote back, asking the tutor whether the student had discussed his attendance record, and suggested that the reason he was having difficulty following my oral instructions was because more than half the time, he wasn't in class to hear them. Once the tutor heard my side of it, she backed me up.

Asking the student to come to a one-on-one conference, and then sending a tape of that conference to a developmental tutor would not only help the student, but would also be an opportunity for the developmental tutor to advise me.

In SHU's "Seminar in Thinking and Writing," in-class discussion, the time- and stress-management lessons that students learn the hard way, and the bonding that occurs in extracurricular activities mean that even a student who is not demonstrating good progress in writing assignments may be gaining something from the class, and may be contributing significantly to the class culture. While students may be surprised by the extent to which college writing differs from the high school writing that earned them As, SHU offers many resources to students who are struggling.

I don't consider myself a gate-keeper, whose job is to flunk those students who aren't worthy of a college education. Still, the high-functioning students with learning disabilities that did not seriously affect their success in high school need to be encouraged to take advantage of the full range of resources that the university makes available to them.

Varying Instructional Methods (PILOT Reflections)

I wonder if I'd do a better job varying my instructional techniques if every college classroom came equipped with a first-grader to act as an early-warning system, ready to flop over on the carpet and moan at the first sign of boredom.

I love writing workshop days because there's usually little prep to do. On the rare occasion when I prepare a formal lecture, I do tend to take up the whole period (and sometimes more). After spending a week teaching first-graders in a Vacation Bible School, I learned very quickly the value of varying one's instructional approach.

Instead of a day-long writing workshop on Monday and a day-long lecture on Wednesday, split each day in half. That would also accommodating students who can't type or sit for extended periods.

Missing Class (PILOT Reflections)

Preface: Did I Miss Anything, a short poem by Tom Wayans.

Amusing: A FAQ page that I put up is the top Google hit for "missed class".

Students sometimes miss class for extended periods due to illness.

I once had a student who was a group leader in a technical writing class. She passed out assignments to her team members, then didn't show up for six weeks. This student was in regular contact with me, but her group members had little reason to believe that she would actually come back. I think I can understand why they wouldn't feel particularly motivated to work on their group project.

Whenever a student mentions a health problem, or a problem with a family member's health, even before I ask for documentation, I typically tell the student that their grade in my class should be the least of their worries. I don't mind making exceptions for students who miss class for reasons beyond their control.

Obviously, asking a dependable student to take notes, encouraging the student to keep up with the readings as much as possible, and inviting the student to participate in online activities as much as possible is a way to keep the student from dropping completely out of the classroom community. And since I design the in-class activities to reinforce the concepts that will become even more important in final projects and term papers, missing even a "fun" class can affect a student's grade later on.

Mobility as a Learning Needs Issue (PILOT Reflections)

My father has a neck injury that acts up whenever he is immobile for a long period of time. Concentrating or racing the clock aggravates his injury. Getting to sleep can also be a problem.

He has experimented with different seating postures, but what seemed to work best was if he happened to drop off to sleep in the middle of the day in front of the couch, don't wake him up -- it might be the best sleep he would get that day. His desk job with the U.S. Government was seriously impacting his health, although he could split wood with an axe and work like an ox outdoors.

If I knew a student had a similar mobility issue, I would try to schedule several different activities during a class period, letting the students know the general timeframe (so that a student who was feeling discomfort would know when the next change of pace is due). My students seem to welcome "circle games" and other activities that get them out of their seats, though I'm also aware that students who haven't done the readings welcome any change of focus, so I ration these games so that I'm not doing more than one in any given week of classes.

Circle games work well for classes that involve a lot of discussion, but classes that involve a lot of computer work would be a little harder to accommodate. Establishing small breakout groups, where students can pace, sit on chairs, sprawl across tables, or even use a cluster of couches in a lounge area would help.

If a student has mobility problems that prevent him or her from typing, then tape-recording lectures and using a human note-taker can help with the intake. Output, particularly in a timed classroom exercise, would be another issue. My own handwriting is atrocious, and in the academic crunch times, my carpal tunnel syndrome acts up. My previous department chair had a budget line for technology to prevent repetitive strain injury and other occupational injuries, so he sprang for Dragan Naturally Speaking, a voice-to-speech software package.

I seeded it with my dissertation, a few other academic articles, and the contents of my "sent" e-mail folder, so that it would have a good sense of my vocabulary. My personalized copy knows to capitalize words like Miller and Rice, since I'm less likely to talk about agriculture than about American playwrights. I rather enjoyed leaning back like Commander Adama dictating his log on Battlestar Galactica -- my words appearing as if by magic on the screen.

Getting thoughts down on the page is relatively easy, but using only voice commands to format and edit can be tricky. Navigating the web by voice is also a pain. The "fun" factor wore off quickly, and I felt like I wasn't "breaking even" until I was using the software for more than a month.

Editing the text once it's on the page can be very tedious -- I would generally switch back to the mouse and keyboard, but that's not an option not available to students with significant mobility impairment. It would make a tremendous difference to let the student know which assignments should be formatted and punctuated properly, and which can be just tossed off without any editing beyond what is necessary for clarity.

Asking that the student use voice-to-speech software is only part of the solution -- we can't have one student dictating her answers into a laptop while everyone else in the room works quietly.

Depending on the degree of mobility impairment, perhaps the student could use a trackball or other pointing device to complete an online quiz. If the purpose of the quiz is simply to make sure the students are doing the readings, I would probably try to rely more on multiple-choice and fill-in-the blank. For the essay questions, perhaps we could just converse in quiet tones while the rest of the students are writing.

Accessing a Map of the United States for a Visually Impaired Student (no answers -- just musings) (PILOT Reflections)

If I wanted to use a map of the United States in a class that includes a visually disabled student, what would I do? For a low-tech solution, I'm sure there are Braille maps, or 3-D maps that show terrain and so forth.

In "Cathedrals," a much-anthologized short story, a rather cynical sighted man who learns about the power and beauty of cathedrals while trying to describe them to a blind man. While the story employs the stereotype of a blind person as having the unique ability to "see" what the sighted characters cannot, it's an excellent metaphor for examining writing, teaching, art, architecture, and humanity in general. At the climax, the sighted man and the blind man draw cathedrals together -- that might be a way to help the student conceptualize the boundaries of the map.

I recall playing a computer game in the early 90s that let you terraform a planet. There was a lot of information to track. You could trigger what I think the interface called a "song," that would play a note to indicate the average temperature (or population density or water depth or whatever) in each horizontal band, from the north pole down to the south pole. If you left that "song" playing in the background while you tended to other matters, a sharp change in the "song" meant something was happening on a global scale.

I imagine that if I found a web page that has a good clickable image map, with alt text tags that can be fed to a screen reader, I'd be in good shape. I might download that map and personalize it with my own data.

I don't rely on maps to teach English, but I have used maps as part of a lesson in visual rhetoric. For instance, one an get a false sense of the geographic landscape of the United States through maps that show huge swaths of sparsely-populated counties voting Republican, while heavily populated areas that take up only a pinprick of space on a map vote for Democrats. (See this analysis of the Schwarzenegger vs. Bustamente contest for governor of California.)

How would one transmit that to a visually impaired person?

If it's not practical to make a physical model, one alternative would be to use sound. When the user mouses over a region, a different sound could play. Maybe the sound of a braying donkey for the Democrats, a trumpeting elephant for the Republicans. The volume or number of animals could vary to indicate relative differences. This would take some technical doing, of course.

A much more sophisticated version of the same thing is the subject of a Microsoft research project at the University of North Carolina called the Blind Audio Tactile Mapping System (BATS, though that acronym should be BATMS, shouldn't it?) I wasn't able to find a quotable prose description of the project, but I gather that it uses 3D surround speakers and "iconic sounds" such as the chirping of birds to represent a forest. If there is a forest west of the user's simulated position, the sound of birds might come from the left speaker. The volume of the iconic sound would represent distance, and perhaps the number of different birds would indicate the size of the forest. You'd be able to tell you are in the middle of a forest if there are bird songs playing all around you.

Something that is within my technical capabilities would be a textual version of the same thing. Imagine a text adventure game like this...

You are in the state of Virginia, where the lush rolling hills and soaring oaks dig their roots into the soft clay. To the northwest, hills rise to form the Blue Ridge Mountains. The land flattens out to the east, as it falls towards the Atlantic Ocean. In the northeast, the climate gets a little muggy and smoggy near Washington, D.C. (on the other side of the Potomac River).

Route I-95 leads north, through the District of Columbia and on to Maryland, and south to North Carolina.

>go ne

Northern Virginia

You are in northeast Virginia, a tangle of commuter highways and parking lots.

A mural that is part of the scenery in Emily Short's text adventure game "Metamorphoses" offers an excellent study in the granularity of textual representations of space. I recently played through Andrew Plotkins' "Shade" for the first time too -- it's a game set in one room, but the room has three distinct areas: a central living room, a bathroom alcove and a kitchen alcove. Depending on what object you interact with, the textual description differs, emphasizing those objects that are near other objects you have recently interacted with.

Hmm... something like that could be really interesting. There is a community of visually impaired computer gamers who play text adventure games (among others). I wonder if a class project like this would be a good way to introduce my students to interactive writing. One more thing for me to investigate, if only I had world enough and time.

I couldn't simply slap something like this together if I learn that a visually impaired student has just added into my class. Realistically, I'd probably check with a librarian to see whether we have (or can get) a tactile map.

After spending a bit of time on Google, I can see that Canada seems to be putting some resources into making maps accessible to the visually impaired. I might ask a few people I used to know at the University of Toronto whether they can point me to a website with online maps that might be useful for visually impaired users with screen readers.

Since my first instinct is always to go for the high-tech solution, I'll force myself to consider a low-tech alternative.

While I personally am not very into hands-on crafts, the presence in the class of a student with visual impairment would be an excellent motivator for having the class build a tactile representation of the information in question. Assuming that I wanted to present a map showing the rural nature of Republican political strongholds and the urban nature of the Democrat strongholds, we might photocopy an ordinary flat map onto several large sheets of paper. I'd ask the students in the class who identify themselves as Democrats to come up with an iconic tactile sensation (soft fuzzy fake fur? would that offend animal-rights activists) and likewise the Republicans (maybe fur would better represent the hunters' rights activists). Glue strips of this material on the map. Perhaps the more populous states could be built up with cardboard cutouts.

All these activities would be perfectly appropriate to a course in media studies. I can imagine that a student studying Faulkner, or Tolkien, or James Joyce would benefit from peer-manufactured tactile maps... such an activity would be great for the day students turn in a major paper, since most will have stayed up all night working on it and would appreciate a change of pace. If we're running low on creativity, I could at least ask a work-study student to glue yarn onto the contours of a basic line map, and use pushpins and other physical objects as icons to represent various features.

Including the Student with Moderate Hearing Impariment (PILOT Reflections)

I know a smidgen of sign language. I once rode a bus from Virginia to Texas, and happened to sit next to a hearing-impaired young woman. (Hmm... I was young at the time, too.) I learned to sign the alphabet when I was in third grade, and she could read lips, so we had a good starting point. I learned the basic concept of ASL very quickly, so much that sometimes when I didn't know the right word, I would guess, and either I guessed right, or I was close enough to understand. The sign for "forget" is sort of wiping a thought away from your forehead and throwing it away, so it makes sense that the sign for "remember" is grabbing a thought and putting it into your forehead.

My two-year-old daughter likes repeating the sign language gestures done by Maggie Stewart, the actress who plays Mayor Maggie on Mr Rogers' Neighborhood. (When Ms. Stewart and some of the other cast of the show were recently at a local theme park, Ms. Stewart sort of clicked out of auto-pilot, put down her autograph pen and spent some time signing back and forth with my daughter. The fact that my daughter toddled up to her and, in sign language, called her "beautiful" and "wonderful" probably helped get her attention!)

But there is no way that I could learn enough ASL to translate my lectures if I learned a few days before class started that a hearing-impaired student had signed up for one of my classes.

Using blogs as a way of discussing class material will help level the playing field, so to speak, but I'm going to work against my tendency to see blogs as the solution to every instructional problem.

While I depend upon the classroom bonding that takes place during informal class discussion, that bonding can take place through more physical and visual activities.

I've picked up some other tips that seem pretty obvious, but which I might not think of in the middle of a class:

• Show DVDs with the titles turned on.
• Don't turn your back to the class (to write on the board, for example).
• Speak slowly (that will be a problem with me!)

I already often send follow-up e-mails after introducing new material. Perhaps the hearing-impaired person would benefit from being able to read this material first, so that the classroom experience is less fatiguing.

At my previous job, a student did a senior project on the humor of hearing-impaired persons. An example she gave was that after Clinton's sexual history began to affect his presidency, the sign for "Clinton" changed in the deaf community, taking on some of the elements of the sign for "slippery" or "slick" (or maybe it was "waffle", I don't remember -- something else mildly critical). And I'm also familiar with the play/movie "Children of a Lesser God," which operates from the premise that sign language is a beautiful culture in its own right, one that risks being destroyed if the world at large forces the hearing impaired to adapt to the culture of the hearing world.

I'd be careful not to expect the hearing impaired person to give "the deaf side of things", just as I wouldn't single out the lone non-white student or the lone male student to give a minority report. Still, if I were teaching a literature or media class, I would try to include "Children of a Lesser God" along with, say, "The Miracle Worker" (the story of Helen Keller).

Depending on the future educational and career goals of the hearing-impaired student, I would consider how strictly I would ask him or her to conform to standard written English. I'd probably be lenient in a literature or media production course, but I'd have to educate myself on the syntax of signed English, which, when translated into written English, can be structurally very different. Asking this student to participate in informal typed conversations, via e-mail or via blogs, may help the hearing impaired student recognize the differences between standard written English and transcribed signed English.

If the student has moderate hearing impairment, and can understand conversational speech but may miss offhand comments made by students in the back of the room, then I might restructure classroom discussion so that it is more ordered. Students speaking into a microphone may begin with prepared statements, and then a panel will give their responses. Students could then break up into small groups, so that everyone gets the chance to participate in a freer discussion, but the hearing-impaired student doesn't have to strain to listen to comments lobbed from the back of the room. Students might be asked to write up a conclusion from their breakout sessions, and post it to a central location.

Actually, now that I think about it, if the students who start with formal statements were required to submit them in advance for a grade, so that they could be reviewed in advance by the hearing-impaired student, that strategy would also help students who feel uncomfortable speaking in class, who have difficulty taking notes, who regularly miss class due to extracurricular or health obligations, etc. (That may be a good example of Universal Design.)

Revising Seminar in Thinking and Writing (with an eye on inclusion) (PILOT Reflections)

In my first year teaching at SHU, I found the wide range of students I encountered to be eye-opening. My Seminar for Thinking and Writing class included top-notch students who showed up already knowing how to do college-level research, and it also included students whose fear of public speaking or whose dyslexia caused significant challenges.

Since Seminar in Thinking and Writing is a year-long course that also serves as sort of first-year-experience "homeroom" class, I think it makes good sense to have a wide range of students in the class. SHU also offers a one-credit lab and a three-credit developmental course that goes along with STW, for those students who need extra help. If I work more closely with the other resources on campus that are available to students, I think I can make STW a better experience for students with additional learning needs.

In my previous STW course, only one student was identified in advance as needing special accommodation; and a volunteer from the class took notes for another student who has difficulty following oral instructions. But issues with time management, fear of public speaking, and the pressure of timed assignments also surfaced. In a slightly different but not unrelated category are those students who missed far too many classes due to athletic commitments.

I was glad to see that the course asked us to look at the example of a student-athlete with far too many commitments. It’s refreshing to be reminded that I’m not the only instructor who feels frustrated about how difficult it is to teach students who miss class. A student who misses class misses out on the discussions, informal interaction, and bonding that takes place in the classroom. That student also misses the opportunity for Q & A, and timeliness is a factor, too – a question that I would love for a student to ask two weeks before an assignment is due may be a burden for me to answer (and impossible for the student to absorb) the night before the assignment is due.

Sometimes I feel like a broken record, reminding students how important it is to manage one’s time. But I’m the pot calling the kettle black – I often chat far too long with students during my office hours, and then rush through a stack of papers to return them in time. There are some necessary activities that are not fun, and there are some fun activities that are not necessary.

One major adjustment I will make is to rely less on the oral delivery of instructions. However, when I shift to written prose descriptions, I tend to get too verbose. I have a large collection of online instructional handouts, and any time I find myself explaining anything in words, part of my brain starts wondering, "How can I make this chunk of text do double-duty as part of an online handout (or weblog entry)?" Invariably, I add too many hyperlinks to related concepts, which frustrates the student who simply wants to know what I want for this particular assignment.

Promoting Instruction and Learning Opportunities with Technology (PILOT) project (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

I’m taking training in acessibility via Seton Hill’s Promoting Instruction and Learning Opportunities with Technology (PILOT) project. I’ll be blogging some of my thoughts on the "inclusion" unit of this online course.

• Revising Seminar in Thinking and Writing (with an eye on inclusion)
• Universal Design in Education
• Including the Hearing Impaired Student
• Seeking a Map of the United States for the Visually Disabled: A Remediation Thought Exercise
• Mobility as a Learning Needs Issue
• Health Issues: Students Missing Class, or Restricted from Writing or Sitting
• Varying Instructional Methods
• Dyslexia in "Seminar in Thinking and Writing"
• Teaching the Student with Psychatric Disability
• Accessibility and Gifted Students
• Traditional Methods are Tools, Too

This site is about TV Licensing? (the "television licensing authority") . . .

. . . and how they treat those who do not have television.

I have not had a television for many years. One would think that would be an end to it, but it isn't. One cannot simply refuse this entertainment service, without appearing to be dishonest in the eyes of TV Licensing? (a.k.a. the Television Licensing Authority or TVLA). The non-viewer does not fit into their framework. To TV Licensing? there are licence-payers and licence-dodgers and the non-viewer (with whom they really have no business) is treated as a suspect licence-dodger. Whether there should be a licence-fee at all (or the present organisation to collect it) is a new and interesting topic; however, this site is primarily concerned with how the mechanism of BBC funding unfairly affects those who do NOT have television.
--How the British television licensing system unfairly affects those who do NOT have TV (Marmalade.net)

In the UK, an impressive public broadcasting system (the BBC) is funded by expensive licences extracted from TV owners. But not everyone watches TV.

Suggested by "Non-viewer in the UK" in a comment posted to "The Disgrace of the BBC."

She graduated a year ago with a major in English and a minor in information systems. Now she works as a cashier. She wore a red smock and a little plastic nametag with the word "Target" on the bottom.

Pampers, VeggieTales videos, Harry Potter paperbacks, and kitchen utensils designed by Michael Graves rolled by. My former student scanned and bagged the objects as if she was running on a treadmill. She recognized me, and I tried to return her nervous smile. We each asked how the other was doing and said "good." I swiped my card, and she gave me a receipt. There were bored people all around, and the whole conversation was understood in a few embarrassed glances.

"Good to see you," I said, leaving. "Yeah, you too, professor," she said, flatly. I saw her feigned cheerfulness droop a little as she turned to the next customer. --"Thomas H. Benton" --An Adviser Without Advice (Chronicle)

I've been very fortunate in the academic job crapshoot. All of us who advise undergraduates do so from the same position of privilege. I admire “Benton” for his frankness. I can permit myself to dismiss some of the observations made by outsiders, and thus wave it away with a nervous laugh. But this was written by an insider, which makes it more painful.

Last term, while talking with a professional outside academia, I came up with this forumua. I can prepare students to be competitive when it comes to getting an internship, and the internship can prepare the dedicated student for a job in the real world. While many of the students I teach are English education majors, who are in fact pegs being groomed to fit into a very specific hole, that grooming happens in their education classes, not in my English classes.

Since I advise the student paper, I am involved in training students for a particular trade, but many of the students who work on the paper aren't planning to be journalists -- they just like doing it. I tell my journalism majors, and high school students who are considering Seton Hill, that if they expect a piece of paper to get them a job after four years, they should consider a full-fledged journalism college, or something like education or nursing.

An article that Benton wrote a few years ago, "A Superhero's Perspective on the MLA Convention," has deeply affected the way I advise students who are considering (or in) grad school. When I first read it, I was on the job market, and things were actually going pretty well for me, but it kept me humble: "[T]his is a conditioned response from people who reacted to schoolyard taunts by winning the praise of teachers. But, as one advances and ages in the profession, there are fewer and fewer teachers to please."

A road trip with someone you've never met—more specifically, a road trip across a prison-clogged desert with an English professor you've never met—is a delicate thing, and we both want this to go well, because he's about to be my guide and interpreter for four days at the 119th Annual Modern Language Association Convention. Gideon Lewis-Kraus --In the Penthouse of the Ivory Tower (The Believer)

It's a tradition for reporters to attend and mock the MLA convention.

I find I enjoy the 4Cs (Conference on College Composition and Communication) to be much more enjoyble and practical, but that's only natural... college composition is a much more practical subject. My memories of going to the MLA are so closely connected to a harrowing job search. Further, the MLA convention is always between Christmas and New Year's, and since the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas are full of marking papers and dealing with stressed students, I'd rather spend that time with my family.

As mockworthy as the MLA is, any organization develops its own jargon and culture; and specialists who come together to talk to other specialists rarely do a good job communicating their relevancy to outsiders.

Lewis-Kraus does a good job placing this article in the context of the anti-intellectualism and humanities-bashing one often finds in certain sectors of contemporary culture. The MLA conference is for modern languages, not just English, though throughout the author keeps referring to the relevance of English research and publication.

Some amusing, well-written anecdotes, such as this one:

As Charlie and I orbit the small table, calculating who deserves how much of the steadily evaporating cheese, a short bald man approaches; he's wearing a green argyle vest and a maroon tie emblazoned with little shieldlike insignia. His name tag reads "DOD." Charlie steps backward, away from the table and asks him, "What does DOD stand for?"

"Department of Defense," says the man, as he commands the remaining hunks of cheese. We both freeze for a minute before Charlie produces an anxious chuckle. "Oh, interesting. What are you, uh, up to, here?"

"Oh, I'm a translator at DLI, the Defense Language Institute, and I'm here for some, uh, workshops on translation." Charlie tries to mollify the man with an anecdote about his wife's failing a security clearance test at DLI as a teenager, but the man says nothing in response and takes the rest of the cheese. The man wanders off.

"Why'd you talk to that guy?" I ask Charlie. "He's probably uploading our names and pictures to some defense satellite right now."

"And he took the rest of the cheese," Charlie says.

And this:

The actual papers delivered are so bizarre and freakish and sodden with jargon as to make them utterly incomprehensible. But it is a truly virtuosic incomprehensibility that makes sense only as a kind of poetic performance.

Bill Stevenson, 79, and Sten Gerfast, 74, both retired 3M employees, were eating at the Sun Ray Shopping Center Bruegger's Bagels when they heard a man cursing loudly on his cell phone, they said Friday.

"You know, there were about 15 people in there and some children and this person, if he stood in the corner and talked in his cell phone, that would be one thing, but he actually walked among the tables, pacing and talking loudly and you could tell he annoyed a lot of people," said Gerfast, of Mendota Heights.

After hearing the obscenities, Gerfast said he approached the man and said, "Would you mind, sir, to go outside and take your call?"

He was met with a round of obscenities, according to a police report, that would have made Vice President Dick Cheney blush. --Mara H. Gottfried --Cursing on cell phone starts bagel-shop bruhaha (Duluth News Tribune)

Suzuki Sampler: Cello | Piano | Violin | GuitarSuzuki Sampler: Guitar (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

It's 20 minutes after we're supposed to have started, and there's no instructor here. When you consider how rapidly a Suzuki lesson goes, I figured that didn't bode well for today.

My son Peter and the other student in the class, Georgie, immediately start playing with each other while they wait.

Complicating matters is the fact that I have to leave early, so my wife has to bring our 2-year old along.

The instructor arrives. If she gives her name, I don't catch it. She begins with the standard "get to know the instrument" demonstration.

The guitar is your friend. Will never fight with you or break up with you. When you're happy, he's with you. When you're sad, he's with you. But you have to be delicate.

Hmm… I'm not sure that my six-year-old son would understand the concept of "breaking up," but otherwise the introduction is fine. The instructor shows the guitar's head and neck, and asks the boys to show their own heads and necks. That's working out well enough.

Since the boys have seen two other string instruments this week, Peter glances at the handout and shrugs. "You know what, I don't even need to look at this to know what it is."

But there are parts of a guitar that don't correspond to other instruments. For instance, I didn't know there was such a thing as a "tapping plate".

Georgie recognizes the bridge, and sings a bit of the cello teacher's "this is the bridge" melody. He starts tapping the guitar, which upsets Peter, but the instructor says that's fine.

Now that Peter knows the instructor won't get mad if he touches the guitar, he's like a moth to a flame. The instructor keeps shifting it over a few inches, just out of his reach, and Peter keeps scooting after it.

When I leave, Peter and Georgie are learning the letters that go along with the fingers on their right hand -- p, i m, a, e. I wonder what the letters stand for, and why there isn't a mnemonic for it.

I give the camera to Leigh and head off to my meeting across town.

* * *

When I get home a couple hours later, Leigh is on the couch, reading books to Carolyn, and Peter is nowhere in sight. He's in bed already.

Uh-oh.

Leigh tells me that the lesson was a disaster.

Peter was sticking out his tongue at everybody, shouting "blaah!" and "I don't care!". When Georgie decided that he would be a dog for the rest of the night, Peter chased him around and tried to knock down his imaginary doghouse.

According to Leigh, this is the worst she's ever seen Peter act in public. (He can be stubborn and sullen, but I've really only seen him throw one honest-to-goodness temper-tantrum, and he was probably only two then. Now, he prefers to stew over a particular injustice, rather than lash out in general lamentations concerning the injustice of the universe, which is more Carolyn's style.)

The previous lessons (in cello, piano, and violin) always seemed to teeter on the verge of chaos, but somehow managed to remain coherent. I think that after 20 minutes of playing with each other, George and Peter were too interested in each other to focus when the guitar finally arrived.

According to Georgie's mom, Carolyn, whose presence we worried would be disruptive, was the only one good enough to deserve to play the instrument.

[Translated from Italian, by Google.]

More interesting, above all for the informative content, are instead articles of historical character like "The scientist on the stage: to survey "of M. To Orthofer, a review of teatrali witnesses from the classic antiquity today with a more rather wide deepening on the dramas of the atomic "era ", or "The experimental seduction of mechanistic modernism in Eugene O' Neill' s ' Dynamo' and the Federal Theatre Project' s ' Altars of steel'" of Dennis G. Jerz that faces the glares of the cultural debate in years Twenty and Thirty on the transformation in industrial sense of the United States, passing from the end of the strong critic of O' Neill in the comparisons of the blind faith in the progress to the end of the propaganda dramas on the effects benefits of the industrialization process. (Google's translation of Silvana Barbacci) --Review: Science and Theatre: between pedagogical debate and historical reconstruction (Journal of Science Communication)

A review of a special issue of Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, (Volume 27, Number 2, Autumn 2002) where I published an article that remixed parts of two separate chapters of my dissertation. As far as I can tell from the translation, the reviewer, Barbacci, seems to complain about dramatists (and critics?) who make mistakes with their science or technology in order to make a didactic point. He places my article in the more favorable "historical reconstruction" category.

If anyone out there can help me make sense of the original Italian, I'd be grateful.

Suzuki Sampler: Cello | Piano | Violin | GuitarSuzuki Sampler: Violin (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

Monday was cello, Tuesday was piano, today is violin.

Miss Ramona starts with the usual chit-chat that one can count on going over well with young kids.. how old are you? She asks them how old they think she is.

Peter thinks. "You're probably twenty-five years old." (He’s way under. She doesn't correct him.)

Miss Ramona has the kids pick a sticker and put it on the carpet, then sit on it. Peter is reluctant to sit on whatever Lion King character he’s chosen, but he does so anyway.

She asks them to sit “like an Indian.” Years of politically correct conditioning in academia cause me to cringe each time I hear that, though that’s probably an over-reaction.

She leaves them sitting on the ground for a while, while she sets up. (She had been teaching a private lesson until right before we entered.)

Peter squirms too much. George leans over and snaps, in a tone that exactly mimics the command I have been hissing at Peter all week: "Listening body!" (A positive alternative to "Don't slouch and roll around like that, pay attention instead!")

When the students ask a lot of questions or plead to hold their instruments right away, Miss Ramona doesn’t let them babble on off topic – she cuts them off with a pleasant but final "Nope."

Once she is set up, selecting little violins that are the right size for her pupils, she gives a little lecture about following directions -- and threatens to take away the violin if the students don't do what she wants, when she wants it.

This isn't playtime.

She's perfectly pleasant, sitting on the floor with the kids, and nicknaming Georgie “baby doll,” but she's also very professional and efficient.

While the little tiny violins are still in their cases, on the floor next to each student, Miss Ramona first plays Twinkle, Twinkle. She explains it’s the first song you learn on any instrument in the Suzuki method, and I understand that it’s also always the last song that one plays at a Suzuki concert, so that everyone – even the newest students – can play along.

I’m getting very familiar with that song.

Miss Ramona plays it again, and asks them to sing along this time. She claps for them when they’re done.

10 minutes into the class, they are doing fairly well.

She introduces the string family, taking the word “family” literally. The violin is the baby, the viola is the big brother. Cello is mommy, bass is dad.

"Who's the sister?" asks Peter.

"There is no sister, it's a boy family," says the daughter of the cello instructor (who has been hanging around with nothing better to do while her mother teachers in another room).

Miss Ramona demonstrates the instrument’s pitch range, she plays it at different speeds, she shows how to bow, pluck, and bounce the strings with the wood of the bow (a "special effect"), She also demonstrates the mute.

At the 15 minute mark, they open up the tiny violin case – but they take out only the bow. The violin doesn’t come out for another 5 minutes.

As they go through the anatomy of the instrument, Peter recalls a bit from Monday’s cello lesson, though he calls the scroll a "screw", and the pegs "pins," the fingerboard "finger rest." He does remember "bridge".

The students pluck the E string. The A string lives next door, and on to D and G.

At one point, Peter raises his hand and solemnly informs the instructor that a whitesmith works with steel, and a blacksmith works with iron.

She smiles. “Ooo-kay.”

When she demonstrates what happens to the sound of a string when you play it while also turning the tuner, the tuner makes a horrid clicking sound.

"Stop that," says Peter, worried. "I don't want to see you doing that.”

He’s convinced that she’s breaking the violin, because we have a little plastic toy guitar at home, and when you turn the little cheesey plastic toy tuner, the little cheesy plastic toy strings pop out, and Daddy has to fix it.

“Stop that!” says Peter. “Or else."

The instructor stops, her curiosity roused. "Or else… what?"

Pause.

Peter folds his arms. "I'm not doing that," he says, meaning he’s not going to turn the tuner.

Miss Ramona goes back into her spiel about how the vibration and tension of the string affects the sound.

Peter sighs. "We've heard that over and over."

Miss Ramona taps the violin, and invites the students to tap theirs and listen to the sound.

Peter won't tap the violin -- he doesn't want it to break.

Miss Ramona tries to get Peter to loosen up a bit. "You probably couldn't hit it hard enough with your hand to break it," she says.

Peter eyes his violin.

I blurt out, “Peter, don’t try.”

I needn’t have been worried. Obviously the instructor's reference to the violin as the baby of the string family has made an impression -- Peter wants to cradle his. "Has anyone made up a song called 'Rock a Bye Violin'?"

The cellist’s daughter seems to have officially crashed our lesson. With a new student in the room, the dynamic changes; George and Peter have just barely gotten used to the idea of taking turns, but with a third person, there’s a bit more squirming and poking going on.

The cellist’s daughter has taken cello for five years (she looks about seven or eight) and has to unlearn a few cello things in order to do violin things. Her hand shoots up with an answer for every question. She knows all about what rosin is for and how to put on your bow, but when asked where rosin comes from, she pipes up: “Maple.” She doesn’t know how or why, she just knows rosin has something to do with the word "maple". While the girl is very sweet, the competitive Dad in me is pleased to see that something has stumped her.

Peter gasps – he notices the instructor has been touching the bow with her finger. “Don't touch the horsehair!” he blurts, genuinely concerned.

"She knows what she's doing," says the cellist’s daughter.

Peter (holding the rosin up to her): "Sap!"

I snicker into my hand. That was a good one, Peter, though I’m sure it was completely unintentional.

At the 36 minute mark, the kids are doing very well, though they’re still eager to start bowing.

Peter suggests that the rosin and pitchpipe can be the violin’s cousin.

Peter hears someone scraping away at a cello. He reaches out towards it, looking for all the world like the Frankenstein monster from "Young Frankenstein," clawing away at the air which bears the music which calms the savage breast. "I think the cellos are going on!" he shrieks.

Our instructor introduces four rhythms that are important for playing violin:

Mississippi hot dog.
ice cream (shh) cone.
Ham-burger cheese-burger
Michael Michael motorcycle

At the 45 minute, we take a little break. When we come back, we practice stretching and reaching with the “bow hand” and the “violin hand”.

Learning to hold the bow: make a bunny with your hand. Pinky and index finger up, other two touching thumb. Now the students show their parents.

Holding the bows more or less properly, it’s time for “Bow Olympics.”

Make windshield wipers – back and forth, back and forth.

So far, so good.

Now, make a rocketship.

Whoops – immediately, both boys start making engine noises and running all around the room, making their bows chase each other and shoot laser missiles.

The idea is to get them to hold their bow straight up and down, so perhaps “tree” or “flagpole” would be a better image to put in their heads.

It takes some time to calm them down for the next step…

What’s your favorite food? Macaroni and cheese, of course.

The students use their bow to help them stir a big imaginary pot of macaroni and cheese.

After some singing practice, it’s time for posture. One at a time, they stand before the teacher, first holding just the violin, then both violin and bow. This takes much more doing than playing the cello.

Finally, after more than an hour, they’re ready to play “Mississipi hot dog” on one string.

Time to put the violins back in their case for some more listening. Peter pleads to play again. He makes his hands into spaceships and makes them swoop, dive and shoot at each other – a nervous habit that flares up for weeks at a time whenever he watches one of the Star Wars movies.

The cello teacher arrives to pick up her daughter. She and the violin teacher talk shop a bit. The violin teacher turns to Peter and asks which he likes better, violin or cello?

Peter looks from one to the other.

“Piano,” he says. Then, after a tiny pause, “And violin and cello.”

For his prize at the end of the day, Peter receives a sparkly butterfly sticker.

He brings it right to me. “You wear it,” he says. “I'm just too generous.”

The lesson is over.

Peter pines after the closed violin case.

"I want to play!"

Elisha Gray (born in Barnesville, Ohio, on Aug. 2, 1835, died Newtonville, Mass., on Jan. 21, 1901) would have been known to us as the inventor of the telephone if Alexander Graham bell hadn't got to the patent office one hour before him. Instead, he goes down in history as the accidental creator of one of the first electronic musical instruments - a chance by-product of his telephone technology. --Elisha Gray and 'The Musical Telegraph' (1876) (Obsolete.com)

Thanks for the suggestion, Rosemary.

Suzuki Sampler: Cello | Piano | Violin | GuitarSuzuki Sampler: Piano (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

The piano lesson was a little more stressful than yesterday's cello lesson, in part because we have a few toy and electric piano keyboards around the house. While playing with the cello, and even smelling it, was a new and exotic sensation, the action of sitting down and hitting a key is familiar to him (via his exposure to computer games).

Nevertheless, I am enjoying my own exposure to the Suzuki method.

First, Miss Charlene asks the students to say the musical alphabet - A B C D E F G. She claps her hands with each letter, and invites the boys to do the same. She then invites the younger boy (who is very squirmy today) to make up a different gesture. He flaps his arms. Miss Charlene and Peter imitate him, shouting out letters. While the other instructor always started with Peter and then let the younger boy copy Peter, this instructor seems to spread it around fairly evenly.

Next, the children are invited to sit at the piano and push a few keys. Then the instructor starts at the lowest white key and plays each one, counting as she goes.

By the time she gets to forty, both boys are squirming, but she soldiers on... after reaching the top, she works her way back down on the black keys.

So far, so good.


Now it's time to do some simple stepping up and down, focusing on getting the students to use five fingers of one hand.

The familiar melody "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" is divided up to four sections:

* Bread: "Twinkie, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are."
* Peanut butter: "Up above the world so high"
* Jelly (softer): "Like a diamond in the sky"
* Other piece of bread: "Twinkie, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are."

The transitions from the piano (on one side of the room) to the table (on the other side) aren't going very well. Peter and George feel comfortable enough with each other to poke each other and play. The colored stickers they're supposed to put on a picture of a clown each time they learn a lesson are just too tempting to fiddle with during the next tabletop lesson.

When the instructor holds up a little rubber treble clef, Peter brightens -- he recognizes it from Jump Start Music (computer game), and correctly identifies it as a G clef.

The game that comes next is a hit. One student goes out into the hall, while another hides the treble clef somewhere in the room. When the first player comes back in, looking for the treble clef, a third student plays louder on the piano when the first student gets closer to the clef.

I notice that the instructor asks each of the boys if they would like to be the player, but neither volunteers. They choose to do the hiding or seeking, so the instructor does the playing -- and introduces the next melody in the process.

Just as parents were drafted into playing the cello last time, parents are drafted into playing "hunt the treble clef" this time.

Peter is able to find C with no trouble, playing it up and down the keyboard. He finds F pretty easily too. Now the instructor holds up a raisin, and announces that she will say either C or F, and Peter has to play the right note before the raisin drops to the ground.

I am pleased at how well is doing.

Then when it's little George's turn, I notice the trick -- she waits until he has decided which key to go for, and then she drops the raisin. It doesn't really make any sound when it hits the ground, so when she says George wins, he just beams happily.

As I noted, transitions aren't going very well. Yesterday, each boy had his own cello, but today they have to share the piano. There's a lot of sliding around on the bench, poking each other playfully when they share the bench, and flopping and slouching in their chairs while they wait for their next turn at the piano.

Just when both boys are near the breaking point, the instructor calls a bathroom break. When the students return, each gets a baggie full of crackers, on which they munch in relative contentedness, while the instructor reads to them a book about the orchestra.

She also has big flash cards designed to teach rhythm, and introduces a rest.

At one point, sitting on his chair while George takes a turn, Peter looks around forlornly.

"I wish the cellos were here," he says.

(Update: Corrected Miss Charlene's name.)

Suzuki Sampler: Cello | Piano | Violin | GuitarSuzuki Sampler: Cello (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

In the first few moments of his first Suzuki music lesson, my six-year-old son is sitting on the floor with Miss Rann, who is introducing him to the parts of a cello.

The instructor sings a very simple melody: "This is the bridge," and the students are supposed to sing back, "This is the bridge."

"This is the fingerboard," she sings, to a different tune.

"This is the fingerboard," the students repeat.

Maybe the bits of music she is singing are from a famous composition she's trying to drill into their minds. I never learned to play an instrument, and my knowledge of music is very limited, so I have no idea. Maybe she's just improvising.

For about ten years I was a church cantor, but I never had any formal training (other than an hour or so before Mass, and the occasional extra practices for more complex Christmas and Easter programs). The most I can say for myself is that I was probably a little better than having no song-leader at all, though I did enjoy it because many people in the congregation already knew the songs, they just needed to be reminded when to start.

Later, when she points to the bridge again, the instructor uses the same tune, singing, "What is this piece?"

She asks Peter to sing a question to the other boy, and vice versa. They're practicing pitch without realizing it, just like The Karate Kid, who polished Mr. Miyagi's old cars with a circular motion, not realizing he was practicing the motion you use to deflect an opponent's blow. Okay, I think I get it now.

I'm very impressed with Miss Rann's ability to keep his attention. Peter and the other boy are the only students in our group, so I'm sure that helps. Still, I'm amazed.

Now they are practicing posture -- how to sit down and get ready to play cello. One -- stand with feet together. Two -- move left foot left. Three -- sit on edge of chair, holding imaginary cello in left hand. Four -- tuck in and start playing.

One -- feet together.
Two -- feet apart.
Three -- sit down.
Two. (Whoops! She faked them out! After some fiddling, the kids stand up, feet apart.)

One. Two. Three. Four.

Peter does pretty well, aside from tending to fart on "Three", though it's the adults in the room who exchange glances and try not to laugh.


"Boy, you look good playing a cello," says the teacher. "You look like a born cellist!"

Peter puffs up at the flattery.

"Now I want to see how strong you are -- how long can you hold a cello, while you listen to me play?"

Peter looks very serious. "Excuse me, you'd better use the bow."

She does. He seems to enjoy the music the teacher makes. He closes his eyes, listening.

A little later, he chirps, "Look, I can hold the cello with my eyes closed!"

The teacher asks the kids to sing along with her as she plays each of the cello's four strings, A D G C. The lyrics:

"Axe, Dig into the Ground, all the way to China."

"Do you know why we have to sing?" she asks.

"Because you do," says Peter.

Well, yes, but she also wants the students to get into the habit of hearing the notes in their head, or they won't play them right.

Peter plucks the strings in the right order -- he is accompanying the instrutor as she sings! I'm amazed.

I watch more closely, and of course the instructor can see his fingers (which I can't, not from my position behind him), so she times her singing to his uncertain plucking.

Still, the illusion works -- and he laughs with pleasure.

I can't help but think of Harold Hill's 'Think System'. I wonder if The Music Man was written as a response to the Suzuki method?

When it's the other boy's turn to play, and Peter has to wait, he presses his nose against his (borrowed) cello, announcing, "Well, if I can't play it, I'll smell it."

A little later, the students pluck G over and over, one two one two, plucking while the instructor bows a more complex harmony around it.

I have to bite my tongue to keep from barking out orders, realizing Peter has to learn to listen to his instructor, and that if he's not ready to do that, he's not ready to play an instrument.

So far, they've only plucked. Peter has asked eight or ten times to use the bow.

While the other little boy takes a bathroom break, the teacher shows Peter how to put rosin (resin from a tree? Miss Rann has an accent that I can't place, so I'm not getting all her words, and she's not talking to me anyway) on Peter's bow, and lets him tug on it.

The other boy comes back; the instructor asks Peter to explain what rosin is and where it comes from.

I realize that, as much as possible, she's first instructing Peter, then asking him to repeat the lesson for the younger boy. The little boy gets to watch the new step twice before he's expected to perform it, and Peter gets the lesson reinforced when he teaches it.

"I'm tired," says the other boy.

Peter pretends his hands are spaceships and makes them shoot at each other -- something he does almost constantly, whenever his mind wanders.

Now it's time to teach a conductor's gestures. She lets the boys play whatever they want, but getting them to play soft and loud together, and -- very important -- to stop on her cue.

It's been just about 20 minutes. Now it's time for a walking break -- she takes the kids out into the hall. Away from the instruments.

Away from the parents.

They must have been playing follow-the-leader and Simon Says out there, because when they come back into the room, Peter is eager to get back to his instrument, yet they first have to play "Cello Maze".

Follow the teacher as she weaves through the chairs, around the cellos placed carefully on the floor. The object is not to kick the chairs or the instruments.

"I'm sure that piano is easier," says Peter at one point.

Now it's time for the "Cello Song," which is designed to remind the students to hold the cello with their knees and chest, not their hands:

I love my cello very much
I play it every day
I love to watch my spinning strings
When my hands fly away.

I can't help but think of the Battlestar Galactica episode where Starbuck taught some kids a battle plan in rhyme.

Next, it's time to turn the cello over and tap out a beat on the back. The teacher taps it out, then puts her hand on her head -- the sign that the student should repeat it. Peter has played rhythm games like this before in computer games, so he does very well. The other little boy strokes his cello, which squeaks under his palms. Instead of telling the boy, "No, don't make it squeak, you should tap it instead," the instructor compliments him on learning a new sound to make. Everyone tries to make their cello squeak for a while.

Whoops -- the middle part of the class flew by without any time for me to take notes. But I quickly noted that she's alternating "playing the instrument" with some other more physical activity.

The instructor demonstrates how the cello can make the sounds of a cow, a mouse, and a woodpecker. We sing and play "Old MacCello Had a Farm."

I have to help Peter; she's going a little fast, and Peter is getting frustrated his sounds don't sound like hers. He doesn't care that much about the cow, he wants to keep doing the mouse.

Just in time, the teacher gives them a break from the instruments.

What I don't expect is that I and the other parent get drafted to play the one two one two G drone in something the instructor calls "Muset" -- I didn't expect to be asked to play anything, but it was easy, and doing it really felt great.

Ten more minutes left.

She's teaching students how to bow (not the horsehair thing, I mean bend at the waist to accept applause). Everyone watches the instructor, until she makes big wide eyes -- that's the signal to bow.

Seven minutes left.

"What did you learn today?

"What a mouse sounds like!"

"Show me what a mouse sounds like!"

>squeak squeak< with the bow.

She explains the technical term for whatever it is they are doing. I don't catch it.

"What else did you learn?"

"How to bow!"

"Show me how to bow."

Peter makes big wide eyes, and flops over at the waist. The teacher follows her cue, and bows with him.

At the end, it's time for stickers.

For the rest of the week, Peter will spend one lesson each on violin, piano, voice, and something else (I forget). Depending on how that goes, we'll ask him if he wants to take another week on one particular instrument.

Then we'll see.

Earlier today, we dropped our daughter off at college. Like her brother before her, she went and grew up on us.... And as usual, whenever a buzzer sounds, the competitor within wants a score. How'd I do? whispers the bottom-line lobe of my brain.... [S]omehow, my kids' leave-taking has cracked open my shell. Suddenly, I can see some areas of Daddy weakness. --Hugh O'Neill --Put up the Hoop Sooner: 10 lessons of parenting from one wise guy who's done doing the dad thing (MSN)

The time is waning that my son will want nothing more than to play Battleship and The Magnificent Race with me all afternoon. Some day I'll make a silly joke, and my daughter won't giggle with glee, she will roll her eyes and say, "Dad, you're embarassing me."

Thanks to Torill's praise of my ongoing reviews of Into the Blogosphere, and the other bits of encouragement I've recieved here and there, I've been feeling a bit guilty that I haven't posted another review in a few days. This article cured me from feeling that guilt. There's plenty of time to read academic articles. I'll work my way through that collection. Just not today.

The user plays Sergeant Smith, while the other characters are virtual constructs. Using a laptop, the user speaks for the sergeant, in Arabic, through a microphone headset and controls the character's actions by typing keyboard instructions.

The project is part of a major initiative, financed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, to explore new ways of training troops by making use of the large installed base of existing technology, especially laptops. --Margaret Wertheim
--Virtual Camp Trains Soldiers in Arabic, and More (NY Times)

It's hard to tell from the description, but it sounds like a command-line interface... I wouldn't call clicking an arrow key or tapping the spacebar "typing".

Via Grand Text Auto.

A US inventor has come up with a hi-tech way of allowing the deceased to talk from beyond the grave - by fixing video screens to their tombstones.

Robert Barrows says people could leave video messages before they died, to be played to friends, loved ones or the just plain curious from the grave side. --Video diary from beyond the grave (BBC News)

Hmm.... the web story runs without a picture of the invention, and the inventor was speaking on radio, where he wouldn't be expected to show a sample.

Okay, BBC News, let's google for Robert Barrows...

Bigfoot -- - Major Bigfoot Expedition Seeking