#SOL17: Wonder

A foggy morning in Leonia, NJ. I was on my way to Manhattan and just had to stop. I was two miles from the GWB entrance.

If you are an artist, it is work that fulfills and makes you come into wholeness, and that goes on through a lifetime. Whatever the wounds that have to heal, the moment of creation assures that all is well, that one is still in tune with the universe, that the inner chaos can be proved and distilled into order and beauty. —May Sarton 

I.

For as long as I can recall, I have been fascinated with and attentive to light. Lambent light of dusk, the almost watery Maine light Hopper captured, the variations of light Monet's haystacks allows us to see, and the light that disperses fog that I have learned to see through the lens of my camera--all of these and more have taught me to look and look again. I can recall one afternoon telling Rob that some days I made it into work in Morristown, NJ and did not recall driving there as much as I could narrate what was happening with the light of day as I moved along in stop and go traffic on a highway.

Learning to look is different than seeing.


II.

I measure time with light. Dawn, near dawn, mid-day, dusk, twilights, midnight are more about the presence and absence of light than they are representations of time on a clock. Such representations are so often wrong and certainly one could well argue that the invention and our uses of mechanical clocks has harmed more than helped.

Interval measurement assumes that time is relative and we know that time is not.



III.

I am healing myself by making art--making forms of captured light. Grief is no easy matter, nor is finding myself a single parent of an 18-year-old.  Some days I feel like I am failing at everything. Other days, not so much.

Last night found me awake at 3 a.m. mixing paints to create tints and shades for a painting I am making. I felt compelled to make something. I'm not sure how long I was painting as I consulted no clock, but what I do know was that true night was gone.

The shape of trees in my neighbor's yard were distinguishable from the darkness.

#SOL16: Say it Plain

(CitraSolv papers, original photographs, digital remix)

And what struck me is that what actually all three of the religions that come from Abraham — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — what we all have in common is the sense of wonder that leads to praise.  -

Mary Catherine Bateson, from here.

I.


A sense of wonder that leads to praise.
A sense of wonder that leads to praise.

This is what moves us, moves through us. A praise song, like the one Elizabeth Alexander graced us with nearly eight years ago on that bitter cold morning when Barack Obama became president. A praise song for the new day. 

What if we were more about praise songs, about wonder, than the sad bickering that seems to be part of the national discourse?  What if it we knew that it was grace that supports us when our burdens feel too heavy? 

Would we love more fiercely? Forgive one another our differences? Celebrate what moves us?


II.

Say it plain: There is only now. 

There are no promises beyond this moment. 

On that morning President Obama was sworn into office, Rob and I imagined a long life unfolding ahead of us. A life we would walk each day and decades later grow old together, best friends. We were filled with such promise--a loving marriage, a beautiful son, brothers and friends. That my husband would die a mere seven years later would have seemed unfathomable. But he did. Then, God was more abstraction, than substance. Faith a poem waiting to be read.  

And I wonder if on that inauguration morning as Elizabeth Alexander read her poem aloud, was she too imagining a long life with her husband and children? Was she imagining what was not to be? 

Towards the end of her memoir, The Light of the World, she writes,

When Ficre and I chose the house at 150 Edgehill Road we felt we could see our entire lives in front of us, our grandchildren coming there, sleeping in their father’s childhood rooms left intact. We searched for a table big enough to accommodate feasts of friends...(p. 169). 

Like Rob and me, the imagined future was one that happened communally, around a table. A year before Rob died, we were in a small town in Maine when we stopped in a shop to get a cup of tea.  We sat at a worn and lovely farm table that would have sat 14 more people comfortably. For weeks after we tried to figure a way to transform our small kitchen and family room so we could house such a table.  Rob would tell me,  "You could paint at one end while I prepared dinner at the other. Or I could sit and read, and really spread out my books and we could gather round the other end for eating."    


III.

At the beginning of the memoir, Alexander wonders,

Perhaps tragedies are only tragedies in the presence of love, which confers meaning to loss. Loss is not felt in the absence of love (p. 3).

And I think she's right.  Tragedy is shaped by the presence of love, given voice by the power of our affection. And against such tragedy is it wonder and praise that are left to comfort us when no human touch can still the pain?

IV.

More than a century ago, Whitman spoke to us about the light and dark. He spoke to us about miracles.  And tonight the dark is thick with remorse, so sad that rain is but a moment away. Clouds cover the sky and I stand beneath the darkness looking for what cannot be found.  By all that is holy, it is wonder and praise that keeps me company when Rob is so very, very far from home.

Let's Imagine: 5 Picture Books of Wonder

from The Wonder

Hanson, Faye. (2015).  The Wonder. London, UK: Templar.

A boy, distracted with head full of wonder, walks through life day dreaming.  He wonders “what the crossing guard’s sign would taste like" among other things. He's told: Get your head out of the clouds. No day dreaming. Pay attention...  Encouraged by his art teacher, he realizes that he can use his imagination to make art. Then the shift happens in the text from sepia colored images to color. This is a début picture book.

from The Wonder

Kuefler, Joseph. (2015). Beyond the Pond. New York:  Balzer + Bray.

A curious boy, bored at home, decides to explore the pond. Ernest D's adventure leads him well beyond the limits of a bit of water. This is a début picture book.

from Beyond the Pond

from Pool

Lee, JiHyeon. (2015). Pool. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books.
A boy, a girl, a crowded pool and a bit of imagination is all it takes to transform the mundane into something decidedly different. Wordless wonder.  This is a début picture book.

from Float

Miyares, Daniel. (2015). Float. New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.
A wordless tale of what happens when a boy, a folded piece of paper and a puddle meet.

from The Whisper

Zagarenski, Pamela. (2015). The Whisper. Boston: HMH.
“You can imagine the words…the stories….There are never any rules…imagining just is.”

John Keats, Neil Young, and Me

Things I wonder about….

And Full of Sleep (M.A. Reilly, 2012)

I. 

What are the types of things that can’t get lost… Tonight I am thinking about that line from Neil Young's "Old Man." “Love lost, such a cost/Give me things/that don’t get lost…”

What are the things that do not have the potential for getting lost?  Perhaps those people in your life who are your true North, if such people exist--if true North is really a constant.

II.

What does it suggest to want things with no potential to get lost?  I wonder here about Neil Young and what was on his mind so many years ago, about the finality of those we have loved deeply who die and the deep desire for them to remain.  

Tonight I am thinking about John Keats’s letter to George and Tom Keats.  In that letter, Keats writes about the qualities that form “a Man of Achievement.”  He notes:

“what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason” (from here)
 

Is it a matter of achievement to be easy with not knowing?  Is that somehow related to the idea of things being lost, perhaps even selves.

Unsay the World

Times Square at Near Night (M.A. Reilly, 2013)

The emancipation of both nature and the human imagination depends first on the capacity to ‘unsay’ the world and, second, on the ability to image it differently so that wonder might be brought into appearance. 

                                                                                      - James Corner

Making A Playground for Ideas: WonderBooks

In thinking about a Year of Wonder Project, making WonderBooks to record thoughts, ideas, possibilities are important.  Here are a few possibilities.

I. Making Your Own WonderBook





II. Gesso:  A Book: How to Make an Altered WonderBook




III. Collected Artifacts: Filling Your WonderBooks (Favorite Things)



IV. Embedding an Art Conversation into Your WonderBook

Conversing without speaking and using paint as the medium for exchange is the idea behind art conversations. My friend, Jane Gangi and her students at Mount St. Mary's College have been busy engaging children through art conversations.  Adding an art conversation to your WonderBook allows you to think beyond the spoken word.  Here are a few examples of children's art conversations.

Genesis of an Art Conversation (Reilly, 2009)

V. Your WonderBook

The first rule is there are no rules.  A WonderBook is a place to set down tentative ideas, explorations, disconnections.  It is very much a playground for ideas. I have never consistently kept a 'writer's notebook', but I have lots and lots of artist-books where I think and explore ideas and feelings. Some of these have been made with paper and others are digital.

This is a page from one of those books that later became a finished art piece, The Alphabet is No Language.

A page from my WonderBook

The Necessity of Wonder: Rethinking Argument

I. A Problem

Martin Nystrand and Nelson Graff authored a critically important piece of research, Report in Argument's Clothing: An Ecological Perspective on Writing Instruction (CELA Research Report 13007) that we need to pay attention to. Nystrand and Graff conducted a 9-week observation (nearly 5000 hours) of a middle school English-social studies blocked class in order to examine how the intellectual environment of a classroom (in)forms the teaching of argument. They explain that their research

examines the puzzling situation of an excellent teacher of writing who encountered unanticipated difficulties in helping her seventh-grade students produce effective arguments in their written work. In spite of the best efforts of this skilled and dedicated teacher, it was a challenging and not altogether successful effort, and the fact that her students still weren't writing argument despite her up-to-date professionalism became our research problem (pp. 1-2).

Wonder (M.A. Reilly, 2011)

So what was at issue?   They explain:

We came to view the students' problems as indicative of something systemic about cutting edge practice. We learned that it's not possible to understand the problem by focusing only on writing instruction. Rather, it is essential to examine the general culture, or ecology, of the classroom (p. 2). 

Here is a description of the teacher and the class:

Sally Martin's multiracial classroom of 31 seventh-grade students was a veritable cornucopia of the best pedagogical innovations in writing instruction from the last thirty years. As a well prepared, professional, and highly regarded English and language arts teacher, Martin believes that writing is best learned through practice and feedback, and she practiced what she preached: Her students continuously wrote and rewrote; she often responded to drafts, not just final copies, and revision was an expected part of every major assignment. Martin also conducted writing conferences with her students as needed, with additional support for students who either voluntarily sought extra help or whom Martin designated. And small group work was part of a rich menu of activities. 

Nonetheless, the students' argument writing did not mature past the report stage even though that was the expressed outcome the teacher sought.  How come? How is it that students in a classroom  taught by an experienced teacher who employs many of the 'best practices' espoused by writing workshop advocates and experts failed to better develop writing products? What went wrong?

Nystrand and Graff report:

In the 9 weeks we observed (in blocks of two 55-minute classes back to back), not 1 of
the total 4,950 minutes was given over to discussion in any extended form (we define discussion as the free exchange of information among students and/or between at least 3 students and the teacher that lasted at least a half minute). Martin's talk was peppered with the word, okay (sometimes with rising question intonation). These okays never functioned as questions requiring responses: Martin never paused for students to answer or even nod; she went on with her speech as if they had (p. 19). 

Instead of engendering a classroom where one wonders, Martin created a classroom where she told students how to write the argument by emphasizing form. Consider this exchange between Martin and a student and ask yourself, who did the thinking?  What did the student learn?

Martin: Have you ever had an argument with your parents about how late you
can stay up? Have you argued about how late or what time you have to
be home? Have you ever had an argument about that?
Jafari: (Yeah)
Martin: Okay. And when you have an argument with your parents, do you give
them reasons why you think you should stay up late?
. . .
Jafari: Uh 'cause I'm older
Martin: Okay 'cause you're older. What are some other reasons?
. . .
Jafari: Not sleepy
Martin: What do you mean—not, Oh, you're not sleepy: "I'm not tired, I should
be able to stay up when I'm not tired." What's another reason you
should be able to stay up?
Jafari: Um.
Student: Homework?
Martin: All right, someone's saying homework, so maybe you could say, "I
have homework to do—there's a reason for me to stay up." So right
there you have three reasons why you think you should stay up 'til 11.
Now, can you take each of your three reasons and back 'em up with
more concrete evidence? So when you say, "Mom, I'm not tired," can
you give some reasons? Can you say some other things other than "I'm
not tired"? Can you support your evidence, or your claims, or your
assertions with reasons? This is what you're gonna have to do in
writing. Okay? [2/16/98 ] (from p. 12).

In the rush to teach a specific format, the thinking necessary to conjure an argument and locate a defense is usurped by telling the student what to write. I think of this as I know that somewhere a well intentioned teacher is dusting off Stephen Toumlin's argument model (1958) and readying it for children to mimic.

II. Mimicry

Mimicry can never be the apt substitute for wonder. The challenge isn't employing models as much as it is developing thinking environments in which models might be composed and/or placed.  Nystrand and Graff conclude:

A few changes in writing instruction, while important, may not have the desired results if the dominant epistemology of the classroom derails the instructional goals for writing (p. 20)...The pedagogical character of the classroom ecosystem is sustained, moreover, by the fact that participant roles in classrooms are also epistemological: The questions teachers ask, the tests they give, and the responses they make to student answers, writing, etc., all function to establish what counts as knowledge in their classrooms (Nystrand, 1997) (p.21).

Along with the demand of the CCSS to ensure children and teens are composing arguments as readers and writers will come the myriad of professional books that sport spiffy lessons and units of study that are tidy, neat, well intentioned, and nonetheless deeply flawed as they attend to the topic of teaching argument as if it could exist apart from the ecological expression of the classroom. In communities where mimicry is the mode, knowledge is predetermined and dispensed by the teacher, and correctness as measured by a rubric is the sought outcome--the learning that is done will need to be unlearned.

Nystrand and Graff close their research by saying:

effectively teaching writing as process and writing as argument requires teachers to
radically and comprehensively develop sophisticated ideas about the nature and sources of
knowledge and the role of language generally, not just implement a series of cutting-edge lessons on writing. Classroom discourse has the seminal power to shape and maintain classroom epistemology. Conflicting demands on teachers' time, energy, and limited resources can also readily work against the use of the most innovative and creative teaching strategies considered on their own. It is through an ecological analysis of Martin's class related to these themes that we begin to understand how even skillful teaching that does not incorporate such changes in philosophy can yield superficial results (pp. 21-22).

III. Wondering

It is 4 a.m. as I write this and outside the window next to where I am seated is a full moon, hazy with cloud cover.

It is a moon to wonder
beneath.

It is this space of wondering that we most need to conjure inside classrooms--creating a luxury of time where the agenda is open to the learner, not predetermined by teacher, principal or a director of curriculum.  Argument requires thinking.

We need to make room for learners to wander, to get lost, to get the lessons we teach, wrong. To fail in ways that most help us to learn.

Not all failure results in important learning, for failure without agency results in repeated failure. Our learners come to make the same errors over and over and over again.

To predetermine knowledge is to limit the discourse and to situate knowing as a finite unit that can be passed from one to the next, much like coins in a pocket.

Here's Toumlin's model.  Six steps.  Plug in your answers and check them off as you complete each task.

To begin a unit of study about argument requires us to understand that wondering trumps correct form.  It is better to have a messy product that involves thinking that is wonderfully incorrect than to have a pristine form that is largely empty of actual thought. The increased pressure of living within a testing culture we create inside classrooms where measurement outcomes are mistaken as signs of divinity obscures the necessity for talk especially when learners have nothing to say (think John Cage).

"Here are the answers," we say.  "This is what you put in paragraph 1, 2, 3, and so on."

We need to stop and clear a space where we have nothing to say.  It is in such spaces that wonder rises most acutely.

So tonight
beneath this very full moon, I am wishing you
                   false starts.
I am hoping
                            you will chuck the pre-made lessons,
                                                     the commercial units of study,
                                                     the pristine and pressed professional books
                                                     shrink-wrapped and delivered to your door.

As Annie Dillard nicely wrote, I am hoping the tracks have grown over; that the birds ate the crumbs and that you and your learners need to forge new ways of walking, new paths of meaning.

Let's clear spaces to wonder and wander.