Revising Ginger

The Felix Chronicles,# 11

In which a struggling student reveals the limits of her befuddled teacher

Ginger has come to see me to talk about her latest essay. This is a meeting neither one of us particularly wants to have – she’s surely dreads it; I’m knee-deep in the middle of recalibrating my spring semester syllabus when she arrives. But now that our unplanned encounter, largely orchestrated by others, is happening, we’re both doing our best to make it worthwhile.

I’ve known for weeks now that Ginger is a weak student. Utterly silent in class, she never handed in her first essay of the new semester, and when I asked her about it a couple days after it was due, she said that she had a bad Internet connection. That’s fine, I said. Just give me a hard copy tomorrow. When that didn’t happen, she said she was having printer problems, and would drop it off later that day. When that didn’t happen, I sent an email to her parents. The essay materialized the next day, along with apologies for the delays from them and her. Minimally acceptable in terms of content and structure, I decided that this was not a good time to tell her to do it again – I inferred I’d already caused some tumult in her household, and establishing a reputation as a remorseless stalker would not be the best way to promote a working relationship. But clearly, I was going to have to keep an eye on her.

Her next essay, handed in on time, was even weaker. In my comments, I beat around the bush a bit, commending her for her evident engagement and willingness to grapple with the question, but finally confessed that I found it – hesitating to use the word, but deciding it was best – “incoherent.” I asked her to come and see me so that we could plot a course for revision. I felt both justified and guilty for this approach. Justified, because I felt it important to both be willing to help as well as ask her to take responsibility for her work, and guilty because I was asking her to demonstrate a level of maturity she’d already shown she lacked. I always feel a tug between trying to nudge my students along and protecting my time, and at some level I knew that if I wasn’t more proactive with Ginger, she’d slip my mind. As indeed she did.

It was her parents who pushed the process along, sending around group emails to her teachers asking for feedback about her work a couple weeks later. A flurry of email exchanges with her advisor followed, which culminated in a phone call from the school learning specialist telling me that she happened to be with Ginger as we spoke and wondering if she could send her my way. Yes, I said, turning back to my work with the added fervor of knowing it was going to be interrupted momentarily.

Now she’s here at my desk, backpack at her feet, awaiting her fate. Dark hair, dark eyes, she’s pretty, maybe even striking, but her sense of vulnerability is so palpable that it overrides any other attribute. I try to set her at her ease. Where do you live, Ginger (Hudson Heights), what do you your folks do (they’re both on the business side of the television industry), do you have any siblings (an older half-sister from her father's previous marriage). Her answers are direct, earnest, and dead ends. This is not a conversation.

“What do you do for fun, Ginger?”

“I dunno,” she replies. “Nothing, really.” Then, brightly, as if she’s suddenly realized the solution to an algebra problem that’s been posed to her: “I decided this week to work on sets for the spring musical!”

“That’s great,” I say, wishing I could make that ember flare. But I don’t have the presence of mind to ask her what she’s making, how the show is going, or something to keep the momentum going. The only thought that comes to mind is that she'll have one more reason to put off grappling with her academic difficulties. And I think, not for the first time, that I have a worse track record with girls than boys when it comes to dealing with struggling students.

We proceed to talk about her course work. Usually math and science are harder than history and English, but this year it seems to be the other way around. Last semester’s history teacher was different, she tells me. More facts and dates and smaller, more manageable, assignments. From another kid, this would be barely veiled criticism. I don’t think she means it that way, though perhaps she should. But we need to get down to the business at hand.

“So what did you understand my message to you to be in my comments?” I ask. This is a standard gambit of mine; it’s helpful for them to interpret what I said in their own words, and for me to be prompted, dozens of essays and days later, about what I said to one kid in particular.

“That I was incoherent,” she replies. Ugh. She got that message, all right.

I prompt her to tell me what she was thinking about when she was writing the essay, and once she gets launched on a little soliloquy, things get easier. I jot down some notes as she talks, structuring her various points into a simple outline. The essay she’s narrating is rudimentary, and doesn’t quite answer the question I ask. But if she can actually execute what she’s saying on paper, we’ll be making a discrete step forward.

I show her the outline. “Does this make sense to you?”

She looks at it intently. “Yes,” she says. “I had a pretty clear idea when I sat down, but I felt like I had so many ideas in my head, and I have attention deficit issues, and I dunno . . . .” her voice trails off. I don’t think she wanted to surrender the fact of a learning disability to me. But this is apparently what she’s supposed to do, and she’s going to play her part.

“I understand,” I tell her. “I have a kid with learning disabilities. I won’t tell you I know what that’s like, but I think I have some notion of the issues.” She looks me in the eye for the first time. She understands my gesture for what it is, and her acknowledgment feels like one in its own right.

My problem now is that I don’t know where to go with this. I know it’s very easy to say the wrong thing, promise too much, offer too little. Our silence is awkward. Ginger pulls together the two sides of the unzipped hoodie she’s wearing over her scoop-necked shirt, something she’ll do repeatedly in the remainder of our meeting. This saddens me.

Back to the task at hand. She’s going to work off this blueprint. She asks when I want the revised version. I ask when’s good for her. She tells me to tell her. How’s Friday. All right, then. We agree to meet again before an upcoming test. “This is going to work out fine,” I tell her. “I know it’s hard – it’s hard for everyone – but it’s going to be fine.” She smiles at me, hopefully and doubtfully, as she returns her papers to her backpack and zips it up. Our meeting is over.

Mom will follow up with an email; I promise to read multiple drafts. But it's been a few weeks now, and nothing has happened. Ginger avoids eye contact again whenever possible. Maybe she'll pull things together on my watch, or someone else's. She has the good fortune – if at times she surely regards it as a mixed blessing – of people looking after her, which is more than some kids even in this privileged school can say. But for me the whole encounter is a reminder of the limited ability of teachers generally, and this teacher in particular, to fill the unaccountable holes that riddle our lives.

Business Practice

The Felix Chronicles, #7

In which the class follows
a capitalist train of thought

“I have a proposition for you, Sam.”

“Oooooooh,” multiple voices say in unison.

“I’m not propositioning him,” I say with some irritation. “I said I have a proposition for him.”

“Go right ahead, Mr. Cullen. I’m game.”

“Well, Sam, I understand you’re in lumber business, and that you’re pretty good at it.”

Sam nods, picking up my drift like a drummer responding to a chord progression at a jam session. “That’s right. Lumber.” I love this kid.

“And I understand that you move lumber by barge,” I say, pointing to the map on the wall, “from your mills somewhere around here in Milwaukee, up Lake Michigan, down Lake Huron, and down into Lake Erie. And that you pay a rate of $6 a ton in shipping costs.”

“Yup.”

“Well, son, I’m in the railroad business, and I’ve just finished building a line from Chicago to Sandusky.” I draw a line that runs due east from Chicago across Indiana and Ohio. This is clearly a shortcut. “It cost me $600,000. I reckon that if you were to give me 100,000 tons of lumber at $6 per ton, I’d amortize the cost in about a year. No great bargain for you. But it would be a lot faster than moving your goods by barge. And of course time is money. Moreover, should my venture succeed, I promise you significantly lower costs, which we can write into a contract if you like. What do you say?

“Absolutely,” Sam says. “Count me in.”

“Wonderful.” I turn to Susan. “And you, Susan? You want to be a part of this grand experiment at $6 a ton?”

“Sure,” she says, in the spirit of the moment.

“And you, Tom?”

“Why not?”

“How about you, Joey?”

Joey wrinkles his nose. “You said this rail line is costing you $600,000, right?”

“Right.”

“Which means that Sam basically paid for it, right?”

“Well, yes. Though of course I do have maintenance costs.”

“Well, I’m not interested unless you give me $5 a ton.”

“Very well, then. Five dollars it is.”

I move on. “How about you, Ellen?”

“Four dollars.”

“OK.”

“Can I get $4 too?” Joey asks.

“Nope. You’re locked in.”

Joey swats his hand in irritation. “You businessmen are all the same."

“You wish,” I reply. “You’re just mad because I’m so much better than you.”

“I want in for $2,” Alec says.

“I guess I’ll take it,” I say. “That’s not much money, but as Joey has pointed out, I’ve already earned back my costs. The real value of taking Alec aboard is that I’m beginning to reach that tipping point where more people will choose me than the barges. Now you all will pay a premium for speed.”

“I want a dollar a ton,” Becky says.

“Nope.”

“Why not? You just said whatever you get is profit, didn’t you?”

“Well yes. But you’re a little late, Becky. I’ve got the upper hand now.” Everybody pays $7 a ton. Except Sam. He’s one of my peeps.” (Laughter at my use of slang.) Sam smiles broadly.

“What do you think, kids? Am I an honest businessman?”

“No way!” Susan says. “You took advantage of me!”

“That’s your own fault,” Erica says.

“You don’t have any problem with what I did, Erica?”

“I didn’t say that,” she says with a mischievous smile. “You’re probably a creep. But Susan wasn’t paying attention. She deserves what she got.”

Susan sticks her tongue out at Erica.

“Well, Erica, in the brave new world of industrial capitalism, you’re largely right,” I reply. “This kind of dealing has always been going on, but now it’s being practiced on a scale, and a level of sophistication, that’s never been seen before.”

“Of course, the deal-making isn’t simply a one-way street,” I continue. Take Mindy here.” I place gesture in her direction. “Mindy happens to be in the oil business.”

“Mindy wouldn’t happen to be John D. Rockefeller that we read about last night, would she?” Beth asks.

“Kinda looks like him,” Joey says.

“Yeah,” says Nate. “The long blonde hair is a giveaway.”

“As a matter of fact, Mindy does happen to represent Mr. Rockefeller’s interests. Some years ago, she used to be his competitor. But recognizing her talent, Mr. Rockefeller made her a very compelling offer.”

“An offer she couldn’t refuse?” Joey asks.

“Well, no, not if she wanted to remain in the oil business,” I reply. “Anyway, that’s all behind us now. Right, Mindy?”

“Riiiight,” she says, with an air of disdain, perhaps as much because she’s a hostage in this discussion as conveying her dismay at being steamrollered by Rockefeller. I think of this as a compromise solution to her silence of recent weeks: I draw her in without forcing her to do much in the way of heavy lifting. There are some chuckles at her evident distaste.

“Now as it turns out, Mindy has made me a very interesting offer. You see, I’m now charging about $8 a ton to move freight, a price that reflects the fact that I have to use my own equipment to pick up and load goods from warehouses and other facilities. But Mindy runs a real state-of-the-art operation. She has the equipment to deliver her oil directly to my rail yards. That’s a big saving in terms of time and aggravation, which was exactly my appeal to Sam, if you recall.”

“So I guess this means Mindy wants something in return,” Sam observes.

“Of course. She wants a discount. Actually, to be more precise, she wants a rebate. Mindy understands the importance of stable, public pricing of services like shipping. So the official price for her will be $8 ton, just like it is for all of you (except Sam, of course, until his business gets taken over by the n’er do well son of his). But we’ll have our accountants work it out so that she gets a dollar back for every ton she ships with me. Fair enough?”

I get blank looks. What’s to argue with, they seem to ask.

“One other thing. Mindy has asked that this be our little secret. You see, she doesn’t want anyone to know that she’s saving money this way. That way poor Mark here” – I point at Mark, who reacts as if he’s been jolted – “will be utterly mystified by how Mindy can always sell her oil for less than he can afford to sell his. Mark will gradually choke to death on his overpriced oil. Sorry, Mark.”

Mark raises his eyebrows, speechless. There’s laughter, both because it’s clear Mark has been somewhere else, but also because his reaction is kind of appropriate to the circumstances he’s just been dealt.

“So let me ask again: Is this fair?”

“Are there any rules against it?” Sam asks.

“Nope. Should there be?”

“Absolutely!” says Susan.

“Are you still bitter about overpaying for that freight back when I was starting out, Susan?”

“You’re damn right I am!” She’s having fun.

“I think Erica had the right idea, earlier,” Alec says. “What’s that saying? ‘Let the buyer beware?’”

Beth’s brow is wrinkled. I’m so pleased. Good things tend to follow.

“Something wrong, Beth? Is your friend Alec here being callous?”

“Well no, not exactly,” Beth replies. “What I’m wondering about are the buyers of all this stuff.”

“The buyers?”

“I mean the people who buy the actual lumber or oil for their houses. If Mindy can put Mark out of business, then she’ll be able raise the price to whatever she wants.”

“So let me get this straight: You don’t really care what becomes of Mark, or Susan, or Tom or the rest of them?”

“Well no, it’s not that I don’t care about them. I’m just wonder about what this all means for everybody else. You eliminate competition with your railroad, Mindy eliminates competition by putting Mark out of business, and where does that leave everyday people? We'll be at your mercy.”

“You know, Beth, I worry about you. I really do.” Samantha, who has been looking on with amusement through all of this, is laughing in that quietly hearty way of hers. “And I’m not sure about you, either,” I say to her. “But we’re out of time. I just hope you kids can get yourself some help. I really do.”

Stages of Learning: Teacher as Performer

Felix Chronicles #1

Introducing Felix, and his creator, with notes from a forthcoming piece on progressive education:

There are lots of ways to be a good teacher, but I’ve always been among those who imagine my work in terms of live performance. Over the years, I’ve built up a repertoire of American history, one centered on some core content that gets shuffled and stretched, retired and revived, every few semesters. Each course I teach is a program or set, a collection of pieces I play in a series of shows that run a semester or school year. Like an actor or musician, I see my job in terms of leveraging experience to gain quick mastery over the material and achieving consistency, while at the same time improvising adjustments that keep it fresh. To a great extent, my ability to do this depends on audiences that are also collaborators. No two classes are ever alike, something every teacher who has taught a course (or two sections of the same course simultaneously) knows very well. Your professionalism is a function of your ability to deliver as well as your receptivity to unexpected challenges.

Of course, most of the time, this conception of teaching is something of a conceit; I spend a lot of my time – more than I probably should, truth be told – standing in front of a room talking to people who hardly think of themselves as being entertained, much less inspired. To some degree, my ability to do this prosaic type of work well may be the best gauge of my talent. But that's only true to the degree to which the talking I do, and reading I assign, or discussions I moderate, lead students to filter information, use what they learn outside the classroom, and collaborate productively in real time. These are the hallmarks of genuine progressive pedagogy, and the standards to which I strive.

Photo by Nina Freedman