Stop the Presses?!

A few weeks ago, I discovered that an article I had written that was approved to be published in the New Jersey English Journal won't be put into print any time soon. This is due to budget cuts and a production halt. Bummer! I wrote this piece last February, and in the event that it never makes it into "real" print, and also for the sake of making it as current as I can (note Owen's "writing" from the same time), I want to make sure I chronicle this. So here it is. I usually don't mix business with pleasure, but you can see how much this professional piece relates to my personal life... I have the works cited, upon request!

From Tots to Teens and Everything Between:
The Literary Lifestyle of an English Teacher Mama

As the mother of three little boys and a teacher of English, my two full-time jobs afford me a lifestyle through which various forms of literacy pervade. From the moment my mini-van pulls down the driveway and I cue up a Baby Einstein DVD for our morning commute, to the final seconds before I drift off to sleep, novel in hand, literacy is on both my personal and professional agendas.
This week’s lesson plans include a rhetorical analysis of President Obama’s State of the Union Address in AP English III, Socratic seminars on Gail Godwin’s “A Sorrowful Woman” and Tillie Olsen’s “I Stand Here Ironing” in Honors English IV, and a text-based debate entitled “Banquo: Protagonist or Antagonist?” in CP English II. I’m excited for my students to deconstruct Obama’s speech to educe his varied objectives. My seniors’ essays on the two short stories left me wanting more analysis, hence my seminar assignments. As for my sophomores, I want to motivate them to scrutinize Shakespeare’s subtext.
After fourteen years in the classroom, I have read every genre possible with my students, but nothing compares to the fulfillment I feel when I read with my children. Early in my teaching career, an elementary school teacher asked me how I could possibly teach high school. “How can you work with teenagers all day?” she asked. “How can you work with little ones all day?” I joked in response. Ironically, each one of us thought the other had immeasurable patience. Little did I know then that toddlers and teenagers are essentially the same puzzling beasts. Paradoxically, both want absolute freedom yet crave complete structure. They rail against any rules phrased in the negative, yet discipline often brings out the best in them. In order to get one’s way with either a teen or a tot, a plethora of options must abound. The destination is not a matter of choice, but the route must be.
Once my husband and I get home from work and the hectic dinner hour is past, there is a window of about an hour that we have with our children before it’s time to start their bedtime routines. Since we are limited on time, we divide and conquer. My husband does the dishes, and I corral the troops, marching them out of the kitchen.
Owen, our oldest at four, loves to play with his Thomas trains. He does not, however, love it when his brothers play with them, too. I pick my battles, send him downstairs, put our youngest, Peter, into his ExerSaucer and pull our two year-old Nicholas into my lap for story time. On the side table is an eclectic selection: Henny Penny, The Giving Tree, Dr. Seuss’s ABC, and How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food?
“Okay, buddy, which book do you want?”
“Anny! [Henny Penny!]”
“You got it.” I turn back the very worn front cover and begin.
“‘One day when Henny Penny was scratching among the leaves—’” Nicholas has zero tolerance. Ready to switch it up already, he pulls Henny Penny away and chucks her to the floor.
“Diso! [Dinosaur!]” Why does he ask to read Henny Penny every night if he hates it? On to his absolute favorite…
“‘How does a dinosaur eat all his food? Does he burp, does he belch, or make noises quite rude?’”
“No!” Though this response is not in the actual text of How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food? I have grown so accustomed to his response that it feels as though it is.
“‘Does he pick at his cereal, throw down his cup, hoping to make someone else pick it up?’”
“NO!” It occurs to me that rhetorical questions can be asked in texts other than those in my Advanced Placement class. I prefer these rhetorical questions.
“‘Does he fuss, does he fidget or squirm in his chair?’”
“NO!”
“‘Does he flip his spaghetti high into the air?’”
“NO!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Irony: my two year-old can actually say “no” in such a way that it makes both of us smile. We finish, and of course, he wants us to read it all over again. (And again.) From the playroom, I can hear Owen narrating as he navigates the tracks with Thomas, Gordon, Toby, Spencer and James. From the sound of it, an inevitable train wreck is imminent.
“Gordon SMASHED into a jelly wagon! Oh no!!!”
Now, Peter is starting to kick up. He doesn’t need a diaper change, and it’s not time for a bottle yet, so I take him out for a stretch while Nicholas reads Dr. Seuss’s ABC to “himself” out loud.
Peter and I take to the floor, and I start to sing “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” and “Where is Thumbkin?” For a kid who has just started raking up Cheerios and stuffing them in his mouth, his motor skills are impressive right now. He lifts his right hand and smiles, captivated by the spider, the rainfall, the sunshine. Nicholas flings aside Dr. Seuss and chants along, fighting his way into my lap. At the same time, Owen emerges from the playroom, teary-eyed.
“Mommy and Daddy,” he cries, “May you help me build the train tracks?”
It takes a few minutes and a lot of compromise to relocate our whole brood to the playroom, but once we get downstairs, Nicholas unearths a copy of Barnyard Dance. Before I have even opened the front cover, he is stomping his feet and clapping his hands. With my right hand, I turn the pages and recite the board book by memory. (This is not the only book I have memorized from start to finish. My repertoire includes but is not limited to The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Goodnight Moon, Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? and Elmo Loves You.) With my left hand, I swipe up a train that poses a choking hazard for Peter, who is now crawling over to Tidmouth Sheds and demolishing all of Owen’s hard work, using the wooden train tracks as teethers.
It’s time for a quick game of peek-a-boo. I roll Peter onto his back, bend his legs to cover his eyes, then let them go as he giggles away. In a matter of seconds, Owen has left the Island of Sodor and is over playing with his youngest brother. Nicholas, as the typical middle child, knows the best way to get my attention is, once again, with a book. This time it’s Green Eggs and Ham. I hold it up for group story time.
“‘That Sam-I-Am. That Sam-I-Am. I do not like that Sam-I-Am—’”
“‘Do you like green eggs and ham?’” Owen chants by memory as he plays with Peter. I answer back.
“‘I do not like green eggs and ham…’” Nicholas is content to sit in my lap, paying some attention and occasionally saying “bam [ham]” under his breath. Owen, who is multi-tasking, answers to my rhyming cues.
“‘I will not eat them with a mouse, I will not eat them in a’:”
“HOUSE!”
“‘I will not eat them here or there, I will not eat them’:”
“ANYWHERE!”
With each exclamation, Owen makes Peter laugh. Nicholas has left our circle and is breaking the binding of Everyone Poops. Desperate moms will take whatever measures are necessary to potty train their children, and I am not above buying this and other titles like Zoo Poo and Potty Train. After all, the sooner we’re out of diapers, the more books we can buy! Nicholas is now pointing at various illustrations of animals and humans, all of whom are doing what they’ve got to do. He narrates the same basic plot, though the characters vary.
The hour does not pass us idly by, and soon it is time for baths, brushing teeth, and bedtime rituals. Owen and I have recently started A Family of Poems. When it was given to us as a gift from one of my colleagues when Owen was a newborn, I read the touching inscription and stored it in a safe place. Now, I can’t believe he’s old enough for us to start it. I skim the table of contents and immediately have some apprehensions. Will my preschooler really be able to “get” Emily Dickinson? Do my high school students “get” her? Do I “get” her? What about Alfred Lord Tennyson? T.S. Eliot?!
Then, I graze over a title that evokes nostalgia immediately: “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” by William Butler Yeats. I remember reciting this poem for my grandmother, hearing my voice echo from the walls of her apartment foyer in the Bronx, seeing her smile, a Sligo girl with an immigration story all her own. Three years later, shortly before Grandma’s death, I saw Yeats’ country, traveling Ireland’s northwest coast with my mom. I have pictures stored away somewhere, but the poem brings them all back for me. I read the poem for Owen, and he looks at Jon J. Muth’s illustration: “I will arise and go now, for always night and day/ I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;/ While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,/I hear it in the deep heart's core” (20).
On the verge of tears, I want to read it again. But Owen wants to turn the pages, and we land on Sandra Cisneros’ “Good Hot Dogs.” Before I know it, I am nine years old, sitting at Irving’s for Red Hot Lovers in Wilmette, Illinois, ordering up my hot dog, French fries and lemonade with my best friend. We have taken our bikes down Lake Avenue, and it is well worth the journey. It will also be worth it to ride them back home in this scorching Midwestern summer. I can hear and feel Cisneros’ voice as I recite. Mango Street is right here, too.
Throughout most of this, Owen is silent, but I can tell he’s far from bored. Boredom is palpable, and he is by no means wearied. I know he hasn’t “gotten” most of what I have read to him. What he does understand, I hope, is my passion. Some parents will have this feeling when they teach their children how to throw a curveball. Others will feel it when they show them how to ride a bike. For me, poetry is as good as it gets.
Such elation cannot last long without worry close behind. As a high school teacher who prides herself on “keeping things real,” I am worried that my sons’ current love of reading will disappear. And my worries are not unfounded. When the brightest of my students fail reading check quizzes and I call home, I hear the same story. They used to love to read, and then it stopped. They hate required reading. They don’t have the time. Nothing keeps their interest. Then, of course, there are those savvy students who don’t read an entire novel but are able to utilize online resources and gloss over the general points of it enough to get by. It’s a sad commentary, but even this skill I can value over total apathy. There is, at least, some cursory skimming involved.
I can’t make The Catcher in the Rye into “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.” While I acknowledge the importance of a dynamic classroom presence, I’m an educator, not an edutainer. At this stage in my students’ academic careers, is it my job to get a gimmick, or is it their job to read? I can’t help wondering what happens between Seuss and Salinger. Is it that they aren’t reading the way I used to, even though they are still reading to some extent? If that is the case, will the study of long texts become obsolete because they take too much time in this fast-paced global culture? Will I ultimately change what I teach to suit the reading styles of my students? And what are the implications and the consequences? If I allow my students exclusive choice of long texts, ditching the standard curricula, will they still attain the same skills? Can I really say goodbye to Holden? How can any young person get through high school without him? By the time my sons graduate from high school, will Caulfield have made the cut, or will he be an anachronism?
At core, what I want for my children is also what I want for everyone else’s. I want them to make connections with what they are reading, to respond, to react. I want them to have the right to throw down a book if they don’t like it in one moment, but to keep giving that book chances in the future. I first read The Catcher in the Rye in middle school, the paperback copy a castoff from my older sister. I liked Holden’s voice. I could relate to him. When it came time to re-read it as a sophomore, I was game. Ten years later, when I started teaching Catcher, I couldn’t believe how much I “missed” in the first two reads. In the wake of J.D. Salinger’s death, I am prompted to further reflection. After years of reading Holden, I look at what he is saying through the eyes of a mom: “Certain things they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone” (122). I’d like to think that I can perpetually retreat to the playroom to captivate my boys with Horton Hatches the Egg. But as they inevitably outgrow the footie pajamas and storytime, I want them to grow into reading other texts. As Holden also says, “The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to let them do it” (211). Unfortunately, I have no means of predicting what that gold ring might be for each of my children. In ten years, will they be reading magazines online, perusing graphic novel versions of Macbeth instead of the Folger paperbacks? Nicholas might not totally comprehend Green Eggs and Ham, and Owen might only grasp a few words in Yeats’ poem, but I am nothing if not ambitious when it comes to their pursuits in literature and in life. Will I be able to accept a literary world in which my children don’t read the classics on which I was raised and, instead, quite feasibly read the “new” classics on Kindles?
The boys are all in bed, though perhaps not asleep. My husband breaks out his textbook for the class he’s currently taking, and after finishing some online grading of blogs and a set of short essays on Literary Companion, I am calling it a night. Or am I? I crawl under the covers, tap on my book light, and continue my journey with Daisy Goodwill through The Stone Diaries. It may only be a few paragraphs I read, or it might be a whole chapter, but reading for my own pleasure is a must. After all, as a teacher or as a mom, I can’t give what I’m not getting.