Spring/Summer 1999

SpringFall/Winter / Summer 1999 1999

Rural Teacher Network

Alaska • Arizona • Colorado • Georgia • Mississippi • New Mexico • South Carolina • Vermont TeachingChanging with Practice Technology

Byte-ing into Medieval Literature

Literacy in Cattle Country

A Course in Cultures of the American Southwest

An Interview with Vito Perrone

Plus more stories about how the Bread Loaf Rural Teacher Network encourages and sustains innovative teaching practices.

COVER PHOTO COURTESY OF EDWARD BROWN

A Publication of the Bread Loaf School of English Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont Spring/Summer 1999

From the Editor

by Chris Benson rigid school policies or curriculum and national discussions about critical mandates that do not foster freethink- educational issues: accountability, Clemson University ing or grassroots innovation. The fact school reform, standards, equity, and Clemson, SC is you can’t make someone change. It so on. This written discourse informs happens only if the conditions are others about our practice; moreover, HIS PUBLICATION of the right and you let it happen. the reflection and the writing are actu- Bread Loaf Rural Teacher Net- Teachers in the BLRTN are suc- ally means to changing practice at a Twork (BLRTN) affirms its cessful agents for change, in part, be- very individual level as well. Teach- members are committed to changing cause the conditions are right and they ers in the BLRTN suggest that regular practice in schools. Characteristics we let it happen. The BLRTN is espe- reflective writing about teaching can recognize in effective teachers are cially valuable to teachers whose have a positive influence on how one their willingness to acquire new ideas, schools do not or cannot provide the approaches the profession. their ability to grow as professionals, circumstances necessary to foster ex- Collaborating with colleagues is and their desire to change. Adaptabil- perimentation, innovation, and another important condition that fos- ity may be one of the most important changes in personal teaching prac- ters change, and the BLRTN offers qualities of a teacher. As BLRTN Fel- tices. What are those conditions? many opportunities for teachers to low Dan Furlow aptly puts it in his BLRTN teachers believe that in- work together: through summers of story on page six, teachers “should be quiry is a primary model for learning. study at the Bread Loaf campuses in the business of change” because Teachers who come to Bread Loaf, where many Fellows are engaged in learning thrives in places where and especially those who are members collaborative activities and graduate change is welcome and experimenta- of the BLRTN, are interested in active work, through state meetings of Fel- tion is encouraged. inquiry as a way of “continually be- lows held numerous times during the So why are teachers constantly coming” a teacher. It’s an ongoing school year, and through online com- being reminded that they must re- process. Active inquiry in the class- puter conferences that link teachers form? Are teachers more resistant to room also has the potential to shape and students across the country in col- change than other professionals? I students as lifelong learners. laborative projects. don’t think so. Teachers I know in the Another important activity that It’s often said that good teachers BLRTN work continually to establish encourages changing practice among are good learners. There’s a lot of a climate of growth and change in teachers is the opportunity to write truth to that statement. As the stories their classrooms. More often than not, about and document teaching prac- in this issue of the BLRTN Magazine an inability to change is the result of tices. This documentation of our suggest, teaching is learning. teaching contributes to state, regional, Spring/Summer 1999 Table of Contents

Byte-ing into Medieval Literature ...... 4 Rural Teacher by John Fyler Network A Tufts professor serves as an online expert in medieval literature for several rural high school English classes, fielding questions and directing discussion Spring/Summer 1999 among BLRTN teachers and their students.

Editor Literacy in Cattle Country ...... 6 Chris Benson by Dan Furlow [email protected] Are reading and writing skills developed more efficiently within the context of students’ local culture and language? A summer in the Green Mountains of Address correspondence to Chris Benson, Vermont convinced this Southwestern teacher to have students put away Bread Loaf School of English, Middle- worksheets and open up personal journals. bury College, Middlebury, VT 05753- 6115. The Bread Loaf School of English Crossing Cultures, Changing Practices ...... 8 publishes the Bread Loaf Rural Teacher by Kate Flint Network Magazine twice a year. The study of diverse cultures in the American Southwest has led the author, a Victorian scholar at Oxford University, to rethink how the Victorians of Eng- Director of the Bread Loaf land viewed American Indians and how that view reflected something of their School of English and view of themselves. Director of BLRTN James Maddox Fieldwork: A Research Approach to Creating Classroom and School Change ...... 10 Coordinator of BLRTN by Allison Holsten Dixie Goswami Collaborative initiatives of teachers in an Alaskan school are turning high school students into field workers who help raise important school and commu- Bread Loaf Office Staff nity issues for discussion. Elaine Lathrop Sandy LeGault Learning to Be at Home: Dianne Baroz A Course in Cultures of the American Southwest ...... 13 by John Warnock Faculty Coordinators Developing a course in “writing culture,” the author avoids conventional ap- JoBeth Allen proaches that commodify or sentimentalize distinct cultures. Instead, his stu- Courtney Cazden dents experience cultures of the Southwest as an exploration of the self and the Andrea Lunsford “other.” Lucy Maddox Jacqueline Royster, Senior Consultant The Romance of Teaching: An Interview with Vito Perrone ...... 16 John Warnock by Chris Benson Tilly Warnock How can teachers keep the romance of teaching alive? Harvard educator Vito Perrone says the question “Why?” can provide the answer. Director of Telecommunications BLRTN Practice and Change in the Teaching Life...... 18 Rocky Gooch [email protected] by Stephen Schadler Good teaching requires continual inquiry and a desire to allow one’s practice to Technical Consultants change. Caroline Eisner Douglas Wood Staying Afloat: How Teaching Revises My Life ...... 20 by Tilly Warnock Documentation Consultant Words have the power to change the world. But do they also, in the process, Scott Christian change the writer herself?

Teacher Research Consultant Teaching outside the Comfort Zone ...... 22 Bette Ford by Susan McCauley The author left a comfortable job in Pennsylvania to accept a teaching position Copyright 1999 in a remote Native Alaskan village on the Yukon River. After four years she Bread Loaf School of English looks back at the challenges of changing her teaching practice.

No part of this publication may be repro- Plus more stories about how the Bread Loaf Rural Teacher duced without permission of the editor. Network encourages and sustains innovative teaching practices.

Bread Loaf School of English • Middlebury College • Middlebury, Vermont 3 Rural Teacher Network Byte-ing into Medieval Literature

John Fyler sion; in practice, the logistics of writ- ferences proved to be an unusually ing and photocopying them meant that successful innovation: first, they Tufts University they usually showed up just as class saved a number of trees, no doubt (as Medford, MA was about to begin. The one-pagers we can all infer from the omnipresent did indeed contribute to a developing reminders at Bread Loaf, the only OR THE PAST decade Tufts feeling of relaxed camaraderie, thing better than recycling is not using University, where I teach though I quickly gave up the idea of the paper in the first place); and, sec- F during the regular academic having everyone comment on every- ondly, the conferences established a year, has had a writing-across-the- one else’s work: amid the intensity of compact and perpetually accessible curriculum program in which I par- a Bread Loaf summer, virtually no archive of intellectual activity. I kept ticipate. The classes in this program, one had time to do more than read and these conferences going even after the from a wide range of departments, assimilate what others had written. courses had technically ended— meet for an extra hour every week— In my third summer in Vermont, I they’re still there—and for one of the either as a whole or as a section of the discovered BreadNet—or more pre- courses, the conference provided a larger course—to focus on writing. cisely, discovered, thanks to Caroline venue for a continuing lively discus- Many of my colleagues use this time Eisner and Rocky Gooch of the Bread sion on myth, the Classics, and other for exercises in free writing, collabo- Loaf technical staff, what BreadNet topics, which lasted until the follow- rative writing, and journals—in effect, and its computer conferencing capa- ing summer (where else could I so warm-up exercises to prepare for bility could do for my classes. I set up easily chat with Gary Montaño about thinking about and writing papers. I conferences on line for my two reading and teaching Dante?). Vergil use the time mostly for practice with courses, Chaucer and Vergil/Ovid, and Ovid turned out to be relevant to revising (with Richard Lanham’s Re- each with three folders: one for longer a number of contexts in high school vising Prose as the text, backed up by papers, the second for the one-page English courses—mythology, epic, Frederick Crews’s Random House comments, and the third for more in- and classical influences on British and Handbook); and the weekly assign- formal discussion, questions, and con- American literature. I’m teaching the ment is usually a one-page single- versation. I still asked for a hard copy same two courses in 1999, and I think spaced comment on the reading for of each comment (I haven’t yet dis- I’ll simply add them to the Chaucer the course, as a first step towards a covered how to make stylistic sugges- and Vergil Conferences that are al- draft of a longer paper. I’ve often as- tions on the screen), but everyone else ready in place. I’ll be interested to signed these one-page comments in read the papers on line (and of course compare the 1997 papers with what other courses as well, particularly could also print copies of the papers someone says next July about Book near the beginning of the semester. that interested them most). These con- Two of the Aeneid or the “Wife of They break the ice, give me a chance to look at people’s writing in an unthreatening context, and make students think about their longer papers well before the last minute. When I taught at the Bread Loaf School of English for the first time, in 1995, I used these one-page comments, as I have in succeeding summers. But as in other ways, Bread Loaf has changed my practice. My courses in Vermont require the usual two papers; and in addition, everyone in the class writes a one-page comment for class distribution once a week (I divide the class into five groups so that a few comments appear every class day). Ideally, these comments were to be distributed ahead of time to help focus the class discus- John Fyler at Bread Loaf in Vermont consulting with Brad Busbee

4 Bread Loaf School of English Spring/Summer 1999

Bath’s Tale,” and I hope the compari- curriculum for a month: the “General son will be interesting for others as Prologue” to the Canterbury Tales well. and the “Pardoner’s Tale,” along with Changing practice at Bread Loaf is the film Becket. Their students begin easier, I’ve found, than carrying inno- the month by writing short (and won- vations home. My students at Tufts derful) introductions of themselves are still photocopying their comments and their communities. (I showed (or having me do it) for others in the these to Larry Benson, a medievalist workshop; and though the discussions at Harvard who edited the Riverside are often lively, they lack the intense Chaucer and who has the best focus and energy of a Bread Loaf Chaucerian Web site; he loved them, (words that rhyme no less) especially class. The differences are not alto- in light of the fact that there were no gether surprising: these are under- dictionaries or standardized rules?” graduates, not secondary school teach- “Why did medieval people enjoy alle- ers, and like most undergraduates, gory so much?” they’re capable of being distracted or The conferences It must be said that this Chaucer at loose ends; the larger class meets established a compact conference worked better in the first twice a week, and the workshop once, year than the second, when communi- not every day. (In this respect, a sec- and perpetually cation between the several classes ondary school class, meeting four or accessible archive of seemed to fizzle out, and only two of five days a week, might be closer to them sustained the conference’s mo- the Bread Loaf situation.) Since the intellectual activity. mentum for the whole month. Part of workshop devotes an hour each week the problem was scheduling and coor- specifically to talking about writing, I kept these dination. If there are any glitches, there’s less need for us to be in touch conferences going even with only one month to cover every- outside of class. Even so, since most thing, you’ve already moved on to the of my students use email all the time after the courses had next thing in the curriculum by the and are quite comfortable using com- technically ended. time they’re fixed. If, as Janet Atkins puters, I’m still hoping to make better lamented, the teacher is doing all the use of the electronic network at Tufts. typing on the computer, she’s adding I do wonder, though, if the uses of a time-consuming extra task to an al- BreadNet aren’t singularly appropriate ready busy schedule. There can also for the internal workings of summer particularly the ones from Risa be other computer problems. Hazel classes at Bread Loaf. During the rest Udall’s class in St. Johns, Arizona, Lockett was going to join the group in of the year, BreadNet seems because he himself is from a small 1997 with her students at an inner-city tailor-made for the Bread Loaf Rural town in Arizona.) With their teachers’ high school in East Orange, New Jer- Teacher Network. Applied to this net- guidance, the high school students sey; and I was eagerly looking for- work of teachers, the technology move on to exchanging ideas about ward to reading their exchanges with makes it possible for teachers and stu- the reading, and responding to each rural students. But she had trouble dents to communicate with other other’s papers. At the month’s end, working out an Internet connection, teachers and students, scattered in re- each class can ask up to six questions until it was too late: her particularly mote rural places across the country. of the “expert,” who found their ques- memorable message “HELP!!!” I’m not telling you anything new, as tions to be surprisingly difficult, be- showed up on the screen when the the scores of conferences on BreadNet cause unexpected; and I was provoked month was nearly over. Despite the suggest. I am intrigued by some ques- to do some serious thinking about is- problems, though, I much enjoyed tions, and possibilities, that came up sues I don’t usually think about in being able to eavesdrop on these con- during my two-year stint as the resi- Chaucer and medieval literature. ferences, and hope I’ll have the dent “expert” for the Chaucer confer- You’ll see what I mean with these chance to do so again next year. They ence for high school students. Partici- three representative questions. “The add an important, even crucial dimen- pation by teachers in the BLRTN has sexual innuendoes and the gory as- sion to the BLRTN; and I’m thinking been the backbone of this conference pects of Chaucer seem out of place in already about ways in which I might during the two years I’ve participated a time when chivalry and gallantry engage my largely suburban college (taking John Fleming’s place): Janet historically prevailed. Why did Chau- students in conversations about Atkins, Risa Udall, Brad Busbee, cer choose to appeal to the dark side Chaucer with these lively and intelli- Priscilla Kelley, and Anne Gardner. of human nature?” “Where did Chau- gent high school students from rural These teachers agree on a common cer get his wide use of vocabulary schools around the country. ❦

Middlebury College • Middlebury, Vermont 5 Rural Teacher Network Literacy in Cattle Country

Dan Furlow I’ve only been teaching for five years, tell us what we’re supposed to memo- starting a new career in the classroom rize about this book so we can do Clayton High School at the age of forty. So what? Well, good on the test you’re going to give Clayton, NM during the intervening twenty-odd us.” This is what the kids have come years between high school graduation to expect from the educational estab- and that first day in the classroom as a lishment. They’ve cut their teeth on it. ARLY IN THE EPIC Lone- teacher, I was developing my own And besides, teaching what is easily some Dove, Woodrow muses literacy skills. quantified on fill-in-the-blank tests Ethat long-lost friend Jake I spent a lot of time away from and true/false quizzes can tempt a Spoon “hasn’t changed a bit.” Gus family while in the military. I wrote teacher to sell out and “teach” what is retorts, “You’re one to talk. When’s many letters. First to parents, later to easily quantified. Everyone is satis- the last time you changed?” That’s a my wife and children. I did a lot of fied. The kids know what to do to get good question. As a teacher, I ought reading (Thank heavens Army manu- by. The parents like to hear about to be in the business of change. Folk als have lots of pictures!). I also read spelling and vocabulary word lists. wisdom tells us that, apart from death for personal pleasure to pass the time And reading? Why yes, we did book and taxes, we can always count on in airports or in a pup tent thousands reports, not all that different from the things changing. But I’m an old guy, of miles from home. I wrote after- ones they learned to do in the fifth forty-five years old to be exact. action reports, operations orders, per- grade. I began to ask myself what was Maybe I’ve done all the changing that sonnel evaluations, and countless I actually teaching, and what would I want to do. But the kids I teach and memoranda for many purposes. Pre- kids take from my classroom that the ever-changing world they will in- senting information in staff briefings, would be of value to them in their fu- herit demand that I constantly work to addressing formations of soldiers, or tures? improve my teaching to prepare them issuing orders meant that I also Well, my learning curve wasn’t a better for that world. And if that needed to communicate orally. Accu- pretty thing. I trashed one dull, pre- means that I need to change my teach- racy with language was relevant and scriptive lesson plan after another. ing methods, then I better get to it. important to me because language had But the questions persisted: How do I recently spent my first summer at a purpose. I got on-the-job training in you get kids interested in reading? Bread Loaf as a new Fellow in the why I might want to pronounce How do you get them to want to Rural Teacher Network. I’d like to tell “creek” as something other than write? And why don’t they understand you that my involvement in a tele- “crick.” the symbolism of the White Whale? I communications project, in which stu- Now enter a graying, neophyte read everything I could get my hands dents discuss literature or other topics English teacher, a child of the Sixties, on. I read about teachers doing cre- of interest via the Internet with stu- no less, educated during a time when ative things in their classrooms, about dents in other schools and frequently we were all lined up in neat rows and kids writing in journals; kids writing in other states, has changed the way rote memorization was the rule of the about how they felt about something that I teach, but that isn’t the case. I’m day. Here, thirty years later, I stood in they had read; kids writing about any- just getting started with some of these front of these kids in the 1990s and thing and everything. But where was technology projects. What actually delivered dry, cookbook lessons about the literary analysis? This didn’t happened was I realized before I even nouns and verbs and the symbolism of sound like my English class in 1968. left the Green Mountains of Vermont the Great White Whale just like the And how could I justify these activi- that I needed to change the way I was lessons I had endured. But I knew that ties to administrators and parents? going to conduct my classroom when my interest and love of reading and They want spelling tests and vocabu- I returned home to the high plains of writing didn’t spring from that kind of lary lists, true/false and matching northeastern New Mexico. mind-numbing drill. And yet, even questions, grades in black and white. The catalyst for that change was though I knew that I needed to change You know, real teaching, not a bunch Dixie Goswami and Jackie Royster’s what I was teaching and how I was of feel-good exercises. Still, I knew class, “Language, Culture, and the teaching, I was trapped by conven- that I had to make my classroom rel- Development of Literacy.” What I tion. And so were the kids. Although evant for these kids. I knew that they heard in their class confirmed what I they were bored to tears with find-the- needed to use language for important had previously suspected about the subject-and-predicate worksheets, purposes just as I had learned to use nature of what it means to be an Eng- they counted upon that type of class- language for important purposes in lish teacher. Let me backtrack a little. room activity: “Mr. Furlow, please real life, reading and writing and

6 Bread Loaf School of English Spring/Summer 1999 speaking for a reason. Grades sure critical thinking—isn’t that one of cases, they are eloquent. Reading don’t motivate the majority of my stu- those often-cited educational goals journal entries written by fifteen- to dents. that school districts across the country seventeen-year-olds has made me One of our textbooks for the claim they want to improve in their “sensitive to local variations in lit- Goswami and Royster class was So- students? eracy practices” that Street points out. cial Literacies, by Brian Street. The What am I doing in my classroom Not only am I sensitive to them, I en- author presents the development of these days that’s different? I still have joy them immensely. These personal literacy as a process that is grounded too much coffee before ten o’clock, pieces of writing reveal something of in the needs and idiosyncracies of a and I still have my students learn new the personality and culture of the local community. Growth in literacy vocabulary words, but now I use writer. A female student who has has to take into account how and why words from the literature we are read- struggled in English class throughout people use their language. I knew I ing so the kids can read how the au- her high school career writes a witty had to begin teaching my students thor uses the words in context. My account of an eccentric relative. A where they were culturally and re- students are writing in journals. After young cowboy describes himself po- gionally. Betty Bailey, a teaching as- ten weeks of school the journals are etically as being like the country, with sociate at Bread Loaf, persuaded me not gathering dust on the bottom much to offer to those who take the that I had been fooling myself by be- bookshelf; they are in almost daily time to discover its secrets. And these lieving that the vocabulary lists, true/ use. I’m even working up the courage writings were in response to reading false, matching, and answer-the-ques- to have the kids respond to each other Emerson and Thoreau. I always tions-at-the-end-of-the-story routine through their journals. It hasn’t been prided myself on treating my students were somehow creating classrooms of easy. The kids were confused (so was as the individuals they are, but read- literate students. The Goswami and their teacher), especially when I told ing journal entries has created deeper Royster class taught me what I knew them that I would be evaluating their awareness of who my students are, intuitively: it takes a real audience journals periodically. How could I where they are coming from cultur- and a real purpose to produce authen- grade them for a response to a prompt ally, and where they hope to go. tic writing, and authentic writing is that asked them to describe the local And my role in this process? I the result of critical thinking. Ah, northeastern New Mexico landscape? have the responsibility to establish The answer to that ques- and apply criteria for that writing. I tion takes me to issues need to tell my students what those we discussed in “Lan- criteria are. I need to provide them guage, Culture, and the with an audience and purpose that Development of Lit- motivate them to want to write. It’s a eracy” this past summer: little like real life. It’s kind of like what is good writing and what I had been doing for those how will you know twenty-odd years before I began to when you see it? teach: writing for a wide variety of By incorporating in- audiences for as many different pur- teractive journal writing poses. I can imagine highly literate in my classes, I’ve dis- students coming out of my classroom covered that I am begin- in the future, even though they may ning to create a commu- not be able, alas, to produce a pol- nity of writers. Just like ished piece of literary analysis on the their adult counterparts symbolism of the White Whale. I can on the Bread Loaf cam- still accommodate the students who pus this summer, my will need to write critical literary students are producing a analyses. The challenge is to address range of writing, from the literacy needs of non-college memoirs and histories to bound students (85% of our student scripts and opinions. body) and prepare them for their fu- And I have discovered tures. that some students, who It’s the fall of the year. Time to in previous years had move cattle off pastures. Kids are ab- never produced any sent from school to help their families “good” writing in my ship cattle. Some things don’t change. class, are capable of But, slowly, change is happening in writing well. In some my classroom. ❦ Dan Furlow at the Bread Loaf School of English

Middlebury College • Middlebury, Vermont 7 Rural Teacher Network Crossing Cultures, Changing Practices by Kate Flint also means that students can miss out about authors’ styles; and to work in on learning other skills. This year, for pairs or small groups to introduce po- Oxford University the first time, I’m teaching my first- ems or themes for discussion. These Oxford, England year students differently. They are, are basic classroom techniques, to be like all first-year English majors in sure, in many institutions, but it has N A GREY, gloomy, midterm Oxford, taking a course on Victorian been my Bread Loaf experience that Oxford morning, in the literature. But instead of the weekly has led me to break the Oxford teach- Omonth of November, a pack- tutorial, I’ve substituted a weekly ing mould. Without a doubt, these stu- age arrived in the mail. Wonderfully, class and required them to write fort- dents are more confident, more sure this turned out to be a cassette sent me nightly papers (discussed in one-on- of their own judgments and voices by Anne Berlin, a teacher at Lincoln one sessions). And in these classes, and, above all, more alert to their own Elementary School in Gallup, New I’ve used all the techniques I’ve de- group identity than any other set of Mexico, whom I’d met during last veloped teaching Bread Loaf classes, first-year students I’ve taught since summer’s Bread Loaf session at the getting them to pose three major ques- I’ve been here. Native American Preparatory School tions about the texts we’re looking at; As well as teaching classes, I’ve (NAPS). The tape included the songs to choose particular sentences to ex- been lecturing this term: one series of we’d all heard the South San Ysidro emplify points they want to make lectures has been on The English singers perform at the seniors’ party and at graduation. The Navajo chant- ing of “Far Away,” “Hills of New Mexico,” and “Des Colores” not only Bread Loaf Professor Kate Flint filled my car but powerfully, instantly (right) with Bread Loafer transported me back to the NAPS Jeanine Brown campus, to the tall skies, the thicken- ing folds of clouds and the electric storms; to the heady excitement of class discussions; to the multiple cultural contexts of this corner of the southwestern United States. But in some ways I need no musi- cal prompting, however evocative, to transport me. Teaching at Bread Loaf over the past ten years or so has fed directly into my academic life here in Oxford: it has influenced both my teaching and my research. More than this, it has made me think in broader terms about the relationship between education and experience. Bread Loaf has affected both what I teach, and how I teach it. Oxford, traditionally, prides itself on its tutorial system, on one-on-one or, more often, one-on-two meetings between academic and student to discuss texts and student papers. At best (or, indeed, with students in need of particular help) this allows for an amount of individual attention which is the envy of many universities, whether in the U.K. or the U.S. But it

8 Bread Loaf School of English Spring/Summer 1999

Abroad—in the Empire, in Europe, Victorian period, I also found myself graphically. One of the freedoms that and in the United States. It’s a series asking, “What did the Victorians, in teaching at Bread Loaf has given me that grew out of a course I taught at England, know and think about Na- is to encourage students to write cre- Bread Loaf in Santa Fe in 1994 and tive Americans?” Over the past atively and personally, if this is a just one example of how texts and couple of years, this has turned into a mode that suits them. Experimenting ideas that I try out with Bread Loaf major research project, taking me into with different ways of writing about students find their way into my how one responds to what practice here. But something one reads is hard for my much more crucial happened Oxford students to do, when I went to Santa Fe in given our university’s 1994: I realised how circum- Just as teaching American modes of assessment. But scribed our view of American an openness to how one’s literature had been in Oxford, students defamiliarises English reading and studying inter- how limited our courses. Cer- culture for me, so commentators sects with the rest of one’s tainly, I’d previously lectured life is one of the things I’ve on African-American litera- on Native Americans in the cherished most about ture, but that was the limit of nineteenth century, whether working with Bread Loaf my deviance from the gener- students. In turn, this open- ally East Coast, generally missionaries or performers in ness has made me reflect white male canon. Now, for on how I might bring this the first time, I was coming Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, into the classroom. Read- across writers like Louise disrupted the Victorians’ views of ing Jane Tompkins’s A Life Erdrich and Leslie Marmon in School, which Tilly Silko and Joy Harjo; reading themselves, and can challenge Warnock had placed on Chicano literature; recognizing how we customarily read library reserve last summer my own ignorance. I returned (one learns in many and to Oxford determined to lec- Victorian culture. valuable ways from one’s ture on my suddenly expanded colleagues as well as stu- sense of American writing, and dents), further made me see I have continued to read and quite how valuable Bread teach avidly all kinds of texts Loaf is in breaking down that demonstrate America’s cultural anthropology and the study of race, barriers that so frequently exist be- diversity. I’ve been wonderfully sup- into popular fiction and the portrayal tween one’s professional and private plied with ideas for primary reading of indigenous people, into the exami- selves, and between concepts of from other people’s course lists. Next nation of transatlantic stereotyping of teaching and learning. term I’ll be lecturing here in Oxford all kinds. And I’ve realised, too, how I’m waiting for a long email to- on “Crossing Cultures,” building on one-sided my original question was, morrow. BLRTN Fellow Brad the course I taught at NAPS last sum- and I’m now equally looking at how Busbee, another of my last summer’s mer with that title and looking at Americans saw Victorian England. students in New Mexico, is working transculturation in contemporary Brit- Just as teaching largely American stu- with his Mississippi high school class ish and American writings. I wouldn’t dents—sometimes in the U.S. and on Wuthering Heights—working from be tackling this comparative study of sometimes in an Oxford which I see a teaching plan first developed as an writing and national identity in this through their eyes—defamiliarises assignment from our Fiction into Film way, which is new to our Oxford cur- English culture for me, so commenta- class. The class will be sending me riculum, without the experience of tors on Native Americans in the nine- their questions—first about Victorian Bread Loaf. teenth century, whether missionaries society, and then about the novel. I’m I went to Santa Fe in 1994 as or performers in Buffalo Bill’s Wild intrigued by what Mississippi students someone with a fairly hazy idea about West show, disrupted the Victorians’ of Ocean Springs High School will Native American cultures. It would be views of themselves, and can chal- ask and excited by this new opportu- difficult to spend any time in the lenge how we customarily read Victo- nity for dialogue. Bread Loaf, in other Southwest without asking some quite rian culture. words, will be coming online into my searching questions about indigenous Writing about how teaching at teaching room in the Oxford English peoples and contemporary society, Bread Loaf has immeasurably en- Faculty tomorrow. And, increasingly, but, as a cultural and literary historian riched my teaching and my research it never seems very far away. ❦ who’s worked primarily within the means, necessarily, writing autobio-

Middlebury College • Middlebury, Vermont 9 Rural Teacher Network Fieldwork: A Research Approach to Creating Classroom and School Change by Allison Holsten that gets students out of the library and I always coordinated what we and into field sites where they learn to taught, but each instructor worked Palmer High School observe, listen, interpret, and analyze pretty much independently. Marilyn Palmer, AK the behaviors and language of the Bock, however, was new on staff, and “others” around them. As the authors in the spirit of sharing information The true direction of the development point out in their introduction, doing about my work at Bread Loaf, I lent of thinking is not from the individual fieldwork encourages the understand- her my copy of the Chiseri-Strater and to the social but from the social to the ing of self as each student reads, Sunstein text. individual. writes, researches, and reflects on re- Marilyn was interested, and we —Lev Vygotsky lationships with the “other” (Chiseri- began to discuss how we could imple- Strator, Sunstein vii). ment an inquiry-based model of learn- HAVE ALWAYS been interested As a former elementary school ing. In retrospect, our collaboration in the definition and development teacher, I knew that using the commu- began because we were willing to Iof critical thinking. Since working nity as a source of content in my cur- take risks. Our discussions became with Professor Tony Burgess at Bread riculum was a good idea. In Tony’s invigorating explorations of how we Loaf at Lincoln College, Oxford Uni- class, we discussed the idea of “gen- could challenge the students. Another versity, in 1994, I have begun focus- erating a curriculum” out of students’ colleague who worked with sopho- ing on discourse in my classroom, interests, and I later attempted a few mores, Deb Thomas, expressed an encouraging students to speculate assignments that had students inter- interest in working with us. By De- more verbally, and noting how this viewing parents and siblings. How- cember the three of us were working increased activity affects their writing ever, I still wasn’t sure how to de- together and enriching one another’s and thinking. Tony would say that as velop an approach to learning based teaching. teachers we are in a “cultural politic,” on inquiry. As an English department In adopting fieldwork research confronted with issues of language, of only seven teachers, my colleagues assignments for our students, my col- power, gender, and class. And as teachers we ought to examine these issues. Kids should too. Following James Britton’s ideas, Tony would also say that language arts teachers shouldn’t force children through “dummy runs” or writing tasks that are not for real. Tony’s encouragement to create real writing contexts led me to teach research and writing skills to students using a fieldwork approach, one that helped me meet two objectives: to engage students in the social and cultural issues mentioned above, and to give students opportunities to explore and report on the issues in the context of a relevant field. In 1997, another Bread Loaf professor, Shirley Brice Heath, introduced me to the text Fieldworking: Reading and Writing Research by Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater and Bonnie Stone Sunstein. According to the authors, fieldwork is intellectual inquiry Kevin E., Logan McLain, Charles Duncan, Allison Holsten, John Harger, Josh Goodwin discussing methods of fieldwork

10 Bread Loaf School of English Spring/Summer 1999 leagues and I believed we could avoid beginning their observations, student Family, and Couples,” “Offensive those old, deadly research papers in researchers had to examine their own Language and Speech,” “Group Ac- which students compile a hodgepodge biases, a fascinating process. One ceptance,” “Sexual Harassment: Flirt- of quotations from encyclopedias and writer summed it up this way: “I don’t ing or Hurting?” and “Abuse within other textual sources. I remembered even think the actual paper was the the Relationship.” Tony saying (again paraphrasing important part of the project. The im- My colleagues and I were awed by Jimmy Britton) that students often portant part was the process of getting the honesty and authority of these re- merely go through the motions of re- to the conclusions through realizing ports. One student examined the issue search, “limping around in another’s my prejudices.” of spousal abuse within her own fam- language.” Our students were as eager as we were to avoid merely going through the motions of research. The kids took to the fieldwork method because it Fieldwork also presented a chance to study the allowed them to write in their own people they are most involved with: their peers. voices as they navigated the reader through rather complicated personal It is a type of “self-science.” narratives. Fieldwork also presented a chance to study the people they are most involved with: their peers. It is a type of “self-science.” For student researchers, no action or behavior was The range of topics examined was ily. Another used the struggles be- considered too esoteric to examine. wide. Fashion was addressed as indi- tween parents and teens to compile a The manner in which groups of stu- vidual writers examined everything thoughtful and provocative analysis of dents habitually clustered in certain from the kinds of shoes Palmer High the differences in attitudes and values places during the lunch break became School students wear to how the me- between the generations. Clint, a a sociological paper titled, “Territo- dia influence teens to buy certain hockey player, researched the use of ries.” Other topics of inquiry included clothing. Some students branched out offensive language. He conducted his the crowding of the hallways and to research in the community: stu- initial observations in locker rooms stairwells between periods, the lack of dents conducted research at the local but was surprised when he discovered adult supervision near the music coffee houses, tanning parlors, bowl- relevant data on his subject in various classrooms, the way the pop machines ing alley, and doctors’ offices waiting classrooms. I interviewed him after he were filled and why certain beverages rooms, where they found interesting completed his project, and he said, “I were chosen. Each student found a people with valid and extensive infor- ended up observing one of my class- topic that provided observable data mation about our community. Surpris- rooms. My teacher was out at the and a purpose for commentary. ingly, many students decided to re- time, and it got pretty bad in there. It Our Fieldworking text defines cul- search language issues and speech got to the point that females were cut- ture as “the invisible web of behav- communities, examining the use of ting down the males, very sexist and iors, patterns, rules, and rituals of a profanity, put-downs or “dissing,” so on. I interviewed one of my class- group of people who have contact even the language of misunderstand- mates. He told me there is really no with one another and share common ings between friends. One memorable such thing as offensive language. I languages” (3). Though not a compre- project entitled “Classroom Conversa- thought that was pretty interesting. He hensive definition, it worked fine with tions” carefully analyzed the author’s said the thing that makes language tenth graders. Each of us teachers ex- algebra class in terms of student and offensive is who you talk to. I could plored this definition through class teacher interaction. The conclusion? call someone a jerk and they’d just seminars; kids offered examples from A few students who show a lack of laugh in my face, but then I could call the daily life of our “microculture” of respect can dominate and destroy a someone else a jerk and they might school and community. Every student classroom learning culture. Other call me something back in defense, was able to acquire a basic under- titles included: “Once You Go Black, thereby showing that my speech was standing of the characteristics that You Can’t Come Back: Tanning Ad- offensive. In thinking about it, I came define a culture and distinguish it diction,” “Physical and Verbal Abuse to believe there was no such thing as from others. at the Senior Wall,” “Language Dif- absolute offensive speech because it After students had chosen topics ferences between Adults and Teenag- depended on the context.” of inquiry, we asked them to list their ers,” “The Language of the Library,” assumptions about the topic. Before “Communication between Friends,

(continued on next page)

Middlebury College • Middlebury, Vermont 11 Rural Teacher Network Fieldwork AH: So, you recognized you were We teachers are learning too; we continue to collaborate. We experi- (continued from previous page) trying to be an observer, even though nobody else knew? ment with new approaches to the project and depend on the Fieldworking Clint: Yeah, exactly. text for new insights and guidance. I could see from Clint’s response We share materials and ideas for as- that he had begun to understand subtle Clint’s recognition of himself as sessment. We listen and learn from points in his research. The idea of of- an impartial observer is an important each other, and we take what we learn fensive language wasn’t a black-and- one. As a member of the hockey team, from our shared reflections to the white subject, and his explanation of Clint participated in that “culture” and classroom in order to change our prac- the effect of context on language re- “language.” But, I believe, as a result tices and do what is best for the stu- flects his serious consideration of the of doing fieldwork on this particular dents. Changing teaching practice fieldwork and his findings. discourse community, he is now able takes support and encouragement. Near the end of the interview, I to view it as such, i.e. a culture in We’ve discovered we can provide that asked Clint what he learned about for each other. fieldwork. We have also begun to appreciate teaching in an environment of mutual AH: What advice would you give support because it helps us to take to somebody who was starting out more risks and to accept the occa- fresh with fieldwork and had the same We have begun to sional failure that is surely within the ideas you had when you started? appreciate teaching experience of all innovative teachers. In the process, we grow more critical Clint: My advice would be just in an environment of and more objective. start it and it will be fun. Just go have mutual support An ethnographic approach to re- a good time with it . . . don’t tell any- search, reading, and writing works body you’re doing a project. Just go because it helps us to well with high school students. Now out and do everything you normally in our second year, we think that the do and. . . . take more risks and long-term benefit of the fieldworking to accept the approach will help address school is- AH: So what things might you do sues and conflicts. We began by re- in the project that are different from occasional failure quiring the students to present the re- what you normally do? that is surely within sults and an account of their research orally to their classmates. This year Clint: I didn’t do anything differ- the experience of all we’d like to expand on the idea and ently. Um, I changed the way I spoke. have a symposium in the spring in That was about it. innovative teachers. which writers will present their findings to the entire sophomore class. AH: What do you mean? Our bet is that we will start to see some positive changes in school cli- Clint: Like, I don’t really have the which he participates and one that he mate as more of our students become cleanest mouth in the world, and I can move beyond or incorporate into fieldworkers in their school and com- admit to that. I’ll be the first one to a larger structure. The fieldworking munity and share what they learn. ❦ admit it, so I cleaned up my speech approach forces kids to step outside of pretty much. themselves briefly to look around at their place in their world. As they do Works Cited AH: Why? so, I sense that truths are brought home and new concepts are developed Chiseri-Strater, Elizabeth and Bonnie Clint: I cleaned it up pretty much internally. As the kids talked about Stone Sunstein. Fieldworking: Read- because I was there to observe other their fieldwork, we observed them ing and Writing Research. Upper people, and I didn’t want to have to be developing mature perspectives on Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997. distracted by myself. I didn’t really their own behaviors, particularly in feel like adding myself into the relation to the culture around them. Vygotsky, Lev. Thought and Lan- project. guage. Trans. and newly revised by Alex Kozulin. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986.

12 Bread Loaf School of English Spring/Summer 1999 Learning to Be at Home: A Course in Cultures of the American Southwest

by John Warnock to pick one or another culture to study home that is one’s true home. The and learn about, and when the tour is American Southwest, and Santa Fe in University of Arizona over go home with your souvenirs, particular, is populated by many to Tucson, AZ more “cultured” than before, perhaps, whom this has happened. We could or more aware of diversity, but un- call this the “sentimental” approach to Culture is webs of significance in changed in any way that matters culture. Developers and marketers which we find ourselves suspended. much. This “touristic” approach to make use of it, but we should be care- —Clifford Geertz culture is very popular, and a good ful not simply to sneer at it. It can deal of writing regards culture in this open the door to good things. It can Y COURSE AT Bread way, writing of the sort found in the also underlie the “teaching” of ideolo- Loaf for the last several airline magazines and the “Travel” gies. In any case, it is not an approach Msummers has been called section of the New York Times. This I would build into a course at Bread “Cultures of the American South- approach is common in classrooms Loaf. west.” It is a course that is very dear too, though in universities it can be Both of these approaches to cul- to my heart, which I’ve been able to dressed up in discourse that obscures ture see it first of all as belonging to teach in its heartland, in what must be the fact. In any case, courses that ap- someone else. What, then, might be two of the best possible locations for proach the teaching of culture as a the approach to the culture of the such a course: first, at the Bread Loaf packaged object flirt with a kind of American Southwest for those whose campus at St. John’s College in Santa tourism, it seems to me. A writing culture it is? I once heard poet Luci Fe, New Mexico, and now at the course that focuses on writing for the Bread Loaf summer campus at the market could take this approach and Native American Preparatory School would probably need to take this ap- (continued on next page) on the Pecos River in the Sangre de proach, in fact. I knew this wasn’t the Cristo Mountains. approach I wanted to take at Bread This course is not about “culture” Loaf. in the “high culture” sense—not about It is possible to Santa Fe’s nationally celebrated opera approach an encoun- or its thriving theater and arts scenes, ter with another cul- as another perfectly respectable ture in quite another course might be. More significantly spirit—in the hope for me, the course is offered not as that the “other” cul- part of the School of English’s pro- ture might become gram in literature but as part of its home. We can be sur- program in writing, and this distinc- prised by this hope. tion has made a significant difference We can come over in how I have thought about what it is Glorieta Pass and see to teach culture and what it is to teach the Rio Grande Val- writing. ley in the rain shadow Culture didn’t exist as a subject, as between us and the something that might be studied in Jemez Mountains and school, until the late nineteenth cen- find that it hits us tury. The study of culture in itself, hard, and discover an then, is a cultural invention, with an urge “to go native,” to interesting history of its own. Today, move to this place, to however, culture is an all-too-familiar become one of term, and it is common to talk about “them,” hoping to culture as a separate entity, as some- find or create the thing that can be facilely contained, packaged, and marketed. It’s possible Bread Loaf professors Bruce Smith and John Warnock at Fenn Gallery, Santa Fe, 1998

Middlebury College • Middlebury, Vermont 13 Rural Teacher Network Learning to Be at Home American Southwest, some of whose born in New York City and moved (continued from previous page) families have lived there for genera- with his family to the Southwest in tions, all of whom have taken my 1916 when his father contracted tu- class, all of whom have helped me berculosis. My mother’s father had Tapahonso, a Navajo, gently remind a teach it. taken his family west from Kentucky fellow panelist who was explicating a Those for whom the American in 1922 because of the “opportunity” book about adventures in the “wilder- Southwest is home are not likely to he had heard was there. ness” of northern Arizona that this see it “touristically” as an exotic com- After I graduated from Tucson wilderness would be called something modity. Those for whom it is home High School in 1959, I left the South- else by the people Luci grew up won’t think of it as some “other” west to attend college in New En- with—for her this place was home. place where one’s true home might gland, graduate school in Oxford, and A number of American Indian be. professional school in New York peoples do call it home. The Ameri- The American Southwest is also City, and to work in San Francisco can Southwest might also have been my home. I was born in Tucson, Ari- and Wyoming. I did not return until called home by people with Spanish zona, and am now a professor at the 1990, when my wife and I took jobs surnames who came as colonizers to University of Arizona. I’m an Anglo- with the English Department at the what was then the northernmost out- German, the son of a man who was University of Arizona. From the time post of New Spain, I left until the time I re- some of them before the turned, I did not see the Pilgrims landed on the American Southwest as shores away to the East. home, though it was my It could also have been birthplace. When I called home by people moved to Wyoming, I with Spanish surnames began to realize I was a who no longer claimed Westerner. Only when I to be Spanish, having returned to Tucson did I come from the south begin to know the after Spain was expelled American Southwest as from what became home. Mexico in 1821. It was Growing up in Tuc- called home by people son, I knew little of my with northern European home culture. It wasn’t surnames who shortly just that we weren’t after 1821 began to taught anything of the come in numbers down pre-Anglo history of the the Santa Fe Trail into region. It wasn’t just what for them was the that the history we were Southwest, though not taught located the cen- for a while yet the ters of significance American Southwest. It somewhere else, back was called home by Af- East, in the places the rican Americans whose Anglo-American settlers ancestors may have of the region had come come to the region hav- from. It’s true that the ing escaped from sla- curricula of the Fifties very or as Buffalo Sol- did not offer us any way diers. of coming to terms with It is home now for that rich cultural diver- Amethyst Hinton, Diana sity of my high school, Jaramillo, Carol which I now realize was Krajewski, Alfredo richer in that respect Lujan, Susan Miera, than any educational Philip Sittnick—all ru- setting I have been in ral teachers and all since, as student or Bread Loaf students, all Many students in John Warnock’s classes volunteer to help rebuild teacher. But it wasn’t of whom live in the historic and cultural sites. In 1998, Bread Loafers helped restore just that we weren’t be- the Church at Cañoncito/La Cueva

14 Bread Loaf School of English Spring/Summer 1999

their home culture. We then embark upon encounters with cultures of the American Southwest through a number of texts but also through what might be called counter-texts, other texts, lectures, class visits, and field trips that help us not to accept any one version of culture as the one true version. At this level, we encounter culture not just in texts but, as the course description says, in “travel, research, language learning, music, labor, conversation with local teachers, and of course through writing and sharing writing.” This is exciting work, but because it is work that constantly complicates this or that version of cultural reality, declining to offer one version of culture as authoritative, it can also be frustrating and unsettling. Bread Loaf students Melissa McKay and Christian Leahey sifting earth Throughout the course, the mem- to make building materials for the Church at Cañoncito/La Cueva bers of the class are invited to invest the writing that emerges from these ing taught in the Fifties to “appreci- This much is true, I believe, of cultural encounters with the kind of ate” the diversity of the cultures anyone who comes to any cultural significance I’ve described above. around us. We could have had courses encounter, whether or not he or she They choose to write many kinds of in the histories and cultures of the views it as an encounter with a things: travelogue, adventure story, tribes in the region, and the colonists “home” culture. In this approach, we literacy autobiography, curricula for of New Spain, and the many other are invited to think about cultural en- their schools, memoir and personal peoples who have come to this part of counter as a matter of learning to be essay, ethnography, history, biogra- the North American continent. That at home in the world, whatever we phy, journalism, documentary, and could have made a difference—but take our local home to be. In this polemic. No particular genre is inher- not if that material had been ap- view, culture is not something we ently better than another for enacting proached in either the touristic or sen- simply learn about: it is something the kind of commitment the class in- timental modes. we grow into and will have to keep vites. I now see that this culture is not growing into. As my epigraph points Every year, Bread Loaf students, something I inherited or simply dis- out, we hang suspended in the webs being the kind of students they are, covered one day, but something with of culture, but not like prey. Like the teach me new and larger ways of un- which I have had to come to terms, spider, we spin webs, anchoring the derstanding what it can mean to enact and always will be coming to terms. I strands as we may on the foundations this commitment to writing culture. ❦ must come to terms with it, not as at hand. As writers, we make these something that is simply given to me webs out of the language we choose. by birth or upbringing, but as some- This is the kind of commitment we thing that is as strange to me as any- must bring to cultural encounters if thing I have encountered in my travels we want them to be more than touris- elsewhere. To know the American tic or sentimental, regardless of Southwest as a culture, I have had to whether we think of the culture as do more than learn about it; I have home. This commitment can be en- had to learn about it in relation to my- acted in a literature class, all right, if self. I had to bring to this encounter a the door is left open in the discussion sense of who I am by virtue of my and writing. It is a commitment that own experience, what I bring to the seems to me especially appropriate in situation that is not simply encom- a writing class. passed and defined by the culture. In my course at Bread Loaf, I be- This is the premise of how we ap- gin by inviting students to locate proach culture in my course at Bread themselves—through writing—in Loaf.

Middlebury College • Middlebury, Vermont 15 Rural Teacher Network The Romance of Teaching: An Interview with Vito Perrone by Chris Benson Vito Perrone: I should probably ing those moments are important to make a distinction between “technical reflect on. John Dewey thought in BLRTN Magazine Editor education” and what I would call a these terms and provided us good Bread Loaf School of English more philosophical approach to teach- models for reflection; Paulo Freire ing. When I think about the philo- was a more contemporary advocate of ITO PERRONE IS director of sophical approach to teaching, my this philosophy. Thus, there’s a tradi- the Teacher Education Pro- thinking is rooted in the question tion of learning from experience and Vgram at the Harvard Graduate “Why?” Why teach? Why is it impor- from the stories that people tell, and School of Education. He has a distin- tant work? Why teach this and not teachers’ personal experiences are a guished career in education as a sec- that? What are the purposes? The un- kind of internal source of knowledge ondary school teacher and a professor. derstanding that stems from this kind around which to construct the art of He served as Dean of Graduate Stud- of inquiry is different from technical teaching. Dewey, for example, be- ies at Northern Michigan University knowledge about teaching, which pre- lieved that a teacher scholar was one and later as Dean of the New School sents teachers with new methods for who always asks the question “Why? and Center for Teaching and Learning teaching reading, for example, or Why this book and not that book? at the University of North Dakota. ways of setting up cooperative learn- Why this question and not another?” Since 1972, Vito Perrone has coordi- ing groups. That kind of technical He was interested in raising matters of nated the North Dakota Study Group knowledge is usually presented as a purpose. For example, if I want to on Evaluation, a national organization step-by-step technique, which is ex- know why students are struggling of teachers, school administrators, ternal to teachers. Of course, learning with writing, I probably can pose community organizers, and university new methods of teaching is useful, but critical questions and find many of the scholars. Perrone is the Project Direc- we usually don’t emphasize enough answers within my own classroom. I tor of the Research and Evaluation the insight and wisdom growing from might be able to have my students Team of the Annenberg Rural Chal- internal or personal reflection. I start help me examine the question. I might lenge. He has written extensively on with the belief that all teachers have examine it by having a colleague in educational issues. His book Lessons personal experience that ought to my school visit and observe my class- for New Teachers is scheduled for guide much of what they do; it’s a room. I can learn from my own place. publication in 1999, and he is cur- starting point. I wouldn’t need to go to the university rently working on a series of educa- 60 miles away and say to someone tional biographies for a book titled CB: So good teaching is based on there, “My kids are having a difficult The Genius of American Educators. one’s personal experience? time with writing. Can you help me?” Vito Perrone visited the Bread Loaf School of English in Vermont in the VP: That connection summer of 1998 to meet with teachers certainly needs to be in the BLRTN. there. Good teachers have a sense that their Chris Benson: Yesterday when experience matters. you were speaking with some teach- What this means in ers, you mentioned that there are terms of teacher educa- countless technical approaches to tion is that we ought to teaching offered through in-service look closely at teachers’ seminars, yet you’ve observed that biographies in relation teachers aren’t generally interested in to how they became that kind of professional development. readers and writers, and Can you explain a little bit what you in relation to the critical mean by “technical approaches,” and moments in their lives why teachers aren’t interested? when they became intel- lectually engaged. The circumstances surround- Advocates for teacher research, Vito Perrone of Harvard and Dixie Goswami of Bread Loaf

16 Bread Loaf School of English Spring/Summer 1999

I have access to my own classroom, VP: I can’t say that I’ve had very the skills necessary to pose important which is an important resource. More- many extraordinary teachers who oc- questions about their communities, over, I have good reflective skills de- cupied a teaching position in a school they will then have the capacity to re- veloped from paying attention to on- or university. But I’ve had a few. One search and master any other body of going experience. was my high school history teacher, knowledge. Jon Young. He was extraordinary be- CB: Is that a counter-institutional cause he’d been an active journal CB: So a locally relevant curricu- approach to teaching? writer since he was 14 years old. lum should be a cornerstone of the When I met him he was probably 45 general curriculum? VP: Probably. But I think it’s an and had been journal writing for over idea that Dewey put forth a long time 30 years. His journal was full of per- VP: Yes. I think that using a place- ago and one that a lot of progressives sonal observations of events over the based curriculum can open up general have continued to put forward. years and was, therefore, a huge knowledge for students. Some pack- source of historical information, a liv- aged curricula are so thin that students CB: In your book Letters to ing history. Today, teachers attend in- acquire only an acquaintance with Teachers, you have a chapter that service workshops to learn various ideas, and they don’t learn how to pur- states the importance of teachers’ be- “new” techniques: scaffolding, au- sue ideas deeply. I would opt to give ing familiar with the history of educa- thentic assessment, collaborative students real power, which comes tion in our country. John Dewey was grouping, and so on. I don’t think Jon from deep learning. And deep learning a major figure in this history, and de- knew these words, but he knew from encourages continual intellectual despite the common sense of his ideas, years of keeping a journal that the velopment because when students do they are often ignored in schooling. best learning experiences are based on something they believe is wonderful, Why is that? inquiry. He had a passion for the in- they internalize it, and the next time sights his students generated, and in they meet the same challenge, they do VP: Dewey isn’t read as much as I his classroom we understood that he it even better because their own sense might like, but there is a growing re- was learning from us. So in his class of standards and quality moves up- naissance of interest in his work. Par- we spent a lot of time thinking about ward. ticularly, there is growing interest in how to frame questions. One question Dewey’s idea that teachers should be would lead to other questions, and my CB: You’re articulating a philoso- scholars who generate knowledge. classmates and I learned history by phy toward learning, that learning There was a time in our history when following these questions. In the pro- should be habitual, natural and inter- teachers were the primary generators cess each student became an expert on nalized, as you say. What do teachers of knowledge about teaching and a particular topic based on his or her and students need in order to be able learning. It has only been during this personal inquiry. I think what I appre- to adopt and practice this philosophy? century, and mostly since 1920, that ciate most about Jon was that he en- the producers of the literature of edu- sured that his students became experts. VP: I think we all need exemplars cation have been people who stood and good descriptions of teachers who outside classrooms. A lot of the work CB: A recent report by the Benton practice this kind of teaching. We need done at Bread Loaf is helping to rec- Foundation speculates that the Infor- to hear the voices of teachers who take tify that imbalance, encouraging more mation Age will require us to be a risks in the classroom, teachers who teachers to become serious scholars in nation of learners rather than a nation might say, “I didn’t know how ‘this or their profession, to become writers of knowers. The report points out that that’ might work, but I thought I who share their teaching and learning information is growing so rapidly that should try it.” But most of all, I’d en- insights and help students become no individual can master it all, and, courage teachers to adopt a romantic writers and producers of valid knowl- consequently, we need to be educat- attitude toward their profession, and edge as well. The work of Bread Loaf ing people who can continually and here I am drawing on some of Alfred resonates with that early tradition of efficiently learn new information. Do North Whitehead’s thought. Romance the teacher scholar. This kind of per- you agree? with one’s work encourages a need to sonal knowledge truly empowers know more and a need for precision in teachers, and it isn’t found in any of VP: Being a continual learner has the knowledge. Sure, you also have to the “how-to” books. always been important. But I also have skills to be a good teacher, but think it’s critical for students to know one shouldn’t ever lose the romance CB: Tell me about an extraordi- the science, technology, history, and because continuing playfulness toward nary teacher of yours, and the quali- literature of their own communities. If learning will always lead you to new ties that made that person a great students master this knowledge about insights and new inquiries, and the teacher for you. their communities, and if they hone romantic cycle continues. ❦

Middlebury College • Middlebury, Vermont 17 Rural Teacher Network Practice and Change in the Teaching Life

practiced all summer!” he knows he is taught something different—or better by Stephen Schadler in for a very long year. For this coach, yet—that I taught the same thing but Rio Rico High School “practice makes permanent,” and thus in a different way. I guess I am fortu- Rio Rico, AZ we must be careful what we practice. nate, then, that I was introduced to As a teacher, I am not sure that I Bread Loaf early in my career, before RACTICE MAKES PERFECT”: ever want anything in my classroom any of my methodologies had a so states conventional wisdom. to become permanent (admittedly, chance to harden and cure. Looking PNot surprisingly, a Bread Loaf there are a few students I would like back, I am amazed at how thoroughly colleague set me straight as to the permanently removed, but that’s an- the Bread Loaf methodology of in- manifest truth of those words when other story). I made it a goal during quiry and change has permeated my dealing with teenagers. He relayed to my first year as a teacher that what own classroom. me his experiences as a golf coach and how I teach would remain flex- Some cases in point. During my where he protectively watches his ible. Though it has been difficult, I’ve first summer at Bread Loaf I took a young protégés with a careful eye. Af- resisted the temptation to switch on course, “Writing in Its Place,” that ter all, in golf, the slightest deviation the autopilot even during lessons that introduced me to teacher/authors such from “good form” will likely result in I must repeat each year because they as Victor Villanueva, Lisa Delpit, a lost ball. When his athletes proudly are stated components of the curricu- Mike Rose, Nancie Atwell, Richard tell him “I practiced all weekend, lum. Certainly there are days when a Nelson, and other authors whose Coach!” he inwardly frowns, knowing time-tested approach saves me from a views represent diverse wisdom on he will have to spend much of the complete breakdown. But when I step the subject of teaching. While I admit- week “unteaching” the now-ingrained back and look at the year in its en- tedly did not agree with all of the “bad habits.” When they announce “I tirety, I want to be able to say that I ideas these authors presented, class discussions, which often spilled over into the dining hall, forced me to define more clearly in my own mind what kind of teacher I wanted to become. So spirited were the discussions that email messages flooded the online class conference (aptly named “the WIP folder”) at a time when all of the first-year students were just beginning to become familiar with the online technology of BreadNet. Just as failure is as much an opportunity for learning as success, so are ideas contrary to one’s preferred ideology an opportunity to learn and grow. During the following summer, I enrolled in John Wilders’ class “Shakespeare’s Comedies in Perfor- mance” at the Bread Loaf campus in Oxford. There I learned the obvious— plays are meant to be seen and not merely read! And what better place than England to see Shakespeare? I attended nine performances in six weeks, ranging in professionalism Rio Rico student Hunter Wickham and teacher Stephen Schadler from local community theater to the blocking out Macbeth in the classroom Royal Shakespeare Company. Cou-

18 Bread Loaf School of English Spring/Summer 1999 pling those experiences with some ding the reader to take those first, Christmas cards but not when study- basic training in blocking and staging heart-stopping steps. From a class- ing literary verse. My solution was to changed forever the way I teach mate I learned of the text What If, spend a summer immersed in the me- Shakespeare. My students are now out which is jammed full of fun and inter- dieval verse of Dante, as presented by of their desks reading parts aloud, not esting creative writing exercises. John Fleming, and the British Roman- merely sitting in a circle, a method I Sharing not only the title but also tics as presented by Robert Pack. once actually considered “innova- some personal anecdotes of what While poetry remains somewhat my tive.” While their “acting” under my direction is not likely to win any Tony Awards, a definite sense of understanding settles over the room as we discuss not just the “what” but also As a teacher, I am not sure that I ever the “where” and “how” behind each scene. want anything in my classroom to become These classroom epiphanies are permanent. not limited to my honors students. If anything, the impact of teaching Shakespeare through performance seems even greater on my regular English classes. Students who have worked and what didn’t in her own personal kryptonite, it no longer historically struggled in English classroom, the author energized me, cripples me the way it once did. I can classes not only seem to understand once again, to correct what I knew to discuss and explain poetry with in- what they are reading but they do so be a weakness in my teaching. Teach- sights I was afforded through my pro- with enthusiasm as they choreograph ing writing has always been frustrat- fessors, and I can conduct writing plastic-sword fights and cardboard- ing for me because there is, frankly, a workshops similar to those I employ dagger slashes. By far the most popu- strong part of me that believes writing for fiction writing. While I am still lar roles are Macbeth’s three witches is an art form that one must come reluctant to take credit for any good huddled around a K-Mart cauldron of upon, at least in part, naturally. But I poetry that my students might pro- water and dry ice. Previously, when I have since discovered that every duce, I can at least say we are all hav- would send a group outside to warm writer, no matter how naturally tal- ing a good time trying. Perhaps most up before they “went on,” the other ented, can progress when given important, I am no longer “afraid” of doors in the hallway would hastily guided instruction and a safe forum poetry and, consequently, neither are slam shut to avoid the noise. Now, for experimentation. my students. other teachers are taking their first During that same summer at Bread I offer these thoughts as a testa- tentative steps towards “performing” Loaf, I studied William Faulkner with ment to how thoroughly Bread Loaf a few scenes themselves. Stephen Donadio. My first experience has changed my teaching and as a re- It seems ironic, as I crank out this teaching Faulkner had been a bold act minder to myself never to allow my piece for the BLRTN Magazine, that of spontaneity after I realized that my teaching to become static. The Bread teaching creative writing still remains department’s class set of The Sound Loaf methodology, which ranks con- a difficult task for me. For years, my and the Fury had been sitting on a tinuing inquiry paramount, resists per- students’ lack of enthusiasm, clichéd bookshelf untouched for three years manence by its very definition. With stories, and patched-together final because no one dared teach it. As a each new group of students come new drafts left me dismayed, disheartened, brash rookie, I was willing to try any- contexts and opportunities for teach- and repeatedly disappointed. But dur- thing. As a Bread Loaf graduate, I am ing. In teaching, practicing the famil- ing my third summer at Bread Loaf, I willing to try it again with more care. iar is good, but so is change. Forgoing relearned the writer’s workshop for- Though I am no Faulkner expert, the the familiar may temporarily create a mat that I had enjoyed as an under- six weeks spent intensely discussing sense of insecurity, but that is where graduate. Bread Loaf professor David his work has greatly enhanced my learning, for students and teachers Huddle made the intimidating work of ability to navigate my students alike, takes place. It seems I am al- reading one’s story aloud quite com- through the dusty roads of Yoknapa- ways standing on unstable ground. fortable, and his book The Writing tawpha County. But the more that ground shakes, the Habit remains the only book on writ- Finally, there is poetry. I am what more I like it. Who knows? At this ing I have read that empathizes with I would call a Hallmark Superman: rate, I may someday work up the the struggle of putting words on paper able to write trite ditties with ease courage to revisit Ulysses! ❦ during the course of an over-crowded (though nothing profound). This talent teaching life while still gently prod- serves me well when writing out

Middlebury College • Middlebury, Vermont 19 Rural Teacher Network Staying Afloat: How Teaching Revises My Life

me how writing and living can be un- when I’m trying to contain myself and by Tilly Warnock derstood as inextricably and messily others within the fifty-minute class University of Arizona interrelated, although they can be time and the requirements of a sylla- Tucson, AZ taught as if they have nothing to do bus. At times I feel I want to forget all with each other. . . . I turn to another I’ve learned at Bread Loaf in New HAT I LEARNED last shelf with a small photograph of a Mexico, along the Pecos River, near summer and in the previ- New Mexico sunset that reminds me South San Ysidro, at the Native Wous seven summers at to reflect on the past, to see what’s American Preparatory School. Bread Loaf, while teaching a course, directly before me, and to speculate But I don’t forget. I remember “Rewriting a Life: Teaching Revision about what I might write in the future. what students in the rewriting classes as a Life Skill,” is to have faith in And whenever I open the top file have taught me through direct teach- what poet William Stafford refers to drawer in the cabinet beside my desk, ing and through their own writing. I as the ability of writing to keep I see and hear the words of students in know that learning and teaching are people afloat. Writing can keep a “Rewriting a Life” classes who have acts that require the “dancing of atti- class moving and keep people afloat taught me what I thought I was teach- tudes,” as Kenneth Burke says of all in their teaching and daily living. ing them—that by changing words we acts of communication. They are, as The critical work of the late rheto- sometimes change our worlds and that he also says, courtship rituals, coop- rician Kenneth Burke taught me to understanding writing as rewriting erative competitions, wrangles, wars understand writing and reading as yields wonderful results. of nerves, rat races, and other forms symbolic, motivated actions that have When I live, teach, and write with of order and disorder. We find our consequences in the world. He also the attitude that writing and revision ways in and out and roundabout be- taught me to adopt at times the view can have consequences in the world, I cause we are motivated, as Burke that life itself is a rough draft; people realize that this attitude is a choice, says, by hierarchies and by a desire can do things with words, but our though not a free one, and that it is a for perfection, as we are motivated by words also do things to us. We revise constructed attitude. My language our desires to break hierarchies and to our worlds through language, even as choices are not made by me in isola- avoid becoming “rotten with perfec- our language rewrites us. These no- tion, because I share languages in tion.” tions were easy to understand in common with others and, if I want to It’s hard in most settings to do as theory; teaching at Bread Loaf helps be understood, I must revise for oth- Stafford does whenever he can’t me practice what I teach. ers. I can’t create an attitude and hold write: he lowers his standards. But it Let me spell out more specifically steady to it, but I can try to maintain is less difficult when we accept how my practices as a teacher and it. I realize more clearly than ever that Burke’s definition in Language as writer have changed because of what I I am implicated in all that I do as a Symbolic Action of people as the have learned from Bread Loaf stu- teacher: I want to practice what I “symbol-using (symbol-making, sym- dents. I want to do this through im- teach and listen and learn from the bol-misusing) animal.” And it is less ages given to me by students, because teachers in my classes. difficult at Bread Loaf when we focus the images help capture the complexi- This might sound nice and com- on revision and experimentation and ties and fullness of what I’ve learned. fortable, but it’s not. I’d just as soon doing what we’ve never allowed our- But first, a few images of my own: not face my own daily fears about selves to do with language. A hand-carved mouse peeks from writing and the contradictions of my Specific scenes, voices, and papers under my screen, reminding me of the life as a teacher, writer, researcher, remain vivid in my head. I can see the rats in the basement that tell me and administrator, friend, mother, and rewriting classes in various rooms at others that we can’t write, that our wife. I don’t like to face the daily St. John’s College in Santa Fe; at the writing is trite, that we have nothing forces that prevent me and others Bread Loaf campus in Ripton, Ver- worth saying. . . . I see on a bookshelf from doing things with words and mont; and at the Native American in my office a small figure of the tra- staying afloat. Often I want to forget Preparatory School. I see us as we ditional storyteller with six children writing classes in New Mexico that write, revise, share writing, and re- clinging to her and to the powers of extended beyond class hours to meals, write. The table is piled high with pa- narrative she embodies. She reminds walks, and talks anywhere, especially pers and books. Some people are sit-

20 Bread Loaf School of English Spring/Summer 1999 ting in the back in the broken chairs; together and individually. most want a teacher who talks more somebody has her head down on the How can I say neatly and more than she listens. Most don’t like my table; someone is looking out across specifically how my practices have definition of writing as rewriting, es- the grass where sprinklers perfume changed through teaching at Bread pecially at first, although most begin the air with misted water, all while Loaf? How can I make clear how my to understand the value of this work- someone is reading aloud. attitudes, expectations, and visions of ing definition. On the board are lists of names for teaching have changed? As I drive to I have also extended my teaching the week’s small groups that meet school each day, I think of Amy S. beyond the university. This semester I outside of class, a reminder about the driving to and from Santa Fe for class am teaching a graduate practicum in Friday morning breakfast read- and for small group meetings, writing community literacy. Everyone works around, a growing list of books that her papers in her head. I see Amy P. in a local agency, at the agency’s re- people have recommended, the im- riding in one of many trucks or on quest. Three people work with Child ages and sayings the class has devel- bikes or skis. Suze’s character drives Protective Services on the Life Book oped for writing, and words in various perpetually at sixteen in my mind, Project for children in foster care. languages that have appeared in es- while Nan walks as a young girl with One tutors students of all ages to help says, short stories, and poems. her grandmother, holding two buckets them prepare for the GED. Another But the members of the classes are as she climbs into the earth to spoon developed a course for students on the not confined to those officially en- out clay for pottery. Heidi’s personal Yaqui Reservation who come to a rolled. Even cows from the neighbor- and cultural histories bring a potlatch computer lab at the University of Ari- ing pasture lean their heads over the to me, and Barbra’s family stories zona for two hours each week to do patio wall in New Mexico to see what bring photographs, family trees, other research and create web pages. Two we are up to. An ever-increasing num- lands and languages. The dialogue of others tutor at a local literacy agency, ber of people also join the class Fletch’s essays still gives voice to cu- and one writes a newsletter and grants through our writing—families, rious people and particular places, as for a home for the elderly and handi- friends, fictional characters, historical does the dialogue of Jennifer’s char- capped. Another is working with the figures, and strangers. We begin to acters who sit in doctors’ offices or Balkan Peace Group on a community learn bits of the languages each other fly off the page. Jeanine’s singing book, and another tutors a family who speaks and writes—Spanish, Chinese, from her performance pieces fills the just arrived from Bulgaria. Another Egyptian, French, German, and many air around me, and Marsha’s charac- works at a center for victims of do- dialects of English. “Rewriting” class- ters keep speaking out, accompanied mestic violence by writing grants and rooms are crowded by the end of the by jazz and other music that helped to other documents for the director. summer, with our former selves and create them. I accompany Maria to Next year I will return to directing with people visible and invisible, talk- Africa and South Carolina again and the composition program at the Uni- ing, laughing, listening, and crying. again. Enas stands in the subway, en versity of Arizona because the work I can smell the new wood of the route to see her parents, who in a pho- helps me make sense of my research loft classroom in the barn on the cam- tograph look adoringly at their small in composition and rhetoric. It allows pus in Vermont, see the lush meadows daughter with sturdy legs and a face me to be a teacher, researcher, and outside of the windows, and feel the upturned for a kiss. administrator all at once, working rush of getting to class after breakfast. Learning to believe in my stu- with graduate student teachers who I remember poems, sermons, essays, dents’ images is how my practices are revising themselves from students and stories that people wrote in that have changed, in teaching, writing, into faculty, and with first-year uni- loft classroom that, through the writ- reading, and living: I rely on students versity students who bridge the uni- ing, was transformed into a rain forest more and talk less myself. I have faith versity, schools, and the local commu- in Puerto Rico, a woods in Georgia, a in what students write because I know nity. It allows me to participate in on- grandmother’s home, a pasture with a they will rewrite. I’ve realized that I going revision. horse, a bus for a basketball team, a like working with people on their Some days I feel that I am moving diving board, and more. texts more than I like working with out of the university academy and into I now want all of my classrooms to texts. And I know writing will keep the streets; other days I know I am be experimental sites, filled with me afloat, if I’ll just lower my stan- doing what I value within the state many people, languages, essays, and dards at times and remember that hu- educational system. I’ve learned to stories. I want my students to find im- man beings tend to become “rotten thrive in places where revision is es- ages for what we are doing and to de- with perfection.” sential because teachers at Bread Loaf velop a class vocabulary. I want un- I’m not sure these changes are in the summers have taught me and dergraduates and graduate students to good for students or for me. Often have become a living force in my have time to think, write, read, and students want the teacher to provide daily practice. ❦ revise, so that all can see themselves more direction than I do now, and as writers and revisionists who work

Middlebury College • Middlebury, Vermont 21 Rural Teacher Network Teaching outside the Comfort Zone

learning to cook without fresh pro- Susan McCauley duce, distilling my drinking water, considering my neighbor’s place the Mountain Village School next best thing to a real restaurant, Mountain Village, AK and replacing my health club with aerobic videos performed in a spare W0KE EARLY on a Saturday bedroom. I worked hard during that morning several weeks ago ex- first year to reserve judgment about Icited about my eighteen-mile cultural practices and attitudes I snowmobile trip across Alaskan tun- didn’t fully understand, having dra to shop in the neighboring village. adopted “growth” as my mantra. I re- I was hoping to purchase Romaine minded myself frequently that some lettuce, coffee creamer, and a pint of culture shock and cabin fever were to Ben and Jerry’s, but primarily I was be expected. Still, I was bothered by looking forward to the trip itself. what I saw happening to my motiva- Wearing a beaver hat, goggles, face tion and passion for teaching. I no mask, goose down bibs and parka, longer arrived at school an hour early, mukluks, and two pairs of mittens, I stayed an hour late, or worked most of climbed aboard my new snowmobile, the day Sunday. Gone were the cre- hoping the sunrise would be the stun- ative projects integrating subject areas Susan McCauley ner it often is during the fall in and aligned with district curriculum Alaska. Stopping often during the goals. The weekly goal-setting I had struggling to articulate these issues, forty-minute trip to take pictures of religiously conducted for the previous and I find I have more questions with the sunrise appearing behind the five years metamorphosed into an each year I spend here. snow-covered willows and distant hour of last-minute planning done be- Frustrated with an eighth grader of mountains, I made myself notice at grudgingly on Sunday evenings. By mine several weeks ago, I said, “Why each stop the peacefulness of my sur- May of that first year, I had deeply do you come to school? You do noth- roundings and the simple pride of be- disappointed myself and was deter- ing while you’re here. You’ve not ing alone in utter wilderness. “Why mined to reënergize myself during my turned in one assignment since the can’t this be enough, Susan?” I ad- summer in Pennsylvania and come beginning of the year. Why do you monished myself. “Are you really back to Alaska as the kind of teacher I come?” With complete seriousness he ready to give all of this up?” I had no had been and was still capable of be- answered, “I’m not sixteen.” More answer. I still don’t. ing. discouraging than his answer was my Four years ago I moved from Over the past two years, I’ve inability to provide a rebuttal which Pennsylvania, where I had been teach- gradually resumed the kind of teach- would explain for him the importance ing for five years, to Hooper Bay, a ing of which I am proud, but I am of graduating from high school. Em- Yup’ik Eskimo village of 1,100 contemplating whether my fourth year ployment in the village is very limited people on the coast of the Bering Sea in rural Alaska will be my last. I and does not necessarily require a 500 miles west of Anchorage. Assur- transferred at the beginning of this high school diploma. He comes from ing my parents that I was not “going school year to a smaller village on the a Native Alaskan culture that prac- through a stage,” I knew the kind of Yukon River in the same school dis- tices a subsistence life-style, and there growth I was seeking and that I could trict. I was optimistic that teaching in is no guarantee that he would, or not experience this growth staying in the same village where my district’s should, prefer employment at one of a place where I saw myself reflected central office is located would result the two local stores, the post office, so clearly in those around me. I in my being more informed about cur- the school, or the city office to spend- wanted to challenge my assumptions riculum, as well as in the overall di- ing his time subsistence hunting and about the way things are and should rection in which my district is headed. fishing. be. What I have found, however, is that Why, then, should I be encourag- My first year here was difficult, as teaching well here continues to be in ing him to graduate high school so he I had expected it to be, but in ways I spite of many obstacles resulting from can pursue higher education? This had not anticipated. I adjusted quickly very complex issues for which there would require his leaving the village and actually enjoyed the challenge of are simply no right answers. I am still and his large extended family to navi-

22 Bread Loaf School of English Spring/Summer 1999 gate mainstream life and culture colleague told me, “Out here you are week of school, parents and students where, for the first time in his life, he either a missionary or a mercenary.” ask me if I intend to return the next would be a part of an ethnic minority. She was referring to the assumption year. This doubtful attitude toward Not only would this be a daunting that teachers come to rural Alaska teachers also makes it easier for the challenge, his “success” in applying either to “save the Natives” or to earn teachers to make the decision to leave. his higher education toward gainful and save money, which will be spent And the cycle continues. At the end of employment would probably require elsewhere. I vehemently refused then, last school year, twelve of Hooper him to live in mainstream society far as I do now, to identify with either Bay’s thirty-one certified staff mem- away from his native land. It is not motivation but have come to under- bers resigned from the school district that I question his ability to succeed stand why some people view educa- or transferred to another site. Of the in either local employment or higher tors out here in this way. thirteen administrators in my district’s education far away from home. I do, Some teachers here have a need to central office last year, eight of them however, question the merit of either define their role in an environment are new to the district this year. In the option for a young man who is most that is foreign and confusing, a situa- four years I have been working in this content and at home hunting on the tion that can actually be quite benefi- district, I have had four different prin- tundra or fishing at the river. And so, cial to teachers’ growth. But even cipals and three different superinten- what should education look like in when one welcomes the adjustment to dents. This rapid turnover is a cause contexts that do not easily accommo- a new culture and lifestyle, the chal- of the continued inconsistency and date conventional definitions and lenge of it can be overwhelming. confusion that plagues Alaska’s re- practices? After four years in rural Many teachers who come to the bush mote rural schools. Alaska, I’m unable to answer this ba- come, as I had, from areas in the So, how do teachers develop cur- sic question, one that confronts and Lower 48 in which they could reason- ricula that are responsive to communi- disturbs many teachers in remote Na- ably assume much about the world ties’ needs? How do communities par- tive Alaskan villages where subsis- around them. I found myself those ticipate in educational decisions about tence culture has survived for centu- first couple of years in Alaska ques- what is best for their children? How ries to this day. tioning not only the appropriateness do teachers learn to identify their own Discussions abound about how to of my teaching practices, but of ev- biases about education while teaching address this basic question. I have erything from my communication in environments vastly different from served on many committees and been style to my personality characteristics. the ones where they were trained? Are involved in many informal discus- These challenges, when combined these the right questions for Alaskan sions in which non-Natives passion- with little understanding of teachers to be asking? Through my ately debate proposed solutions to ev- education’s purpose for our students, affiliation with the Bread Loaf Rural erything from low standardized test make it convenient simply to claim to Teacher Network and my interaction scores to high rates of teenage preg- be out here for the money. “We wear with other teachers at Bread Loaf last nancy and suicide. Often excluded golden handcuffs,” a colleague told summer, who teach in diverse cultural from these discussions are the people me referring to himself and his wife, environments, I have gained confi- who are most directly affected by the who have been teaching in rural dence to raise these questions. proposed solutions. It is not an inten- Alaska for more than ten years, “be- I recall a day last July during my tional exclusion. It’s just that common cause our expenses are now commen- “Language and Culture” class with ground hasn’t been sufficiently ex- surate with our income and we’re Dixie Goswami and Jackie Royster on plored. Some Native Alaskans are not stuck here.” These teachers, who may the Vermont campus when my per- interested in “fixing” the system, be lumped by others and themselves plexity with these questions reached a which in their view does not have the in the “mercenary” category, still boiling point. I shared with the class best interests of their children and spend weekends and evenings prepar- some of these uncertainties with their community at heart. And non- ing lessons and materials, and fre- which I’ve been struggling, admitting Natives are often unwilling to admit quently engage themselves in conver- as well that I wasn’t sure I could con- to not knowing the answers to these sations with other teachers about how tinue. I received many supportive very complex questions. best to instruct their students. comments from classmates; one came One result of this mutual frustra- Parents and students are skeptical as an email message from Rex Jim, a tion is a stereotypical generalization of teachers’ motives for coming to Navajo who teaches Navajo students about why teachers come to rural rural Alaska. Their skepticism, which in Arizona. He described the frustra- Alaska to teach. Even some teachers is well founded since most teachers tions and rewards he has known as a hold this view of their colleagues or do not stay long, makes it easier for teacher in the Navajo community themselves. During my first year, as I them to accept a teacher’s departure where he grew up and continues to struggled to make sense of Yup’ik when, inevitably it seems, he or she Eskimo culture and my role in it, a leaves. Every year, during the first (continued on next page)

Middlebury College • Middlebury, Vermont 23 Rural Teacher Network . . .Comfort Zone Book Review: (continued from previous page) Weaving “Countless live. Though far from Alaska, Rex’s Silken Ties of Love and community faces similar problems regarding the institution of education Thought” in a Native culture. Through cooperative effort, his schools and the by Mary Juzwik in the Land, educators develop and community have worked to imple- articulate these tenuous yet important ment solutions for problems similar Bridge School bonds, giving testimony to how indi- to those I have seen in rural Alaska. Boulder, CO viduals connect themselves to their While proudly recounting his environment and to their cultural community’s successes, Rex made Stories in the Land: A Place-Based communities. clear the hard work necessary to get Environmental Education Anthology. In these stories of American class- there. I have taped on my classroom Great Barrington, Mass: Orion, 1998. rooms—from places as diverse as ru- desk the words with which he closed 127 pp. $8.00. ral Arizona, coastal California, and his email message: “Susan, all I can urban Philadelphia—school teachers, say is, accept your frustrations as college professors, and undergraduate challenges, as gifts from God, as UOTING VERSES from students describe projects they carried seeds of greatness. I want to know Robert Frost’s poem “The out with the support of grants from you through the love for life that QSilken Tent” seems a fitting the Orion Society between 1992 and your students will express in any way to begin responding to 1996. Headquartered in Great field they choose to pursue, through Stories in the Land, for in this poem Barrington, Massachusetts, the Orion the passion they will express for the tent’s “supporting central cedar Society is a non-profit organization, lifelong learning! And remember, pole,/. . . Seems to owe naught to any founded to further the connections when the going gets tough, Susan single cord,/ But strictly held by none, between people and places through gets going!” is loosely bound/ By countless silken publishing, environmental education, I hear you, Rex, and I am trying. ties of love and thought/ To every- and grassroots community networking And “trying” is the first step toward thing on earth the compass round.” Idaho teacher Jo Anne Kay, citing success in a place where I must ac- Likewise, this anthology evokes the Marcel Proust, captures the dominant cept that I don’t have all the answers intricate way in which all life on our theme running through this book: to the questions that frustrate me. I planet is interconnected and supported “The real voyage of discovery con- also realize that frustrations in teach- by the earth itself. Throughout Stories sists not in seeking new landscapes, ing, wherever one teaches, might originate from having accepted nar- row definitions of what “success” looks like in other places. I may need to trust my instincts and com- bine my best teaching efforts with traditional Native learning approaches. What I can provide my students as their teacher, in combi- nation with the strength and wisdom of their culture, could ensure a kind of success that may exceed what I envision for them. ❦

Bread Loafer Mary Juzwik, with seventh grader Becky Walker (left), during a reflective moment of field study

24 Bread Loaf School of English Spring/Summer 1999 but in having new eyes” with which to Each story demonstrates a particu- to the careful study of place is to view and respond to the landscapes lar way that children see their imme- articulate how place-based studies can where we live. Bread Loaf professor diate world with new eyes. The voices be situated among language arts John Elder’s passionate introduction of the teachers show how changes in standards and/or portfolio require- claims, “Successful education has the their practice prompted their students ments. Carrying out a Stories in the power to make the world strange to develop new perspectives on their Land project funded by Orion last again . . . strange enough to get our environments. English teacher Jenni- spring, I came to believe that measur- full attention.” This high-minded ide- fer Danish writes, “After a few years ing the success of the project needed alism, echoing Thoreau and the Tran- of living and teaching in Hightstown, to happen in terms of the language scendentalists, reflects learning—both oral and Orion’s mission “to heal the written—accomplished over fractured relationship be- the course of the project. tween people and nature by Those skills included undertaking educational Successful education interviewing, preparing programs and publications has the power to make the world working bibliographies, that integrate all aspects of writing two-column notes, the relationship: the physi- strange again . . . strange enough using MLA format for cally immediate, the ana- documentation, writing lytical and scientific, the to get our full attention. narratives that synthesized inspirational and creative . . . learning and conveyed to cultivate a generation of students’ “author-ity” on citizen leaders whose wis- subjects of place-based dom is grounded in and study, and supporting written guided by nature literacy.” Indeed the New Jersey, at the Peddie School, I text with visuals and appropriate perspectives established in each of the had come to the quick conclusion that captions. I treasure the environmental stories inspire me (as I suspect they this place was not beautiful.” She idealism that the Orion Society brings will other English teachers) to recon- goes on to chronicle her project with to the conversation about American sider how I might better inspire stu- eighth graders in which she and a sci- education, and I hope Stories in the dents to become literate and respon- ence teacher created a course for stu- Land becomes a catalyst for further sive citizens who understand their in- dents to explore their surroundings. discussion among teachers about how tegral roles in the web of nature. The new perceptions (in both teacher to weave our environmental commit- These stories could be described and students) that resulted were not to ments with practical standards for the by the differences among the students be found in quick conclusions and development and assessment of who appear in them (geographic loca- hasty judgments; instead, they came language skills. The discussion has tion, socio-economic level, or the through careful observation and con- already begun to happen among many range in age), but overemphasizing certed work over an entire year. teachers in the BLRTN and has been these differences would miss the The stories are inspirational, but helped along by the environmental “countless silken ties,” those ideas the book is practical as well. Activity concerns of John Elder, the ethno- that bind the collection together. Sev- plans implemented “to make the graphic approaches of Shirley Brice eral themes knit the stories together to world strange again” supplement the Heath, the teacher research advocacy reveal how the environment can fig- teachers’ narratives, and they include of Dixie Goswami, as well as numer- ure in learning: instruction and dis- making maps, creating magazines, ous BLRTN Fellows who have, cussion about the concept of home; making books, setting up study sta- through the Nineties, been pioneering interdisciplinary learning; inquiry- tions along a river, writing journals, classroom practices to cultivate driven outdoor experiences; assess- reading poetry, and making trail students’ “literacy of nature.” ments of learning that correspond to guides. Resource lists follow most Even while wanting to hear more multiple intelligences; and collabora- activities, and an appendix of refer- specifically about the language tions of many varieties. Read to- ences and curriculum projects pro- growth, I found in Stories in the Land gether, these stories narrate the impor- vides a further guide for practice. a message with the power to effect tant struggles teachers face each day: Several more pages outline the pro- classroom changes, by reminding gaining autonomy within hierarchical grams and resources of the Orion So- teachers and their students that their educational systems, managing con- ciety to support teachers and others actions on this planet matter, that they straints of time, and negotiating the involved in environmental education. truly are “loosely bound” to “every- demands of innovative projects and After reading Stories in the Land, thing on earth,” and that these rela- mandated curricula. I sense that a current challenge to tionships continually take shape here English teachers who are committed and now. ❦

Middlebury College • Middlebury, Vermont 25 Rural Teacher Network State BLRTN Meetings

Alaska Colorado Mississippi Fourteen Alaskan Bread Loaf Rural Distance, duty, and weather prevented On October 28, Mississippi BLRTN Teacher Network Fellows separated the Colorado BLRTN from meeting Fellows met to discuss ways to influ- by thousands of miles met on line to face-to-face, so the first state meeting ence further Mississippi language arts share classroom activities, accom- was accomplished by audio-confer- instruction. The major question was plishments, upcoming events, and ence in early February. The discus- “How can BLRTN better function statewide concerns. Individuals are sion of the meeting focused on tele- within established institutions like the still enjoying success with projects communications exchanges on which Mississippi Department of Education like the “Anne Frank Conference.” Fellows are working. Colorado Fel- and the Mississippi Council of Teach- New innovative conferences are being lows met at the Colorado Language ers of English?” Many BLRTN mem- established, on Jane Eyre, for ex- Arts Society Meeting in Colorado bers already hold influential positions. ample. Several issues important to Springs on March 12, where several Sharon Ladner and Renee Moore are Alaska teachers were raised during Fellows and high school students par- curriculum coordinators and special- the online meeting: the increase in ticipated in a presentation on “Cross- ists within their respective districts. class sizes, increasing implementation Age, Cross-Cultural Electronic Ex- Patricia Parrish works with the State of standardized tests, and the account- changes,” coordinated by Sharilyn Department’s Office of Educational ability of schools according to test West. The BLRTN meeting at the Technology. Fellows Brad Busbee, scores. Face-to-face state meetings are conference focused on telecommuni- Renee Moore, and Peggy Turner pre- being planned in Anchorage and Ju- cations exchange updates, student sented at the Mississippi Council of neau for April and May. publications, and the BLRTN’s grow- Teachers of English’s 1998 spring ing role in school reform. conference in Jackson.

Arizona Georgia New Mexico The first meeting of the Arizona As first-year members of the BLRTN, The fall meeting of BLRTN Fellows BLRTN this academic year occurred Georgia teachers have focused on set- was held October 10, 1998, at in October in Tubac. The meeting ting up communications technology to Bernalillo High School. Sixteen Fel- served as a launching point for the link Georgia schools and teachers. At lows attended, including two from year as teachers discussed the plans their October state meeting held in Colorado. BLRTN activities pre- they had for upcoming telecommuni- Macon, Georgia, discussions explored sented at the meeting included intra- cations exchanges and reviewed those the theme “Where You’ve Been and state and interstate writing exchanges already completed or in progress. For Where You’re Going.” Recruiting using telecommunications. Phil some, the meeting was an opportunity new members to the network was also Sittnick and Ren Sittnick from La- to put names of new Fellows with a priority. At the Georgia Council of guna Middle School reported on their faces. Afterward, everyone enjoyed a Teachers of English Conference at work in a $30,000 technology plan- lively dinner, and a group attended a Jekyll Island in February, several ning grant from NEH. With state elec- performance of Eugene O’Neill’s members of the Georgia BLRTN pre- tions coming up, political platforms Long Day’s Journey Into Night in sented success stories from their first on education were discussed. Mini- Tucson. A second meeting of the Ari- year of involvement in the network. workshops were presented on writing zona BLRTN was held in Pinetop, On the agenda are plans for a presen- and publishing. The NM BLRTN Arizona, and focused on “writing,” as tation in Valdosta in March and a spring meeting is scheduled for April teachers presented specific successful spring meeting in conjunction with 10, near Truth or Consequences, at teaching methods and projects. This the national meeting of the BLRTN the Black Range Lodge. informal workshop proved popular on Jekyll Island in April. and effective, and everyone left with something tangible to implement in his or her classroom.

26 Bread Loaf School of English Spring/Summer 1999

South Carolina writing, book chapters, and grant pro- a meeting at Camels Hump Middle South Carolina BLRTN teachers are posals. The annual spring meeting of School in Richmond. A main topic having a productive year. Their fall South Carolina Fellows will be held at under discussion was recruiting strate- meeting was held November 7 at the Penn Center, St. Helena’s Island. gies for BLRTN. Mary Burnham Waccamaw High School, Pawleys Teachers, students, and school admin- hosted a second meeting at Waits Island. The meeting was attended by istrators will attend to report the River Valley Middle School in East twelve South Carolina BLRTN Fel- year’s activities, which will be pre- Corinth on December 5, 1998. Topics lows, five members of the BLRTN sented primarily by students. Repre- on the agenda included teaching staff, and several school administra- sentatives from the South Carolina Shakespeare, writing prompts and tors. The meeting focused on generat- Department of Education will attend rubrics. A discussion of the New ing individual and group activities for the Penn Center meeting. Standard Reference Exam led to fur- the 1998–99 school year. In January, ther analysis of standards, which be- eleven BLRTN Fellows and staff met came the focus for our next meeting at the Thurmond Institute at Clemson Vermont on February 6 at Camels Hump University for a writing retreat. Col- Vermont State meetings always in- Middle School. At that meeting we laborative work included personal clude a sharing of teaching insights, reviewed how mandated standards philosophy, and materials. On Sep- were affecting instruction in Vermont tember 19, 1998, Ellen Temple hosted schools. ❦

Announcements

Janet Atkins presented “Professional Samantha Dunaway’s poems have ap- Allison Holsten received a $30,000 grant Development Models in the U. S. Depart- peared in several magazines and journals for two years for her research project ment of Education Challenge Grants” at this year, including Blue Violin, The Lou- “Examining Students’ Ethnographic Ap- the Consortium for K-12 Networking isville Review, and English Journal. proach to Writing and Research” from Conference in February, 1999. This The Spencer Foundation’s Practitioner spring she will present “Professional Heinemann Publishers announces Elec- Research Communication and Mentoring Development for Teachers Using Tech- tronic Networks: Crossing Boundaries/ Grant program. Bread Loaf professor nology” at the Florida Educational Tech- Creating Communities, edited by Tharon Tony Burgess of the Institute of Educa- nology Conference in March, and “Inte- Howard and Chris Benson. The book tion, University of London, will be her grating Technology into the Curriculum” includes several chapters by Bread Loaf- mentor in the project. at the National Education Computing ers: Rob Baroz, Kurt Caswell, Anna Conference in June. Citrino, Brian Gentry, Rocky Gooch, Sharon Ladner received the National Dixie Goswami, Lucy Maddox, Tom Teaching Excellence Award given by the Mary Burnham was chosen for inclusion McKenna, Phil Sittnick, and Doug U. S. Information Agency and the Ameri- in the 1999 volume of Who’s Who in Wood. can Council for Collaboration in Educa- American Teachers. Her article on ecol- tion and Language Study. This award ogy, “Worlds Apart: Bridging the Gap At the December 1998 annual meeting of allowed her to visit the former Soviet between Rural Vermont and Urban the American Anthropology Association, Union (now the Newly Independent Singapore,” will be published in a forth- Eva Gold, documentation consultant for States) for a month during October to coming issue of THINK magazine. BLRTN, was a panel participant in a develop partnerships with public school discussion titled “Learning in Multiple teachers and students for the purpose of On February 10, Brad Busbee presented Spaces: Knowledge Construction and exploring American Studies. a workshop, “The Uses of Email in the Assessment in the Postindustrial Society.” Humanities Classroom,” for the Gulf Drawing upon her research on BLRTN, Rod Landis and Taylor McKenna re- Coast Consortium of Educational Admin- her talk focused on the challenges of ceived two grants to fund the Second istrators. On February 26, he presented a building personalized contexts for learn- Ketchikan Humanities Conference, workshop, “Classroom Connections,” at ing across geographic, cultural and role scheduled in February, 1999: from the the Mississippi Council of Teachers of boundaries. English Conference in Jackson. (continued on next page)

Middlebury College • Middlebury, Vermont 27 Rural Teacher Network Announcements nual Teacher Researcher Conference Ellen Temple presented the results of her sponsored by Fairfax County (VA) Public classroom research, “Genres: Listening, (continued from previous page) Schools, the Greater Washington Reading Writing and Performing,” at the Vermont Council, and the Northern Virginia Writ- Council of Teachers of English and the Alaska Humanities Forum ($7,000) and ing Project, April 29-30. National Writing Project joint conferences from the University of Alaska Founda- on March 13 and 27, 1999, in Rutland and tion, President’s Special Projects Fund Patricia Parrish was featured in the Burlington, Vermont. Several of her stu- ($3,000). The grants funded the travel of January, 1999, issue of NEA Today con- dents co-presented with her, performing English and philosophy students from cerning her work on the Connections an original play that they developed and several branches of the University of Project. Patricia has presented at several wrote as part of the research plan. Ellen Alaska-Southeast to attend Seamus national and state conferences: the Na- also presented “Developing a Standards- Heaney’s play The Cure At Troy in tional Council of Teachers of English, the Based Student and Parent Report Card” Ketchikan and to participate in two days Mississippi Association of School Admin- at the annual conference of the New Eng- of workshops, seminars, and panel discus- istrators, the Mississippi Staff Develop- land League of Middle Schools, Provi- sions. Bread Loaf professor Michael ment Association, and the Mississippi dence, RI, April 1, 1999. Cadden gave the keynote address at the Milken Conference. She was recently conference. The conference is cospon- named to the Mississippi Association of After a comprehensive examination pro- sored by the First City Players of Educators Instruction and Professional cess, Pat Truman qualified for National Ketchikan. Development Committee. Board Certification in Early Adolescent Language Arts. The certification requires Arlene Mestas received a $1,000 Teacher David Leo-Nyquist and Bill Rich pub- submission of a complete teaching portfo- Dream Fund Grant from the Center for lished “Getting It Right: Design Prin- lio, successful completion of a day-long Teaching Excellence at Eastern New ciples for Starting a Small-Scale School/ written exam, thorough knowledge of Mexico University. The grant will fund College Collaboration” in the September curricular resources, ability to analyze her travel to Mexico City and the supplies 1998 English Journal. The article de- student work samples, and creative man- needed to videotape images found in scribes how university and high school agement of challenging teaching situa- Corky Gonzalez’s poem “I am Joaquin.” faculty collaborate to prepare preservice tions. English teachers for teaching. In February, 1999, Gary Montaño re- Maria Winfield was appointed to the ceived a $1,000 Teacher Dream Fund Sylvia Saenz and interdisciplinary team- founding board of the Agape Christian Grant from the Center for Teaching Ex- mate Martha Sheppard sponsored two Youth Center in Sierra Vista, AZ, to plan cellence at Eastern New Mexico Univer- winning eighth grade research teams in a a city-wide youth center. Her duties in- sity and the Ruidoso Municipal School contest supported by the Arizona Advi- clude soliciting community support, de- District. The grant will fund telecommu- sory Council on Environmental Research. signing and planning the building, fund- nications exchanges and ongoing collabo- Each team won second place in its cat- raising, attending the board meetings, and rative work between Gary’s and Steve egory and will receive a $5,000 grant to including students in the planning. During Schadler’s classrooms. fund a field trip to learn about water African American history month in the rights and the effect of farm chemicals on Huachuca City School District, Maria Renee Moore was awarded a second year human health. Field trips will include vis- presented “A Love Story,” a workshop to of funding from The Spencer Foundation its to Glenn Canyon Dam, Hoover Dam, involve students actively in the study of for her Practitioner-Research Communi- agricultural test farms, a science museum, history. Students viewed reproductions of cation and Mentoring Grant, which sup- and the Grand Canyon. vintage photography, created poetry and ports her research with African American collages, and participated in dance. students on Standard English. She was a Sandra Porter received a $700 Teaching panelist at The Spencer Foundation’s Incentive Grant from her school district to conference, “Collaborative Research for obtain software and books to create a Practice,” held March 11-12 in New school-to-work English class that incorpo- Orleans. Renee presented a workshop, rates telecommunications technology. “Teaching Grammar to African American Another grant from the district enabled Students,” at the annual conference of the Sandra to take 42 students to a Job Corps Mississippi Council of Teachers of Eng- site, the Frontiersman Newspaper, and lish, in Jackson, February 26. Renee will the school district computer center to be the keynote speaker at the Eighth An- learn about technology as it is related to career choices.

28 Bread Loaf School of English Spring/Summer 1999 Bread Loaf Rural Teacher Fellows Since 1993, the following rural teachers have received fellowships to study at the Bread Loaf School of English through generous support of the DeWitt Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund, the Educational Foundation of America, the Annenberg Rural Challenge, and Middlebury College.

FELLOW SCHOOL SCHOOL ADDRESS

Alaska

Christa Bruce Schoenbar Middle School 217 Schoenbar Rd., Ketchikan AK 99901 Patricia Carlson Lathrop High School 901 Airport Way, Fairbanks AK 99701 Scott Christian University of Alaska-Southeast Bill Ray Center, 1108 F St., Juneau AK 99801 JoAnn Ross Cunningham Haines High School P.O. Box 1289, Haines AK 99827 Samantha Dunaway Nome Beltz High School P.O. Box 131, Nome AK 99762 Hugh C. Dyment Bethel Alternative Boarding School P.O. Box 1858, Bethel AK 99559 Pauline Evon Kwethluk Community School Kwethluk AK 99621 Patricia Finegan Schoenbar Middle School 217 Schoenbar Rd., Ketchikan AK 99901 Allison Holsten Palmer High School 1170 W. Arctic, Palmer AK 99645 David Koehn (formerly of) Barrow High School P.O. Box 960, Barrow AK 99723 Joe Koon Bethel Regional High School P.O. Box 1211, Bethel AK 99559 Danielle S. Lachance Hydaburg City Schools P.O. Box 109, Hydaburg AK 99922 Andrew Lesh Akiuk Memorial School Kasigluk AK 99609 Susan McCauley Mountain Village School Mountain Village AK 99632 Sandra A. McCulloch Caputnguaq High School P.O. Box 72, Chefornak AK 99561 Taylor McKenna Schoenbar Middle School 217 Schoenbar Rd., Ketchikan AK 99901 Rod Mehrtens Matanuska-Susitna Borough Schools 125 W. Evergreen, Palmer AK 99645 Karen Mitchell University of Alaska-Southeast 10012 Glacier Hwy., Juneau AK 99801 Natasha J. O’Brien Ketchikan High School 2610 Fourth Ave., Ketchikan AK 99901 Mary Olsen Sand Point High School P.O. Box 269, Sand Point AK 99661 Clare Patton Ketchikan High School 2610 Fourth Ave., Ketchikan AK 99901 Prudence Plunkett Houston Junior/Senior High School P.O. Box 521060, Big Lake AK 99652 Sandra Porter Susitna Valley Junior/Senior High School P.O. Box 807, Talkeetna AK 99676 Rosie Roppel Schoenbar Middle School 217 Schoenbar Rd., Ketchikan AK 99901 Dianna Saiz Floyd Dryden Middle School 10014 Crazy Horse Dr., Juneau AK 99801 Sheri Skelton Shishmaref School General Delivery, Shishmaref AK 99772 Janet Tracy East Anchorage High School 4025 E. Northern Lights Blvd., Anchorage AK 99508 Patricia A. Truman Palmer Junior Middle School 1159 S. Chugach, Palmer AK 99645 Kathleen Trump Susitna Valley Junior/Senior High School P.O. Box 807, Talkeetna AK 99676 Linda Volkman Colony Middle School HCO 1 Box 6064, Palmer AK 99645 Trevan Walker Ketchikan High School 2610 Fourth Ave., Ketchikan AK 99901 Claudia Wallingford (formerly of) Gruening Middle School 9601 Lee Street, Eagle River AK 99577

Arizona

Priscilla Aydelott Monument Valley High School P.O. Box 337, Kayenta AZ 86033 Timothy Aydelott Monument Valley High School P.O. Box 337, Kayenta AZ 86033 Evelyn Begody Greyhills Academy High School P.O. Box 160, Tuba City AZ 86045 Sylvia Barlow Chinle Junior High School P.O. Box 587, Chinle AZ 86503 Sabra Beck Marana High School 12000 Emigh Rd., Marana AZ 85653 Celia Concannon Nogales High School 1905 Apache Blvd., Nogales AZ 85621 Jason A. Crossett Flowing Wells High School 3725 N. Flowing Wells Rd., Tucson AZ 85705 Chad Graff (formerly of) Monument Valley High School P.O. Box 337, Kayenta AZ 86033 Karen Humburg Lowell Middle School 519 Melody Ln., Bisbee AZ 85603 Amethyst Hinton Catalina Foothills High School 4300 East Sunrise Dr., Tucson AZ 85718 Vicki V. Hunt Peoria High School 11200 N. 83rd Ave., Peoria AZ 85345 M. Heidi Imhof Patagonia High School P.O. Box 254, Patagonia AZ 85624 Beverly Jacobs Marana High School 12000 Emigh Rd., Marana AZ 85653 Nancy Jennings Ganado Intermediate School P.O. Box 1757, Ganado AZ 86505 Rex Lee Jim Navajo Community College P.O. Box 6, Tsaile AZ 86545

Middlebury College • Middlebury, Vermont 29 Rural Teacher Network

Cecelia Lewis Buena High School 3555 Fry Blvd., Sierra Vista AZ 85635 Jill Loveless Globe Junior High School 501 E. Ash St., Globe AZ 85501 James Lujan Ganado Intermediate School P.O. Box 1757, Ganado AZ 86505 Jody K. McNelis (formerly of) Santa Cruz Valley Union H. S. 9th and Main St., Eloy AZ 85231 Kevin T. McNulty (formerly of) Calabasas Middle School 220 Lito Galindo, Rio Rico AZ 85648 Janet Olson (formerly of) Chinle Elementary School P.O. Box 587, Chinle AZ 86503 Robin Pete Ganado High School P.O. Box 1757, Ganado AZ 86505 Tamarah Pfeiffer Ganado High School P.O. Box 1757, Ganado AZ 86505 Lois Rodgers Patagonia High School P.O. Box 254, Patagonia AZ 85624 Joy Rutter Window Rock High School P.O. Box 559, Fort Defiance AZ 86504 Sylvia Saenz Sierra Vista Middle School 3535 E. Fry Blvd., Sierra Vista AZ 85635 Stephen Schadler Rio Rico High School 1220 Lito Galindo, Rio Rico AZ 85648 Karen Snow (formerly of) Ganado Primary School P.O. Box 1757, Ganado AZ 86505 Nan Talahongva (formerly of) Hopi Junior/Senior High School P.O. Box 337, Keams Canyon AZ 86034 Judy Tarantino Ganado Intermediate School P.O. Box 1757, Ganado AZ 86505 Edward Tompkins Lake Havasu High School 2675 Palo Verde Blvd., Havasu City AZ 86403 Risa Udall St. Johns High School P.O. Box 429, St. Johns AZ 85936 Maria Winfield Sierra Vista Middle School 3535 E. Fry Blvd., Sierra Vista AZ 85635 John Zembiec (formerly of) Chinle Junior High School P.O. Box 587, Chinle AZ 86503

Colorado

Stephen Hanson Battle Rock Charter School 11247 Road G., Cortez CO 81321 Sonja Horoshko Battle Rock Charter School 11247 Road G., Cortez CO 81321 Mary Juzwik Bridge School 6717 S. Boulder Rd., Boulder CO 80303 John Kissinger Montrose High School P.O. Box 1626, Montrose CO 81402 Joanne Labosky Lake George Charter School P.O. Box 420, Lake George CO 80827 Joan Light Montrose High School P.O. Box 1626, Montrose CO 81402 Maria Roberts Peetz Plateau School 311 Coleman Ave., Peetz CO 80747 Sharilyn West Cheraw High School P.O. Box 159, Cheraw CO 81030

Georgia

Carolyn Coleman West Laurens High School 338 Laurens School Rd, Dublin GA 31021 Rosetta Coyne Brooks County Middle School Quitman GA 31643 Jane Grizzle Ware County Middle School 2301 Cherokee St., Waycross GA 31501 Elizabeth McQuaig Fitzgerald High School P.O. Box 389, Fitzgerald GA 31750 Beverly Thomas Warren County High School 509 Gibson St., Warrenton GA 30828 K.C. Thornton Ware County Middle School 2301 Cherokee St., Waycross GA 31501 Mya Ward Warren County High School 509 Gibson St., Warrenton GA 30828

Mississippi

Brad Busbee Ocean Springs High School 406 Holcomb Blvd., Ocean Springs MS 39564 William J. Clarke (formerly of) Shivers High School P.O. Box 607, Aberdeen MS 38730 Leslie Fortier Jones Junior High School 1125 N. 5th Ave., Laurel MS 39440 Carolyn Hardy R. H. Watkins High School 1100 W. 12th St., Laurel MS 39440 Myra Harris Pascagoula High School 2903 Pascagoula St., Pascagoula MS 29567 William E. Kirby North Forrest High School 693 Eatonville Rd., Hattiesburg MS 39401 Sharon Ladner Pascagoula High School 2903 Pascagoula St., Pascagoula MS 29567 Renee Moore Broad Street High School P.O. Box 149, Shelby MS 38774 Terri Noonkester (formerly of) Hawkins Junior High School 523 Forrest St., Hattiesburg MS 39401 Patricia Parrish Sumrall Attendance Center P.O. Box 187, Sumrall MS 39482 Patsy Pipkin Oxford Junior High School 409 Washington Ave., Oxford MS 38655 Peggy Turner Saltillo High School Box 460, Saltillo MS 38866 Penny Wallin (formerly of) Jones Junior High School 1125 N. 5th Ave., Laurel MS 39440

30 Bread Loaf School of English Spring/Summer 1999

New Mexico

Kim Bannigan Rio Rancho High School 301 Loma Colorado, Rio Rancho NM 87124 Anne Berlin Lincoln Elementary School 801 W. Hill Ave., Gallup NM 87305 Wendy Beserra (formerly of) Deming Public Schools 501 W. Florida, Deming NM 88030 Erika Brett Hatch High School P.O. Box 790, Hatch NM 87937 Dorothy I. Brooks (formerly of) Ojo Amarillo Elementary School P.O. Box 768, Fruitland NM 87416 Lorraine Duran Memorial Middle School Old National Rd., Las Vegas NM 87701 Ann Eilert (formerly of) Los Alamos High School 300 Diamond Dr., Los Alamos NM 87544 Nona Edelson Santa Fe Indian School 1501 Cerrillos Rd., Santa Fe NM 87502 Renee Evans Crownpoint High School P.O. Box 700, Crownpoint NM 87313 Daniel Furlow Clayton High School 323 S 5th St., Clayton NM 88415 Emily Graeser (formerly of) Twin Buttes High School P.O. Box 680, Zuni NM 87327 Annette Hardin Truth or Consequences Middle School P.O. Box 952, Truth or Consequences NM 87901 Diana Jaramillo Pojoaque High School Pojoaque Station, Santa Fe NM 87501 Susan Jesinsky (formerly of) Santa Teresa Middle School P.O. Box 778, Santa Teresa NM 88008 John Kelly Shiprock High School P.O. Box 6003, Shiprock NM 87420 Carol Ann Krajewski Pecos Elementary School P.O. Box 368, Pecos NM 87552 Roseanne Lara Gadsden Middle School Rt. 1, Box 196, Anthony NM 88021 Juanita Lavadie Taos Day School P.O. Drawer X, Taos NM 87571 Leslie Lopez Native American Preparatory School P.O. Box 260, Rowe NM 87526 Timothy Lucero Robertson High School 5th & Friedman Streets, Las Vegas NM 87701 Carlotta Martza Twin Buttes High School P.O. Box 680, Zuni NM 87327 Theresa Melton Tse’Bit’ai Middle School P.O. Box 1873, Shiprock NM 87420 Arlene Mestas Bernalillo High School P.O. Box 640, Bernalillo NM 87004 Susan Miera Pojoaque High School Pojoaque Station, Santa Fe NM 87501 Gary Montaño Carlsbad High School 408 N. Canyon, Carlsbad NM 88220 Barbara Pearlman Hot Springs High School P.O. Box 952, Truth or Consequences NM 87901 Jane V. Pope Lovington High School 701 W. Ave. K, Lovington NM 88260 Virginia Rawlojohn Estancia High School P.O. Box 68, Estancia NM 87016 Stan Renfro Wingate High School P.O. Box 2, Fort Wingate NM 87316 Zita Schlautmann Bernalillo High School Box 640, Bernalillo NM 8704 Norma Sheff Hatch Elementary School Hatch NM 87937 Philip Sittnick Laguna Middle School P.O. Box 268, Laguna NM 87026 Lauren Thomas Sittnick Laguna Middle School P.O. Box 268, Laguna NM 87026 Bruce R. Smith Jemez Valley High School 8501 Highway 4, Jemez Pueblo NM 87024 Marilyn Trujillo Taos Day School P.O. Drawer X, Taos NM 87571 Michelle Wyman-Warren Mountainair High School P.O. Box 456, Mountainair NM 87036

South Carolina

Janet Atkins Greenville County School District 301 Camperdown, Box 2848, Greenville SC 29602 Michael Atkins Beck Academy of Languages 302 McAlister Rd., Greenville SC 29607-2597 Polly E. Brown Belton-Honea Path High School 11000 Belton Hwy., Honea Path SC 29654 Victoria Chance Travelers Rest High School 115 Wilhelm Winter St., Travelers Rest SC 29690 Raymond Cook Socastee High School 4900 Socastee Blvd., Myrtle Beach SC 29575 Ginny DuBose Waccamaw High School 2688 River Rd., Pawleys Island SC 29585 Monica M. Eaddy Mayo H. S. for Math, Science &Technology 405 Chesnut St., Darlington SC 29532 Barbara Everson Belton-Honea Path High School 11000 Belton Hwy., Honea Path SC 29654 Doris Ezell-Schmitz Chester Middle School 112 Caldwell St., Chester SC 29706 Anne Gardner Georgetown High School P.O. Box 1778, Georgetown SC 29442 Joyce Summerlin Glunt (formerly of) Hunter-Kinard-Tyler High School Box 158, Norway SC 29113 Linda Hardin Beck Academy of Languages 302 McAlister Rd., Greenville SC 29607 Tracy Hathaway (formerly of) Robert Smalls Middle School 43 Alston Rd., Beaufort SC 29902 Priscilla E. Kelley Pelion High School P.O. Box 68, Pelion SC 29123 Nancy Lockhart Homebound Tutor, Colleton School District P.O. Box 290, Walterboro SC 29542 Robin McConnell Calhoun Falls High School Edgefield St., Calhoun Falls SC 29628 Carolyn Pierce Cheraw High School 649 Chesterfield Hwy., Cheraw SC 29520 Anne Shealy John Ford Middle School P.O. Box 287, Saint Matthews SC 29135 Betty Slesinger (formerly of) Irmo Middle School 6051 Wescott Rd., Columbia SC 29212 Elizabeth V. Wright Ronald E. McNair Junior High School Carver St., Lake City SC 29560

Middlebury College • Middlebury, Vermont 31 Rural Teacher Network

Vermont

Kurt Broderson Mt. Abraham Union High School 9 Airport Dr., Bristol VT 05443 Mary Burnham Waits River Valley School Rt. 25, East Corinth VT 05040 Mary Ann Cadwallader (formerly of) Mill River Union High School Middle Rd., North Clarendon VT 05773 Katharine Carroll Middlebury Union High School Charles Ave., Middlebury VT 05753 Moira Donovan Peoples Academy Morrisville VT 05661 Jane Harvey Brattleboro Union High School 50 Fairground Rd., Brattleboro VT 05301 Margaret Lima Canaan Memorial High School 1 School St., Canaan VT 05903 Suzane Locarno Hazen Union School Main St., Hardwick VT 05843 Judith Morrison Hinesburg Elementary/Middle School Hinesburg VT 05461 Bill Rich Colchester High School Laker Ln., Colchester VT 05446 Gretchen Stahl Harwood Union High School RFD 1 Box 790, Moretown VT 05660 Ellen Temple Camels Hump Middle School Brown Trace Rd., Richmond VT 05477 Vicki L. Wright Mt. Abraham Union High School 7 Airport Dr., Bristol VT 05753 Carol Zuccaro St. Johnsbury Academy Main St., St. Johnsbury VT 05819

At Large

Rob Buck East Valley High School East 15711 Wellesley, Spokane WA 99216 Jane Caldwell Board of Cooperative Educational Services Dix Ave., Hudson Falls NY 12839 Jean Helmer Belle Fourche High School 1113 National St., Belle Fourche SD 57717 Christine Lorenzen Killingly Intermediate School Upper Maple St., Dayville CT 06241 John Rugebregt Maria Carrillo High School 6975 Montecito Blvd., Santa Rosa CA 95409 Peggy Schaedler East Hampton Middle School 19 Childs Rd., East Hampton CT 06424 James Schmitz Kennedy Charter Public School P.O. Box 472527, Charlotte NC 28247 Patricia Watson Floyd County Schools Prestonburg KY 41653

DeWitt Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fellowships for Rural Middle and High School Teachers in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, New Mexico and Vermont The Bread Loaf School of English of Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fellowships crease access to these improved ser- Middlebury College offers full-cost for rural teachers cover all expenses vices for young people in low-in- fellowships for rural middle and high for the summer session: tuition, come communities. school teachers to attend the Bread room, board, and travel. For application materials and a Loaf School of English as Fellows of During the summer session, Fel- detailed description of the Bread Loaf the Bread Loaf Rural Teacher Net- lows receive training in Bread Loaf’s program, write to: work, now in its seventh year; prefer- telecommunications network, James Maddox, Director ence is given to teachers in low-in- BreadNet, and participate in national Bread Loaf School of English come communities. These teachers and state networked projects. Each Middlebury College will be eligible to reapply for fellow- Fellow receives a $1,000 stipend to Middlebury, VT 05753 ships for a second and third summer finance telecommunications costs, to at any one of the four Bread Loaf make modest equipment purchases, PHONE: 802-443-5418 campuses, in Vermont; Lincoln Col- and to finance the implementation of lege, Oxford; New Mexico; and a classroom-research project in his or FAX: 802-443 2060 Alaska. The DeWitt Wallace- her school. Reader’s Digest Fellows spend their The mission of the DeWitt EMAIL: first summer session at the Bread Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund is to [email protected] Loaf campus in Vermont, taking two foster fundamental improvement in courses in writing, literature, or the- the quality of educational and ca- Or visit the Bread Loaf website: ater. Only full-time public school reer development opportunities for http://www.blse.middlebury.edu teachers are eligible. The DeWitt all school-age youth, and to in-

32 Bread Loaf School of English Spring/Summer 1999

1999 Summer Courses at Bread Loaf

At Bread Loaf, Ripton, On Looking: Victorian Literature Between the Acts: Literature, Vermont and the Visual Imagination— the Avante-Garde, and European Jennifer Green-Lewis Modernism 1914-1945— Sara Blair with Ellen McLaughlin Group I (Writing and Nineteenth-Century Fiction and the Teaching of Writing) the Meaning of Space-Isobel The Comic Stage— Language, Culture, and Armstrong Michael Cadden the Teaching of Writing— Jacqueline Royster or Modernism: Some Questions for Beverly Moss Literary Criticism—Victor Luftig Group VI (Theater Arts) Acting Workshop—Carol Poetry Writing—Paul Muldoon Between the Acts: Literature, the MacVey Avante-Garde, and European Fiction Writing—David Huddle or Modernism—Sara Blair with Directing Workshop— Jonathon Strong Ellen McLaughlin Alan MacVey

Playwriting—Dare Clubb Fiction of the Empire and the Breakup of Empire— Memory, Writing, and Gender— Margery Sabin Jacqueline Royster At Lincoln College, Oxford Writing for Publication— Group IV (American Literature) Beverly Moss American Civilization and Its Group II (English Literature through the Seventeenth Century) Origins of Narrative and the Discontents—Bryan Wolf Shakespeare’s History Plays— Narrative of Origins: Contemporary American John Wilders How We Tell Stories and Why— Short Story—David Huddle Susanne Wofford and Two Traditions of Seventeenth- Michael Armstrong Modern American Drama— Century Poetry—John Wilders Oskar Eustis Literature and Religion in Tudor- Group II (English Literature Modern American Autobiogra- Stuart England— through the Seventeenth Century) phy—Harriet Chessman Peter McCullough Chaucer—John Fyler Modern American Poetry— Shakespeare: On the Page and Regarding the Henriad: Robert Stepto On the Stage—Robert Smallwood Shakespeare, History, and and Nigel Wood Performance—Michael Cadden The African American Literary Aesthetic—Valerie Babb Chaucer—Douglas Gray Politics, Performance, and Rebellion in Shakespeare’s Racial Vision and Nineteenth- Renaissance Romance— Plays—Susanne Wofford Century American Literature— Peter McCullough Valerie Babb Reading Elizabethan Culture— Group III (English Literature Dennis Kay since the Seventeenth Century) Group V (World Literature) Romantic Poetry: Discourses of The Novel after Cervantes— Group III (English Literature the Sublime in Poetry by Men and Jacques Lezra since the Seventeenth Century) Women—Isobel Armstrong Wordsworth and Coleridge— Classical Backgrounds to English Seamus Perry Fin de Siécle Fictions, or It’s the Literature: Vergil and Ovid— End of the World . . . and I Feel John Fyler Fine—Jonathan Freedman (continued on next page)

Middlebury College • Middlebury, Vermont 33 Rural Teacher Network

English Literary Responses to Group III (English Literature At University of the French Revolution— since the Seventeenth Century) Alaska-Southeast, Nigel Wood British-Irish Modernism— Holly Laird Juneau Romanticism and Modernism in British Poetry, 1910-1965— Group I (Writing and the Seamus Perry Group IV (American Literature) Teaching of Writing) James Baldwin: Genres, Histories, Writing for Publication: Reading and Re-reading Victorian and Intersections— A Seminar—Andrea Lunsford Fiction—Kate Flint Arthur L. Little, Jr. Writing and the Sense of Place— Virginia Woolf and Her Native American Literature— John Elder Contemporaries—Kate Flint Diane Glancy Sustaining Indigenous Studies in English Fiction: Chicano/a Literature— Languages— from Joseph Conrad to Doris A. Gabriel Meléndez Courtney Cazden Lessing—Stephen Donadio Culture, Ethnicity, and Autobiog- raphy—A. Gabriel Meléndez Group II (English Literature Group V (World Literature) through the Seventeenth Century) Dreams of Glory: Poetic Vocation Revisiting Poetry—Emily Bartels and Poetic Form in the Late Group V (World Literature) Middle Ages—Vincent Gillespie Introduction to Cultural Studies— Shakespeare across Cultures— Claire Sponsler Emily Bartels South African Fiction in English— At the Native Lars Engle Group III (English Literature American Preparatory since the Seventeenth Century) The Social Character of the School, Rowe, New Victorian Novel— Mexico Jeffrey Nunokawa Oscar Wilde and the Fin de Siécle: Group I (Writing and the Desire Manageable and Teaching of Writing) Unmanageable—Jeffrey Fiction Writing Workshop— Nunokawa Diane Glancy

Cultures of the American Group IV (American Literature) Southwest—John Warnock Native American and Native Rewriting a Life: Teaching Alaskan Literature— Revision As a Life Skill— Lucy Maddox Tilly Warnock Group V (World Literature) Group II (English Literature Performance Is Memory: through the Seventeenth Century) (How) Memory Plays— Chaucer—Claire Sponsler Cindy Rosenthal

Milton’s Poetry—Lars Engle The English Bible—Kevin Dunn

Shakespeare and His Cultural Geography—Arthur L. Little, Jr.

34 Bread Loaf School of English