Paired Teaching Brainstorming Ideas

NCTE on Revision (Chapter 3) and “The Bath”

Read, Write, Think lesson plan for "A Small, Good Thing"

Hi!

While looking for an example of the Carver story "The Bath", which "A Small, Good Thing" is evidently based, I found this lesson plan. I looked through it a wee bit. 

How do you guys feel about using lesson plans like this? Is this an ineffective teacher cop-out, or a way to structure some ideas? This hasn't really come up in class--but the Beach books we've been reading have pretty detailed lesson plans. 

See ya!

Using the NCTE text

Hi everyone!

I am sorry I have been a little MIA here--I have been suffering under the strong arm of a fierce illness for quite some time. 

About Carver, the '70's and me

I just wanted to wrap up our postings with some comments on the NCTE text. Cathey made comment at the beginning of our blogging experience about how she had to reread some of our selections again because she thought she missed something.  I definitely felt that at the beginning too--that "that's it" feeling. But after a few stories, I wanted to read a few more--not unlike Rubenstein's students in the NCTE book. Carver's words seem to make sense of the negative space between words, or at least shed light on that space. Rubenstein writes "...because it seems so slim and slight, it compels the reader to become deeply involved." (Rubenstein, 17)

While reading many of the stories, for some reason I visualized my parents, family and family friends  as the protagonists--especially my mother's side whose stories I listened to so intently while aunts spent long summer evenings talking about shared memories. It didn't click until the NCTE book revealed to me that most of the stories give a voice to that blue collar population in the '70's that maybe didn't get recognized otherwise. A contemporary example might be the protagonist in 'No Country for Old Men'. 

One of those repeated stories I heard from my family was about my Uncle who was given a junior science kit as a gift and ended up accidentally burning down a few vacant lots with his magnifying glass. My grandfather was  reportedly had uncontrollable drinking and anger problems found out and much to the surprise of my uncle, did not fly off the handle for once and stood by my uncle as the local authorities tried in vain to get to the bottom of the arson. Reading Carver teased that out of my memory, for some reason.  

My family--through blue collar follies, drinking, divorce and all--managed to carve out what they considered their own American Dream. My Uncle married his high school sweetheart after all, raised a family in Amherst and is generally happy. 

The moments from the 1970's that punctuate the time between freewheeling and settling down were discussed  so much when I was growing up. Metabolizing those histories, I now can juxtapose my own late 20's experiences on those stories and find solace that someone like Carver has the gift to poetically paint what I see in my mind.

Anyway, I see a lot of my own history--the history of where I came from-- in Carver's words.  It's unnerving and comforting at the same time. 

About Minimalism (things to think about when considering our paired teaching)

 The NCTE text explores the reasons why minimalism became popular in the latter portion the the 20th Century.  Lifestyle changes having to do with the inception of the suburbs and strip malls in addition to advances in technology that led to how Americans spend leisure time have a lot to do with the lack of motivation to read. 

This is interesting thinking about contemporary culture and how in Japan, novels in text speak sent to a cell phone are popular. Modernity and Post-Modernity have certainly changed the way we spend time. But is this a bad thing? It was only around 1450 when Gutenberg's printing press was in full-function after over a millenium of people deciding what history is. Still, it would take centuries for print literacy to be addressed as something everyone is should have a handle on. A lot of people talk about how people don't read like they used to, and value print literature over other types. But through the history of people communicating, print media has been a relatively new kid on the block. Considering that through most of the centuries up to and including even the 19th and 20th, literacy was still something for privilaged (even today in Buffalo and WNY, the illiteracy rate is around 30%)

But I digress. 

I really, really like the ideas in web 2.0--"we are living in exponential times". 

Is the reason minimalist writers are so popular because of this?

I like the idea of prompting students to write their own pieces of minimalist writing  (Runebstein, 27) because I know a lot of the students I work with think because it' short, it's easy. Rubenstein got surprised by some of his students work. Maybe we could incorporate brief explaination of minimalism and how the style came about from Hemingway and the 'Iceburg Method' to strip malls and Carver and have our peer students write a minimal story of their own. Fun!

Huh?

What do you think?

 

Teaching Space.

But, after all, the aim of art is to create space - space that is not compromised by decoration or illustration, space within which the subjects of painting can live. - Frank Stella
The 2nd chapter of Rubenstein's guide to teaching Carver talks about models of creativity, assigning Carter (who goes grudgingly) to Minimalism, which is as much a critique of art as it is a genre of it. It is a term that can be used in a broad way over many mediums- and this is what piqued my interest as far as ideas for teaching. Rubenstein focuses mainly on minimalism in prose writing, citing Hemingway as a direct influence on Carver, but I would encourage a much broader take on Minimalism in art, music, photography, film to give a more holistic approach. I included the quote by Frank Stella at the top (along with one of his paintings) because I thought it could be broadened into a theme for a class, or even a great writing prompt in relation to the characters in Carver's "space." Carver's world is certainly not "compromised by decoration or illustration."
Bringing in a visual aspect to a unit on Carver (the work of Stella or Modigliani) as well as encouraging students to pursue musical and film representations of the ideals of Minimalism that we see Carver establishing is a great way to make the work we are experiencing part of a larger literary conversation.

muscles, bikes and cigarettes

I like reading Carver because it's like sitting on your porch and watching the goings on around you in your neighborhood. His characters are so genuine and familiar. He keeps his descriptions so minimal that the reader's imagination is allowed to fill in the backdrop. I love this because although we're all reading the same story, the uniqueness of our own experiences set the scene and create the plot on our own terms. The characters could be your neighbors as much as mine. Because of this, I think his stories would be a great entry into a short story unit in any high school class.

This was such a sweet story fo me to read. I have two boys and though they are not angels by any stretch of the word, they are generally good boys and rarely give me any issues. (believe me, I know how fortunate I am). They have such an underlying sense of goodness that even though they are "typical boys" and stir up their share of mischief, they ultimately would never intentionally do something to hurt someone else. At least, I don't think they would. They're just not mean spirited. Somehow they've become very empathetic to the feelings of others. I'm not going to take credit for this attribute, but I do take advantage of it and try to foster their understanding of other people's circumstances. It helps them to see outside of themselves, and I think that is an important attribute for any human to have.

My dad would never have done anything like this when I was a child. He's very non- confrontational and for a long time I also hated to rock the boat on any issue in anyway. I'm not saying that it's a terrible personality trait, just that more often than not I found myself getting taken advantage of and that led to resentment and tension. Instead of talking about what was bothering me, I'd just cram it all inside and stew about it. I still have a tendencey to do that, but I try to put my feelings regarding a situation out here before they can fester and cause a larger issue later. Which, by the way, is always the case when you try to be a "non boat-rocker." (at least that's been my experience). My mother...on the other hand would totally have gone down the street and made an issue of the bike situation. I'm trying to think how she would've behaved if it were my bike, and she definitely wouldn't have been as nice as Gilbert's mother.
I'm not sure how I would react in such a situation, my Jon let someone ride his bike this summer and complained that the kid "bent his rim". He is my ...opinionated child. I really didn't know anything about it until about 9:30 one night when my doorbell rang and it was the kid's mother with a twenty dollar bill in her hand. She apologized and tried to give me the money, "this is for Jon's bike, " she'd said. I asked her what she was talking about, and then she gave me the story about her boy riding Jon's bike and Jon accusing him of bending the rim and then demanding payment for it. OMG!! I was mortified. Now, don't get me wrong, I stand up for my own when the situation calls for it, if you know anything about me it has to be that I'm not afraid to..express myself. This, on the other hand was different. I smelled a rat, and he was living in my boy's room. So you can get a better idea of this..allow me to paint the picture for you. Jon, my 12 year old, is the hardest headed child that Jesus has ever made. He is going to learn EVERYTHING the hard way. I love this boy beyond words..but there are definitely days when I've considered taking two twenty's for him. Obstinate would be putting it mildly. Jon is 50,000% boy, really, no exageration. He hates to shower, he smells his clothes to see if they're clean, I can smell him coming home in the summer, and even though he goes to school looking like a clean and well brought up child, he comes home looking like he's been working in the coal mines for eight hours. There are actually times when I throw his clothes out because I don't want to foul up my washing machine..yes, really. We bought him one of those silly BMX bikes a couple of years ago, the ones with the pegs sticking out of the wheels. He "ramps" over twigs, okay? Once I looked out the window and he was dragging a palate from behind the grocery store down the street. He came in and started rummaging through Matt's (my husband) tool box, grabs the hammer and walks out. Because I wanted to see where this was actually going, I just watched for a minute. He took apart the palate, and started leaning the boards next to each other against the blue recycle bin. He throws the hammer down and rides his bike to the end of the street. I knew where this was going so I went out and said "uh, whatta ya doin?" "I made a ramp for my bike, he says. "I'm gonna jump it with my bike." Yeah, okay, that's happening, Can you wait 'til I get an ambulance to stand by? "Are you insane???!!!!!!!!!!." He goes through a minimum of four inner tubes for his bike tires every summer, we finally wised up and got the "Unbreakable" ones...and unbreakable is really a matter of opinion, he managed to ruin one of those as well. This is a kid who tried banging a 9volt battery into a AA battery spot, and was irritated with the fact that he couldn't "make the stupid battery fit." When Jon got the bike he gave every kid in the neighborhood a ride on the back pegs...even though we recommended against that. "It's my bike," he'd say to me. (Can you feel my pain)?
so..the point here is I knew damn well the neighbor's kid didn't bend Jon's bike rim. I certainly couldn't take her money. I did make Jon come downstairs and face the music, and he was really mad at me for a while. He really insisted that this kid bent the rim. Now, I'm not sure what this has to do with the story other than I think there are two sides to every story. I was glad Mr. Hamilton kicked Berman's ass. He deserved it. I can see my little (long) story going completely the other way if I decided to pretend that my kid is a perfect specimen of humanity..but I know better. He's not. Can I fault him for it? Neither am I, but I do want him to make the right choices and even if it makes him want to "stick my doll"..I'll do that to the best of my ability. I want them to say that they wish they knew me when I was little, like they could imagine us being friends. I loved this story. Sorry that I carried on and on and on..

Perspective

I think an interesting creative decision Carver chooses to make has to do with perspective, especially in the stories "Gazebo" and "So Much Water So Close to Home." In "Gazebo," he chooses to tell the story from the perspective of the husband and in "So Much Water..." he tells the story from the perspective of the wife. Why do you think he chooses these perspectives? I thought about it a lot this week and I really don't have an insightful statement to make either way. The wife's perspective is so personal and jarring, I feel like I am inside her skin when I read it and it's disturbing. The husband's perspective is less reflective and more matter-of-fact; instead of sympathy I rather feel as though I'm being bludgeoned by the story. I feel empathy for the characters and am frustrated by their obstinancy to the feelings of their partner in both cases (the husband's decision to cheat and make no effort to re-establish trust, the wife's decision to shut her husband out because of his insensitiviy to the dead girl). I was hoping that one of us might shed some light on these characters and the way they tell their stories...

arguing parents..yuk

This story so reminded me of my parents when I was that age. They were constantly arguing, and the house was a giant hive of tension. No one ever wanted to be there. I totally empathize with the kid wanting to stay home. I never wanted to go to school during their divorce.

I was annoyed with the mother's comments about how the father "wanted to tear apart the family." My mother talked trash about my father all the time and it didn't do anything but breed resentment in me. It certainly didn't bring me over to "her side" if there really was such a thing.

I think it's awful to put kids in the middle of it all, they didn't ask to be brought into the world or your mess, why should they get stuck sqare in the middle of something that they really don't have any choice in? It's awful to expect them to pick sides. They love both of their parents. You should't ask them to choose. (sorry..a little pent up anger coming out..my ex is constantly putting my boys in the middle of our crap. It frustrates them and infuriates me..which doesn't allieviate the situation any either). I keep praying for him to spontaneously combust..but God hasn't come through for me yet...Awful aren't I? No, not bitter...anyway...............

The rest of the story seems to pretty much follow the plan of action that any typical teenage boy would follow when he cut school. Wait until mom (or dad) leaves, turn on the television, eat a bunch of crap, then go find something to do and make sure you're home before your parents get there. It is almost like Ferris Bueler's day off..but not as much fun.

I wasn't getting the father's reaction to the fish, but again, I may need some remedial reading lessons from you all. It seems as though the further I read into the book, the less I'm understanding. I have had to read everything twice so far...I'm really feeling that my status as "reader" has greatly declined over the past 48 hours or so. I keep thinking..."What was that?"

Perhaps you all want to reconsider my membership to this club..You may consider voting me off the island, or perhaps providing me with a bunch of reading life-lines..yikes..(no I really don't watch that much tv..especially that kind of crap..) Maybe I'll get the bike and muscle one...

A small good thing..what's small or good about it?

Okay, I remeber reading this during my observation period in one of the English classes. I kept thinking, God, what an awful story. those poor people lose their boy and if someone would have reacted a little bit sooner, maybe(probably) it could've been prevented. Not that I'm a fan of this litigitous society that we live in, but somewhere in the back of my head I'm thinking someone bears some responsibility in all of this.

I suppose I'm a little reactionary, but I am a mama and I would be paralyzed by an event like this. I suppose if I think on it a little more, I imagine any parent would feel the same. It would be so hard to accept the death of a child. My husband just lost his 26 year old daughter and I just don't know how he gets up in the morning. He hasn't been able to go to the cemetary yet, and over the weekend we went to our storage unit and, of course, some of her stuff was in there, so he had a really hard time getting through the rest of the day. He's not a sobber , but it definitely affected him.

I thought the parents were a little wierd, the mother seemed to be content to wait for the Doctors to sort of plod along. I try not to be a "heli-mom" and hover over everyone, but I think I would've been a little more proactive. I suppose hind sight is 20/20. It's easy to be an armchair quaterback when you're not in the game. The other side of that coin is that I would hate to second guess the doctors. I'm not sure what I'm trying to say. I guess losing a child would pretty much incapacitate me. I suppose the parents reaction was what they could handle at the time?

I was a little confused about the baker's phone calls. I mean, what was the purpose? I guess he was annoyed because he thought they stiffed him on the cake, but prank phone calls just seem a little juvenile to me. Maybe he should've sent them a bill anyway, and when he found out about the circumstances he could've just forgiven the bill. that's probably not the best way to run a business. I suppose the parents could've blown the bill off..I don't know. I think this story left me with more questions than answers...obviously it did. I actually feel like less of a "reader" after reading it..does that make sense? Did any of you get this feeling? I hope I can make sense of the rest of the stories. You guys might be in for a pretty long discussion forum while you try to explain everything to me. I'll have to go back and read your posts, and then try a re-reading of the story....

Readings for the week of 2/17-2/24

Hey everybody!

So we have decided on four selections this week, try to get to at least three. 

So Much Water So Close to Home

They're Not Y0ur Husband

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Gazebo

Okie dokie? 

Stealing bikes and pulling weeds

So...

this happened to me--"this", as in I was in a situation where a missing bike was involved and the high parental court was forced to interject (which is never good in kidom). I remember the high tension between my mom and the mom down the street because someone's bike went missing. I am not sure of the details, but I think I was covering for my friend down the street or my brother. Either way, we were all punished and forced to weed the garden for the rest of the day. 

I can see how relationships between parents can be dicey. No one has the same familial constitution set up and one family's rule broken is another's rule bent. I think about this more and more as we talk about starting a family in the future. 

As for teaching, I guess this is the same between teachers. A late arrival or cell phone is a detention (or even ISS!) for one teacher and a conversation or look from another. 

I have never seen my parents throw down with anyone else's, and thank God for that. I would d.i.e.

Raymond Carver's style makes me tense and anxious!

My Dad could beat up your Dad...

Here was another protoypical teenage boy story. I never saw my old man get into a physical confrontation with anyone's dad: the only kid on my street I ever fought with didn't know who his dad was (which is probably one of the reasons he liked to fight so much.) My dad was always a big guy, like my Danish grandfather: tall and thick with wide shoulders and an enormous head. Somehow I got to be short and chubby like my mom's Hungarian father. Anyways, that's another subject. My old man used to fell trees in our woods with his chainsaw and then me and my older brother would chop them up for firewood. My best friend's dad chopped and delivered firewood for a living. I always associated the whole process with masculinity, the way the boy in the story is doing with smoking and muscles. I still find myself sometimes looking at a man that I meet for the first time and thinking, "I wonder how many swings with an axe it would take him to split a trunk?" or "Does this guy know how to operate a chainsaw?"
Another thing my old man used to do was to tell my little brother and I stories before we would go to bed. They were pretty outlandish stories about his boyhood in Washington: spearing a steelhead with a fencepost, the three-legged coyote with green spit who took off with the neighbor's goose, the avalanche he drove through with his milk truck, his Indian friend John Moses who killed a guy with a shotgun. So another thing I've always associated with masculinity is the ability to tell a good story (regardless of getting the facts straight.) My mother would read to us often, but never tell stories the way Dad did. I suppose that's why he became a preacher.

Some Things Never Change...

... for instance, if you search on GoogleImage for pictures of steelhead trout, like I did here (look up), you will find pictures of boys of various ages and sizes holding up fish and smiling, just like R. in the story. Who are they showing the fish to? Who indeed...

Much of "Nobody Said Anything" reminded me of growing up in rural western NY. George was a fairly accurate facsimile of my little brother who also had a knack for fouling up my diversionary tactics with the parental units and generally stirring up feelings of fraternicide (we also shared a room.) When you are a young boy, you crave adventure. You go into the woods, to the river, across town and look for monsters to vanquish. You wish for the woman with the nice boobs to pick you up in the flashy car (did anyone else feel like this part was a little fantastic?), you wish for the monster in the stream, the biggest fish you or any of your buddies ever saw, you want to smoke cigarettes and shoot guns and kill things, etc. You have a lot of energy and crazy chemicals being produced internally, and generally you are looking for excuses to get them out.

A few images that came to me while reading this story were the Nick Adams stories (Hemingway), only Nick wasn't constantly jerking off. The scene where they split the steelhead also reminded me of the story of King Solomon in which two mothers quarreling over a baby come to Solomon for advice. He offers to cut the baby in half so they can both have a part. Now, obviously a mother would reject this notion, but here the boys (hilariously) fight over who gets the head. Some things never change...

Nobody Said Anything

Nobody Said Anything takes you back to that place when you are younger where you are just starting to assert yourself as an independent person, while still feeling the need for your parents approval. 

The part where he hitchhikes made me think of that one David Sedaris story (please forgive me, I am unaware of the title, and it would take an hour for me to locate it) where he decides to hitch hike and is propositioned. It also took me to that This American Life where the brother's try to hitch home and some unsavory characters take them to a graveyard and they escape. But I digress. 

The imagery of the kid constantly "beating off", made me sort of uncomfortable, I am not going to lie. The style of writing here reminds me of David Foster Wallace, a very masculine organic way to present what I understand to be real male experiences. (S.S., you would like DFL very much, I think). 

The kid tries to think where to start fishing and remembers where his father used to take him and his brother.  I wondered where the father was at the beginning of the story and this line sort of made me think that he died, but it turns out he is just an angry jerk. 

I really like the way Carver brings the anxiety and personal tension to the forefront of his characters. In A Small Good Thing, I really felt the anxiety of Ann. In this story, I am taken back to being a kid and those weird negotiations we make to play certain games or get the blue popsicle. This kid wants the fish, just to show his father. That other crazy green one was cool enough, but this one will prove that he listened when his father told him to bait the hook just so and go to this part of the creek at this time of the year. He wanted his father to be proud and when he got home he just got arguing and nobody said a thing about his fish. 

week of 2/9 readings

Nobody Said Anything

Bicycles, Muscles, Cigarettes 

I also read 

They're Not Your Husband

and Put Yourself in My Shoes, if anyone wants to talk about those as well. 

Though what happens in "A Small, Good Thing" is heart wrenching, Carver has such a good way of taking the extraordinary and making it relatable. He just describes the events as they happen, as if the gruff interaction between the woman and the baker has just as much of a chance of occurring in life as a child being struck in a hit-and-run. One minute the story is about a child and his friend walking to school, passing back and forth a bag of chips, and the next minute he is in a coma.

Tragedy is like that I guess. We always wish we could go back and cherish those moments before life took a dramatic turn, but we can't. I actually feel sick reading back at the beginning of the story, before the child was hit. It reminds me of the mother who pushed her son out of the way to save him on Main Street last year.

The baker is made very human as well, though. I used to be the overnight baker at Tim Horton's, so I can relate to the sense of callousness created by long hours of solitude and ovens that are "endlessly full and endlessly empty." Sometimes you forget the purpose of life, and it takes a shocking event to make you really reevaluate what is important.

Sacred Collisions

I am re-reading Breakfast of Champions right now, and in it, there is a section where the author is explaining how he sees the world around him:

"As for myself: I had come to the conclusion that there was nothing sacred about myself or about any human being, that we were all machines, doomed to collide and collide and collide. For want of anything better to do, we became fans of collisions." - Kurt Vonnegut

In Carver's story, there are collisions of all kinds going down. There is the very physical collision of the car and Scotty, the collision of people's lives intersecting (the various doctors, nurses, orderlies, patients, and families), and collisions of understanding (Ann realizing who is making the disturbing calls, the baker's realization of what he has done). As opposed to the cynical narrator of Vonnegut's novel, I believe that Carver is implying that there can be something sacred in the way that our lives collide. The scene at the end where the couple and the baker "break bread" together is a very spiritual scene, it reminds me of Caravaggio's painting of the Biblical story where Christ reveals himself to two mourners after he has died. They are seated at a table, breaking bread, when they realize who they are seated with. I included the painting for dramatic effect...

Also, when Ann sees the woman silently praying, and knows they are in very similar situations, "She had an urge to ask what those words were." There is a sense of a Communion of pain and worry, just as when Ann and Howard stand next to each other at the window: "...they seemed to feel each other's insides now, as though the worry had made them transparent in a perfectly natural way."

Link to a web version of 'A Small Good Thing'

Our First Selection

Good afternoon readers, 

Yesterday in class, Rachel, Stephen and I chose to all read 'A Small Good Thing' to start our discussions as it is likely in most collections of Carver's work and is represented in the NCTE book. Cathy, I am sorry we were unable to get your input and hope that is ok. 

Happy reading!

Amanda