Metaphors we teach by

How does English differ from other disciplines? After all, math, science, and social studies also require reading, writing, and critical thinking. Such was the question a friend raised to me: why is it we're always "getting into everyone else's class"? What do we have that's our own?

The answer, I think is this: metaphor. I'm stealing unashamedly from Northrop Frye here, who situates English between History and Philosophy: Frye suggests that if the basic unit of History is the event, and the basic unit of Philoosophy is the Concept, then English is really about metaphor. Of course there's overlap, but using language to bring two otherwise unlike things into relationship is the bread and butter of English class. I mean, it's our bailiwick. You know, it's what makes our world go around.

But metaphor isn't really about the cliches I've just used. In fact those happen when a metaphor "dies." Consider the word "arrive": derived from French, it originally described the moment when a ship came to the bank of a river or "a rive." English is full of these "kennings" which have become dissociated from their metaphorical meanings and come to stand simply (ok, metonymously) for themselves. The worst examples of this are everyday objects whose commercial names become synonymous with the thing itself: a photocopier becomes a Xerox; a tissue becomes a Kleenex. Will the same thing happen to the "Internet"--no longer a glowing, "World Wide Web" of knowledge but just a thing we access through the (Microsoft) window of our...I mean, the frame of our...you know, our computer screens.

A teacher friend, Jen, now working in Colorado, sent me this video she used to revive metaphors and remind her students of how important and ubiquitous they and other literary devices are in their daily lives. Wisely, she drew the examples from songs students had listed as favorites on an initial survey of their likes and interests.




While keeping metaphors alive is a worthy crusade for us English teachers, I think there's even more to it than that: when I ask English teacher candidates what made them want to become English teachers, many give responses about empathy: helping students to consider multiple points of view besides their own. Where else but English class could you "walk a mile in someone else's shoes" by reading about--identifying with--a narrator of another race, gender, or social class, or even travel to fantastic alien worlds so different and yet so alike our own?

Now there's a reason for tackling that class of tenth graders. It gives me chills. Literally.

Literature and Society

Why does literature exist in society? This fall I'll be teaching a course called "Literature and Society," and I've been thinking about this question as an overarching topic for the course. From the tales we tell every year at Thanksgiving dinner to Greek tragedies and political satires, stories play an important role in our lives. What constitutes literature? Why do we write it? Read it? How do audience, purpose, and genre figure in the answers to these questions? What do we mean by "society"? What role has literature played in your life? Can it have an effect on more than individuals? If so, how/why?

As I write this, I'm reminded of an assignment I've given and gotten that asks one to describe the literature that has been important to one's life over the years--one version of the "literacy autobiography." Perhaps this kind of assignment is the first step in engaging the larger question of literature's role in society.

One concern I have about broaching a topic like this in a course is that it's a common topic about which much has already been written. Is it inviting plagiarism to address this question? Or can that pitfall be avoided by changing the nature of the assignments? For example, the personal response I've recalled above can't be plagiarized; perhaps some kind of multimodal composition, like a website or movie, would also make dialing in a paper or downloading an essay more difficult.

For me, when I think of literature, I think of metaphor, the figure that distinguishes the literary from history's event or philosophy's concept (at least, according to Northrop Frye, although even he recognizes that there's overlap). If metaphor is distinctly literary, then one purpose of literature is to allow people to identify with experiences that are not their own, to see the creative connections between things that might otherwise appear distinct. The power of metaphor to make us see ourselves, each other, and the world differently is one reason I became an English teacher.

What do teachers eat?

What do teachers eat? As a beginning teacher, my answer to this question included seven cups of coffee and a donut. The afternoon combination of sugar and caffeine acted like a defibrillator, shocking my brain, heart, and pancreas and (temporarily) heightening my energy level. But in a few hours, I crashed. And in the meantime, for the middle school students who came to me after lunch full of high-fructose corn syrup, having class with Hyper-Mike was like taking a tour of a fireworks factory by torchlight.

Ten years later, I've learned that the Sherry metabolism requires a sustaining breakfast and lunch and a sugar- and caffeine-free afternoon if I am to make it to dinner. For a long time, I made my own protein bars each weekend using this recipe from the Food Network's Alton Brown (http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/protein-bars-recipe/index.html). It makes for a quick and tasty breakfast or snack. And like other meals--oatmeal with nuts for breakfast or beans/lentils and rice for lunch--it provides complete proteins: certain combinations of foods, like grains and legumes, complement each other and provide sustaining energy (learn more here: http://www.theveggietable.com/articles/protein.html). And if you're really feeling daring, try quinoa (pronounced "keen-wah"), a grain-like food that provides a complete protein by itself and has been around since the Incas. It goes with almost anything and can be purchased in bulk for cheap. And taking quinoa in tupperware for lunch has the added benefit of attracting attention from students who ask, "What the heck is that?" And this as they unwrap a fruit rollup....