Freedom Writer's Diary--awww!

Ok, so I just watched Freedom Writer's Diary, and I have mixed feelings about it. I haven't read the book, and I'm sure I would have a very different reaction to reading their actual writing . . . because who can deny the words a person writes?

However, watching the movie, I focused more on the character of the teacher. I say "character" because who knows how much the real Erin Grunwell resembles the Hilary Swank version? But I think my reaction was a very personal one--I'm a teacher and I could never do what she did. And by that I mean, I could never take two extra jobs and sacrifice my marriage for my job. And watching this movie makes me feel kind of guilty for that fact, even though I know that most humans can't do what she did--and really, do we want our teachers to give their entire lives over to their jobs? Yes, she did AMAZING things for her students . . . but is this sort of personal sacrifice what it takes? And if so, can we really expect on a larger scale?

My first teaching job was a Michelangelo Middle School #144 in the Bronx. I started in January of 2003, after student teaching in a southwest suburb of Chicago. M.S. 144 was something like Woodrow Wilson High (the school in the movie), junior version. Students called me profanities, there were fights in my class, and Curtis, a lovable boy with a violent streak, liked to throw dictionaries at people when he got bored. I did not have the breakthrough that Erin Grunwell did. And so my reaction to her sacrifices in the film are probably a reaction to my inability to have a breakthrough with my students in the Bronx.

I think the film portrayed her as too perfect . . . I understand that they have to smush a lot into two hours to cover two whole years, but it made it seem to easy, too quick. Like all the sudden they were singing Kumbaya together and holding hands. I would have like to see more of her failed lessons, times when she missed the mark. But that's the teacher in me, wanting to commiserate, I think. Who said my reactions have to be fair?

Reading and rocking

These days, I'm doing most of my reading while feeding my 7-week-old son Abraham. It requires quite a bit of skill really. One must be able to hold a 10-11 pound baby, keep him eating, balance a book/magazine/computer on the arm of the chair or lap, and keep focused on both baby and text at the same time. Hardest is reading on the computer. Today I was reading "What is Literacy?" by James Gee for one of my graduate courses (I'm a student in the University of Iowa's School of Library and Information Science), and I am proud to say that I've mastered the timing to keep the light going on my screen, scroll down, and scroll pages on a PDF file without disturbing Abe.

The essay was really pretty interesting, and his discussion of acquisition vs. learning was really interesting. It made me think about how I teach and how to get more out of it. We can't always "acquire" knowledge in school the way he suggests (because it's not a natural environment), but I can do better to admit the limitations of the environment and make better use of the teaching/learning situation that we do have.

Sonia's profile

I read a profile of Sonia Sotomayor in The New Yorker last week, and it confirmed two things for me: 1) I want to be a Supreme Court Justice someday soon and 2) I think I'll just read profiles of judges and current legal issues as my primary means of preparation for the job. Forget law school.

ART: RIYAS KOMU, AICON GALLERY--copied from the story at the link above

Daniel Deronda (is boring but I love him anyway)

Ok, so my first post will be dedicated to George Eliot's Daniel Deronda, a book I finished last week (or the week before? Days are blurring together...). First, let me say that I am a devoted Eliot fan: if I could steal a brain and take it on as my own, hers would be high up on the list (along with Virginia Woolf). I love her ability to depict humanity in all its glory and dirt--particularly with characters like Gwendolyn in Deronda. My friend Tony says Gwendolyn is his favorite character in all of literature, and while I've never really thought about who my favorite character across the board is, I do love Gwendolyn with a special love. Gwendolyn knows who she is: she knows that she is selfish, small, petty, and ignorant, and she does not apologize for it. She is initially fatigued by these unfortunate facts (but with the fatigue of a bored princess), but through her interactions with Daniel Deronda, she becomes bent on rehabilitating her shallow soul. Her turn toward perfection is a little too much for me, but I do love her messiness. It gives me hope for my own messy soul.

Deronda himself is too perfect to be true (so is Mirah, his love). He's righteous, intelligent, devoted, selfless, reflective, and any other good adjective you can think of--and that's it. Thus the title of my post. His boringness didn't really occur to me until I finished the book though; while I was reading it I was loving him and wanting to be more like him, just as Gwendolyn was. But at the end, I thought, "Humph. So that's all there was to him? Just one dimension of perfection." Which is what we always say we want in a man (by we I mean women who love romance, like myself), but in the end, it's kind of boring. It's almost like Eliot wrote Deronda to be a philosophy or a worldview, more than a character. That is, he's not really human in the way Gwendolyn is...he's not messy enough. His primary purpose seems to be more to establish what humans "should" be/do/want/think in the book. In the end, he's sort of like a cardboard cutout of The Man of My Dreams. Looks great, but there's nothing behind the shiny outside. Here's to messy humanity!