The Hallway at Lunch Time - An Anecdote

After depositing books and papers in their lockers, Faye and her friend Sarah walked the school hallways and ate their lunch.  Faye slowly nibbled at her sandwich and sipped juice as they meandered around the circuit of main corridors and talked about school and boys and the pressure they were feeling to get their English essay done.  They had already tried the gym, but there were just some boys there trying to play basketball and making rude jokes, so they returned to the hallway.  As they rounded the corner to the “back hall”, Faye had to step sideways to avoid a spill of lettuce and croutons on the floor.  Today was lasagna and salad day in the cafeteria.

Meeting them were a group of students, four or five grade 11 and 12 boys, and two grade 9 girls.  Jeff was laughing loudly and body-checking his friends into the lockers.  Faye and Sarah moved to the opposite side and switched to single file, Sarah ahead, Faye behind.  The boys barely glanced their way as they passed, but one of the girls spoke to her friend in a half-audible voice, “… at least we have someone to hang out with.” 

As they walked on, Faye could hear a teacher behind her:

“Jeff, is that your salad on the floor?”

“No, that wasn’t me … That was Sarah and Faye.”

“Yeah right, Jeff.”

Faye checked her watch.  They had almost 15 minutes left.  They decided to try the library.

So, what did you consider as a "source"?

HMMMMM!  What to choose as a source for reflection?  There are so many great options.  Is anyone else interested in sharing their favorites – or at least some of the possibilities they thought about?  Here are a few that I considered.

Albom, Mitch.  Tuesdays With Morrie: An Old Man, A Young Man, And Life’s Greatest Lesson

Armstrong, Lance.  It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

Boukreev, Anatoli.  The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest

Carr, Emily.  Klee Wyck

Cormier, Robert.  The Chocolate War

Guterson, David.  Snow Falling on Cedars

Lee, Harper.  To Kill A Mockingbird

MacLeod, Alistair.  No Great Mischief

McLean, Stuart.  Stories from The Vinyl Café

Oufkir, Malika.  La Prisonnierre: Twenty Years in a Desert Gaol

Quindlen, Anna.  One True Thing: Love What You Have

St. Pierre, Paul.  Smith and Other Events: Tales of the Chilcotin

Reflecting on The Vinyl Café

The Story

Stuart McLean is a storyteller and CBC radio host, with a show called The Vinyl Café.  The following passage is from one of McLean’s short stories in print, “The Secret of Life”, published under the title Stories from The Vinyl Café, in 1995. 

Sean said he wanted the car to go to the station to buy a train ticket for Bishop’s.  And Mike said, “Why not just take the car?  You’ll need it more than us down there.  We got the truck.  What’s the difference?  We don’t need two cars.”

And so he did.  Take the car.  On Labour Day weekend, with all his possessions piled into the trunk and the back seat of the family’s blue ’81 Impala.  Stereo, tapes, records, clothes, posters and books.  At the gate he paused and tooted the horn twice at his mother and father as they stood in the yard.  Then he lurched about ten yards further and stopped and got out and waved.  Then he disappeared around the corner.  (Mclean, 1995, p.190)¹

The story is one of family communication.  Sean is preparing to leave home to attend college, an experience completely foreign to his father, who wishes that his son would take over the family dairy farm.  The story is rife with tension over Sean’s growing independence and his parents’ hesitation to trust him with important decisions.  As Sean struggles to establish his own identity and his own place in the world, Mike struggles to communicate his love for his son and to pass on important life lessons that he himself took years to learn.  Many of these mixed feelings about independence and control seem to be expressed in conflict over use of the family car.

Occupying Space

This passage describes the arrival of a time when Sean finally moves physically from his parents’ home.  Though there remains a material connection to his parents (the family car), and a level of dependence on them, Sean begins to occupy his own space in the world by moving away for college.  This is not space in a strictly corporeal sense, rather in the sense of having a living area of one’s own, the sense of being in control of the space and how it is organized and how it is used.  Sean has been entrusted with his own space and with ‘ownership’ of the car, and after driving around the corner, he is no longer controlled by or even visible to his parents. 

Loving and Being Loved

At different times in the story, Mike attempts to communicate intimate thoughts to Sean, and fails to do so in every case.  The inability to express himself in words leaves Mike feeling frustrated and inadequate as a father.  The relationship between Sean and Mike becomes more strained and apparently more distant with time. 

In some ways this passage clarifies Sean’s feelings for his parents, and in other ways leaves his feelings a mystery.  His love, concern, gratitude, appreciation and need are all expressed in his actions as he drives away from his childhood home; beeping a car horn in farewell may be a common gesture in Canadian culture, but Sean’s action of stopping again, getting out of the car and waving to his parents shows more about his feelings than many words could.  The exact contents of Sean’s feelings remain unclear, but with the gesture, Sean has rendered knowledge of them irrelevant; the closeness of Sean’s relationship with his parents is clearly preserved. 

But Really …

The amazing thing to me about this passage is the depth of feeling that McLean has conveyed with a simple gesture.  I suppose this is a reflection of what attracts me to phenomenology; our empathy for others is rooted in understanding something of their experience, even a tiny part of their experience.  There seems to be, in this field, a sense of personal connection to other human beings.  This is not to disparage other forms of research, but here is a way of knowing that seems more deeply connected to the human condition than many more conventional ways. 

¹McLean, Stuart. (1995).  The secret of life.  Stories from the vinyl café (pp.179-191). Toronto: Penguin Books.

Article Response

The Pedagogical Significance of the Look , by Patricia Paradis

Since I started teaching almost a decade ago, many conversations with colleagues have centered around classroom management, teacher-student relationship, teacher presence, and the tone set by a teacher among his or her students.  Patricia Paradis’ article, The Pedagogical Significance of the Look, briefly considers one small but important aspect of the teacher-student relationship: eye contact. 

Beginning with the admonition, apparently from teacher education courses, to “look at the students when you teach them”, the author clearly identifies a progression of three questions; “what could be difficult about (a meeting of eyes between teachers and students)?”, “what (is it) we mean when we speak of eye contact?”, and “What is it about eye contact that could make it significant for pedagogy?”  While the title suggests the preeminence of the third question, most of the article is a considered response to the first two.  The author begins with a dictionary definition of “eye” and “contact” then uses these two words as a jumping off point for a thoughtful reflection on the connection that people can experience while making eye contact.  The subtitle “I Contact” indicates the author’s interest, not in the physical act of looking at one another, but in the deeper connection, awareness, and intimacy experienced by two people when their eyes meet; “I cannot separate my look from me just as the other cannot separate his look from himself.”  Paradis points out the difference between looking “at” someone’s face and looking “into” their eyes.  The “willingness to open in a shared look” implies a trust that allows another to see deeper than the physical presence.  Looking is also understood as a form of language distinct from speech, a communication that “seems to go beyond what many others – words, handshakes, smiles – can do.” 

Unfortunately, only the very brief final section deals with pedagogy, and only in a rhetorical way.  The single anecdote in the article is about the author’s relationship with her mother, and bears little resemblance to the many kinds of eye contact that occur daily between teachers and students.  Many possible examples of teacher-student eye contact come to mind; a look that assesses a student’s understanding of a lesson, a look that questions whether a teacher is being serious, a look that reprimands a student for inappropriate action or language, a look that expresses empathy with a student’s personal situation, a look of forgiveness of the teacher not having assignments graded on the expected date, a look to express the understanding of a shared joke.  A series of anecdotes reflecting different types of eye contact would go a long way in addressing the pedagogical significance of eye contact. 

I feel that the article would be stronger if it addressed only one question, preferably a revision of the third question leaving out the word “could”. (What is it about eye contact that makes it significant for pedagogy?)  Most of the article - the thoughtful discussion of personal connections through eye contact - would still provide a useful lead-in to this question.  And I wonder whether a series of anecdotes might illustrate the reciprocal nature of the student-teacher relationship?  Rather than a relationship that depends on “the desire of the student to want to be affected and led by the teacher and the desire of the teacher to lead”, we might see more of the leadership roles that students can play, and we might see, between teachers and students, more of the mutual trust that exists in all strong and healthy relationships. 

An Incidental Final Comment:

Here is the opening quotation from the article, presumably from someone who was interviewed by the author: 
Eye contact? Oh, yes. All the time. They taught us that in our education courses. You're supposed to look at the students when you teach them. If you can't do that, you're supposed to aim your look about an inch above their heads. That way, they think you're looking at them. It's very important.

I am bewildered, really.  The notion that prospective teachers need to be instructed to “look at” their students seems bizarre.  Is there such a gulf between us that we need formal instruction to simply look at one another?  Where else would a teacher look when she is addressing her class?  The thought of being a student in a class where the teacher has to look above my head gives me chills.

Can I really Blog?

Hi Everyone,

This is just a quick note, mostly to myself, to see if I can post successfully to my own blog.  Right now I'm feeling like a slate, a mallet and a chisel would be more appropriate tools for communication.  Please feel free to ignore me for the moment - at least until I can share something that is meant to be content.

I look forward to reading all of your thoughts and your writing.

Brent