SEL and Teaching Writing

Even before the pandemic, young people were struggling with anxiety and other issues of emotional self-regulation. In 2019, I was at a Learning and the Brain conference on “Educating with Empathy.” One of the speakers was refuting the argument that stats on such issues in young people are up just because people are more open about seeking mental health help and more open talking about such problems. They pointed out that the staggering increase in suicide deaths among adolescents indicates the overall rise is, sadly, not just a matter of reporting. The pandemic has only aggravated that.  Social and emotional learning thus is more important than ever (though sadly in some circles has become a political buzz word).

When I help students move their stories to “show, not tell,” one side benefit is to help them increase awareness of their own physical reactions to emotions. Such self awareness is a first step in improving their self-regulation. I experienced something similar in a racial literacy workshop by Howard Stevenson, who walked participants through what they were feeling in various parts of their body as part of his method to help “people learn how to read, recast, and resolve racially tinged episodes.”

So as the student-writer moves from tell (“She was absolutely furious as she thought about what he’d said.”) to show (“Her hands trembled and she balled them into fists at her sides as his words rolled around in her mind.”), they are reflecting on how emotions live in the body and on their own emotional experiences. They can then employ this greater awareness and use it to respond to those physical reactions as a way to calm the emotions that underlie them (unball the fists – indeed, start at your head and feel for tension in each part of your body and try to relax those muscles). And thinking about how to describe emotions through the physical responses rather than open exposition makes them better writers.

A little Labor Day baking

School starts this week and I thought I’d whip up some cookies to welcome my advisees and colleagues back. I’m going to make three of my favorites: Chocolate Chip Oatmeal with Ras el-hanout (NYTimes Cooking; paywall warning), Ginger Molasses Amber Ale (King Arthur Baking), and Salted Rosemary Shortbread.

Ras el-hanout was a real revelation for me because it is usually associated with savory cooking, but lends such a wonderful warmth and depth of flavor to the Chocolate Chip Oatmeal cookies. Like chili powder blends, every one is a different. Literally, the name means “top of the shop,” i.e. a blend of the best spices a merchant has to offer. I like the blend from Stock+Spice in NH.

In the ginger cookies, no alcohol remains: you reduce the 12oz of ale down to 1.5 oz. by boiling. The reduced ale adds a little bitter under-taste that pairs perfectly with the molasses and ginger. People often can’t believe that the ginger cookies contain (golden) raisins, but it adds to the flavor and chew.

And the rosemary shortbread doesn’t have a specific recipe. I use the basic shortbread recipe from the King Arthur Cookies Cookbook (an old edition), but any basic shortbread recipe you like would do. I finely mince the rosemary and mix it with the sugar and butter and then put Maldon’s sea salt flakes (crushed between my fingers) on the bottom before baking. The idea came from some Lark cookies that my mother bought.

Pictures of all three (from past bakes) can be seen on my baking site.

Epic: The Trojan Saga album

Yep, I’m still stuck on The Odyssey. Here’s something fun for the holiday weekend. My colleague who shared this with me said “It’s like… amateur Hamilton-style songs about the Odyssey.” From the video’s own description: 

EPIC is a work-in-progress musical. It has 2 out of 9 sagas released currently, the Troy Saga and the Cyclops Saga. Jorge Rivera-Herrans posts snippets of the unreleased sagas on his TikTok. This video compiles all the songs and snippets in chronological order.

This compilation is about an hour and half long, but has links in the comments below it on YouTube where you can leap into different “chapters.” 

Nota Bene: For the beginning clips, the video just shows the album covers, but starting with the chapter “Storm,” you get videos of performs (many Zoom-esque TikToks, but sometimes on the beach or other appropriate settings). I was listening to it (and enjoying it) while on another screen, so I didn’t catch the changeover at first. 

The cover up is always worse

Whether it’s folks who find themselves in a bit of a misunderstanding or someone engaged in something more intentionally nefarious, why don’t people learn that the cover up is usually worse than the original mistake or crime? Think of Martha Stewart and the SEC. Or Trump and the National Archives. And now the Cleveland Museum of Art. They’ve had a beautiful (albeit headless) Roman bronze statue since the 1980’s which has now been seized as part of a criminal investigation into looted and smuggled antiquities. Perhaps the Cleveland Museum were unwitting participants in this. Perhaps it is understandable that they dismissed Turkey’s claims about the statue as Turkey couldn’t provide evidence. However, this part of the NYTimes article (link will get you past the paywall for the next 30 days) caught my eye.

Turkey’s claim on the statue hinged in part on persuading investigators that the statue in fact depicted Marcus Aurelius, because the stone plinth where they say it had stood is inscribed with that emperor’s name.

The Cleveland museum’s website had until recently described the statue as “The Emperor as Philosopher, probably Marcus Aurelius (reigned AD 161-180),” adding that the item had originated from “Turkey, Bubon(?) (in Lycia), Roman, late 2nd Century.” They also wrote in an accompanying description that the statue “likely represents Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor known for his philhellenism and Stoic writings.” (Aurelius wrote “Meditations,” a classic work on Stoic philosophy.)

But several weeks ago, the museum removed the earlier references to Turkey and Aurelius and changed the website to read: “Draped Male Figure, c. 150 BCE-200 CE,” adding, “Roman or possibly Greek Hellenistic.” It also altered the language of its accompanying description to read “without a head, inscription, or other attributes, the identity of the figure represented remains unknown.”

Will folks never learn?

Still on an Odyssey kick

One of my favorite receptions of The Odyssey is Romare Bearden’s collage series. If you are unfamiliar with Bearden, he was a mid-20th century African-American artist. He had played around with The Iliad earlier in print form (late 1940’s-early 1950’s). In his Odyssey series, he not only draws in Homer, but also the influences of Matisse and other artists such as Robert S. Duncan (a 19th cent. African-American landscape painter) and his Land of the Lotus Eaters. Below are two great videos on this series from a Smithsonian touring exhibition of them.

Romare Bearden Black Odyssey (15 min.)
Wallach Art Gallery Visit with Robert O’Meally and Diedra Harris-Kelley

A moment of joy

I think Wednesdays deserve a moment of joy. I’m going to try and post one each Wednesday, start with this: the Linus and Lucy song from Charlie Brown. I don’t think anyone can be unhappy listening to it. I told my sophomore homeroom I had such a song and they looked at me cynically …until it started playing.

Mythical Fantasy: The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea

I’m a huge fan of retold fairytales and myths. I’ve already mentioned Naomi Novik’s  Spinning Silver and Uprooted. I’m going to go through some of my other favorites, but I thought I would start with a recent one: The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea by Axie Oh, based on Korean myth. What do I love about it? Besides a great protagonist (the NYTimes says she “ranks among our great Y.A. heroines”) and rich description of the spirit world below the sea, I really appreciate the broad cast of characters, many of whom are on their own journeys. Some elements of the story also read like a mystery and we follow along as Mina (the main protagonist) unravels these mysteries for us along with herself. She’s on a tight deadline to do so, adding to the tension of the tale. It is a great read – or listen as an audiobook.

Creating tension

Have you ever been reading a book and things get so tense you just have to set it down for a bit a come back to it? Elizabeth Moon can be a master of this sort of writing. More than once when reading her, the tension built and built until I had to put it down, but then when I picked it up I realized I was just at the point that she would break the tension, either with bad things befalling the protagonists or them just escaping bad things. I heard someone talk one time about the difference between suspense and surprise and the value of the former. A jump scare is all good and well, but the foreshadowing of what may come has a bigger (longer) payoff in engaging the reader — or viewer. I was thinking about this recently while watching Hijack with with Idris Elba. That show is the essence of tension. Fortunately I was watching it alone because I don’t think I got through a single episode without pausing it to breathe. I love that they left an opening for a second season -though I agree with the person who asked if there was anyone who worked for Cheapside Firm voluntarily/for the money or were they all just being blackmailed by threats to their families in an ever widening circle.

Getting into the Odyssey

So having posted about my cats, now my brain is on Homer’s Odyssey. If you are just getting into in, here’s the introduction video I created when we went remote during the pandemic.

Do you have a favorite translation of The Odyssey? If so, let me know which it is in the comments below.

Speaking of goddesses

I’d be remiss not to post any cute cat photos. Here are my two goddesses, Calypso (the Calico) and Circe (the Tuxedo). Yep, they’re named after two who delayed Odysseus on his journey home. Here they looming large over me (you can also see a third cat, a painting, in the background; I only have two cats (and one cat painting) as it is a slipper slope to crazy catwomanhood).