Remembering Hitchens

I first became a regular reader of Christopher Hitchens as I was beginning a year abroad in Chile in 2003, through a pair of his pieces addressed to the life and work of the literary scholar Edward Said: first, an ambivalent Atlantic Monthly review of the updated edition of Said’s Orientalism, and then, a few weeks later, a touching Slate obituary to Said, who had recently succumbed to leukemia.  Living, studying, and volunteering thousands of miles from home—and from anywhere else I knew—constantly tested the borders of my independence and experience, and in the occasional lonely or unscheduled moments of those months abroad I often found myself, for 20 or 30 minutes or more, plumbing Hitchens’s new or old writings wherever I could find them online.

My ability to lose myself in his work would continue when I bought some of his books over the next few years.  At one moment, I’d be rearranging my bookshelf; at the next, I’d be flipping open an anthology of his, vowing to snap it closed again; and an hour later, I would have gotten myself accidentally engrossed in explorations of Kipling, Saul Bellow, the death penalty.  His command of politics and literature was impressive, his perspectives incisive, and his prose punchy.  At his best, he achieved a beauty of both language and analysis that was perhaps most on display when he joined books and politics.  Only one such example was his wonderful, counter-narrative Atlantic essay on Churchill, “The Medals of His Defeats,” which I found myself reading and rereading one Christmas vacation.  His writing also found a unique register when he was on attack.  He could sometimes allow personal slights and vendettas into arguments where they did not seem to belong, but when the target was clear, and the target’s character legitimately at stake, it was a thrilling ride.  I practically tore through The Trial of Henry Kissinger, and would again.  The fire extended to non-personal matters: he wrote frequently, and devastatingly, against capital punishment. 

Pieces like these showed, further, that he could both revel in American ideals while subjecting his adopted homeland to a skepticism for which he was famous.  He underwent waterboarding, for heaven’s sake, and found yet more reason to oppose torture.  At their best, his writings evinced a concept he once advanced (I don’t remember, and can’t find, where): that the measure of intelligence is in one’s tolerance for contradiction—which indeed he turned into the title of his Atlantic piece on Kipling, “A Man of Permanent Contradictions.”  If Hitchens’s views of America and its leaders could be multidimensional, his ardent defense of the Iraq war was at times indulgent, and led him to gloss over both the effects of battle and legitimate criticisms of it.  Yet his constant reminders of the authentic threats to organized civilization were a healthy counterpoint to my own opposition to the Iraqi conflict, and more.  Reading Hitchens gave me deeper, more nuanced ways of viewing post-9/11 politics.  Most of all, it made me skeptical of the widespread skepticism--felt on the Left, and which I’d felt myself--toward American purpose and power.

After a couple years reading his work, I was thus well aware of the qualities of Hitchens’s prose and persuasive power—to say nothing of his brash, biting public persona.  But it was a serendipitous meeting with Hitchens in the summer of 2005 that exposed me to a perhaps less prominent feature—his personal generosity. 

I was on campus at Stanford that summer doing research for my senior thesis.  I noticed Hitchens would be coming to the Hoover Institute as a Media Fellow.  I contacted the coordinator of the fellowships: Would the writer be holding any public events?  She got back to me: No, he would be here for a week, and would have no such events, but you should keep an eye out for other appearances in the future.  Very well, I thought, it was worth a shot, and I sent an email thanking the woman for getting back to me.  It was to my great surprise, then, to receive another email, the next day, from this same lady: Mr. Hitchens would be happy to meet with you one-on-one.  Please go ahead and contact him at the following email.

I don’t remember where I was sitting when I got this, but I surely catapulted out of my chair.  I emailed an introduction, and to at least attempt to justify this meeting that I had not solicited, stated an interest in discussing various topics I’d touched on in school and knew he was interested in: Chilean politics, Kipling, the Iraq war.  On the appointed day, when I knocked on the door to the Hoover office he’d asked me to come to, he turned from his computer with his characteristic slight smirk, cocked his head, and intoned, in full throaty British, “It is I.”  

This wasn’t going to my normal afternoon, that’s for sure.  He stuffed me into his maroon Volkswagen, and before we’d even gotten to the nearby Trader Joe’s to pick up lunch, he was discussing Jefferson and Paine.  At his in-laws near campus—where he spent the summer—he kicked off his shoes, padding into the kitchen to pull out the choice of spirits.  (It was more than a double-take to see my literary hero in his socks.  What can I say?  He didn’t look quite poised to confront Islamic fundamentalism at that moment.) 

As we sat outside, eating lunch and drinking, I’d lob him a topic and sit back to enjoy the response, emitted between puffs on his cigar.  He talked about Kipling’s poem White Man’s Burden, acknowledging the author’s contempt toward the colonized peoples yet elucidating a connection to the way American intervention in Iraq would one day be viewed.  He discussed the Pinochet investigations in Chile.  He recited some poetry aloud.  We were joined for some time by his wife, Carol Blue, whom I found very engaging (in one jaw-dropping moment for me, she came out to the patio, and asked her husband, in my paraphrase, “Sean Penn wants to know what’s better for us, Thursday night, or Saturday?”).  When he drove me back to campus a couple hours later, he curbed the VW, stretched out a paw, and nodded at me: “It’s been real.”

While I can’t say our meeting was exactly a two-way conversation—it didn’t take much to get Hitchens talking, and I was happy enough to listen—it represented quite a generous act on his part.  I hadn’t asked for a one-on-one, he had plenty going on, I was young.  He didn’t have to reach out, but he did; he didn’t have to invite me to his home for a long lunch, but he did.  About a year later, when I was considering applying for journalism jobs or internships, I emailed him for advice.  Again, there was no reason he should have felt he had to do anything, but he referred me to a contact at Slate.

The personal connection to Hitchens was meaningful, but tiny in the grand scheme of things.  Nevertheless, it made it all the harder to hear of his diagnosis with esophageal cancer 18 months ago.  The fact that he could be so battered by a disease—that it might at one point take his life—was so at odds with the verve and conviction I’d seen both publicly and in private.  As he confronted cancer, it brought out a new dimension in his writing.  His portraits of others—Said, Sontag—had shown Hitchens’s capability to be empathetic, even affecting.  But in a series of essays he wrote about sickness and death, he turned those skills on himself and rendered tender and deeply intimate reflections.  His June essay in Vanity Fair detailing the loss of his voice ended this way:

What do I hope for? If not a cure, then a remission. And what do I want back? In the most beautiful apposition of two of the simplest words in our language: the freedom of speech.

When I heard Hitchens had passed away, early Friday morning, I was surprised by how socked I felt by it.  It wasn’t so much the small personal connection we’d made a half-dozen years ago as the larger impending absence to the world of words.  His voice punctuated the Web six, seven, eight times a month.  It was a voice not just frequent but muscular, a voice that stood out.  And it was singular, a voice that forwarded unique ideas, made unlikely connections, took on unassailable targets.  It is not clear who could say the things he was able to say, say them as often as he did, say them as well as he did--or who will.  

Next Steps for Adult Learners: A Sequence of Possible Classroom Activities

Last week, I laid out a concern facing many adult language learners: when you've maxed out the course offerings at one site, how do you find the next class?  Especially in a climate of long waitlists at the publicly- or grant-funded programs sought out by many low-income immigrants?  At my former small agency, where we could only support a five-month beginning-level ESOL course, the issue of connecting students to "next steps" became so paramount that one of the most important parts of the program became what students would get to do after the program.

Because all of my students wanted so badly to keep studying English once they'd gotten an initial taste, I developed, through trial and error, a series of activities designed to help them do just that.  I had a few guiding principles.  First, I wanted to elicit students' interest in next steps.  I had my own theoretical bases for why it was desirable for students to keep their language-acquisition momentum, and was happy enough to share it, but I tried to maximize their own urgency.  Second, it's a big, bad (well, at least long-waitlisted) world.  The Boston area, like many metropolitan regions, is replete with agencies, course offerings, and levels of study.  Negotiating these thickets in English is hard enough; harder still if one is learning English.  I was there to support students.  Finally, I made the process iterative.  This might be nice: write down three program phone numbers; add water; enroll in intermediate English.  But it's unrealistic.  The issued needed to be visited, then revisited.

So here's the rough sequence of activities to help students explore--and secure--"next steps":

Pose the Problem: Using the "problem-posing" methods derived from the revolutionary Brazilian educator Paolo Freire, I introduce a "codification" of the problem of continuing English.  Usually I show students a picture of a few adults sitting at home, looking downbeat (thanks, Google Docs), with a couple lines of dialogue from each I've typed on the paper: "I used to study English at X location.  I called Y program.  I'm waiting."  I lead students through a five-stage process to uncover the dilemma, make meaning of it, and develop an action plan for the characters.  At the end, I ask: What would you do in this situation?  And it turns into an action plan for themselves.

Write a Script: Students brainstorm questions to ask a program when they call it, e.g., Is there a cost?  What levels do you have?  When does class meet?  What's your address?  Students can usually hit the main ones themselves.  Teachers can suggest others they might have missed.  I help them collectively edit the quesitons, then pass out a "next-steps" form.  They write down the questions, and the form goes in a sacred spot in their binders.

Practice Phone Calls: This is your classic practice asking and answering the questions students have devised.  Student A is potential program registrant; Student B is a staff member at the agency being called.  It's more fun when students pull out their cells.  For those who are ready, it's most fun (and realistic, and challenging) when one student goes into another room, actually calls the other, then holds the conversation.

Bring in a Guest Speaker: In the past, I'd invite an adult-ed mentor of mine, whom I'll call Tim, a highly-respected program director at another program, to visit my class to talk about next steps.  He'd talk about "confidence," answer students' many questions (in English!), and recommend programs to look at.  Students already have an intrinsic drive for next steps, but this exposes them to another voice to reinforce the message and motivate them.  And, it provides them with a connection to a program.  I used Tim's visit as a placeholder the rest of my course to connect back to the next steps concept.

Find Programs: I provide students with directories of local English classes, divided by neighborhood.  Sometimes this means packets printed from the state Department of Education Web site, or Boston's English for New Bostonians Web site.  Sometimes this means directing students to those Web sites, with guidance on how to navigate the search functions.  Students fill out a preset worksheet with contact information for four to six programs.

Call Programs: A nice weekend homework assignment: between Friday and Tuesday, call two programs, ask the questions you brainstormed earlier, and write down the answers.  Now, some programs' outreach officers speak languages common to Boston immigrants, like Spanish or Haitian Creole.  But not always.  And few programs have staff who speak languages like Mai Mai or Somalian that other students of mine have spoken.  So while students may find they can simply speak their native language when calling certain programs, they'll have to ask the questions in English sometimes.

Share Back: After the first homework assignment, I have students share with each other the information they've heard from other programs.  If one student calls a program in Jamaica Plain and there are no intermediate classes, another student can cross that program off her list, and add in a different program that might make more sense.  We also discuss how it's going: Are there other questions students should be asking?  Did somebody's aunt just get in a program nobody knew about? Do they have more spaces?  Often this informal networking is just as important to getting students in continuing education.

Repeat, Repeat, Repeat: The next week or weekend's homework is to call three or four more programs.

Celebrate Successes: One morning last spring, a student came into my class early: "I have news," she said, "I have a class for August!"  Chances were, she had already told classmates the good tidings, but I asked her if I could put her on the agenda to make sure everyone heard, and celebrated, her news.

Hit the Pavement: I take my students to visit one other program, which in the past has been a well-respected site, located downtown off several bus or train lines, with multiple ESOL levels.  Such a visit, at which the program's outreach coordinator presented the course offerings and registration process, gave the concept of "next steps" yet another friendly face, provided a practical option for many students, and gave them practice getting there on public transit.  A visit to a local literacy center got at the issue from the other end: most public libraries are hubs for education and job-placement resources.

Discuss Plan B: After a few weeks of this process, I often raise the qustion: what happens if you're put on waitlists everywhere you call?  We brainstorm steps: read books, go to the literacy center, take a lighter-level conversation class at the library; call me for more ideas.  I make sure everyone has my cell phone number (though not every teacher would be comfortable with this) and office number to call me for more support should they still be exploring classes after graduating my course.

Follow Up Individually: Over the last few weeks of class, in one-on-one conferences with students, I check in with students about their progress finding classes.  As important as whole-class activities are to investigate next steps, individual check-ins can uncover particular difficulties or be a space to comfortably suggest new pathways or ideas.

Connect to Curriculum: I haven't done this in every class, but in one course our next steps explorations coincided with a unit on Following Directions (turn left, turn right, where's the restaurant? and so on).  I created mock conversation between a student and program staff involving directions from the train to a downtown program.  I built it into a Jazz Chant, which students practiced over multiple classes, both to reinforce in a high-energy way what they were learning grammatically as well as to suggest language useful for phone calls.  Ultimately, we turned it into a role-play, again with cell phones.

**

As I look at these activities, carried out in this fashion, a few things stand out.  First, it takes a lot of time and effort.  Not that that's a bad thing, but it's striking how prominent a role this has played in my classroom.  Second, there are obvious connections to students' self-advocacy for other resources.  The most obvious parallel is to securing free or affordable childcare, a common issue for so many of my past students: just as with ESOL programs, there are eligibility requirements, many suppliers, a variety of ways in which the service is offered, and variation in quality.  It might make sense to frame "searching for English classes" more explicitly as "searching for resources in general."  Third, the process assumes the need for next steps is universal, and lays out the activities accordingly.  In my experience, the need has been universal, but what about when several students have already discovered their next class.  Does it make sense to continue to use everyone's classroom time to address the remaining needs of a few students?  What would it look like to do some next-steps activities on a voluntary, out-of-class-time basis?

My dear Blog Visitors--what stands out to you?  What sounds good?  What's missing here?  What could be done differently?

The Week's Links: Not Forgetting Poverty & Remembering Hitchens

A few unfair swipes in this Times op-ed, but the larger point about addressing poverty to help address what happens in the classroom is a good one.

Any number of pieces can be read on the passing of Christopher Hitchens, but Jacob Weisberg's comment at Slate on Hitch's generosity to young people reminded me of a time when I had the very good fortune of seeing that generosity up close.  I'll have more thoughts next week.

My To Do List

Tentative plans, for once all of the last statistics have poured out my ears and I am officially on break ...

1. Write poetry for open-mic
2. Cook something while not in a hurry
3. Eat something while not in a hurry
4. Taper caffeine intake ...
5. ... and, being here, ramp up wine intake.  Bet you 10,000 dollars I won't be thinking about regression diagnostics there!

Next Steps for Adult Learners: What's the Problem?

This past April, I had the good fortune to spend a week in Montreal, bumming around la belle ville, barely missing the chance to use Bixi bike-sharing, and everywhere I went trying to pull together the bits and scraps of French I'd learned in the U.S. (and was learning there): at my hostel, at the grocery store, on the street.  I had enough grammar to purchase my share of wine, if too little vocabulary to discuss whether it was any good, to say nothing of follow the conversations that pinballed around my hostel's rather cramped and enlivened dining room once that first (second, or third) bottle had been uncorked.

I got by--indeed without having to fall back on English too often.  And I got better.  But eight months later, grad school has intervened and made those bits and scraps suddenly seem all the more infinitesimal.  It's a situation any of us who has labored through the beginnings of a foreign language as an adult can attest to: three steps forward, a few months off, two steps backward.  Language "attrition," as it's known, is only one of a murderer's row of hurdles facing adult language learners.  For adult ESOL learners, whose language acquisition is quite a bit more high-stakes than anything I've experienced, it's a big concern.  And an issue that raises important questions about helping adult ESOL learners access their "next steps"--how to help them keep studying English once they've maxed out the opportunities within a single program.  

Given the demand for ESOL in Massachusetts, it has been heartening to see how many small programs exist in all imaginable corners of the city: in the pocket-sized human-services agency where I used to work, in school-based community centers, housing projects, daycare centers, churches, prisons.  There are still the established, state-funded, multi-level programs, but who's kidding themselves?  The state can't or won't fund all the demand.

The challenge with storefront programs like the one I worked at is that they may not have the multiple levels provided by the state-funded bulwarks.  Students put 6 or 9 months in, then what happens?  In my five-month program, students did a number of things to prepare for graduation and the inevitable search for a next course.  For more on that, stay tuned.  But after a few months, either through the grapevine or formal follow-up, I would tally up the progress of my alumni.  The result was usually this: about half were studying English elsewhere, another quarter were looking or were on a waitlist, and the rest I either couldn't get in touch with or had ceased looking for more English.

I wasn't concerned about the 50 percent still studying.  These students were the obvious successes of our next-steps preparations.  It was the other 50  percent that got me thinking.  I hardly expected every student to keep studying English.  Life happens, especially for the low-income immigrant folks who came through our doors.  In one of many such examples, a student once had to drop my class right after starting because her daughter had a baby.  She was now a rather heavily-involved grandmother; English could wait.

I was curious about those three, four, or five who wanted to continue but didn't have the relatively immediate opportunity to.  Like virtually all my students, they had entered my program with clear goals for learning English: To defend myself in everyday situations.  To help my daughter with her homework.  To get a job (or a better one).  By the same token, I cannot remember a single student who didn't want to keep studying English once she got a taste of a class.  In following up months after graduation, I found that many were waiting for a call back, and many were on a waitlist--often at multiple programs.

That wasn't surprising, given demand in our area.  The main adult-education program in Cambridge has a waitlist of 439, a smaller program, 128.  In Somerville, the waitlist for the program run through the public schools currently stands at 1011.  In Boston, an organization in Chinatown runs to 296, another in South Boston to 211.  It was an accomplishment that my students had the motivation and wherewithal to get on those waitlists in the first place.  That can't be overlooked.  But the waits that inevitably ensued--three, four, five months or more--were a frustration to my old students.  And the likelihood that they were squandering to attrition some of their hardwon language skills ought to be a concern to all of us in the field.

Many a student--current or former--complained to me about this situation.  Nearing the closure of one cycle I taught, my beginner-level crew teamed up with an offer I wish I hadn't had to refuse: Would I make my next class intermediate-level, and keep them all on board for the next six months?  I couldn't, but it only reinforced my efforts to prepare students for what could come next.  Still, the mixed results of future groups suggests new ways to think about next steps.  Indeed, not every program has the bloated waitlists of the ones I mentioned above.  But how do we go about finding out what's available, and where?  And how do we get students into those spaces?

I Used to Think ...

"We need a course where we can pull together what we're learning in our three other courses." --classmate Z.


That course wasn't there for me to take, but as much as often this semester I've tried to pull together what I've learned.  In September, facing readings flush with theory that felt far removed from the classrooms I'd taught in and the immigrant parents I'd worked with, I felt like I was being asked to predict weather patterns at 40,000 feet based on how I felt the wind blowing over my face.  As time went on, I sensed progress, most notably when I opened my mouth in class, started, "In another class I'm taking, we've been studying X ..." and could make the link back.  Taking a reading from class A to integrate into an essay in class B: another good sign.  I can't completely make the jump from ground to cruising altitude yet (I leave that for the basketball court; oh, wait).  But I'm gaining hops.

I learned a lot about a lot of stuff, from the mundane to the pointy-headed: parent-engagement techniques in districts and charters, Common Core, methods to improve child protective services, promotive and protective factors in child development, how foundations affect school reform, an eye-opening amount of management theory, an eye-crossing amount of stats.  On a personal front, I've worked on communication, from how to use hand gestures to voicing dissent in a way that informs new consensus.  I've learned how to manage time much better (and only been made fun of for my 15-minute increments ... 200 times plus/minus 100 times by T.).  On a professional front, I've had many conversations with folks in numerous fields, to the point that I got an email back confirming an informational interview a couple weeks ago and found myself staring at the subject line thinking: Catie who?  Works where? (It was in the email; all's well).

I'm one stats project (speaking of that), two final papers, and three class evaluations away from being done.  But taking a moment to glimpse the light ahead, some changes in my thinking.  Warning: these are (a) a Sample, (b) Broad, (c) General, and (d) Obvious in some cases.  The more nitty-gritty stuff ... well, I'll leave that for my posts on ESOL techniques.


I used to think ... in terms what I saw right in front of my eyes; now I think, not only that way, but also in frameworks, strategies, concepts.

I used to think that business practices were cold; now I think they can inform many types of management.


I used to think of cradle-to-career work in terms of starting programs, a la the Harlem Children's Zone; now I think collective impact might work better in many places.


I used to think of consulting as outside my interests; now I think that consulting assistance has helped spur great initiatives that I'm very much interested in (see here and here).


I used to think about poverty in terms of the experiences of the students in my class; now I most definitely still think about them, but also about funding issues, building support to sustain policy changes, strengths-based interventions, targeting vs. universal, and more.

I used to think that early parenting classes were mainly site-based, or classroom-based; now I think that home-visiting may be the key to making them productive.

I used to think that national foundations were too aggressive in promoting school reform; now I think they have a role in advancing knowledge in the field and, yes, putting their money out there to spur innovation (insert many caveats here).

I used to think a mission statement was crucial to keeping an organization focused on what matters; now I think that's still important, but should also be accompanied by strategic action steps, a theory of change, a theory of action, and criteria for ways to measure those actions.  

Oh god, the profs have gotten in my blood.  Back to that stats.

2Rev

Interesting org, worth a look.

BikeBits #1

Spotted on Commonwealth Ave. last night:  Yellow stenciled warnings at pedestrian crossings: "Look left for bikes."

The paint was a little thin, but the paint/thermoplastic used for road markings is known to stick poorly on non-new asphalt, and the stencils were quite readable for those who needed to read them--people about to leave sidewalks to step into crosswalks.  Boston has gone to great lengths the last five years to make its streets more bike-friendly.  From Allston Heights to the Eliot Bridge completely on bike lanes or with road-shares.  Left-side lanes on Comm Ave. in Back Bay.  Proposed removal of parking spaces to accommodate bike-lanes on Mass Ave. (just in time for me to no longer be using that route to commute; sigh).  Lanes all around Dorchester.

It'd be wonderful to get to a point where drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians don't need explicit warnings for us all to coexist, but in a section of the city notorious for erratic behavior by all users, the heads-ups are a welcome sign--literally.