"Is this for us too?"

Rather than start last Thursday’s class with my typical overview of the writing lesson, I asked students to follow me out of the classroom. We walked down the hall, around the corner, where a turkey lunch was set up for them outside the canteen: shredded turkey on white rolls, dressing with brown gravy, chopped vegetable salad, and a choice of deserts: cupcakes or squares of a thanksgiving carrot cake, in addition to the student drink staple, Sierra Mist. 

While I am often narrowly focused on student lesson plans and activities for the day, I know school is only a small part of a student’s life. College students often struggle financially, emotionally as well as academically. Instructors know students thrive in a classroom that encourages socialization, enhances self-confidence, and promotes self-respect. Respect is, I think, key to the advance of learning. A student needs to respect himself or herself, as well as the school, instructor, and course work.  

If a student does not respect himself or herself, however, how do they learn it? Thursday’s meal was an model of how the Shawano Regional Learning Center shows that it respects all its students, even those in basic education.

My students work hard during the College Writing Prep and the open lab and often skip or skrimp on lunch in order to attend my noon-2 p.m. class and then continue the open lab afterwards. A hot turkey meal, the week before Thanksgiving, a traditional time for us to gather, did three things: it provided fuel for an afternoon of work, it allowed them to breakdown classmate to classmate barriers and eat sociably together, and it demonstrated, in a simple but concrete way, that they are respected members of the Shawano Center.

Basic education students sometimes have a crisis of confidence; they can’t believe that they are actually college students. As my students joined more than 70 other students from nursing, medical records, non-credit, and general studies courses in Thursday’s free hot meal, they asked, “Is this food for us too?” Of course it was. This gesture showed them that we respect their work. This gives them permission to respect themselves in turn. The meal showed they are as important as any other student within the college.

Kudos to the center for showing respect by action, not just words.

A Little Like Christmas Eve

Two days before open enrollment, it seems a little like Christmas Eve in the Basic Education Lab: the anticipation, the wonder, the magic of a gift too perfect to open. Students are freely chatting with each other, ignoring the algebraic order of operations (Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally) for the moment, talking about their expectations and plans, and what courses they are planning to sign up for in the spring college term.

I’ll admit that doesn’t sound like a marketable sequel to “The Christmas Story,” but it is inspiring. When the students started in August, they were blocked from enrolling in college classes because their entry scores were below college minimum standards. About one in ten college candidates fall short of the grade levels needed for success in the college classroom. They are disappointed, of course, and sometimes doubt their own ability, but they can’t let that doubt get the best of them.

So, the students get to work. They attend the open Basic Education lab when they can, sign up for College Prep courses in Reading/Writing and Mathematics, and work against odds to raise up their scores so that when they do sit in a college class, they have the best possible chance of success. Unprepared, their failure doesn’t help them or help us as an institution. 

During the past week, a group of my students have now retested, and they have exceeded, equaled or come within a few worksheets of hitting the college standards that beyond their best efforts just a few months ago. Most have achieved minimum college standards. Some have even reached the much higher program standards. Now, rather than facing remedial exercise, they are ready to take their place in a college classroom.

Within the superficial wrapping of college benchmarks and standardized scores, the students will uncover a greater gift: the dream of a college education. And, because of the work that they have put in this semester, they have started to develop the discipline and self-confidence to see this dream through to the end.

The anticipation of Christmas Eve is fun, but Christmas morning is even better.

Mistakes can be Profited By

I just finished the classic SF story, Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury. I remember reading the story the first time in college as a warning against censorship. Books and the written words are poison in protagonist Montag's world and firemen, like Montag, set fires to books, rather than put them out. It's a reversed view of the world that is prevalent in much of Bradbury's work: take a common idea and twist it 180-degrees to reveal another logical reality.

While the criticism of censorship is still the initial rage for the book, during this reading (it's probably my third or fourth time), the wisdom or folly of our choices seems a more clear underlying theme. Who of us would not like to have an unwise choice brought back? Who of us would not prefer to be braver, stronger, more confident, than we have been in the past? Who of us have not played life safe because we were worried about consequences of bad choices, of mistakes?

But, what if we do make a mistake? Montag's compatriot and conscience, Faber, chided Montag's preference to blend back into the collective rather than risk individuality: "I know, I know. You're afraid of making mistakes. Don't be. Mistakes can be profited by."

The Montag's choices unveil a hidden beautiful world to him. The consequences of the choices are hard and brutal, this is not a sugar plum fairy-tale, but, Bradbury seems to say, are well worth the pain. After Montag uses a river to escape,  he dramatically rises from the water:

"He (Montag) stood breathing, and the more he breathed the land in, the more he was filled up with all the details of the land. He was not empty. There was more than enough here to fill him. There would always be more than enough."

In the broad strokes of typical Bradbury symbolism, Montag is reborn into a new world and a new purpose. His mistakes opened him up to a world full of hope, even though he knows the world can still be a hurtful, cynical place, and he knows he can still make mistakes. But isn't that a wonderful choice to have?