The Foo, Smiths, Smashed Pumpkins, and a 15-year-old--birthday edition

Dear G,

Boy howdy! 

If I didn't know any better or hadn't witnessed the last couple years with my own eyes, I would think that a master race of aliens had visited our home and did a little switcheroo with the boy who used to live here. He has been replaced by a young man who is cool, able to laugh at himself, and better able to handle his emotions. 

Trying out your sister's boyfriend's sweet new ride. 

Today you are 15, an age that I might not have expected you to live to mostly because I thought I was gonna ring your neck with my bare hands many, many times during your earlier years. 

You love a Great Lake. 

Your fashion sense is...interesting.

You handsomed it up for 8th grade promotion in the spring. 

You started high school last month, and while your first days were not great, you have since gotten used to the flow, even being able to sleep on the bus going to school. You keep your earbuds at the ready and listen to a panoply of music that you are happy to share with me. You are, in fact, the official disc jockey of the car whenever we go anywhere. 

You've listened to the Foo Fighters, The Smiths, Radiohead, and are now on Smashing Pumpkins, and it is really great to know the sounds you like. Listening to it has helped me know you better as well as remind me of some really great music I'd forgotten. You are a blend of what I always called "whiny British music" that your dad always enjoyed and the grunge that I tended to lean towards. 

Your favorite class is Philosophy, and you're always telling me interesting things you learn there. Last week, you brought up the Trolley Problem and are now writing about the ethics of Mikhail Gorbachev. You have always been a deep thinker so it doesn't surprise me in the least that this is the class you most enjoy.

You continue to be a hard worker in school who doesn't procrastinate. You inherited many, many of my not-great qualities, but I admit I like that you don't put things off. (Ask your sister how crazy I make her because she tends to be less "in a hurry" than I am, and I have trouble controlling my anxiety. But I'm working on it.) I think you're like me in that you want your to-do list to be as short as possible or nonexistent.

Look at those lovely, expensive teeth. 

Since last year, you have gotten a girlfriend, and that has been a learning experience for both of us. You have tried more and different food in the last six months (which is annoying since you would NEVER try new foods when I asked). But you've also had some confusing and uncertain moments, and I'm so glad you talked to me about them. You are learning that relationships can be great, and they can be awful, and they can be confusing. 

I am incredibly proud of the young man you are and the one you will transform into during the next year. You have always followed the beat of your own drummer, from your long hair to your Steve Jobs-like commitment to wearing the same type of clothes day-in and day-out. That isn't always an easy road to walk, but you have never seemed to care what other people think (including me sometimes). That is admirable in a lot of ways and something it takes other people much longer to understand the freedom of. 

I'm glad you had a good celebration yesterday, and I hope the homework gods smile on you today and you aren't overwhelmed with work,

I love you,

Momma

I'm the teacher with the complaints

I have been at the cottage school for a decade, and sometimes I'm surprised that they've kept me around as long as they have since I am the one whose classes parents seem to have the most issues with. 

My high school classes, really.

And it's the texts I select for students to read.

I love teaching the classics but I have tried to add a little bit more modern classics to my list over the years because classic literature can be really hard for students to get, especially those who don't have the weird love of English that I do. 

For a lot of students, Wuthering Heights (1847), Great Expectations (1860),  Pride and Prejudice (1813), and anything Shakespeare is utter torture. 

So this year I am teaching Rebecca by Daphe Du Maurier (1938). Several years ago, I started teaching   The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien (1990), A Raisin in the Sun (1959), and Long Day's Journey Into Night (1939-1941). 

Because I can potentially teach the same student all four years of high school, I have to rotate books so as not to repeat. After a several years hiatus, I am teaching The Things They Carried again. 

This is a book about the Vietnam War. About young men (in their 20s) in the Vietnam War. Young men, in general, think about sex. And war is about killing and death and raping and destroying and dying. All unpleasant topics. 

(It is at this point that I like to mention that all of these things--sex, rape, war, killing, dying--are also in the Bible. Like 2 Samuel 13:1-39.)

Some parents homeschool because their kids have food allergies or because their kids are involved in activities that require more flexibility than what traditional school gives. Some parents homeschool because their kids have had socially unpleasant traditional school experiences. Some parents homeschool because they want more control over what their kids learn. Probably some homeschoolers are a combination of these. 

It was due to this last group that we determined, a couple years after I began teaching, that we needed to add a disclaimer to my English classes to warn parents that there is often content that they may find troubling and that they should review the books in advance (like before registering for my classes). The ones who complain are generally the ones who fail to do this.

While I personally think it is ridiculous to censor what kids read, especially once they reach high school, parents have the right to do whatever they want including marking out things from books or keeping certain books from their kids. However, they would save themselves a lot of headache (and me too) if they would check out the books in advance. Or if they are so concerned, read the books with their kids and have whatever discussions they feel compelled to have. That is entirely their business, and we encourage it in our disclaimer. 

The parent who has had the most recent issue with the first book of the year is concerned because I am not explicitly talking about language and sexual content with the students, which he seems to think is my responsibility since I am assigning the book to read. I, on the other hand, think it is my job to assign the book and teach the students the rhetorical devices and complexities of how the book was written (you know, the ENGLISH part of it), and it is the parents' job to discuss any particular issues their children bring to them related to curse words or sexual content if they have concerns about these things. 

If I were to discuss these things, I would be overstepping, which isn't my job, and on this point, the parent and I agree. 

I think the parent's basic argument is that I should have picked a book that this particular parent feels is a better book.

But I picked this book in February and we listed the book choices and the disclaimer in March and this parent apparently enrolled in April and now it is September. Now is not really the time to be complaining that you didn't know what was in the book. 

One of the things I discuss with students while reading The Things They Carry is ethos and pathos, two types of rhetorical devices. Ethos is what gives something credibility; why can we trust an argument that someone makes? Pathos is the emotional language someone uses in an argument that makes the reader feel a certain thing and, therefore, reinforces the argument. 

Tim O'Brien, the author of this Pulitzer Prize-finalist story, served in Vietnam so he has lots of credibility as to what the Vietnam War was like (and this is what the entire book is about). He also writes stories and uses a great deal of pathos to help the reader feel what soldiers felt. 

One thing I explained to this parent is that my job is to prepare high schoolers for college English classes. And I don't know where my students will go to college. Some of them go to private college or Christian colleges, but some of them go to state schools. 

I went to a private Catholic college where I know some of my former students now attend, and I read books that had curse words and sex in them. I actually took a THEOLOGY course in college in which the books we were assigned had cursing and sex in them. 

My point is that keeping a high schooler away from things in the real world (like cursing and sex) doesn't prepare them for when they will be introduced to these things (and they will if they leave the house or if they currently have a cell phone and the Internet). 

I completely understand the desire to protect one's children. I completely understand the parent's argument that kids can't unsee or unthink the things they read. But I think it is better and safer to let them experience the world through books when they can discuss with parents how to address these things that confuse or scare them. Better this that to keep them so protected they have zero reference point and no concept of how to handle it when they do have to handle it in real life. 

Because they will.