I was in Atlanta last weekend for the annual CCCC.  I managed to find time Saturday morning to visit the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site.  An explanation as to why I made this visit hardly seems necessary-- any American-- likely, any citizen of the Western world-- recognizes King's significance.  The site includes King's childhood home, burial tomb, and several buildings holding exhibitions on King, Rosa Parks, Ghandi, and other civil rights information.  The Ebenezer Baptist Church is in the same block-- this is the church where King, Jr. grew up-- watching his father at the pulpit.  King, Jr. held the pulpit there too. 

The site is run by the National Park Service.  In the past, I've always been impressed by NPS sites and facilities.  This site, however, seems less well-kept. 

There's chipping paint along the border of the pool which surrounds the burial vault that holds King and his wife.  There's debris resting in the bottom of the pool.  Shouldn't this be better maintained?  Why isn't the site pristine?  This doesn't seem to do him justice.

 

Inside the exhibits, there are history lessons and artifacts.  Clothes, signs, letters, etc.  (See my full set of photos here.)  In a poorly-lit hallway was a modest showcase with a few items displayed. 

I saw this and I stopped.  I shivered.  Nobel. Peace. Prize. 

It's here.  Right here.  And I'm looking at it. 

I felt something larger than myself in that moment.  I felt humble.  I felt awe. 

But I also felt this display was inadequate.  Hallway, bad lighting, slightly crooked case.  This, I felt, deserves more.  This is how I envision the display:

You walk into a velvet-black room.  You see nothing except the medal, suspended from the ceiling at a height about a foot above eye level-- so you have to look up to see it.  Spotlights focus on it.  It rotates slowly.  It's a quiet room-- no King audio here.  It is a reflective space. 

As I pictured this, I thought about that medal.  How I want it to spin so everyone can see both sides.  Then I looked again at this display-- both sides of the medal are shown. 

Immediately, I became suspicious.  Is this a fake?  Does the Nobel committee issue each winner a handful of museum-appropriate replicas?  Where is the real one?  I reread the caption-- it doesn't actually say "The Nobel Peace Prize"-- in English, we're trained to closely read the text.  And this text isn't telling me what I want to hear. 

Is it fake?  I don't know.  I suspect it is.  I would have asked, but I wanted to protect the possibility that this medal is the one that King held in his hands.  I want to see the REAL thing-- not a replica. 

I left the exhibit, a little disappointed.  I picked up a book and a DVD in the gift shop and walked out, past the burial vault again.  Noticing the disrepair.  The anticlimactic medal display.  There seems a disparity.  I want the polish of the memorial to mimic-- at least aspire to mimic-- King's significance. 

In the days since Saturday, I've been reading The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.  This is a posthumously crafted, edited, and published work that traces King's political and religious life.  It contains some texts penned directly by King, but the bulk of it is a crafted first-person narrative (authorized by King's estate). 

Reading this has vastly expanded my understanding of the civil rights movement.  It has also reminded me that for King, his work was always about the movement, not himself.  He would not seek to be idolized, sanitized, or put on a pedestal.  He would not, I think, want to simply be a day off work. 

I think he would also resist being remembered as anything but a fallible human.  We don't talk about it as much, but King was unfaithful to his wife.  He was also found to have failed to give proper credit to source material in his doctoral dissertation.  (More on both here.)

Clearly, King was not perfect.  He never claimed to be.  And I would argue that none of his foibles undermine his strengths. 

In his death, though, he became a martyr.  We forget or ignore the flaws in our martyrs.  They become figures that we use for our own ends.  I think, in the case of MLK, we use him to feel good about the progress our country has made since the days when a white man could own-- OWN-- a black person. 

King would not want this feel-good veneer to obscure the persisting problems of poverty and war.  King would want-- did want-- us to serve:

President Obama called attention to this when he called for MLK Day to be a day of service. 

As I finish the autobiography-- perhaps tonight-- I'm left with enduring questions-- what can I do?  About inequality?  About poverty?  Give a dollar to the homeless vet-- they're always homeless vets-- standing at the edge of the road?  Buy some Kraft Mac & Cheese and donate it to the food bank?  Any of these might be a little helpful, but none of these address the problems that lead to unemployment, hunger, and poverty. 

I wonder where our champions are now-- our fallible but intelligent and committed leaders.  I want to draw on the well of inspiration, but I can't help feeling a little hopeless at the same time. 

Consider this a follow up to my previous post: Piloting Google Docs for essay grading. 

In my upper level creative nonfiction course, each peer review group has the option of exchanging drafts via Google Docs or traditional hard copies.  I created a quick guide for those reviewing online:  Commenting on a shared item in Google Docs.  Feel free to use or change. 

First, some background:

I've been collecting and commenting on student essays using Microsoft Word for a few years now.  I like several things about this process:

1. Paperless-
I don't have to keep track of as many papers.  I don't have to worry about unstapled essays handed in with bizarre folds and tears to keep them together.  It's environmentally friendly.  It eliminates the "my printer ran out of ink" excuse.  

2. Introduces students to new tech features-
though commenting in Word is by no means cutting edge, neither is it very familiar to most students.  To the extent it enhances my pedagogical goals, I believe that I should be nudging students forward in their comfort and familiarity with tech tools. 

The most significant reason I have found not to collect and comment on papers in Word is that the whole process takes longer than the old fashioned way.  There are many steps in the process (I'm working without a course management system):

1. Students email me their files.  (Inevitably, there are a few students who send file types other than .rtf, .doc, or .docx.)
2. I download each file into a folder on my computer.
3. To grade, I open a file and immediately save it as "student'sfilename w comments.docx".
4. I read, insert comments by highlighting text and selecting the Comment feature, then type an endnote. 
5. I then save the file as .pdf.  This is the file I email back to the student.  (I might be a little paranoid to do this, but this way I know that the student cannot fiddle with my comments or notes and print off an altered document.) 
6. I send an email back to each student with the .pdf as an attachment. 

Using Google Docs instead

Google Docs has a word processing application that is a stripped-down version of Word.  It includes all the features that a college essay writer needs.  (ProfHacker explains it better than I ever could.)  After gaining hope that Google Docs might streamline the commenting and sharing process, I adopted it this term for all my classes.  So far, so good.  The commenting feature is very similar to Word.  The advantage is that the document sharing is live-- once I comment on a paper, the student can see those comments.  There's no need for me to email each file back to each student.  I still take one step to guard against potential dishonest students-- I take a screenshot of my end comment (including the grade) for each essay.  I save those in one Word document on my computer.  This is just in case a student attempts to alter my comment then argue with my about the grade.  (I've never actually run into this problem, but I'm a little paranoid, so this step puts me at ease). 

I created a document to guide students through the file sharing process.  Feel free to use it if it's helpful for you:  sharing files using google docs (shared as a Google Document, of course). 

I've been in a tenure-track faculty position for a year and a half now, and lately I've been a bit disoriented by feeling proud of my students. 

In my ten years of teaching, I've consistently had classes filled with bright and interesting students who do quality work.  But my knowledge of them only lasted for one term-- I was a grad student teaching first year writing; I didn't get to know students any longer than that. 

In my time at USAO, though, I've gotten to know a number of students for a longer period of time and in a variety of contexts.  In addition to working with students in the classroom, I get to know students in the Writing Center (which I direct), and in the Lit Club (which I advise).  So even though a year and a half isn't a terribly long time to get to know someone, given all the opportunities I have to spend time with the same students, I do get to know a lot about these individuals in contexts beyond their roles as students in classes I teach. 

Sometime in the middle of this past term, I noticed myself feeling quite clearly proud of many of the students I've gotten to know, and I felt a bit uncomfortable with the sensation.  The discomfort comes in part from a lack of familiarity with the emotion.  I'm not a parent, and my cat hardly does anything remarkable, so I haven't had many chances to feel pride before. 

There's something to my discomfort that's a little harder to articulate, though.  I can't quite unwind pride from condescension-- in order to feel proud of someone, I think you must feel somehow superior (in skill, knowledge, or experience).  I have always tried to teach more as a facilitator encouraging individual inquiry than as an expert dispensing knowledge to the ignorant.  While I do retain a teacherly authority in the classroom, I try very hard to not place myself as a superior-- I don't feel particularly comfortable there, and I don't think it's pedagogically effective.  Though I've certainly had people proud of me in my life, I've also been particularly quick to react negatively to condescension-- I do not like to be patronized (who does?). 

Perhaps I'm worried that the students of whom I am proud will read my pride as condescension.  I hope that's never the case. 

Oh, but mostly, the experience of being proud is quite pleasant.  I recommend it. 

The old blog will remain in place, but all new intent/effect posts will appear here. 

Thanks for stopping by!