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Two Collage Essays

Collage essays may sound odd, unfamiliar, and difficult to imagine. For that reason I conclude with two examples written by students in two of my classes. I led these classes in the use of the loop writing process for producing raw writing. I don't know whether the summing-up or explaining passages in the following essays were written as part of the original raw writing or were written later during the cutting and pasting process. The first piece was in response to an assignment entitled "What am I doing Teaching?" that I gave to a class of primary and secondary school teachers. Though the title may suggest something theoretical, I made it clear I was asking for a concrete and practical piece of work. I said, in effect, "you will sometimes lose sight of what you are really doing and why; in the midst of day to day struggle you may lose the focus or foundation of your teaching that you most need for keeping it up and doing a good job. In this paper, therefore, figure out your priorities so that if you get confused or have to retreat under pressure you will be able to hold fast to the main thing." (I am indebted to Lester Krupp for the idea of this assignment as an aid to survival.) What Am I Doing Teaching? by CATHY ELLIS I want a purpose and teaching gives it to me. All the inequality, unfairness in the world -- I can make a stab at it in teaching, I can even it out a little. I remember being placed in a reading group in first grade. My group was group two. We sat at an ordinary wooden table with ordinary wooden chairs. Group one sat at a pastel yellow table with pastel yellow chairs. They read better than we. They were treated better than we. They were given the special picture of Santa Claus to color at Christmas time while the rest of us read. I didn't like them very much and yet I terribly wanted to sit at that yellow table. I asked the teacher once why none of the rest of us got to sit at the yellow table or got to play games like they did or color special pictures. It's funny but I remember thinking she was embarrassed. She looked like I did when I'd been caught doing something wrong. When she answered she sounded as if she were angry with me. She said that they worked harder. They earned their privileges. I didn't understand. I thought I worked hard, but I was afraid to ask any more. In later years, during high school, I and a group of friends were turned away from a high school dance because we arrived late. We stood back and watched while another group, a couple of cheerleaders and their friends, were admitted after we were turned away. That night I wrote a letter to the editor of our local newspaper complaining of favoritism in our schools. I made a couple of copies, and friends and I passed them around school to obtain signatures. At the end of the day we had over one hundred signatures and the threat that if we returned to school with the letter the following day, it would be confiscated and we would be sent home. The principal wanted each of those signing the letter sent to the office in the way of a warning. There was some talk of suspending the instigators from school. The school board instructed the administration to leave us all alone. And yet I wonder if we would have been dealt with the same if my father had not been the editor of the paper. Dear Trevor, Richard, and Pacer, The reason I decided to teach, the reason I continue to teach is for children like you. Children who never seem to have a fair break, for whom school is just one more put down, while the other children continue to get the awards, the honors. I want to even up the scorefor you and for my whole childhood which was not nearly so devastating as yours (however, at times I felt it was). I think at least a moment of childhood should be grand for everyone -- and learning should be the most exciting part. I want the learning to be that moment for you. Because maybe then you'll be able to make that moment last forever -- or at least recall it whenever in need. If that happens, then maybe I've compensated just a little for the unfairness of childhood, the inequalities of life. Sincerely, MRS. ELLIS A portrait of Trevor: when he received his first award for completing his work for the week. A look of surprise, followed by a shy smile. Pug nose looking more in place rather than an out-of-place feature on an adult face. Sauntering up to pick out his prize. Trying not to lose all of his Mr. Cool. A portrait of Pacer: when he completed his math page correctly and independently, his whole face was a smile, no longer trying to give an impression of Mr. Tough Guy; totally unaware; a candid photograph. An important moment. The classroom in the morning before the bell. Children waiting for me at the door. Smiles. Rush of words prefaced by "Teacher!" The door opens -- a room that begins only to exist at this moment each day -- warm little bodies file in. Desks open and shut. Security settles in. All's the same. More remarks to teacher. I'm busy. Children follow me. I hang up yesterday's pictures, writing. Children madly search to find theirs. "That's mine teacher. See?" Friends. A good feeling. The whistle blows from outside. Stragglers come in. Order presents itself. All in their seats. Lunch count. It's begun. A bad moment. A writing assignment for my 6th grade English class. I explain, "It's not much I'm asking of you, just a paragraph or story paragraph, so to speak. Tell me about a good moment you've had. Everyone has had some good moments. Try to include some color and sound words. Make me see the moment." "Does it have to be something good?" "Surely you can think of one good moment." "No, nothing good ever happens to me." Subdued laughter from the class. Several other voices join in: "Nothing good ever happens to us." "All right then, pick a bad moment, but write something." I feel myself fighting the desperation in my voice. I hear a chorus of "Do we have to?" Defiant faces, turning around, talking to each other. I'm hurt, I'm angry. "All right, I'll give you a choice. You can write the paragraph I suggested or copy from a dictionary. Which has more meaning for you?" Half a dozen children or more move out of their desks, smirks on their faces, and shuffle over to the shelves for dictionaries. Good God, they're even drawing the illustrations. One shows me hers for my approval. Wants to know if she can do more dictionary work for extra credit. She's serious. I don't believe it. Last night I dreamed I hit one of them. The solid feel of flesh smacking flesh. It felt good. It scares me. I've got to get out of here. So after a year of attempting to reach the twelve to thirteen year olds, I returned to my first grade classroom. It was like another good moment -- going home. A first grade language assignment. Sun shines in through our windows, lighting up the playing fields, reflecting on the bars and jungle gym, drying up yesterday's mud puddles. "Let's write about what you like to do in the sun." A blizzard of hands in the air. "I got one teacher, I got one." Decisions. I choose a hand, a face: "I like to lay in the sun." I write it down on the chart. Giggles in the background as I draw a little stick figure of Donny lying under the sun. More hands. More choices. A bombardment of words, ideas. Soon the chart is covered with sentences, pictures, holding a special meaning for each child. A scramble for pencils, crayons, paper. A vying for position -- each child looking for his story or his friend's. It seems I've no sooner sat down than papers are waving in my face. "Look, teacher, look at mine." "Read it teacher." Or better yet, "I can read it teacher. Listen. I watch the clouds. See, that's me and there's the clouds." Such a smile. He just grasped a tiny part of the world. Dialogue. Vickie: "Sure they all love you. But little kids drive me crazy. At least fourth graders can take care of themselves." Me: "So can first graders, and they have much more potential. It hasn't been squelched by previous education. They're moldable and full of creativity." Vickie: "And running noses and colds. You can have them." Me: "Thanks. I'll take them." Portrait of me by a colleague. Cathy is a very idealistic person. She thinks she might save the world from the classroom. The first grade classroom at that. She feels she has a sensitivity maintained by the very few that allows her to understand and reach children in a way others couldn't. And because of this ability of hers she feels she will reach her children in such a way that they might literally save the world. Basically, Cathy lacks realism. She forgets her children grow up, they change. Trevor, Pacer, and Richard might make some headway in the first grade, but they will revert to their basic natures by adoles- cence. They need firmness a great deal more than they need Cathy's pampering. But she'll continue with her idealistic ways because that is the only way she can teach and the only reason that she does teach. Finally I reach the point where I must answer the question, "What am I doing teaching?" My first thought was to share this title with my fellow teachers. Somehow I knew we could all have a chuckle over it. Why? Because the title says so much and so little. What am I doing teaching? How often does a teacher ask herself that? I'm trying to find a purpose -- satisfaction -- make my life worthwhile. So I chose teaching. I wanted to contribute. First I wanted older children -- old enough to be intellectually stimulating, but young enough to be innovative. Middle school age. I found the primary children were a little more of both -- at least for me and for my personality. I don't like discipline. I resented being on the receiving end as a child and I detest being on the giving end as an adult. But with the younger children, even though they may require discipline, I find I needn't distort my personality to work with them. I can be myself. I need that to find satisfaction. But satisfaction isn't altogether purpose. Purpose comes from achieving a lasting impression, one that makes you a bit immortal. First grade reeks with purpose. In nine months' time the printed word gains meaning. Non-readers become readers. Children unable to express themselves on paper without adult assistance transform into mini-authors. Numbers have gained meaning and their world has become more comprehensible. The children feel a little better about themselves because of me. They know someone cares for them -- their first grade teacher -- and they remember. Over the years they come back to visit -- and a piece of my spirit travels in each of them. Pre-writing and first grade are much the same: a creative flow, a build up of the creative process, a period of productivity when confidences are built and ideas planted. Only after this period of time has been exhausted in thought and activity is the writer ready to evaluate and revise his work. And only after a full year in first grade is the child ready and able to handle criticism. Only after a beginning successful year is he able to say, "OK, that was wrong. There is more where that came from." All the more reason to stress the beginning years -- to emphasize the positive, the creative. First grade builds a well to draw from and success demands that it be full. That's the essence of a first grade teacher: she opens the first doors of the mind. My reason for teaching: I want to open that door for all my children, and maybe just a little wider for those children forgotten in the foreground. The second collage essay was on a topic of the student's choice though I had required that there be an essay as a culmination of some independent thinking, writing, and research into his own learning. Science Is a Verb Not a Noun by BILL MCNAUGHTEN When I was younger, still going to grade school, I had the good fortune to spend 4 years at a junior high school where the "doing" of science was given equal footing and emphasis with the "knowing" of science. The scientific inquiry process of Problem, Hypothesis, Experiment, Data, Conclusions, provided a logical framework within which we explored a vast number of physical phenomena. I've built this pendulum down in my basement, you see. I built it to see if the earth really does turn underneath it like it's supposed to. I've made it from a 500-gram brass weight, some old fishing line, and a piece of bent wire which hangs as a pointer on the bottom. It's not very big, and the air slows it down pretty fast after I start it swinging. But, in twenty minutes it'll move 5 degrees on the circle; I usually go upstairs and eat dinner when I wait that long. Then, when I come back I measure it to see how much it's changed since I started it. Three nights ago I tried to figure out which way the pendulum was supposed to be moving based on the positioning of my house. I'm not sure what happened, but I came to the distinct conclusion that either the earth was "turning backwards," or something was very wrong with what I had been reading about pendulums. Both prospects seemed highly unlikely, and I tried orienting myself again and again. . . ."OK, that's east and that's north, now the sun rises in the east so therefore I'm moving towards it from the west. Therefore, the earth should turn under the pendulum that way but it's not, it's going the other way!" Conclusion: No need to worry though, I finally figured out that I had been visually imagining the earth as rotating the wrong way. So, at least for the time being, pendulums and the earth still move the way the textbooks say that they do, but it was fun for a while half-seriously thinking that I had discovered an inconsistency in the physics they were teaching us in school. I now own several gray lab notebooks full of questions, possible answers, details of testing those possibilities: pictures, graphs, descrip tions of procedure, and finally, the implications of what we had found; those books are a reminder to me of how learning science can be, delightful and fascinating. Later on though, things were different: Subject: Chemistry exam -- endless pages of information: electron orbitals, valences, radical ion transformations, pH, redox reactions, carbon bending, polarity, etc., etc. Problem: Why is studying this stuff simultaneously fascinating and boring, science used to be so easy for me? Hypothesis: Facts, Formalism, Theory; Reading about other people's ideas and experiments. This is all science "knowing," with no science "doing." Experiment: Watch what's happening. Data: Phil, Jack, and I had been studying for the Chemistry exam all day. We had gone over our notes again and again looking for pieces of information not yet memorized. If there was one thing I had learned about Machemer's Chem exams it was that you simply had to know every word he ever said in class. Phil and I had started taping class lectures and then transcribing them back at the beginning of the semester; we were now glad we had. It was the only way you could survive in that class. Into the night we quizzed each other until we could spout forth information on any subject; mental knee-jerking. Finally, we, Prof. Machemer, and the exams arrived in Lab Science 203, Saturday, December 18, 9 a.m. Silence; nervous pencils, calculators, and slide rules dance and skitter across the desktops. Two hours later; we emerge, some comparing answers, some staring into space and moving silently off, probably to another exam at noon or three. I consciously pull the flush handle on my mind and drain away all thought of Chemistry from it; I have an English and Philosophy exams on Monday, French on Tuesday, and Calculus on Wednesday morning. I suppress the urge to reward myself for yesterday's hard work; there is too much yet to memorize, and too little time. Later on, while studying I hear through my window: "Science is the root of all evil. It has destroyed our land, poisoned our streams and wildlife, polluted our air, and threatened our very existence on the planet. We must cease our dependence on this menace to our lives and return to a natural state such as our ancestors knew." As I listened to her speak, I noticed the small pink scar of a smallpox vaccination on her arm, I guess she'd forgotten that it was there. Conclusion: Two worlds have grown up where there once was
just one,
Two worlds co-existing in space.
There peoples divide, then turning walk away,
Only to wind up face to face. The polarization between science and the rest of human study has many roots, not the least of which are the post-Sputnik math/science push in education, and the technological utilization of the results of scientific inquiry for destructive and inhuman purposes. With technology tooting science as its parent, it is easy for those who see the destruction resulting from the misuse of technology to point at science as being innately amoral or evil. And yet, I have experienced science as a joyful and beautiful thing. Is there something different (wrong) with me? Is there something about science that makes it easier for some people than others? What's wrong here? Problem: What is science? Hypothesis: Exploring, observing change, suggesting reasons for change (and testing them). Experiment: Looking under a rock; watching the night sky; leaning out the air/fuel mixture on a car getting poor mileage. Data: The process takes asking, takes time, takes patience, takes encouragment, takes taking time to find the right to ask. Conclusion: Science is the way that we think: Problem: What's in (under, behind) this? What will happen if I change this? What needs to happen to make this better? Hypothesis: Let's try this and see what happens. Experiment: "making changes." Data: getting feedback, experiencing what happens. Conclusion: what was there, what caused what. Problem: What to do next? Hypothesis: How about this. . . . ? . . . etc. Problem: Is this true? How do we think and learn in "the arts" (which tend to reject science as rigid and uncreative)? Hypothesis: Science and the arts both involve two directions of study: 1 Outside to Inside -- technique, theory, training, discipline; dealing with thought, ideas, and logic; intellectual. 2Inside to Outside -- self-awareness, creative, intuitive, unconscious: dealing with feelings, images, and doing; expressive. Experiment: Observe the "Expressive Arts." Data: Movement Class: Contact Improv -- Starting slow, starting still, unsure partners. Hands held out, fingers almost . . . and then touch; Contact: a single finger tip. Eyes closed, touching only allowed. Neither leading nor led, swaying starts, contact remains: one finger, . . . two. . . . three, . . . one again. One hand swaying, no-see mirror; deep swinging slows at height of reaches then hands fall fluttering. Arms touch and turn, both hands now match each other in motion. Fingers sliding; contact remains, shifting: arm to arm, arm to shoulder, shoulder to back, to hip, to leg, and return. Now back to back, lean and hold; extend and be held; pushing, giving way. No thought, just sensing the contact making itself move or not move; we follow it. Sliding past and around now, maximum contact, interweaving flow, body touch body, waves of motion tumbling across one another, and finally . . . subsiding, slowing, gentle touch of sitting close, only hands moving: together, almost still. One finger touching: Contact. Concert Choir: "Learn it until you don't need the music anymore, then we'll sing it together." First, we all sing alone reading each note, one by one, trying to "get" the bass (alto, soprano, tenor) lines from the piano into our heads. Stopping repeatedly, individual parts being played, difficult transitions being repeated and emphasized. Now, sing it together; stop: "Altos, measure 24 to the end, bases, top of page 3." Again, together; David wants us to look at him, we want to look at the music; we feel too unsure yet to give up looking at the notes. Rehearsal again, new music, old music. "Oh, not that one again!" Once through with the music; surprisingly, we do alright with it, well balanced, most notes right. Checking in with David: "We don't know that measure, how does it go? . . . Standing, heads up, no music this time; I begin to listen and hear the others around me. We are "coming together." David marks the pace, but we make the music. Listening to each other we are simultaneously performers and audience, correcting pitch, tone, and rhythm, and reaching for how this song should feel. And when we sing for others we don't stop listening to one another, but there is a difference. We become no longer a group of individuals singing together, but a choir, an instrument that plays itself. In that moment, if we have learned it well, we cease to sing the song, for the song has begun to sing us. Writing: I didn't plan it, in fact I didn't know the concluding idea and final brilliant point of the paper until I wrote those last two sentences which simply sprang from my hand. I had gotten involved in the writing; I wrote and knew that the writing was going somewhere but I didn't know where. I was spinning a web but I couldn't really see it all until I anchored that last corner and then stepped back to take a look. Skating class, private instruction: Kathy Wainhouse, skating instructor: "OK, that's enough time to warm up, now let's see your flip jump." Me: "Well, let me just practice the beginning a few times so I can remember it and get the sense of it." KW: "OK, one's enough, now do it this time." Me: "Well, OK. . . ." (Shaky takeoff, arms flailing, bad landing; I fall and slide on the ice.) KW: "Your arms were all over the place. Do another one." Me: "Let me just practice the arms for a second. . ." KW: "No, just go ahead, you can do it." Me: ". . . all right (mumbled) . . ." Thoughts racing, stroke, arm change, turn, down, poke, arms in, head up, then land, arms out, leg back." (Again, shaky, rigid takeoff and fall.) KW: "Do another one, you're trying too hard and its making you stuck." Me: To myself, "OK, OK." Few thoughts this time; anger at being pushed . . . turn . . . jump . . . land. KW: "That was better, you were higher and the takeoff was good. Remember your arms; bring them around." Me: To myself, "Allright, lets do it, 1, 2, 3, . . . arms in! out! . . . whaaaa! (falling)." KW: "Bill, You're thinking about it too much, your arms were so strong that you overrotated and fell. Do it again and try to remember how the good one felt. Relax, you'll get it!" Me: Talking to myself while skating around the rink a few times, ". . . I can do this, and even if I fall it's OK. Whatever happens is just fine; I'm doing this because I want to." One more lap around the rink, not too fast, then turn, poke, jump, land. Without a pause, I skate around for another one: turn, poke, jump, land. KW: "Good, do another." Me: No thoughts, . . . feeling the rhythm: swing leg, turn; down, swing, poke; up, spin, land; arms out, leg back. KW: "Do one more and bring your arms in more this time." Me: Lapping the rink, images running in my mind I see myself jumping: . . . "arms in" and then turn, poke, arms in, arms out, land. KW: "Good, keep working on it, don't stop to think about it." Later -- People whizzing everywhere, doing spins, flying camels, lutzes, axels, flips, double flips and loops, and an occasional double lutz or double axel. This is the club practice session for competitive junior skaters. I, 23, self-consciously practice my loop and flip, trying, sometimes unsuccessfully, to stay out of the way of these younger people flashing around me. I do a loop: mohawk, down, spring up, around, land, . . . fall. A skater I had smiled at earlier when she fell laughs and calls to me encouragingly, "I've seen you do those better than that!" I accept her challenge and throw out my self-consciousness. Music comes on, I skate. "Hop, hop, flip," Hmmmm, good. "Hop, hop, flip" . . . better! "Hop, hop, flip" . . . alright! Again and again I jump, no longer isolate, but in concert with those around me, reveling in flight over ice. Conclusion: Creative expression requires a degree of both external training and internal awareness. Too much emphasis on training results in great flexibility within the limits of a stylized form; too much emphasis on internal processes results in chaotic or simplistic effort with no defining framework. Essentially, then, scientific exploration is artistic exploration; both are creative. Both say, "Look what's here (inside me or out there); let's look at it; see what it is, does, and feels like; how it acts, moves, responds, and changes. Both need logic, both need intuition (intuition is usually quite logical anyway, even if we cannot immediately see the logic we can usually sense it and how accurate it is). Creativity, as I have come to find, is a very conscious, but only partly intellectual process. To create we need both sides of the brain working because creativity is the melding of details (intellectual) and overall concepts (expressive) to form a specific, accurate, and uniquely human response to the environment. Problem: What does the writer, dancer, sculptor, musician, artist seek? What does the scientist seek? Hypothesis: The greatest art begins within human consciousness and is a response to the universe saying, "this is the order, truth, beauty, simplicity that I see underlying all human and natural existence." The greatest science begins within human consciousness as a response to the universe saying, "this is the order, truth, beauty, and simplicity that I see underlying all human and natural existence." Experiment: Part #1 Ask questions, observe, draw conclusions, question your conclusions and ask more questions. Observe, make changes, observe some more. Part #2 Find something that you feel needs changing; change it, see what happened, change it again. Stop, go away; come back in a minute, a day, a year, a life time and see how it looks (feels, sounds, is still working) then. Change it again if you want. Part #3 Take a thought, image, idea and write it, play it, paint it, make a picture of it, build it, dance it, try it, but do it. Don't worry, just do it! Better yet, do it first without knowing what you're doing it about. Now, do it again; keep it the same, organize it, scramble it, move it, reverse it, change it, rearrange it. Then, do it again. Quit when you're bored or tired and come back to it later; or push ahead past the boredom and see what happens. Data: Part #1 This is scientific inquiry. Part #2 This is how people live their lives. Part #3 This is how "self-expression" works. Conclusion: Human beings are creative and think creatively regardless of whether they are involved in doing art, science, or cleaning the bathroom; the process is the same. The ability to do abstract/intellectual creative thinking, and the ability to do expressive creative thinking are not mutually exclusive. They both involve questioning, exploring, testing, observing, making a response, and coming to a conclusion. For many people, science as they have experienced it in school and in their lives has failed to live up to its creative potential. We have stressed the techniques developed for scientific exploration over the exploration itself. As any dancer knows, too much technique without putting in time to finding out how your body wants to move frustrates and stifles the joy of movement. Creativity is the nature of our thinking. Let us acknowledge it in ourselves and rejoice in our schools and in our lives at the power of our minds to think, create, respond, and love. Because I saw an earlier version in the form of a conventional expository essay with no blips of experiential writing, I think I can see some particular benefits that resulted when he adopted the collage form. The presence of experiential writing seemed to improve his conceptual or "essay" prose here. His language was much more abstract and dead in the earlier draft. And the collage form also seemed to improve his thinking. In the earlier draft he had succumbed to the temptation of almost denying any differences between science and the arts in his eagerness to press home his point about creativity inhering in both of them. Here, the experienced blips, even though a vehicle for his main point about creativity-in-both, nevertheless forced him to do justice to the differences.

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