Category: teaching (Page 1 of 7)

“The Length of a Season”

November 24, 2025 / / 1 Comment

So Stephen King said about how long it should take to write a rough draft for a novel.

I can’t begin to count how many times I’ve failed at this. I always take too long.

Before anyone starts in and says, “The story takes as long as it needs to take,” let me explain that while this may be a helpful maxim for other people, it is not for me.

I know because I’ve let novels take longer than the length of a season and always–always–it has hurt the project. I lose the heat. I lose the thread. I’m at a different place as a writer and my voice has subtly shifted.

Speaking with one of my students today, she had the exact same experience. She started a draft a few months ago but never wrote a proper ending. She added the ending recently, and she and I both agreed it lacked that certain oomph the earlier portions had. It didn’t have the same voice, the same energy. She’d taken “longer than a season.”

This happens to me constantly. I’m not saying this happens to everyone, nor that it necessarily happens to me all the time (I’ve had a few short stories where the break/pause ended up helping me work out something that was missing). But it happens to me often enough that I’ve got to actively fight against the fear and blockage that keeps me from riding the momentum of a project to its completion. Especially for novels. Both my interest and my ability to conceptualize the story dissipate the longer it takes me.

I want to get better at riding the wave. I have too many stories I want to write for things to linger on like this.

And thus my pact. My commitment. I will finish my next book in a season.

The Backstory:

I started writing a novel for my children earlier in the spring. They had brought home a book about dragons from the Scholastic book fair and it left me cold. Generic. Trite. Also, a bit too mature for my first and second graders.

I sprung into action and started writing a dragon fantasy novel using some of their ideas. I wanted it to be more in the tradition of books I remember loving as a kid. Something similar to the Prydain Chronicles, or Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.

This, remember, was in the spring. And now it’s late autumn and I’m on chapter seven. About ten thousand words in. Not very far. And much longer than King’s “season.”

Nevertheless, I will persist, and in the spirit of King’s advice (and my own inkling about how my creative process works), I intend to finish the novel before the end of this season (this season meaning November/December).

To do so means writing 50-60k in a month (so, sorta like the NaNoWriMos of old), which comes to roughly 1600 words per day. I’m not going to hold myself to a strict word count quota (another quirk of my creative process: as soon as word counts come into view, I get the hives); instead, I’m setting a time quota: sixty minutes per day in the writing studio. A bit more on weekends to make up for slow days.

I’ve already built up a tiny bit of momentum because I’ve been working on the book for the past week or so, but I need a more formal commitment to really push myself and write with more urgency and gusto. Not urgency in the panicked sense, but urgency in the sense that this story will be best served if I get it out into the world without delay. In delay there is doubt. There is that changing of voice and squandering of energy. Like my student realized: taking “time off” from the writing didn’t help it; it just made it flatten, like a tire leaking air.

Why do we take that time off? Is it really to make the piece “better”? Or is it fear, resistance, tension, doubt? It’s worry and perfectionism. It’s a defense mechanism. If we keep going, we might end up somewhere “bad.” We might flub it. We might not know where to go next and make a “wrong turn.”

But I would say the more harmful thing, from an emotional and intellectual standpoint, is to let a story idea taper off, to let a novel die on the vine, to never finish the piece. Losing the energy, wiping out from the wave: these are the bigger troubles. A tough, wild wave is easier to ride if you don’t intentionally jump out of it. Better to stay on and ride it out than to jump off and tread water, hoping for a new wave to come along.

I’m going to keep riding the wave. I’m excited, in fact. There’s a thrill here. A high-wire act (okay, now I’m mixing metaphors). But the idea that I can build my own momentum, that I can accelerate myself to the end of a novel: it’s exhilarating. It’s fun to think that in six weeks’ time I’ll have a rough draft novel to share with my children. I’m hoping this experiment shows me a new way of working, of approaching my creative projects. In the length of a season, I’ll have something new and complete.

“Rule 6: Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail. There’s only make.”

October 21, 2025 / / 0 Comments

I want to believe this rule. I want to live and make art and teach within the bounds of this rule. Like a mantra, I want this rule to be a constant refrain within me.

But this is a hard teaching.

I want badly to win, whatever that will mean. Maybe it means more readers, or more money, or more accolades. Maybe it means being happy with my output, with the finished product.

Instead, I fail. I don’t get the readers, or the money, or the accolades. I am unhappy with my output, doubting its quality, hating it. The finished product is an embarrassment. A mistake.

But nothing is a mistake. Like Yoda, this rule is saying either make or don’t make. Those are the only two sides to the dichotomy. Those who make, make. Those who don’t make, don’t make.

Winning and failing are not the opposed forces. Making and not-making are the opposed forces.

It’s the fear of mistakes, of wrongness, of failure that keeps us from making.

This is against the Rule.

Failure is an illusion. As are mistakes.

There is only make.

If you make, you are making. If you don’t make, you are not making. This is the only choice. Everything else–everything–is outside of your control. It doesn’t even exist according to the Rule.

“Nothing is a mistake.” That means you can’t possibly make a mistake. Only Nothing is a mistake. Only not-making is a mistake. It’s a mistake because we are called to be makers, to be sub-creators. If we don’t make, if we let Nothing into the world, then we have ceded ground to the mistake. Only by making can we prevent the Nothing.

This is why there’s no win or fail. A different kind of rule would say, “If you make, you win.” But that’s not this rule. This rule isn’t false positivity. It isn’t false praise. The whole concept of winning, of making something that “wins,” is the thing that’s false.

Making has nothing to do with winning or losing. Making has to do with making. There is only make or not-make. The win/lose is a paradigm of competition. Making is not a competition. A lot can happen if we make, and a lot can’t happen if we don’t make, but winning or losing are not part of those options.

If we make, we add to the world. We imitate God.

If we don’t make, well, we don’t. We go along with our lives doing other things, I guess, but those things are not making.

Right now, I am making something. These words are my making. They can sometimes feel like a mistake. I can start to worry that I’ve failed. I can yearn for the “win,” the high praise, the big bucks (though this is unlikely to happen for a lowly blog post!). I can fear the failure, but none of this–the wish to win, the fear of failure, the worrying about mistakes–is part of the actual making. The making is me putting words to the page. The making is stringing sentences together into a whole. The making is the act of making, and that really does exist outside of win/lose, success/fail.

I am making right now. Each letter typed is an act of making. Good/bad, win/lose: these are not involved. The only thing that is happening right now is the making.

And when I’m done, I’ll have a choice. To make or not-make. If I choose not-making, if I choose nothing, then, yes, I have made a mistake.

But I wonder if it’s even possible to choose nothing. Every moment is a moment of making if you think about it in the right terms. Every moment involves thoughts and actions. Those are part of making. Making decisions, making breakfast, making a joke, making a smile. We cannot help but make.

So there’s no fear when I sit down at the computer or with my notebook. I’m already doing the making. The making is already happening.

I don’t need to worry about believing in this Rule. Believing in it has nothing to do with it. Winning, failing: those are immaterial. Those are beliefs. Whether they are false or true is outside of this Rule. I don’t need to believe in either of them.

I only need to make. And I’m already making.

Goal Update: October 2025

October 12, 2025 / / 0 Comments

It’s been awhile. I’m going to try and be as upbeat as possible, but the results speak for themselves: I haven’t achieved most of my goals.

And yet! I’ve achieved some, and that ain’t nothing. Failing to success, right? Would I have achieved even these small things if I hadn’t set myself the goals?

Some may argue that yes, I would still have achieved these few things. And perhaps that’s true. Doing small actions every day does tend to add up to bigger things. My students who are writing for five minutes at the beginning of every class are seeing that happen in real-time. Their notebooks are filling up and they can’t quite believe it.

But there’s a part of me that thinks the simple act of articulating the goals helps me understand what my small actions are in service to. For my students, the daily writing added up to a class party (which we just had last week). For me, the daily/regular actions have added up to the completion of a couple of goals and slight progress on a few more. Again: that ain’t nothing.

What This All Means is precisely that it’s good to have some end goals, but it’s also good (better?) to keep plugging away. Achieving the goals isn’t the measurement; doing the small actions is. And not giving up. That’s important too.

Which is all to say that I’m writing this to self-assess, yes, but even more so, I’m writing this to remind myself that I must keep going. Even in a year’s time, I’ve accomplished things. Not much, but some.

And some is better than none.

Finish writing Norse City Limits (urban fantasy novel): I must admit that I’ve dropped the ball on this. I’m in that messy middle part in which I loathe every choice I’ve made thus far and feel utterly unsuited to the task of writing a novel.

I’ve taken a pause, honestly. Partly because I need to go back and reread and take better notes on what’s happened, but also partly because I think I need to do more reading/research. The Idea Well has run a bit dry. Problems of output are problems of input, and my Norse mythology/film noir input has been anemic these days (months?). I need to get back in touch with that part of myself.

The difficulty? I’ve started a few new projects and those are vying for my time. I feel the heat to work on them, whereas NCL has grown a bit cold.

I was worried about this, especially over the summer, when the novel was really stalled, but I’ve since made peace with it. This feels like how I work. I’m a multi-book reader, and I’m seeing how I’m really a multi-book writer too. It’s not the most efficient way of doing things, and maybe I need to retrain myself to write with white-lightning heat to finish a novel in a month or two or something, but for now, it seems that my process is more meandering.

It’s not like I haven’t been writing.

Maybe not as many words per week as I’d like, but I’m still writing. I’m finishing stories, I’m starting new stories, I’m writing Substack posts, and blog posts. I’m writing almost every day. Maybe not consumable words, but words that could turn into something later (I use my notebook/morning pages writing for ideas all the time).

I’m trying really hard to stop making demands on my Creative Voice. Instead of saying, “I must write this next chapter of __________,” I sit down at the computer, open a few documents (again, intuitively without deliberate thought), and I start cycling back through a story or start with a fresh page and new words, and I let the Creative Voice do its thing.

In fact, that’s precisely how I started this blog post. I let myself start writing what I felt like I needed to start writing, and an update on my writing goals is where Creative Voice led me.

It takes a great deal of trust in this process to operate like this, but I’m trying to trust it.

A bit like my insight on “inventing the process”: I need to stop prescribing the word count (or the work that “must” be done) and simply do what my Creative Voice wants to do. A story doesn’t have to be x-number of words long. I need to stop even thinking about stories as being “short,” “novella,” “novel,” etc. before I start writing them.

Maybe that’s the trouble with NCL? Maybe I committed to “a novel,” before I really had any idea what my Creative Voice wanted to do with this particular character in this particular world.

Well, anyway, I’m almost 50,000 words into the thing, so it must be something longer than a short story. What that thing is, though, I’m not sure yet. Maybe my idea that it must be 100,000 words long or whatever is getting in my way. Or maybe it’s shaping up to be 200k words or more… I certainly have enough story threads going and no idea how to weave them to a satisfying conclusion… It could end up being a door-stopper!

I’m somewhat tempted to throw a bunch of words out. Partly because I feel like certain choices bug me and I don’t like where they led me, but at the time, I didn’t have the courage to go back and redraft from those (seeming?) missteps. Do I have the courage now? Or is this just a way to avoid finishing?

I don’t think it’s a way to avoid finishing. I think it’s my intuition telling me that maybe I need to trust my gut and not keep putting lipstick on a pig.

Maybe I need to do that process reassessment after all and write with lightning heat…

What would that look like?

New Goal: Write an epic fantasy for middle grade readers/my kids (a novel about dragons): This came about because I wanted something for my kids to enjoy that went a little deeper than the dragon books they were bringing home from the library/Scholastic book fair.

I wanted them to have something like I had as a kid, a fantasy series that was epic and archetypal that also didn’t feel watered down. I’m a bit inspired by Katherine Rundell’s thoughts on children’s books and her novel The Explorer in particular, which we listened to as a family on audiobook.

This new dragon fantasy is partly why NCL is on hold.

As I’m typing all this out, I’m thinking I need to heed my own insights about writing one thing with lightning heat… I started this novel (working title: Shards of Stolen Breath) over the summer, and now it’s October and I’m only on Chapter 5. Maybe I need to write with white-heat and finish it as quickly as possible. My boy Thoreau always said, “Write while the heat’s in you.” Don’t let the fire die (hello, dragon pun, I see you).

What does it look like, for me, to write with white-heat?

Does it look like finishing a chapter a day? Write for thirty days, you got yourself thirty chapters. But what if Creative Voice doesn’t want to write a chapter a day? What if she wants to work on that other story that’s been brewing over here for a bit?

Okay, well, I just got done saying I wouldn’t boss my Creative Voice around, but I also wonder if Creative Voice would want to work on Shards every day if I actually, you know, thought about Shards every day. If I wrote about it in my morning pages, and took notes on it throughout the day, and dreamed about it at night.

I have a problem with daydreaming. I’m not doing it enough. I’m crowding out my thoughts with worries and a million other things. I need to schedule some daydream time.

Like, deliberately sit down (or go for a walk) and think about the story. Think about Shards.

I’ll admit that I’ve always been intrigued by guys like Moorcock (and Sanderson too) who can write something in a few days/months. Sanderson has spoken about this before. Write the novel as fast as you can, before the fire dies.

I like systems. I’m tempted to make this system for myself. The daydream about something, write it as quickly as possible, don’t let the fire die. Keep daydreaming so the fire stays stoked. (I swear I’m not writing all these dragon/fire puns on purpose.)

Isn’t it funny how writing all this out has led to insights? I hope they’re insights.

Finish writing Ysbaddaden and the Game of Chess (second book in Merlin series): Similar to NCL, this one is on hold. Perhaps it’ll be faster to redraft from word one on this as well. I’m tempted, mightily tempted to redraft from word one both NCL and Ysbaddaden.

Do I have the courage to try it? Enough of a fool?

Finish a short story set in my sword and sorcery world: Not yet.

Finish a short story about a mother who learns a terrible secret about her son: Not yet.

Finish a short story set in my Children of Valesh universe: Not yet.

New Goal: Finish a short story set in my magical music academy world: Not yet, but almost! I started a story called “Bronwyn Harper” a little while back and I’m getting close to finishing it. Between this story and Shards, I’ve been writing steadily. I also finished a random short story about a dragon egg and submitted that to Writers of the Future, so I need to remember that I haven’t been idle simply because I haven’t finished one of my big novels.

Publish my short story collection: Yes, I did it!

This was a big goal for me in 2025, and I’m happy to report that I met it. A bright spot for sure. It took me longer than I’d hoped, but the key thing is that I did it.

Finish a novella in my City of Ashes series: Not yet. Maybe never? This was a thing my Creative Writing students challenged me to do, but I’m not loving it. Time will tell.

Blog every day: I am not blogging every day, but I am still blogging. I like that this is a place I can continue to return to. I still aspire to blog every day, but it’s okay if I don’t.

Send out Substack newsletter every two weeks: Not yet, but I’m getting better. I’m prioritizing it a bit more. I’m looking through my notebook each week with an eye toward what can go on the Substack, and I’m loosening up my internal “rules” for what I should write about. The topics and essays are a little more wide-ranging, and I find this suits my personality and writing goals better.

Play more role-playing games with my kids, my husband, family, and friends: This is happening and I couldn’t be happier! I just played a one-on-one session of Caverns of Thracia with my eight-year-old son the other day, and it was glorious. And now that my Dolmenwood stuff has arrived, I’m ready to start up campaigns with family and friends. As a family, we’ve been playing Mausritter, Hero Kids, and DnD 5e.

I’m also playing in a regular Shadowdark game, and I’m running Thracia as an open table at a FLGS.

This has been an unqualified success.

Create some RPG modules for Norse City Limits and Merlin’s Last Magic: Not yet.

Make a “Saturday Morning” zine series and publish an issue every month: Not yet.

Make other zines: Not yet.

Read more books with my kids (Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, Half-Magic, James and the Giant Peach, the Hobbit, the Silver Chair, Horse and His Boy, Magician’s Nephew, Last Battle, more Little House books, How to Train Your Dragon series, Harry Potter): I was doing this, and then we stalled, and now I’m ready to make this a priority again.

I think we need to force our kids a bit on these. They are sometimes reluctant to listen to these older books, but we think it’ll be good for them. First up, NIMH and A Horse and His Boy, then a retry with The Hobbit.

Start naalbinding again (finish the hat I started for my son and make another one for my other son): Ugh, not yet. I want to prioritize this. My son’s head will be too big if I don’t finish soon!

Practice my cartooning/comics drawing (for the zines): Hmm… a bit? Not much, though. Need to do more daily drawing.

Start a podcast: This is a new goal, but I have an idea I’m excited about and which I think my readers will really like. New goal for 2026 is to actually record the episodes and maybe even launch.

Write essays, poems, and fiction that will serve as models for my students next school year: Not much, and I’m wondering if I want to keep this as a goal. I’m not saying I never do this, but I don’t think I need to set it as a goal for myself. I can write things as needed and dictated by the students I have each year. But making it a personal goal feels like an unnecessary step. I’ll do the work if I need to as part of my day job; no need to “focus” on it here.

Bonus achievement: The dragon egg story I wrote on a whim and submitted to WotF. I was using a writing prompt, thinking it would just be an exercise, and then it turned into a whole story. Just goes to show that “practice” for writers can turn into real work (as is true for nearly all artists). Who knows if it’s any good, but I had fun writing it.

Shifting Season

October 9, 2025 / / 0 Comments

I love fall, and I hate it.

I love the weather, but I hate that I can’t always enjoy it.

Fall is busy. It’s the new school year, it’s making lunches again, it’s three birthdays in our family, it’s letters of recommendation and summer homework that needs grading. It’s always getting started on the wrong foot. It’s crisp mornings and warm afternoons, and evenings that start earlier. My walks shift from mornings to after dinner.

Fall is a shifting season.

I like the idea of fall. I hate the reality of it.

I wish my falls could be like what we see in commercials. The cozy apple orchard, pumpkins, sweateriness, the hot tea and reading under blankets, the hay rides and bonfires. I literally went to a hay ride and bonfire a week ago, and still, I cannot enjoy it. I cannot let go of all the ways my summer life has been upended, and how I haven’t yet adjusted.

Fall shifts us from summer to winter, and on some level, I love that shift. I really like winter! I really like summer too, but most of all, I like how I get to enjoy both, and I like the shift from one to the next. I adore seasons.

But the other shift in fall–the harder shift–is the shift into all this busy-ness. It should be the opposite–shifting from summer to winter should be a shift FROM busy TO restful. Instead, the shift is seismic. I lose my balance. I falter.

Spring shifts us too, but that’s a springboard shift. A leap into summer. A welcome shift where the end of the school year is in sight.

I love fall, but I also hate it. I resent it, I suppose. I resent that what I wish it could be is not what it is.

The shift is happening TO me, not the other way around. If I could do the shifting, if I could be in control, then the turn from summer to winter would be beautiful.

But I’m not in control. The shift is happening TO me. I am buffeted about and pulled in a thousand directions. I am the leaf that falls and gets blown hither and yon.

Just as I was thinking all this, an email from Cal Newport hit my inbox in which he mentions the Gen Z trend to “lock in” for the remainder of 2025. This “locking in” is about focusing hard for the next three months to finish 2025 strong and get something done that doesn’t involve doomscrolling or wasting time on TikTok.

Newport then links to his Youtube video where he lays out a plan for using the last four months of the year to “reinvent your life.”

Shifts.

Gen Z’s locking in, Newport’s reinvention plan–these are ways of shifting, of taking control of fall and using the season to move into something better. The shift of fall means change, but Newport’s idea is that this change can be positive.

Would it be possible for me to use fall for my own shift? To stop the winds of autumn from blowing me about like a stray brown?

I am not sure.

I like the idea of taking charge, of shifting things in the right direction instead of being shifted into chaos. But how does one take control of the shift when so much is outside my control?

Perhaps this is just September. Perhaps no matter who controls the shift–me or the world–there will be discomfort. There will be chaos.

It is a shift after all. And I can’t help that it’s a shift into more–more responsibilities, more work, more things on my plate. I can fight the shift, cry about the shift, accept the shift, or ride the shift. I can take more control, but I can’t stop the onrush of birthdays and lunches and grading and earlier mornings. Some things are inevitable. The seasons change.

And I do like the changing of seasons.

I like fall.

There’s a certain glow to the sunlight in September, in early October. There’s a lovely dryness right now, where it’s warm but I can still wear a long-sleeved shirt, and the sun is bright but not intense. There’s a gentleness to the weather. A mildness.

A strange contrast to the hectic day-to-day of tasks and responsibilities.

Maybe I don’t have to like all the chaos and busyness of fall, but I can still enjoy the crisp mornings and the fresh apples and the hay rides. Maybe I can reinvent myself too. Maybe Newport and the Gen Zers are on to something. Fall may be busy, and it may be an uncomfortable shift, but perhaps it doesn’t have to be a meaningless one. Perhaps I can wrest back a little control, shift things in subtle ways.

Maybe fall is just the shift I need to reaffirm my desires and my goals.

If everything is in tumult these days, why not use that unsettling to unsettle some of my complacency, some of my resignation?

What meaning can I find in all this?

Perhaps I need to reaffirm my desires. Perhaps all this shifting (which I find so uncomfortable) is a sign that I’m not in the right place, that something is off. Perhaps I need to recommit to a writing career; perhaps I need to remember what’s important and what’s peripheral; perhaps I need to dream a bit bigger and not give in to despair.

Maybe that’s the challenge of fall. As the weather cools and the days darken, as work piles up and up and up, the challenge is to not let it overwhelm you. The shift is happening beneath your feet and in the air and on your To Do list, but that shift doesn’t have to bury you.

Instead, weathering the shift is a kind of victory. Winter may be a time for rest and healing, but we feel that rest more deeply when we’ve gone through the wringer. The shifting of fall may be troublesome at times, but it can shake loose old ways of thinking; it can challenge us deeply, but facing those challenges can make us stronger.

I’m still annoyed by all the busyness of fall, but now I can sense that there’s an invitation happening too. I am invited to see the tumult as a crucible, as a shaking loose. I can shed old ways and discover new ones. I can let old frameworks die and resurrect deeper desires. I can also stumble and fall. That will happen too.

But it’s right there in the name. Fall.

In some ways it’s inevitable that this season will challenge me.

And yet, despite the challenges, I always manage to make it through.

Go Slow

August 16, 2025 / / 0 Comments

I know it is not efficient or even very “productive” to write my notes by hand or write comments on student papers by hand, but every time I sit down to do my teaching work, I find myself drawn to writing things out with pen and paper.

Right now I’m reading through beginning-of-the-semester student surveys, and instead of recording the data on a Google doc or whatever, I find myself writing the notes on yellow legal pads, my trusty Pilot G-2 pen in my hand.

It’s definitely slower, doing it by hand. I’ll eventually type up some of this info and share the results with the class, so why waste my time handwriting it out first?

I asked myself the same question as I sat down to work, and I don’t know why, but I simply felt compelled to do it by hand. For some reason, this first go-round with the surveys feels like it should be done in analog. Read the surveys, write the answers on my legal pad, put the words down with my own pen strokes, hold the survey notecards in my hands, draw boxes and lines and asterisks on the paper.

When I think about doing the work straight onto the computer, something in me recoils. The work seems less pleasant. More drudgery.

But when I think about sitting at my desk, pen in hand, moving it quickly (or sometimes slowly) across the page, I feel good. I feel excited, energized, drawn to the materials. I want to begin my work.

I’m sure this is crazy. But it’s how I feel. And sitting down to do my teaching work can often be a struggle. I face a lot of internal resistance. Often, the only way I can overcome that resistance is to do the work by hand and tell myself there is no rush.

Of course, the volume of paperwork, of essays and reading journals and the like, means that taking things slowly means I spend hours at my desk. It means I don’t have time for other things.

This rankles me, of course, because I don’t want to spend all my time doing job-related work, but I also find that it’s the only way I can compel myself to do the work in the first place. The computer promises speed, but I rebel against the experience of using it. On some level, it unmoors me. And thus a conundrum arises: do the work “faster” but less pleasurably on the computer, feel more resistance and spend more time procrastinating OR do the work slower by hand, feel less resistance (even eagerness) and spend more time actually doing the work.

Either way, I probably spend more time than I’d like doing work for my job.

I’m simply a slow worker. Slow thinker, slow worker. But this slowness is a benefit. My work is better, and even more importantly, more pleasurable.

For now, I’m going to take it slowly. I’m going to record these survey answers by hand. I’m going to use this time to connect to my students’ answers, and when I type up some to share with the whole class, I’ll have a chance to re-encounter the data by going through it a second time. Maybe I’ll have new insights. Maybe the information will sink in more deeply. Maybe this typing up phase will give me another chance to contemplate my students’ answers.

It’s madness, but it’s the only way of working that makes sense to me.

Go slow. Write by hand. Mull it over. Spend time with it. No rush.

It’s the method that gets me to the desk to work. And that’s what counts.

Knowing Stuff

February 6, 2025 / / 0 Comments

I’m trying hard not to frame this is a “back in my day” vs. “kids these days” thing. I don’t know that people back in the day were more culturally literate than they are today. I suspect not. And cultural literacy changes as culture changes, so the references to things that meant a lot to my parents’ generation or my generation may simply be outdated and that’s cool.

But I do think there’s value to knowing stuff. Not necessarily pop culture ephemera that may wax and wane depending on the year, but deeper stuff. Mythologies. History. Arts and culture that have withstood the test of time. Not just European and American culture either. All cultures and art that are part of the great human repository of imagination and ideas.

But knowing stuff is important. Knowing stuff is how we come to know more stuff; it’s how we come to create more stuff and imagine more stuff and do more stuff.

When I listen to my children talk about their school days, when I see what the curriculum is at our school’s curriculum night, I’m always struck by how little time is given to science and social studies. I often wonder if they are learning about great artists and art movements, great composers and musical genres, mythology, folklore, history, etc.

I really should ask; that’s on me as a parent for not inquiring. I should ask because I do wonder. I think the reason I don’t ask is because I’m afraid the answer is, “Not much.”

Again, I’m not saying things were better when I was in elementary school. I was naturally inclined to be curious about stuff like Greek mythology and the Middle Ages, so I read a lot of that stuff on my own. I can’t disentangle what was my own study from what we did in school. My memory’s not that good.

Natalie Wexler’s The Knowledge Gap book posits that the lack of content-based curricula in American schools has been a detriment to education overall, and maybe I’m inclined to agree because of my own biases in the matter. But when I speak to my high school students about things I assume they know — like who the Greek Olympian gods are, or where Iran is, or what art movement we associate with Vincent Van Gogh, or when World War I took place — I’m always astounded by what they don’t know. I suspect that Wexler’s book is on to something.

Again, I’m not saying it hasn’t always been thus. My high school teachers were probably appalled by the ignorance of my generation too.

But even if this is not a new problem, I still kinda, sorta think it’s a problem. Or, if not a “problem,” then at least something we could try to address.

For my older son, who is in second grade, the lack of any systematic delivery of content and information has been a detriment to his enjoyment of school since almost the beginning. He finds school boring partly because he wants to KNOW STUFF and his school doesn’t seem to be able to deliver the goods. He’s immensely curious about geography, prehistory, paleontology, archeology, earth science, and biology. He’s curious about mythology and folklore and monsters. We provide him with books, let him watch documentaries, share our knowledge with him in conversation, but these are all things that happen outside of school. For him, school is almost a distraction from the real learning, which he does on his own at home.

I’m not particularly worried about my children when it comes to cultural knowledge-y stuff. As their parents, we’re able to provide what doesn’t seem to be coming from the school.

But as a teacher, I do kinda, sorta do worry and wonder what I can do to help. I suppose I might give students a chance to learn this information in my own classroom. I’ll admit, this feels daunting because I’m supposed to be “covering” all kinds of other stuff, like how to write. And it’s also daunting because the way we learn about stuff now is to search the internet, and I’m more and more convinced that what we really need to do is go back into the children’s section of the public library and read those books instead.

I wish my high school had a portal that could take my students directly to the local library so they could easily read books and magazines instead of websites. We don’t even have a library in the school where I teach. The access to books is incredibly limited. Even if I wanted to have my students study Greek mythology, we have no ability to do so without hopping on the internet.

Perhaps the solution is to design a research project that demands they use only books. It’s possible. But as with all things education, there’s the question of, “Is this worth it? Is this the best use of our time?” I don’t know the answer. I do know I like books, and there’s more to be learned from reading a stack of non-fiction kids’ books than we might realize.

And yes, I sound incredibly stuffy by simply rejecting the internet out of hand. I understand the Luddite vibes I’m giving off.

I don’t care. I think we need to do some kind of RESET with our students. Give them a solid base of “stuff” — learned from books — before we let them back onto the web. Once they have that base, they can be more discerning and critical about what they encounter online (though nothing’s foolproof); but the goal isn’t to help them figure out which websites are “trustworthy” and which are not. The goal is to get them some knowledge about the world. A base with which to start. Then they can start the process of being critical about sources and biases.

Or not. Maybe I’m just cranky. These are the times in which the so-called problems of education seem insurmountable, and yet, maybe all of this is a tempest in a teapot and none of it really matters.

I do feel an urge to set some general principles and challenge the students to follow them.

  1. If you have a question, sit with it for a while and try to come up with your own answers before looking elsewhere.
  2. If you have a question, have sat with it for a while, and are ready to seek answers outside of yourself, look in a book first. Look in lots of books. Go to the library and ask the librarian for help in finding these books. Also, as an option, TALK to a trusted someone who is more knowledgeable and wiser than you.
  3. After reading books and talking to others, go back into your own thoughts and consider what you’ve learned. Weigh it all against your own ideas. Ask more questions and repeat the steps.
  4. Old books are good to consult. Magazines and newspapers (in print) can count too.

I’m not sure if these general principles are even feasible in this day and age. But they might be worth the challenge. I should challenge myself to follow them too.

What’s the stuff I don’t know? What’s the knowledge I could use a refresher on? Which section of the children’s library should I explore first?

« Older posts

Original header artwork

Copyright 2015 Chloe Bensinger

Bookshop

I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

© 2026 Jennifer M. Baldwin

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑