A Letter from Mr. Elie Wiesel

Teacher's Note: Upon finishing Night, I assigned my students to write a letter thanking a local Holocaust survivor for his visit to us. Two young men asked me if they could instead write to Elie Wiesel. I said of course! Below is Mr. Wiesel's letter back to them.

Dear (student names):

Thank you for your kind letter. I always enjoy hearing from young people, and your letter was no exception.

I am moved to learn of the effect that my memoir, Night, had on you. As a writer, nothing is more important. From your words, it is obvious that you are very sensitive to the darkness of which I wrote.

If Night has helped you better understand the tragedies of the past, I am grateful. It is my belief that one who hears a witness becomes a witness in turn. May you use your knowledge and understanding to educate those who are unaware.

Keep learning and reading, more and more.

With best wishes to you,

Elie Wiesel

It is always a good day when

one of your students, working on his Martin Luther King, Jr., essays, says he's "not used to thinking this hard." Dr. King would approve, I think.

I'm always amazed at what an intimidating process writing is for so many kids, which is why I repeatedly counsel them to "get it down before you get it right." When we wrote a class rubric together, detailed what an "A" essay should have and do, and so on through an "F" essay, spelling and grammar are always the first thing they think of. That's important, of course, but what about the ideas? Weaning them away from the mechanics over substance is a difficult process, and there is so little time with each kid here to accomplish it.

Another Brick in the Wall

A conversation with a couple of colleagues, both of whom I like and respect, got me thinking yesterday about some of our most basic philosophical assumptions about education and why we do it. We're providing certain skills that we judge to be critical to getting on in the world--reading, writing, a understanding of how one's own government works, and so on. Kids need to get into college, because they need jobs that will actually allow them to support themselves and a family. In the specific context of the Detention Center, how and what we teach is revealing of what assumptions we make about these kids and where we think they're headed. Will they be teaching? Fixing cars? Checking people out at Target? Nurses? Doctors? Working in an office? Back in jail? Running an office?

I don't think the role of curiosity, self-expression or problem solving in education can be overstated. This brings me back to the chat with my colleagues. One colleague and I were in agreement, it seems, that students can produce a variety of "products" to demonstrate a certain skill. In art, it might be a painting, or a sketch. It might, in English, be an essay, a journal entry, a skit, a thank you letter to a visiting speaker, or participation in a debate or discussion. These are all assignments my students have produced. Another colleague seemed to express that if a product wasn't "computational", it might be nice and fun, but was not necessarily actual learning. As I understand it, memorization as a means of building the capacity to concentrate and focus play a role in this classroom. These are necessary to learning, of course, but to my mind this beg the question of what one then does with the facts one has memorized or to what end one applies such focus. The argument went that life is full of unpleasant tasks and students need to learn to focus on them and do them anyway.

The underlying assumptions here about what's worthwhile and what isn't fascinate me. Thought processes, by their nature, can't be 'seen'; when expressed they can be read or heard. Is loving a poem a "product" of a quality education? What about the kid who was in my class for a few weeks as we were reading The Diary of Anne Frank, the one who was released before we finished it? He returned to us a couple of weeks later and asked me if Anne and Peter had gotten together, and did she survive? Where's the role of inspiration in our classrooms, of excitement about a good book because it's a good book? Isn't that what being "life long learners" is about? Or do we view that as an extra, great for the kids who have passed their standardized tests but not a priority for kids with low skills who still struggle with the basics. I am, of course, arguing that creating that excitement is necessary to raising those basic skills. I believe human beings are hard-wired to want to learn. Every society has had art, music and stories to tell. Every single one, period. Do we believe still, in the 21st century, with our industrialized, standardized schools built to suit kids for jobs, in the joy of learning? This approach is counter-culture today indeed.

Now, don't misunderstand. Learning is work; knowledge, like anything worthwhile, is earned. And clearly, an important job of our schools is to prepare kids for the jobs they'll have. In the midst of all the worksheets and testing, curiosity and problem-solving can be tough to quantify. Yet I believe, I insist, that an education that is not centered around powerful, resonant themes (my classroom's theme is telling your story) does not serve a democracy well. After all, what else are those critical basic skills for?

Unlearning

I find myself often emphasizing ideas that I want my students to unlearn.

In my Language Arts classroom, one of the things I want students to immediately begin unlearning that the crazy idea that writing must be perfect on the first try. There simply is no such thing. Revision does not make you a bad writer; it makes you a good one. Nor do we expect this perfection on the first try outside the classroom. No coach only puts her players on the field during game time. There are drills, scrimmages, and practice. There must be a "safe" space to practice writing, make mistakes, fix them, and try again without penalty. Freewriting, for me, is that space. It's also a wonder way to let kids tell their own story, which to me is the most meaningful kind of writing possible. I know kids are "learning" that it must be perfect from somewhere. They constantly want dictionaries for spelling and exhibit a focus on, for example, handwriting. I tell them those things are important, but not yet. Eventually, most of them relax and simply begin writing.

Does it count as "data" that some of my students have asked to take their journals with them when they left the Detention Center? I think so.

This is why I philosophically stand behind the practice of "freewriting", though some argue that it is too unstructured and informal to "do any good". In freewriting, the topic is wide open, and the only rule is you must keep your pen moving. If you get stuck, write that. As I say to my kids nearly every day, it's not that you get an idea and then start writing. You start writing and then get an idea. This is the second misconception that I want kids to "unlearn"--that you must know exactly what you're going to say before you put pencil to paper. Writing is a process of discovery of one's self and the world. There's no way possible to know where you may end up once you start.

Why Do We Always Cry in This Class (or, The Affective Domain)?

The "affective domain", of course, is the clinical, detached and sanitized language we use to refer to FEELINGS and EMOTIONS in the classroom. Ironically, many of us English teacher types work daily to provide our kids with examples of language that has life, voice and power. It's interesting, then, that we used (use?) the lifeless phrase "the affective domain" to talk about emotion and its role in learning.

This struck me the other day when my students were sharing, as I invite them to daily, from their journals. Reality being what it is in the Detention Center, kids come and go without warning or notice. One young woman who has come such a long way simply disappeared today. I filled out her transfer form with a sigh, hoping that someone "downstate" (as the kids call it) will have the eye out for her that we have here. Several of the other girls in the unit wrote about her sudden departure, and the tears flowed. Mine included, I don't mind sharing. One of the girls, sniffling and laughing at the same time, asked "why someone always cries at least once a week in this class?" An answer came from one of the Detention Staff that it's because the classroom is a safe space where students can share what's really on their minds. I agree, and I think that's the magic of these journals. It makes THEM the curriculum; it also allows them to write in a space that will not be judged or graded. Hence they can practice without penalty, just like one would with any other skill. (I can't imagine learning piano as if it were a recital every time I sat down to play.)

CS Lewis once said that we "read to know we're not alone." We write for the same reason. We write to connect and be heard. Vygotsky noted time and again that writing should be taught for the natural-as-breathing survival skill that it is. Allowing and in fact creating space for "the affective domain", that is EMOTIONS, in the classroom, honors the power of language.