Maureen Taylor's "The First Lie"

The first lie I remember telling my parents was a bold one. I was eight, a “good girl”, and I was eager to try out my brand new set of tempera paints. So I went outside and I looked for something that needed painting.

My family lived in a pretty white Colonial, meticulously clean, and antique-filled, but obscured by a miserable looking front yard. According to my parents this was due to the ancient Sequoias that majestically stood on opposite sides of what was supposed to be the lawn. Apparently the tree roots were shallow enough to prevent any potential ground covering from filling in, and so the grass was spotty and brown, at best. The giant juniper bushes in front of the kitchen and den windows downstairs (my mom feared passers-by would peer in and see all that my family was up to if we ever removed them), did not complement the dead lawn effect. And two more giant juniper soldiers stood up straight and tall against the house, guarding the front door and daring anyone to touch the shiny brass knocker. A wobbly brick walkway split the dead grass straight down the middle, and on the sidewalk end of that runway was a step down, flanked by two seat-height pedestals. They were also made of brick, and a neat pattern formed on the top. This was the place, I decided. This was where I’d begin my artwork. I would make the front of our house just a bit more bright and inviting.

So I painted one. I didn’t try to hide it. There I was, right there on Webster Street with plenty of neighborhood traffic, carefully painting each brick square atop the pedestal a different color. It was beautiful, and so much fun! I became engrossed in my work, and I must have been out there for at least an hour, oblivious to everyone and everything going on around me. I wasn’t concerned about keeping my artwork a secret. In fact, I never even considered the possibility that I might be doing something wrong. As far as I knew, my family was still inside, going about their own business.

Later that evening when Mom and Dad were getting ready to go out, my dad called me into his bathroom, which overlooked Webster Street – and the front walk. The bathroom exuded all of the warmth and good smells of my parents: shaving cream, hairspray, cleanliness, and just a hint of that “glass of personality” my father referred to before attending social events.

My sister and I often voluntarily hung out in my parents’ room as they prepared to go out for their typical weekend social or business party. Kate and I would sit on the bed consulting my mother as she labored over her decisions of what went with what, and which earrings she should wear. Well, actually, my sister helped her. I just sat there pondering how difficult it seemed to just go out for such a party. And when I did offer an opinion, the response from my mom was often something like “Really? Don’t you think, though, that this works better?” I would nod obediently. What did I know about fashion? I was just waiting for my dad to come back in from the bathroom so I could watch him tie his tie while he made me laugh with his funny comments.

But on this occasion, my dad didn’t come back into the bedroom. It struck me as odd that he called me in to him. My dad was peering through the curtains that covered the bathroom window (whatever the juniper soldier did not), all clean-shaven and wearing his dress pants. It then occurred to me that maybe I had done something that might have upset him.

“Maureen, do you know who did that?” He was pointing outside. Uh-oh. Why didn’t he call me Mo? He used my real name. I joined him at the window.

“Did what?” I asked innocently, though I knew very well what he was talking about. I didn’t even think about what I was saying.

“Somebody painted the bricks.” He turned to look at me. I continued looking out.

“ Hmmm. I think I saw Sean Bourke out there earlier today.”

My parents did not associate with the Bourkes, even though they lived just across the street and one house over. They were “difficult” neighbors, so Sean Bourke was easy to blame. Certainly any follow-up with his parents would be highly unlikely.

My father looked at me straight in the eye. “Really,” he said. He said it. It was a statement, not a question.

“Yeah,” I continued, a bit too easily, “maybe he did it.”

Again my dad said, “Really.” Then he offered me the chance to come clean: “But you don’t know that he did. Are you sure you don’t know how this happened?”

I looked him straight in the eye, and I knew there was no turning back. I was committed. Shaking my head, I lied, “No.”

“Will you please go wash it off so it doesn’t stain the brick?” This was a direct command, so of course, I did.

I had lied to my father, my hero. I had not wanted to disappoint him by admitting that I, his little girl, his baby, had done something that made him mad. I preferred making him laugh his from-the-gut belly laugh and seeing his eyes sparkle when I sang “The Sun’ll Come Out Tomorrow” just like Annie herself. In order to keep things neat and tidy with my dad and with my family, I was quickly learning that to avoid conflict of any kind, even if it meant lying, was the safest route to take.

Craig Klein's "The Early Bird Club"

Cock-a-doodle-do, and good morning to you! Welcome to the early bird club. I’m your host, Craig Klein, inviting to join me for the next few paragraphs as I explore and explain some of the joys and drawbacks of being an early riser.

I’ve always gotten up early, as far back as I can recall. When I was a child growing up in rural eastern Kansas, my daily chore was to go to the hen house and fetch the eggs for breakfast. This was always well before dawn. As a child, I reasoned that folks somehow thought that the chickens would be more forgiving of the early hand, one that reached under their nesting bodies before they could muster enough consciousness to peck bare knuckles with the force and rapidity of a jackhammer on concrete. Needless to say, I needed to be especially vigilant as the egg taker, ever wary of the dreaded beak. In other words, I arose both early and alertly.

From that point forward, I would always be up with the sun, down with the moon. To this day, I’m fully awake and rarin’ to go at 5:30 AM. Each day. Every day. The world is such a special place in the wee hours as the sun prepares to make its daily debut.! Birds sing, deer forage, dampness and dew hang on everything outdoors. It’s a delightfully quiet time. You know how sound carries long distances at night because the usual background din of human activity isn’t there...the distant siren or train whistle that seems to float on the ether? Now, imagine that with everything fully lighted. To me, this is how day life must have felt before the coming of overpopulation and the industrial age. Perhaps this is why some still choose to live in isolation. I don’t really know. What I DO understand is that one can be contemplative in a way like no other in and around the dawn.

Of course, there are some practical benefits of getting going early. No traffic whatsoever, easy parking, no waiting lines anywhere. Yes, the morning world is one of ease, and low stress, too. The people you do meet all seem to share something deeper, something visceral, something unspoken. I know what it is. We are drawn to dawn, each and every one of us. We know it. We sense it. Our conversations always seem to center on that which I’ve already described. A new bird someone saw or roses in bloom are equally as exciting to the early riser as any political contest. After all, both are world events, in a manner of speaking.

You must be wondering if there’s a downside, and the answer is yes. Early risers do grow weary in mid-afternoon, frequently needing a cat nap at that time of the day. It’s our concession to the late-rising majority of our species...that which allows us to keep going until 5 PM or later just so we can meaningfully interact with the rest of our kind. As for going out late to dinner or parties, in general we can forget it! I almost never go to an event that starts after 8 PM. The reason is simple. Bedtime’s at 9. My 8 hours of rest always begins by then. I can’t help it; I’m preprogrammed for the long haul.

I’d like to continue, but it’s now 8 AM and the rest of you are waking up and my phone is ringing. There goes my window of composing opportunity for today. But another one will come tomorrow, and each and every day thereafter. By the time most of you reading this open your eyes, I will have already finished writing this piece. You see, the birds are singing. It’s my song!

Sophia Pelafigue's "Laissez Les Bons Temps Rouler--Let the Good Times Roll"

Laissez Les Bons Temps Rouler--Let the Good Times Roll
by Sophie Pelafigue

“Cher Baby, come here and give me some sugar,” my grandfather Dee Dee would call to me in his thick Cajun-French accent when I stepped off the plane at the New Orleans airport. I would fly from Orange County, California to visit my grandparents in a small town called Grand Cateau, in the heart of the Louisiana bayou. Other than those warm greetings, almost everything seemed strange and unusual where my dad spent the first 18 years of his life.

The St. Charles highway snakes away from the suburban sprawl of New Orleans and into the inhospitable landscape of Cyprus trees, swamps, and sugar plantations. As the road narrows to a one-lane highway near Lafayette, I notice small groups of people sitting on front porches watching the world go by. Having always lived an agrarian lifestyle, Cajun people live life much slower and simpler than what I experienced in the fast paced world of prosperity and the sharper image.

Fullerton, a city about 10 minutes from Disneyland, provided an ideal setting for someone oblivious of traffic, pollution, and uptight attitude problems. As a young girl, I could visit ‘The Greatest Place on Earth’, swim in the ocean on a hot sunny beach, or shop for clothes at any of the 12 malls within a 30-minute drive. Although I enjoyed these pastimes when I lived behind the plastic curtain, they weren’t filled with the colorful characters that made up my family portrait.

My grandfather, the town sheriff, acknowledged everyone he passed in Grand Cateau. He stopped the car to talk (in French) to anyone close enough to the car to hear him. No one seemed rushed or annoyed as he lovingly introduce me as his “petite-fille (granddaughter) from California”. Once when I was eight years old, a woman name Willie Mae smiled, nodded her head, and knowingly said “California? We know what you all do in California.”

Having no idea what she meant as I gave a puzzled look and asked “What?
What do we do in California?” I felt uncomfortable as she just kept shaking her head saying, “uh huh, we know!” Dee Dee didn’t try to explain what she meant but instead told me her family name, who her children were, and how she was related in some way to our family: The Pelafigue’s.

Throughout my elementary school years, my best friend’s name was Jenny Brown. How I wished to have a name that could be said on the first try and have little potential word play. I cursed my unusually difficult last name: Pelafigue. As one official after another would read “Parker, Pierce, Peterson,” there would be the inevitable pause…..and then the attempt “Pel, Pel, Pel a…..oh I don’t know, Sophia.” Usually, I tried to stop them after the first pause and would call out “here!” in order to save myself the agony of name mutilation. While in Grand Cateau, I could rejoice in hearing my name said with the proper accent on the second syllable. I also realized that everyone else’s name was as unusual as mine: Daigle, Petitjan, Pitre, and Jagneaux.

Cajuns center their social gatherings around food. On every special occasion, some family member hosted a crawfish boil (“bol”). As a way to honor our family traditions, we got together on long picnic tables to suck on and eat dozens of pounds of live crustaceans. (There are photos of me as a two-year old baby, sitting next to three laundry baskets of crawfish waiting to be eaten.) Eating from a communal serving place creates a sense of purpose and helped me work through some of the silent pauses that come from not personally knowing countless numbers of family members.

I remember slurping crawfish juice next to my dad’s best friend, Bubba, from high school as he told me, “Yo daddy and me used to fish for crawfish down on the bayou when we were boys. Did he ever tell you about the time when a big water moccasin fell into the boat yo daddy just pulled it right out with a stick. He was never afraid of anything. He is a true Louisiana boy.” Dad left Louisiana (the day after his 18th birthday) to join the Air Force. Although most of his friends and family never moved farther than 20 miles of where they were born, they still viewed him as the first-born, second generation, male Pelafigue. He could do no wrong.

Since I becoming a vegetarian, I have had difficulty time finding food without the essential Cajun ingredient: Meat. Not being overly concerned with cholesterol levels and heart disease, people from the south use some form of meat in everything they cook: boudin (seasoned pork and rice served in a thin sausage casing), andouille (stuffed large intestines), chaudin (stuffed small intestines) chourice (stuffed stomach), tasso (pork or beef jerky), as well as a glob of grease in everything they cook. Of course, I can’t forget to mention the ever-popular Cajun dish, Gumbo, which contains any combination of different meats the chef has laying around the kitchen. I have had more than one confused great auntie stare at me in shock as I delicately tried to tell her I actually chose to eat the Wonder bread and American cheese I found in the fridge, because I would not eat her blessed boudin. Perhaps my unusual choice of diet was part of what Willie Mae talked about when she eagerly inquired about Californian’s alien traits.

In addition to good food and company, most social events include live zydeco music. People of all ages seem to have no inhibitions about getting up to dance, clap, and sing in front of each other. Visiting as a teenager proved particularly painful as I watched with embarrassment as people smacked their legs, hooted out loudly, or jumped up and grabbed a dancing partner. The closest I had been to shaking my booty was to do the limbo at the roller skating rink on Saturday night. I certainly did not gyrate my body in front of people and clap along with smiling musicians with strange instruments.

Fortunately, after my term as a teenager passed, we discovered an outrageous musical experience. Each Saturday, a zydeco breakfast in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, goes down just outside of Opelousas. The music starts at 9:00 a.m. and does not stop until 1:00p.m. No one leaves his or her table, so you must get there by 8:00 to sit down. After you have eaten, there is no reason to sit down because everyone is up dancing in whatever small space they can find.

Since getting married, I have kept my family name (who would have thought!) and I try to listen to my dad when he details particular experiences of his childhood. Although my grandfather has since passed away and my grandmother now lives in a care home, we continue to go back to New Orleans and Grand Cateau to “laissez les bons temps rouler” every chance we get. I often hear people make endearing comments like “Cher baby” when my daughter Amelia passes and I can hear my grandfather’s sweet voice and see his sparkling smile as I arrived from California years ago. As I watch Amelia boogie freely around on the dance floor, I begin to wonder whether boudin could be made with tofu.

Lee Roscoe Bragg's "Take Only Pictures, Leave Only Footprints"

Why did the coffee smell so much better? I don't know if it was the crisp, earthy air, or the knowledge that I would soon hear my grandfather patting biscuits into the Dutch oven and dredging the trout in flour before frying. If I hurried I could be the first perched on the rock nearest the fire, enjoying its heat as I savored the delicate flavor of the fish with the airy lightness of his biscuits. My father, the fisherman, had left camp before dawn, treasuring this time on the river most of all. With his morning contribution to breakfast he would sit and sip his coffee until my mother emerged from their tent so they could enjoy the meal together.

I've grown up within this culture; camping, hiking, exploring the wild country. Always careful to leave no trace of our being there - except on film. The pictures never as vibrant, but a useful link to the memory of that breath-taking view from the top of the ridge, or the numbing splash into the glacial lake.

Hauling a 21 foot trailer behind his old Chevrolet pick-up truck was my grandfather's preferred mode of camping. He was never in the trailer, living and cooking outside, but its double-bed was his great joy. My parents camped with a tent while my brother and I slept outdoors on folding, canvas cots. Giving up the cot in exchange for the quiet and solitude found at a primitive campsite was an easy sacrifice, and my high school weekends and summers found me in high altitude at the end of a long, steep trail. Close friendships were formed, a self-reliant group seeking a different sort of entertainment from most of our peers. Sunsets would be celebrated on an overlook saying good night to the world. Dark brought on campfires and singing into the night.

The wilderness has been my extended-ed, my summer school. It has taught me the importance of timing. Set up camp first as thunder showers come on so quickly, hang your supplies high and away unless you want a bear and hunger for dinner, when the sun sets, it's dark. You may be only five miles from the drug store but that's an afternoon's excursion, down the mountain, up the mountain, on foot.

The hike out and back to the drug store raised my usual preparedness to a new level. Whatever the circumstance, I would pack to be ready for it. But who wants to carry it? What to leave behind? Time to prioritize - another wilderness lesson. At first I had to write up a list with approximate weights, drawing a line through that pair of sweat pants that was oh, so comfortable and warm, knowing my jeans would do. My scout leader was horrified to discover that a friend and I had carried this to a new level by sharing as much as possible, including the toothbrush, which was much easier to share than the spoon.

Why go to all this effort? Who wants to sleep on the ground and go without a hot shower, to say nothing of the other bathroom luxuries? Or eat what looks like dried sticks and berries, even after being soaked, and cooked over a stove the size of my coffee mug?

We hikers are so thankful that others ask themselves these questions when they drive by us, tired and filthy at the trail head. Their disdain for discomfort is the only way this rugged land will remain the unpopulated wilderness we enjoy. From their speeding cars they cannot see the craggy granite ridge lines, the chilling waterfalls from the melting snow, or the meadows of wildflowers in riotous color. They think only of their creature comforts, not realizing that it's leaving those comforts behind that rejuvenates and expands the soul.

Of course, I married a backpacker. While I had grown up car-camping, discovering backpacking as a teenager, he was introduced to backpacking through his youth-group. Side-to-side campsites filled with tents, ice-chests, and screaming children were not "real camping". Relating stories of my camping childhood, ending with the declaration that I would not carry my pack, the baby, and the diapers (in and out of camp) he reconsidered. We have a beautiful photograph of me eight months pregnant sitting in a meadow of tall grass with our oldest daughter standing in my embrace. A later photo catches him on a riverbank teaching three little girls how to skip stones. The timer on my camera captured the five of us bundled in jackets, caps, and gloves gathered on a small ledge overlooking the shadowed Tuolomne River with the glowing orange sun sinking behind the surrounding mountains.

The garage shelves hold five backpacks now, as we shop for the sixth. In June we introduced our new son-in-law to backpacking up the Tuolomne River in Yosemite, revisiting our sunset ledge. The first week of August will find us up Redwood Creek swimming in the cool, green pools created by the incredibly sculpted boulders, sitting absolutely still while watching the golden eagle preen himself on a snag across the creek. We will gather to admire the sunset and bid the day good-night knowing that our daughters will be doing the same, wherever they are.

In the back country you only have what you carry. Setting up camp takes but a few minutes. After that it's just you and the beauty, and the peace that surround you. They invite you to sit and look, admire, see...think, dream. Bells don't ring, horns don't honk, neighbors don't yell across the street. You have the time and inspiration to become comfortable with yourself, and regain your perspective. And finally to become aware, once again, of how truly

Anna Moore's "Desert Non-Native"

When I was young, walking was exercise. Now my partner and I may take walks to get out of the house, but we plot our course based on the gardens we want to revisit and stop long enough at each that we achieve no aerobic exercise. We walk quickly past the houses that are clearly maintained by the mow and blow workers. They are all alike, great expanses of green clipped short as a golf course, flowers contained in perfect rows and catalogued by color. There is no personal touch, no evidence of a gardener. Two blocks up the hill, we tarry at the yard with three kinds of lavender, rubbing the purple blossoms and breathing in the spiciness; stretch our arms wide underneath the grand oak three blocks over; point out new pink geranium in the cottage garden a few blocks south. “Look at this gorgeous yard,” I say, stopping. “I wonder what lucky people live here.” Sun pokes me with an elbow. We are home.

When we first bought our little bungalow, the yard surrounded by a white wrought iron fence was solid St. Augustine, the rugged thick carpet of green that so many of our neighbors adore. It will grow anywhere and spread everywhere, under soil leaching Mulberry trees and across cement. The first project, even before we started refinishing the floors inside, was digging out great expanses of the “perfectly good sod” and starting our cottage garden. For the last three years, we have woven the people in our lives into these beds, a daily reminder of our family friends. Sun’s mom got us started with coreopsis, gaillardia, lambs ears, and iris from her garden. Another friend gave us violets, Mexican Primrose, and even a surprise Japanese anemone. When the glads come up, I phone Michael, who gave us the bulbs when we left Humboldt County. We talk each other through our gardens, feeling connected by bloom and season, successes and disappointments.

Many people in our community stop to talk when I am out working in our cottage garden, and most lament about the yard on the other side of our garage. “Your yard is coming along nicely,” one woman said. “It’s too bad about those neighbors.” I explained that there are no neighbors; the scraggly weed-ridden lot is part of our property and has posed a problem for us, its borders less defined and a plan harder to sketch out. Our gardening cohorts see endless possibilities. “Put in more fruit trees!” “Wouldn’t an arbor be nice?” In the spring we scour the Descanso and Huntington plant sales for suitable natives, salvia and buddleia, plants who will survive with little water. We cannot resist looking at all of the plants, picking up abutilon, a flowering maple, for their lantern-like yellow and orange blossoms. The work we do does not make a dent, and the next trip to Rainbow Nursery brings friendly criticism from the owner. “Your yard looks awful,” he says. “It looks awesome,” I counter. “I walked by there yesterday and it’s all weeds,” he insists. “Don’t count on it changing until September,” I say. I have done my reading and know better than to plant during the inhospitable summer months. We will get busy when winter temperatures will allow new additions to rest and settle in. These additions will not bring instant gratification, but I have also learned that, gardening takes patience, but come spring, we will be rewarded.

For every person excited about our progress, there is another who asks when we are going to rip out the small house and use our land to build a real house. Two blocks east, a lot our size is getting two “real houses.” They must be 2,000 square feet apiece. We can see grand curving staircases through still-empty doorways. I’m sure the family will enjoy their indoor, air-conditioned clean space. They will need air conditioning without the two oaks that used to shade the property. On our own property we have added a trellis and climbing vines to cool our house. Across the alley, the once-a-month mower and weed-eater could care less that this addition cooled our house at least ten degrees last summer. As I prune back the Cecil Brunner, he appears. “I was wondering when you were going to get out here and trim. You know, you can’t let your plants grow out into the alley.” I am speechless and left to wonder if he is the one responsible for the tire track through the thick nasturtiums. Our whole stretch of alley has greened so nicely now that the honeysuckle has covered the six-foot fence, softening the border between us and the Southland attitude.

The neighbor is as unknowing as the electrician who insisted that we needed an outlet for our sink to run a garbage disposal and looked clueless when I said we didn’t need one. “We compost,” I explained, seeing nutrients re-enter the earth. He truly sees garbage. I want to pull him out to the black bin, pry open the door and place some of the dark, rich soil into his hands. What a triumph that handful of dirt is after a year and a half of nothing. “Put in your grass clippings,” Sun’s dad said. “Keep it wet,” her aunt suggested. Then when I started adding last year’s leaf mold project into the mixture, I got heat and moisture and bugs and results! I have created a home for the worms who will keep my plants healthy. In the back of my mind is the memory that Michael trucked in horse manure to speed the composting process. I will have to buy a truck to get my own manure. This does not sound unreasonable, even to my ever-frugal self.

Who is this person? My Saturdays have evolved from spending all day mowing and tending to what lawn we do have to getting through that task as quickly as possible so I can get to planting, pruning, and propagating. Some days I am so muddy from my morning tasks that Sun will not let me in to pee. “Shed the pants and boots or go down to Starbucks,” she teases, eyeing my earth-covered lower half. I have been packing the soil around the new avocado whispering encouragement to the roots. Please feel at home here. Feel the warmth and nutrients pressed against your roots. Press back into our soil. Spread your roots and bring us fruit. Give to this land as we do. We will live off of this land, planting ourselves as we create an ecosystem that feels right to us.

Some days, our neighbors and I arrive home at the same time. We nod at each other as I remove my helmet, but they are already inside when I emerge from the garage. Bag still slung over my shoulder, I snack through the vegetable garden on strawberries or snap peas. I swing through the back gate and check the progress of the creeping thyme and rub a soft ear of chocolate mint to release its smell. I hear the music of finches at play in our mallow hedge. I breathe peace.

Mauro Staiano's "At What Price Testing: Teaching Writing in a Test-Centered Classroom"

I teach at a failing school. Our broad, student-centered elective program is the envy of visiting teachers and students alike, but I teach at a failing school. Our building trades and HROP auto programs graduate students who have built houses from the ground up and raced stock cars at a national level, but I teach at a failing school. Our music program is the largest in the area and has won national recognition, but I teach at a failing school. We are a National Service Learning School, ensuring our students are valuable, productive members of the community, but I teach at a failing school. The Western Association of Schools and Colleges recently commended the diversity and depth of our integrated, project-based class offerings, but I teach at a failing school. On our campus, the most ethnically and economically diverse student body in the county exists in relative harmony, but I teach at a failing school. We offer a truly impressive range of support services, ranging from after school tutoring and homeless outreach, to a fully certified day care and teen parent program, from gang intervention and conflict and anger management programs, to drug, alcohol, cigarette addiction counseling, and college advising, but I teach at a failing school. Every year we send students to Cal, UCLA, MIT, Wharton, and other top-flight colleges, but I teach at a failing school.

This list represents only a fraction of the ways my school addresses the myriad needs of a diverse campus community. Yet many of the items above address the affective, emotional needs of the student population and none of them is taken into consideration by the state when it evaluates our “success” as educators. Instead the state focuses on California’s two mandated, high-stakes tests. And though our pass rate on one—the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE)—ranks with any school in our area and is at about the state average, and our score on the other—the STAR—is consistently in the top third of the state, we are in danger of being officially labeled a “failing school” because our Academic Performance Index (API) score has not continued to rise* ("The API is a school performance measurement system first developed as part of California's 1999 Public Schools Accountability Act. The API is currently calculated using only the Stanford 9 or STAR test) (Great Schools). But whether we manage to avoid the official label or not, the rhetoric of state and federal politicians and the media in general consistently decries the deplorable state of our educational system. Over and over we hear that the state’s schools graduate students who lack basic skills and are not ready for the job market or for college.

The solution of course is a federally mandated program of tests and the threat of the “failing school” label. The rationale behind this is interesting. Though nearly everyone, conservative and liberal alike, agrees education is under-funded and schools lack the resources our students need, the current thinking seems to be that if we tie what little funding there is to test scores and make graduation dependent on a test, both teachers and students will try harder and be more successful despite the lack of resources. Thus the state expects rising API scores in a time of educational crisis where slashed education spending leaves class size reduction, essential support services, art and music programs, and the jobs of thousands of young, energetic teachers specifically trained in the new state standards by the wayside. Yet as the money for these resources evaporates there is money for remediation, test preparation classes, and test preparation materials.

Many of my older colleagues shrug off these turbulent times. This too shall pass, they say. Yet not so long ago, I recall an emphasis on student-centered learning and teachers as “guides on the side,” serious discussions about multi-modal instruction, learning styles and multiple intelligences. Clearly these buzz words of recent pedagogical history represent a political agenda which has now been replaced (much as my colleagues assure me the current agenda will be in time). This is true I’m sure; we live in a changeable world, but can we afford to wait? What I embraced about that outmoded agenda, and what seems to be disappearing from the current climate, is a focus on the needs of the student, a focus on learning. As universities, employers, administrators, and politicians pound the pulpit in favor of ever higher standards and “objective accountability,” what has become of the student? In an ever more standardized system, where do the unique, affective needs of the individual fit in? As an English teacher, and especially as a teacher of writing, I must question the long term ramifications of our current course. Things are changing in our classrooms, and we must ask ourselves whether these changes truly meet the needs, not of bureaucrats, but of the students who count on us to defend their interests as learners. I cannot address the whole school system, or even just my school. Both tasks are daunting in their scope. However, I can track the changes in my own small department and my own classroom, and ask: What effect is the focus on standardized testing having on the teaching of writing and, more importantly, the learning of writing in the high school classroom?

My experience with high school writing instruction began in 1997 when I first stepped on campus as a naive student teacher. Back then the talk was all about standards and benchmarks. The California State Language Art Standards had been announced, the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) had released standards, and at the high school teachers had just finished crafting local standards. For a young teacher, this focus on standards was a boon. The list of genres the department taught, in what year and in what course, was codified in a clear and widely accepted set of benchmarks. Ninth graders could be counted on to have studied thesis-driven, analytical writing and beginning research papers. Tenth graders worked through controversial issue papers, persuasive writing, and more formal research papers. Eleventh graders wrote an I-search. In composition classes, students wrote a minimum of five formal papers each semester, taking each through the full writing process, and at the end of the year, these papers were gathered into a portfolio of work demonstrating that the student had met (or failed to meet) the department benchmarks. For a young teacher struggling to keep my head above water anyway, the sheer quantity of paper work and reading was a struggle, but at least I knew what to teach and what the department priorities were.

At this same time, the high school was making two other important changes. Acknowledging the work load of composition teachers at all levels and the attention such a comprehensive writing program requires, our district agreed to cap all composition classes at twenty-five students (down from thirty-three), and, in conjunction with the state, reduced class size to twenty in the ninth grade. To put the magnitude of this shift into perspective, imagine a class of thirty-three students. Each student turns in a first draft essay which an experienced teacher reads and responds to in about ten minutes. This equates to roughly 330 minutes of reading time for just that draft in just that class. Let us assume that, in addition to other forms of response, the teacher reads and grades one more draft of this paper in about half as long as the first draft. This adds another 165 minutes for a total of 495 minutes of reading time. Now, assume that this teacher teaches all five required essays in sophomore composition, a single semester course. That is 2475 minutes of reading time per semester, not including planning classes and grading day-to-day assignments, for this one section of composition. Assuming this same teacher teaches three sections of composition, his or her reading load for these classes alone (not including his or her other two sections or planning and day-to-day grading time) is roughly 7425 minutes or 123 hours and 45 minutes per semester. In other words, responding to papers for these three classes alone would take more than three forty-hour work weeks, every moment of which is outside of class time. In class, this teacher would have approximately 1.7 minutes to spend with each of his or thirty-three young writers each day. At twenty-five to one the numbers are somewhat less dismal. Our hypothetical teacher would now spend only 93 hours and 45 minutes reading formal essays and would have fully 2.2 minutes to spend with each student per day. Even in this smaller class, to accomplish ten-minute writing conferences with each student on a given paper would require four and a half 55-minute periods, assuming each conference was exactly ten minutes and the teacher did not have to take any time out for classroom management. A teacher who wanted to conference with students on each paper would use at least five weeks of the sixteen-week semester on writing conferences alone. Up class size to thirty-three and the same teacher would spend six weeks conferencing. These numbers point to two things. One, constructing and implementing a formal writing program is time consuming even with smaller class size, and two, even in such a program, the individual writer receives far too little one-on-one time with the writing instructor. Clearly, the fewer students in a class, the more attention each student receives, both in class and in response to his/her writing. For this reason small class size is the lynch-pin of a successful writing program.

Another learner-centered practice making inroads in my student-teaching year was integration. All over campus teams of teachers were integrating curriculum, sharing students, and sharing grading. One example had a science teacher, English teacher, and history teacher sharing sixty-six students in back to back periods. In this arrangement composition became a focus in all three classrooms, not just English, and writing standards and instruction could be shared. In those first few years, these supportive teams of teachers multiplied from two teams serving approximately 132 freshman on campus, to at least six teams serving more than 250 students of all levels. The first two teams were focused specifically on providing support for incoming ninth-graders and were intended as a pilot program for integrated teams throughout the freshman year.

My classroom at this time was all about project-based learning and writers workshop. For much of the day I taught in a program integrating English with world history and math for ninth-graders, and for the rest I taught mostly sophomore composition, serving roughly 115 students a day. In my ninth grade classes, my students wrote their benchmark papers as part of larger projects on Black History, Totalitarianism, and the Holocaust. In the tenth-grade classes I designed units around the writing process, moving from one genre to another over the course of the semester, reading and writing in each. In both courses I did not grade student writing, rather I marked papers on a continuum measuring student progress in all facets of writing. The emphasis was on process and growth rather than product. I taught grammar, as the rest of the department did, in context as a revision skill.

Since then, in a span of only five years, the focus of the state and of my department has shifted dramatically. Local standards and benchmarks are a thing of the past, replaced by a fanatical focus on the state standards. This started slowly with the arrival of the state-mandated STAR test, a test most in the department ignored initially. Funding and focus shifted away from local standards and as they were less supported they dwindled. It has been years since any teacher in my department put together portfolios demonstrating our benchmarks (though most of us still save student work in the department office). But nothing took the place of the old benchmarks the department had worked so hard on. Instead, as teachers began to realize the STAR test was here to stay, many struggled against it, rejecting it in principle, but failing to hold fast to any alternative.
The result has been a breakdown in department unity. In a survey of my department, over and over teachers responded that we no longer have an articulated writing program, that the department is “confused” and that whatever standards we have “aren’t checked for anything.” At the same time, pressure from the administration to perform better on the state tests has increased. Almost every teacher surveyed indicated they had felt personal or departmental pressure to alter curriculum to focus more on the tests. Initially this was difficult as the STAR test was not aligned with the state standards, and so teachers rejected the pressure out of hand. However, the more recent STAR tests do reflect the standards, making the pressure, and the tests themselves, less easy to ignore. And, as our test scores stagnate and we get closer and closer to being labeled a ”failing school,” it is only going to get worse.

Another wrinkle is the state mandated graduation exam, the CAHSEE. Given in the tenth grade and repeated seven times if necessary, this test is intended to guarantee a minimum standard of proficiency for all California graduates, including those with learning disabilities and whose first language is something other than English. The pressure on us to prepare our students for this new test is understandably enormous, as even parents have begun to ask what we are doing to prepare their students to pass the test.

As a result of these increased pressures, even the most reluctant in the department have begun to give in. Though the department is still scrambling and without a cohesive vision, several steps have been taken with regards to testing. The department has purchased and is advocating the use of a comprehensive grammar program at the freshman and sophomore levels. So while we no longer have department benchmarks for writing, we do have them for discrete grammar instruction and much time is now spent teaching parts of speech, phrases, clauses, and punctuation. Most teachers in the department now spend at least a week or two explicitly practicing for the state tests. Most do practice tests for the CAHSEE and some do extensive “test prep” units including general strategies for standardized testing.

In my classroom, the results of these new pressures are significant and similar to what I know has happened in my colleagues’ classes as well. I spend hours and hours teaching grammar to students unmotivated to learn it, but who will quietly do their drills because they know it is “good for them” and because they fear the exit exam. The result has been that while they have consistently improved in spotting errors in sentences on the board and in worksheets, the grammar in their own writing has improved very little. This jibes with the tests though, as the STAR test has no writing but lots of discrete grammar questions, and the CAHSEE, while it has some writing, also focuses primarily on multiple choice, error-recognition questions. I spent two weeks this year doing practice tests and teaching test-focused writing, warning my students about such test pitfalls as straying away from the prompt and messy handwriting. In addition to the time spent on this new curriculum, there is the time taken on the tests themselves. English teachers lose roughly one week of teaching time every year to the STAR tests, which are given in every grade but twelfth, and face the disruption of several more weeks due to testing in other subjects. Sophomores face an additional week of CAHSEE testing.

This new curriculum and the time spent testing is eating into the already limited time teachers have to address the rigorous state standards. Though my students felt prepared for the tests, in fact most found them easy, much of value has been lost from my curriculum and my coverage of the standards is surface at best. I have not taught a proper poetry unit in two years, I have dropped one formal paper in each semester, and there is less time for multiple-draft writing. Though my class size has stayed about the same, the amount of authentic writing my students do has suffered. The focus has shifted from process to product in many ways as well, thanks to an increased emphasis on timed writing. The same is true in my colleagues’ classrooms as well.

Yes, much has changed in the past five years, but of course much is sure to change in the next five years as well. Two current trends are sure to shape the writing classroom in the near future. The first is the economy and the second is a continuing drive for “accountability” that shows no sign of slowing. The plunging stock market, recent energy crisis, and increased homeland security spending have sent the California state budget into a tailspin with deficits predicted in the $38.2 billion range (Lucas). Though the specifics of next year’s budget are still uncertain, everyone knows the cuts in public education spending will be deep; the only question is how deep. As the state’s schools plan for crippling budget cuts, they are slashing staff and “nonessential services” and programs wherever they can. At my high school, these changes will primarily come in the form of fewer teachers and increased class size. Though the political pressure is high to save class size reduction in grades K through 3, less is being said at the state level about funding ninth grade class size reduction (Posnick-Goodwin 9). Though high school class size reduction has never been fully funded, what funds there were seem to have evaporated, leaving schools little incentive to maintain small ninth grade classes. In planning next year’s schedule at my high school, freshman English classes started at twenty to one, quickly moved to twenty-five to one, and seem to have settled at twenty-eight to one for next year though they could still go as high as thirty-three to one.
Remember that these are composition classes. Using the formula established before, this teacher’s reading load has just increased from five hours per paper assigned to a class of twenty to seven hours in a class of twenty-eight. Sadly, there is no reason to assume class size increases will stop at ninth grade. Our twenty-five to one cap on composition classes has always been a “courtesy” cap. As funding pressures increase over the next few years, many in the department predict the administration will soon throw courtesy to the wind in favor of cheaper, more “efficient,” classes of thirty-three to one. In addition, the tight schedules and reduced staffing required by the current budget have nearly eliminated our once thriving integrated programs, denying student and teachers another valuable avenue of writing support.

All this is only exacerbated by the continued pressure to succeed on state tests despite budget woes. Contrary to the hopes of many in the educational system, state tests have not faded away. The federal government recently passed the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), requiring annual reading and math testing in grades three through eight and at least once in high school (NEA). The law also sets proficiency targets, declaring that all students will be “proficient” by 2014 (NEA). Further complicating the issue is that, though President Bush promised to fully fund NCLB, federal government funding is $8 billion short of authorized levels this year and Bush’s proposed allocation for 2004 is $11 billion short (NEA). The political opposition to NCLB has been fierce as state budgets languish and it has become obvious that few schools, if any, will meet the proficiency target. In California, state officials are backtracking on implementing the CAHSEE this year because it will tragically affect graduation rates as forty-eight percent of this year’s graduating students still have not passed the test (Exit Exam).

Yet the state assures us the test will survive, and the pressure to test often and test well is still there, so in a time of dire budget crisis, there is money for testing and testing support. As class size goes up in writing classes and support programs are cut across the curriculum, newly created classes focused specifically on remediation for the CAHSEE in math and English are still capped at twenty. As more and more class time is spent on test prep and grammar, less and less time will be spent on reading and writing. In my own classes, I can see a shift from broad, open-ended compositions to sentence level writing and even more timed writing. If school funding, graduation, and the evaluation of my performance as a teacher are to be based primarily on tests with little writing (none of it authentic or meaningful), tests that focus on error recognition, and not revision, how can I do otherwise? Parents and legislators do not want to read portfolios; they want to see test scores.

I admit the pressures imposed by the testing movement are not all negative. Though lofty, the state language arts standards are worthy targets by and large, and I am happy testing pressures seem to be bringing some focus to my department which has been set adrift since the loss of local benchmarks. Next year the department will embark on a project to articulate our curriculum and align all courses clearly and concretely with the state standards. And many teachers point out the tests encourage students and teachers alike to focus on admittedly less interesting but under-addressed “basic” skills often lacked by even our brightest students. Certainly learning to write beautiful, coherent, grammatical sentences is a goal any writing teacher can support. And yes, the CAHSEE can and does act as a carrot for many reluctant students who fear not graduating (though once students pass, or come to believe they will never pass, this incentive evaporates entirely, leading many to say the CAHSEE actually decreases motivation). And clearly testing alone cannot be blamed for all the woes affecting today’s schools. The economic struggles of the schools simply mirror those of the nation.

But the fact remains, in the rush for greater accountability, we are leaving the learner behind. I fear supportive classrooms where students have the time to write and revise are disappearing, replaced by frantic test-focused writing and grammar drills. Class sizes are increasing, and testing and test-prep eat into valuable classroom time, leaving overworked teachers with less time to respond to the writing needs of more students. Invaluable integrated classes and support programs that encourage and nurture student writers are being replaced by test-focused remediation and a high pressure, high stakes environment. Ironically, as the pressure increases to leave no child behind, we risk leaving more behind than ever.

For as long as I have been around schools, people have trumpeted the failures of public education, but honestly this has never really bothered me because the definition of this failure is imposed from the outside, leveled bluntly and often ignorantly at the schools in general. I have always been able to look around my room and my school and see the concrete growth in my students as young writers. I have never needed politicians to tell me my students are learning. It is only now as testing and budgetary pressures encroach upon my ability to foster this learning, that I fear I soon really will teach at a failing school.

Works Cited

The Academic Performance Index (API): Ten Things a Parent Should Know. GreatSchools.net. 4 November 2001 <http://www.greatschools.net/cgi-bin/showarticle/ca/72/improve>;.

Arcata High School. GreatSchools.net. 20 May 2003 <http://www.greatschools.net/cgi-bin/ca/ach_more/1047#cahsee>;.

Eureka High School. GreatSchools.net. 20 May 2003 <http://www.greatschools.net/cgi-bin/ca/ach_more/1007#cahsee>;.

“Is state ready for exit exams?” The San Francisco Chronicle. SFGate.com. 16 March 2003 <http://www.sfgate.com/cgibin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/03/16/ED241423.DTL>;.

Lucas, Greg. “Deficits predicted for state. Davis' budget would balance for a year then dive, says report.” The San Francisco Chronicle. SFGate.com. 20 May 2003 <http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/05/20/BA260706.DTL>;.

National Education Association (NEA). "The Law: What It Is, And What It Isn't." NEA Today May 2003: 22-24.

Posnick-Goodwin, Sherry. "Don't Turn Back the Clock, Smaller Class Sizes Work." California Educator May 2003: 6-11.

Cynthia Mossman's "Using Plot Structure for Research Paper Teaching"

We are drawn to stories. The media knows this. On the six o'clock news, we are presented with the latest news "stories." Whether we are given the facts concerning the latest terrorist attack, the discovery of a new star, or a plea for a kidney donor from the desperate parents of a child, we hear the news in story form.

People around the globe transmit information to each other in the form of stories. Whether one is sitting under an acacia tree in Africa, listening to the trackers telling the best way to hunt a kudu, or in a New York penthouse hearing about the best stock market investments, people prefer to get the facts in story form.

We process information by creating stories. This concept is used in the movie industry. When two seemingly unrelated images are placed next to each other, our brains make a connection and we create meaning, or a story, to explain the relationship. Plot is the structure that allows us to process facts.

Robert McKee says in his book, Story:

Since our first ancestor stared into a fire of his own making and thought the thought, “I am,” human beings have seen the world and themselves in it [in the] classical [plot] design. The classical design is a model of memory and anticipation. When we thing back to the past, do we piece events together antistructured? . . . No. We collect and shape memories around an archplot to bring the past back vividly. ("Arch" pronounced "ark" as in archangel.) When we daydream about the future, is it antistructured? . . . No. We mold our fantasies and hopes into an archplot. Classical design displays the temporal, spatial, and causal patterns of human perception, outside which the mind rebels. (62)

Classic plot structure begins with a conflict, or a question in a static situation. With steady increments, tension is increased until a climax is reached. The climax is that situation, event or information that changes the world (or the subject) irreversibly. There is no going back. After the climax, there is a "denouement," or falling action, in which things settle back down to a new stasis, different from the former stasis.

The classical design plot structure according to McKee is not ethnocentric, but rather, a universal human way that factual information is understood. It is "timeless and transcultural, fundamental to every earthly society, civilized and primitive, reaching back through millenia of oral storytelling into the shadows of time" (45).

How can this knowledge help college instructors when they assign a research paper? Suppose we ask student writers to structure their research papers using the basic concepts found in the classical design for plot structure. Therefore, they choose a high point, or climax, for the focus of their research. Papers are then structured so that other information serves to heighten tension, or lead directly toward that climax. The results, or "falling action" show how the world or subject was changed, and how the return to a new stasis was accomplished. This method of presentation of facts and research can be found in popular news magazines and newspaper articles. We would therefore be asking the student to write a research paper as a plotted piece of writing.

Traditional Research Paper Organization

Some of the traditional ways of organizing the body of research papers have included the following:

1) Chronological listings, or historical order of facts and events.

2) Subject area categories.

3) One subject area divided into sub-categories or classifications.

Unfortunately, these traditional methods have often resulted in papers that list events and facts as "evidence" for the opening statement and as "proof" for the conclusion of the research paper. Little attention has been given to the structure of the body of the research paper.

In Active Voice, James Moffett discusses the research paper assignment. He asks the question, "What is determining the author's paragraphs and the order of the paragraphs?" (132). "Almost all book research that students are asked to do in school and college is on subjects assigned to them, the main purpose being either to force students to 'cover' certain material staked out in a course or to elicit evidence that they have done the required reading..."

Advantages of using plot to structure research papers:

1. To give students a focus for narrowing their topics.
2. To give students a focus for revision decisions.
3. To create a more readable/accessible final product.

Using plot structure puts more importance on the communicative aspect of the paper, thereby focusing more attention on the audience. With plot structure in mind, the student writer will have to choose more carefully which events/ facts to use and be more conscious of the ordering of these in the paper.

Pitfalls that a plotted paper should help to prevent are:

1. Plagiarism--since copying "facts" in the same order as they are found won't work.

2. Limited research--when students just write down the first facts they find and categorize them. More synthesis of material will be required in order for the facts to "make sense" in the plot structure framework.
3. Textbookeze" or the unsuccessful imitation of academic dialect without understanding or substance.

How does this structure differ from a persuasive research paper?

This type of paper differs from a persuasive research paper in that the student, while free to use the rhetorical modes, is not limited to a persuasive focus. The only necessary elements are that the facts are designed to lead to an interesting and exciting climax, with increasing tension or heightening levels of interest that build toward the climactic moment, or most important point of the paper.

This structure should come naturally to students, and hopefully will help with invention problems or the "staring at the blank page" syndrome. It asks students to sort through their research to find the most interesting or exciting point they want to make. This method is versatile, and the basic principles can be used in any subject area.

How does this work in practice?

Let's look at an example to understand how plot structure can be applied to a research paper writing task. For our purposes, let's assume that a student is researching Queen Elizabeth the First of England.

To start, the student would have to find several resources and become familiar with the life and times of Elizabeth I. Perhaps after reading about the queen and her world, the student might explore the reasons that Queen Elizabeth, in spite of having many suitors, refused marriage. The student might find the account of an incident when, during a discussion with her council, over a potential marriage to a Catholic Frenchman, she ended up in tears, when she realized that, for the well-being of England, she must remain single and not repeat the mistake her older sister, Mary, had made, by marrying an unpopular man and losing public favor. <http://www.tudorhistory.org/elizabeth/>; We'll suppose that the student chooses this moment in history as the most interesting fact that she has found in her research, and therefore, decides to use it as the climax of her paper.

Next, the student would order the facts and events using plot structure, so that they lead up to this moment in history. She would choose to show with increasing tension how the facts and circumstances led up to the moment in history when the queen decided not to marry the Duke of Alencon of France, and ultimately, not to marry at all. These would include the history of suitors trying to win Elizabeth's hand so that they could gain control of the throne, the numerous attempts on her life by enemies who challenged her right to the throne, the religious contests against her Protestantism by Catholic clergy,etc. The falling action might show how this decision prepared the way for her to rule unchallenged, and how the fallout was that she created the British Empire and colonized much of the known world as the Virgin Queen. <http://www.britannia.com/history/monarchs/mon45.html>; As a final indicator of the new stasis, the student might include one of Elizabeth's poems, for example:

On Monsieur's Departure

I grieve and dare not show my discontent,

I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,

I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,

I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate.

I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned,

Since from myself another self I turned.

<http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem797.html>;

This type of presentation would be far more interesting than a chronological list of events, for example, in Elizabeth Regina's life. It is also more interesting than hearing about categories or subject areas of Elizabethan England. There are no blocks of information on crops, or theaters, or the plagues. If this information were to be included, it would have to be part of the build toward Elizabeth's fateful meeting with her council, and subsequent decision, or be shown as part of the falling action after the meeting. This creates a logical ordering of information, and helps the student become more involved with his or her topic. It creates focus. There is no bland "overview" of Elizabethan England. There are no unattached "floating" facts that are so common in undergraduate research papers.

Using plot structure focuses attention on the communicative aspect of the writing, thereby making the information more easily accessible. During the research process, the student should find more enjoyment in finding facts and events in the subject area, and readers and writer will ultimately find more enjoyment in the "ride" from introduction to conclusion.

WORKS CITED

Brittania: America's Gatewy to the British Isles. Elizabeth I. May 2003. <http://www.britannia.com/history/monarchs/mon45.html>;

McKee, Robert. Story. New York: Harper, 1997.

Moffett, James. Active Voice. Upper Montclair, NJ: 1981.

RPO Editors, Dept. of English. "On Monsieur's Departure" by Elizabeth I. Representative Poetry Online. Toronto: Toronto University Press, May 2003. <http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem797.html>;

Tudor History.org. Elizabeth I. May 2003. <http:www.tudorhistory.org/elizabeth/>