Friend and Foil

I can think of few (good) books that lack character foils. I am thinking now of friend­-foils, not foe-foils: Huck and Jim, Ralph and Piggy, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, Watson and Holmes. The best children’s literature features odd couples, too: where would Charlotte’s Web, Winnie the Pooh, and The Wizard of Oz be without the mismatched-pals dynamic?

As my summer of stellar young adult literature winds to a close, I have dog-eared many passages of highly-burnished writing, grabbing my otherwise-discarded teacher hat to note specific techniques I want students to emulate. The friend-foils component spans all of the books on my list: Matt de la Peña’s I Will Save You and Mexican Whiteboy, Terry Spencer Hesser’s Kissing Doorknobs, and Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak.

Uniquely, I Will Save You’s foil is a shadow, that archetypal embodiment of a protagonist’s darker inclinations—more frenemy than friend.  But like any good friend-foil, Devon contributes an essential ingredient to his buddy Kidd’s development, in this case a destructive world-view that Kidd must learn to reject. In Speak, Melinda's bubbly foil ditches her to preserve her social status, but Melinda's two eccentric teachers arguably fulfill the role of her foils, too. Their baffling, often-outlandish expressivity speaks to the heart-heavy, tongue-tied hero. 

The rest of the gang—Mexican Whiteboy’s Uno and Kissing Doorknobs’ Donna—exert  more straightforwardly-constructive influences on their counterparts (however wholesomely or unwholesomely-delivered).  Each supplies his or her friend with a vital piece of themselves—the quality of perseverance, an optimistic attitude, a thick skin, introspection, extroversion. However tenaciously the protagonist questions or rejects her friend’s offering, however long it grates, bemuses, or embarrasses her, the hero ultimately acknowledges her deficiency and allows the friend-foil to help make her whole.

If stories are, as Jonathan Gottschall writes in The Storytelling Animal, thrillingly crucial life-simulations, the friend-foil element mirrors our abiding need for difference in our relationships, however challenging or counterintuitive it feels. As Susan Cain argues in Quiet, our increasingly-extroverted world needs the caution, self-reflection, and deeply sustained thought of its introverts. In Jefferson County, Kentucky, public school-children mingle across socioeconomic and racial lines because their parents, first-generation products of busing, want the same social education for their children.  They recognize that each child brings a different dimension of the world to their community, making one another whole with each new piece of human experience.

It is hard to understand the paradox that couples our intellectual, emotional, and spiritual need for diversity with our tribal instinct, the source of much human division. The characters in these young adult novels, at least, come out on the moral-growth side of this struggle—taking a chance on challenging attitudes and traits despite their discomfort and fear. However gritty the journey, this is an outcome I can endorse, whether in YA life-simulation or in real life.

Tea for Thought

Thanks to Two Writing Teachers for this opportunity to participate in Slice of Life!

I have a tea date today. A close friend and colleague, she is leaving our school this year. I will miss seeing her in the hallways and mail room, the surprise notes and gifts left on my desk.

But our meeting is a hopeful reminder of a friendship that has extended beyond the context of work. And however anachronistic it might seem, this is not my first friendship that has been nurtured, in part, through the ritual of tea.

Mary Cassat: Afternoon Tea Party

In elementary school, a friend and I set dates for after-school tea and cookies. Sharing our return bus ride stirred anticipation of confidences disclosed over Earl Gray and the aptly named Constant Comment. We grieved my grandmothers' deaths over tea, its aroma like incense. The bitter essence of leaves, the sweet fragrance of dried fruit and flowers, fills conversational pauses and stimulates reflection. As the leaves brew, thoughts acquire their own potency and flavor, ripening to savor in conversation.

My first, somewhat tumultuous year of teaching, I discovered a tea shop close to home. Stuffed with impossibly aromatic leaves, it quickly became a haven for me. Possibly a heaven--a gracious, meditative answer to the neighborhood sports bar. I mourned its eventual closing, but spaces like this endure, as do occasions for tea.

The End-of-Summer Shadow

Josh James/Flickr: Shadows

Teacher-educator Kelly Gallagher describes late Sunday afternoon as “the 4:00 shadow,” the time when every teacher feels that twinge of urgency to wind up her preparations for the week (Deeper Reading, 2004).  It is a positive feeling, with dysphoric undercurrents—as adrenaline fires up creativity and anticipation of classroom interactions, it also unsettles subtle anxieties from their weekend rest: how will I get this student on board this week? Will this new vocabulary activity work as planned?

Three weeks before my students return to class, I am experiencing a sort of “end-of-summer shadow,” my anticipation and apprehension mingling and kicking me into gear. Two months mulling over new approaches and texts, imagining my students, our classroom, and our conversations, have led here: final syllabi and text selections, and wondering if I am biting off more than I can chew.  I have restructured my lessons based on a dialogical learning philosophy, and I have identified reading and writing apps for our new tablets.  Almost everything is new.

Too much change? How will students receive it? I pursued these adjustments with the conviction that students should more actively participate in inquiry, with tools that are relevant to their everyday experiences.  

But uncertainty and excitement inevitably mix. The best remedy is to step over that shadow into the thrumming fluorescent light of the classroom.

More Music to Move To: Janelle Monae's "Tightrope"

National Public Radio reported last year on the “Anatomy of a Dance Hit,” explaining a Danish study’s findings that “danceable grooves have just the right amount of gaps or breaks in the beats,” inviting first our brains, and then our bodies, to supply these missing links in the pulse. A pop favorite that has stood (at least my) test of time nails this “moveable music” criterion: Janelle Monae’s “Tightrope,” one of a series of programmatic songs on her 2010 science-fiction-themed album The ArchAndroid. 

The musical style blends Motown, hip-hop, and an unclassifiable but perfectly melded complement of driving percussion—most prominently, congas, kick-drum, and a drum-machine bass kick—acoustic instruments, and brass ensemble. Monae is among the most charismatically expressive singers I know of: aggressive, plaintive, brash, sweet—and always energetic.

And most to the point, the song is riddled with gaps. Holes in its beat that effectively grab you by the wrist and drag you to the dance floor. From “Tightrope’s” opening bars, I defy you to sit still. Trust me—it is much easier (and so much nicer) to give way to your tapping feet and wiggling hips.