A roomful of city planners, part 3

Like any Art I-level project, the final cityscape drawings submitted by students were a wildly mixed bag. There were a handful of architectural masterpieces, a broad mid-range of serviceable drawings, and the usual last-minute horrors: a tangle of unfinished lines, creases and rips. In addition to the finished drawing, I asked students to submit a written response in which they would reiterate the objectives of the project and identify various conflicts, analyze how another student resolved the conflicts, and then discuss their own choices. As noted in previous posts, resolutions of the social conflicts (scroll down for the 10 criteria) were based on assumptions made by students. Here are a few of examples [note: no spelling/grammar
corrections]:

1. The low-rent apartments were projects.
In AM's comment below, there is the assumption that the low-rent apartments are one of the "black things". This was not indicated in the criteria, but the assumption is a fair one: there are at least three housing projects zoned for our high school.

2. The white-owned chain restaurant was assumed to be upscale.
This opinion was only verbalized by a few students, but seemed to be assumed by many in the final cityscape drawings. For example, when dividing the city into rich and poor sides, the chain restaurant was often on the rich side as P.F. Chang's or Outback, when it could just as easily be on the other side as Biscuitville or Bojangles.

3.The sewage treatment plant is unsanitary or smelly.
One of the few areas where I guided discussions. The sewage treatment plant is an essential city service, but an unseemly one. How would a city cope with this potential menace, and who would have the power to decide, and where does this power come from? All agreed that the plant would be an olfactory nuisance, and that power is derived from wealth, so it would most
likely be placed near the poor side of town, where people are less inclined to protest. Some assumptions:
AB: "One big conflict would of happened if I would of put the sewage plant beside a restaurant because you would smell a bad smell when you eat so that was my conflict."
KB: "His sewage is right by a [clothing] store and the smell might leak into the clothes"
MH: "Conflicts that arose from these few items were that the hospital couldn't be by the sewage treatment plant because that's unsanitary."

4. The hospital is expensive.
For those without health insurance, the hospital is a forbidding place.
KB: "[I put] the hospital more over to the rich side b/c they can pay for it."

These assumptions led to the following compositional choices:

1. The restaurants could not be placed side by side, as they would be in competition.
MH: "The chain restaurant couldn't be by the 'mom & pop' restaurant because there would be too much competition."
DH: "One conflict I faced is to make sure I do not put the two restaurants by each other."

2. The low-rent apartments shouldn't be near the colleges.
Some students assumed that, since the low-rent apartments were housing projects, expensive colleges (such as our very elite one) would bristle at having them next door. In this case I helped to guide the choices, reminding them that college students live on a very low income and would need housing as well. This encouraged discussions about housing around nearby
NCCU.

3. The sewage treatment plant should be placed near the low-rent apartments, not near businesses.
Again, the sewage treatment plant is seen as an aggressively offensive necessity, but one that should be kept away from those with wealth.
KB: "[I put] the dump over by the cheap apartments because they can't afford to have complaints."
Anon: "I put all the white-owned businesses on one side and all the black owned store near the sewage company."
BA, referencing a student's work in which the sewage plant sidles up next to a Macy's: "I do not agree with the way he planned their city because he put a sewage next to a clothing store. Oh no."

4. Or, the sewage treatment plant should be placed as far away as possible.
AB: "I arranged my cityscape with my sewage plant looking like it was in a far distance and the rest of them was up close. I resolved my conflict by putting the sewage plant in a far distance away from all of the other buildings."

5. Buildings had to be grouped according to economic strata.
AA: "My city was arranged in a way were your lower class people lived on the side of town where there are lower class shops. I put the sewage behind everything because nobody wants to live by waste. I feel great about my work. I did a great job." And discussing another student's work: "Like myself, this artist put all the lower class together because that's the only way
business can survive.

6. And thus, wealth belongs to white people, poverty to black people.
The common thread throughout all of these works was the economic divide along racial lines. The criteria identified black- or white-owned businesses, and identified upscale and low-rent entities, but never combined the two. When creating an economically divided city, the upscale was grouped with the white, the downscale grouped with the black. This can be seen in
many of the comments throughout the project.

7. Equity and convenience, with sensitivity to business competition, were major issues for most of the city planners.
KB: "I arranged my city so that the urban could be with the urban and the rural could be with the rural. I put the bank right in the middle so both sides of the city could get to it and the hospital more over to the rich side b/c they can pay for it... I put my barber shop by the collage and hospital so they could donate hair to cancer patients and the students could get a haircut"
IK: "I arranged my cityscape very carefully. The mom + pop isn't too close to the chain restaurant. The apartments are close to the college for the convenience of students, the bank and hospital are also close by. The sewage plant is on the outer city limits so it doesn't cause problems."
AJM: "I drew the bank in the middle of the city so both sides [black and white] could have the opportunity to get there at the same time."
AP, who drew a complex, multi-block cityscape, first responded to student NM's drawing, highlighting the convenience and fairness of the city plan: "He arranged his cityscape with alot of place that are nicely grouped together. Everything is placed convenient for the 'people' of this city. I think the way that he solved the conflicts was by using an example of a real city and how its set up and just played off those factors. I do agree with his city plan because its very elaborate and well thought out. I think the only problem this city could face is that money (income) would be a major problem". Discussing her own choices, she says "I arranged my cityscape with all of the buildings that 'make sense' sitting side by side on the same blocks. I also put things together that that could benefit each other by the convenience of them being side by side. For example the mom & pop restaurant and barber shop combined bring in more business for each other and play off each others income."
IK: "Each building had to be placed carefully so not cause disturbance or competition between each business."
ED: "I gave the sewage plant some space. I put Durham Regional [Hospital] in the back b/c I know they need a lot of room. I put NCCU by apartments + condos b/c that would be like dorms for them."
KB: "This man has the hospital right in the middle of his town so both sides could get to it. But his bank is to far away from the shopping centers... But i like the fact that the mcdonalds is right by the collage because the studant can just walk to go get something to eat."
ED: "The problems will probably make someone go out of business."

I was deeply heartened by these responses, as they demonstrated true engagement beyond the simple mechanics of drawing in two-point perspective. I watched students make observations about their situation, and reflect these observations in their work. I overheard meaningful discussions about race and class, opportunity and equity. I witnessed students taking apart their city and putting it back together again. Even if it was the same as it was before, they did so with their own power.

If I had a disappointment, it was that students drew such a clear divide between white wealth and black poverty. I had hoped that, through this project, students could use their agency to design a city plan that is equitable for all citizens, or one that proposes opportunities for escaping poverty. If they identified racial, social or economic conflicts, this could be their opportunity to mend them.

This was perhaps a misguided goal, as it asked students to ignore reality. What the students gave me was a reflection of a very real city. The choices they made demonstrated what they believe to be true, and in many cases it was accurate to our city's unique situation. How could I fault them for being true to reality, for being cynical of wealth and power, for being defeatist in their own situation, for being frustrated with inequity, for simply being honest?

A roomful of city planners, part 2

"I wanted to split the two worlds up. I wanted the black things to be [together], such as the haircut places and the low rent apartments." - AM, 10th grade

This statement comes from one of the written reflections submitted by Art I students at the end of the Urban Planner/Cityscape project, and it speaks to the kind of choices made by students in the process of arranging a city with civic, social and economic conflicts. In addition to the compositional choices illustrated by these reflections, I became aware that students were making assumptions about the required content of the drawings. These assumptions would underscore my student's situational context more than than the self-reflection and analysis in their own words could. Though I shouldn't be, I am surprised to find that I learned more about my students from their process than the end product, especially this role of situation as compositional tool.

The 10 criteria for the cityscape had the potential to raise several issues in student thinking, and my goal was to present the criteria without comment to allow the students to establish their own hierarchy of concerns. To recap, the 10 entities that students needed to include in their drawings are as follows:
1. Bank
2. Hospital
3. Apartments (low rent)
4. Condos (upscale)
5. Institution of Higher Learning
6. Sewage Treatment Plant
7. Mom & Pop Restaurant - African-American-owned
8. Chain Restaurant - White-owned
9. Barber Shop - African-American-owned
10. Clothing Store (inexpensive) - White-owned
In reflection of our city's real-life context, these entities could potentially highlight the conflicts that keep the city from progressing as quickly as our more cosmopolitan immediate neighbors. In particular, there are deep-seated racial issues that continue to exist: the city is roughly split down the middle between black and white with a burgeoning Hispanic population. There is a wide class division, emphasized by the elite private university and its largely affluent, out-of-town student body. This class division exists due to the economic disparity of the city, with little common ground between rich and poor. There are naturally social issues that arise from these other conflicts, including racial prejudice, gang activity and a rising crime rate, which inspires further bias in the residents of the neighboring cities. Other civic issues could be brought up, including urban redevelopment and gentrification. And would students make any mention of the flourishing arts community or high-tech, research-based industries?

In observing student group discussions, conferencing with them one on one, and reading written responses, I determined that students made important assumptions that would persuade the content of their cityscape drawings, and these assumptions were based on their own situation. Because of the lack of diversity in my school, the situation is common to most students: the school is predominantly African-American (greater than 90%), with a large portion of the school from middle- and lower-income households. To say the school is struggling academically would be overly polite - it is at the bottom of the district's test scores, and a state consortium has threatened to close the school if scores do not improve. At the same time, the school is a long-standing point of pride in its community, with a national alumni organization and strong sense of tradition. The performing arts department has been successful for years and continues to attract positive attention.

With the commonality of racial and economic backgrounds in the school, I expected race and class to play the biggest role in compositional choices. I also expected to be confronted about these issues as a white teacher. With the class disparity in this city divided along racial lines, I expected to be held as a symbol of affluence as well. This did not happen. My students are savvy enough to know that a person from affluence would not find a public school teacher's salary acceptable.

In the next post, I will identify the assumptions my students made, and will list the choices that resulted from these assumptions.

[To those of you - both of you! - who read this blog, I apologize for the infrequent posts lately. I've been swamped with the spring musical, and hope to get my act back together...]

Interesting Sketchbook Entries, part 3

Results are still coming in for the Urban Planner project. So until then, a placeholder:
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
by J, 10th grade

- "Draw a comic strip aobut how you spent your [Thanksgiving] holiday"

First frame: A happy woman holding a baby.
Second frame: 3 weeping figures around a coffin, with text that reads "R.I.P. Baby Matthew".
Third frame: The same woman from the first frame, now weeping, in front of a table full of food.

A roomful of city planners

My primary goal as a teacher, at its loftiest and most philosophical, is to create meaningful, living content for students that encourages critical analysis and self-reflection. Unfortunately, this is the first thing to disappear from view when bogged down by assessments, paperwork, classroom management and endless faculty meetings. Too often I let the students try to find their own meaning in a project as I rush through the introduction in an effort to get their hands busy. But now that I have the benefit of a year's previous experience and a semester under my belt in my current placement, I am able to focus more on these overarching goals - what Neil Postman refers to as the "ends of education", not the means. The means are the technical and mechanical aspects of schooling: standardized testing, integration of technology, methods of remediation and so on. The greater issue, the one that determines the true value of school, is a metaphysical one. "It is important to keep in mind that the engineering of learning is very often puffed up, assigned an importance it does not deserve," he writes in The End of Education. "To become a different person because of something you have learned - to appropriate an insight, a concept, a vision, so that your world is altered - that is a different matter. For that to happen, you need a reason. And this is the metaphysical problem I speak of."

My students are halfway through a project that, in the past, was much more technical than metaphysical. It is called Cityscapes, and in this project, students draw an urban street corner scene using 2-point perspective. Linear perspective is one of those basic art skills that needs to be covered in Art I, either explicitly or implicitly. A good project will embed technique into meaningful, student-driven content, but occasionally there are techniques that are more often studied, at least in part, in isolation before being applied to artwork. Clay technique, and printmaking strategies for example. I had always assumed that linear perspective was one of these techniques as well.

For those who don't know, linear perspective is the graphic system for creating the illusion of depth using lines: the tunnel vision-style of one-point perspective, or the street corner-style two-point. Of all art processes and concepts, it is the one that most resembles a mathematical formula or scientific principle: follow a set procedure, achieve a predictable result. The art teacher is usually in the business of encouraging and rewarding divergent, creative responses, but linear perspective produces convergent, similar responses. It is usually covered in middle school, but since art is not a core requirement after the 5th grade, some of my students may not have had art since elementary school. The challenge becomes to teach a relatively dry subject in a new way. Standard linear perspective projects include Dream Bedrooms (design your fantasy bedroom using one-point perspective) and Cityscapes (design a street-corner scene using two-point perspective). Both have the potential to be fun and creative, but on its own linear perspective is fairly rote, dry stuff.

With the help of my mentor and some inspiring passages by Postman and Paolo Freire, I brainstormed a way to give this project real-world problems, a cultural connection, opportunities for collaboration and meaningful critical analysis. After teaching the principles of perspective and letting students practice it for several days on worksheets and observational activities in the hallway and classroom, I proposed a challenge. They would be required to include 10 different entities in their cityscapes - businesses, living spaces, city services, etc - that would be replaced by actual local entities of their choice. The dilemma: some of these entities may be in conflict with each other. Role-playing as City Planner, how would they acknowledge the issues that exist in our city, resolve some of these conflicts, and design a city plan that is safe, productive and equitable?

The 10 entities are:
1. Bank
2. Hospital
3. Apartments (low rent)
4. Condos (upscale)
5. Institution of Higher Learning
6. Sewage Treatment Plant
7. Mom & Pop Restaurant - African-American-owned
8. Chain Restaurant - White-owned
9. Barber Shop - African-American-owned
10. Clothing Store (inexpensive) - White-owned

Our city has a population split approximately down the middle between black and white (with a burgeoning Hispanic population). It is a southern city, and has a typically unsavory history of racism and segregation. There is also an economic disparity split roughly along racial lines, with a giant, glaring symbol of this rift in the form of an elite private college populated largely by affluent white students from outside the community, especially New England. The nation
learned of our city's racial and economic disparity less than a year ago when several of this university's athletes were accused of raping an African-American student from a neighboring, historically black college.

How would my students address these issues? Would they acknowledge or ignore these problems? Would they, all but a handful being African-American, resent discussing these issues with a white teacher? Would they keep things in the city the way they are, if given the power of an urban planner, or would they try to fix problems that they see?

We've gone pretty far beyond a Dream Bedroom in one-point perspective now.

I broke students up into groups and proposed some of these questions. I let them discuss it for 10 minutes or so, sketching some ideas for their city plan, then had them share their results. I circulated the room while they collaborated, and was impressed with the level of engagement in most groups. Discussions were meaningful and often intense. Disagreements occurred, often settled by a debate about the logic of a certain scenario. For example, it was difficult for students to resolve the issue of the sewage treatment plant. It couldn't be put near a living space or a restaurant or a hospital. Where do cities usually place such things? How could they include this urban necessity, while still being fair to the population?

Some sample discussions:

R & E (period 4) decided that the low-rent apartments should go downtown so that those people could have access to the things they need. They also put the bank and the restaurants downtown as well. They placed the upscale condos far on the edge of town, thinking that the wealthier people could afford cars/transportation, while low-income residents would need to walk.

Bright & creative K (period 4) surprised me by designing a city that was essentially the way it is now: a racially and economically segregated city. The chain restaurants ("upscale" by her assumption) were placed next to the college, bank and upscale condos. The mom & pop restaurant and barber shop - both black-owned - were placed near the low-rent apartments, which sidled up to the sewage treatment plant.

A, a distracted kid who is usually more interested in the remote control for my stereo than any art project, asked why there wasn't a library in the cityscape. Together, we decided there should also be a school and a grocery store for future projects.

The students have just begun to produce final drawings of their cityscapes, incorporating all of these themes and ideas. The culminating activity will be a gallery walk, where students observe and discuss each other's work, then produce a written response about the exercise.

As results come in, I hope to record them here. In the meantime, I will look ahead to future projects and redesign them so that the focus continues to be about the ends of education, not the means.

A hostile audience

"God! I do NOT want to do this! Art is stupid! God-uh... Why can't I change classes??" So sang B, the day after it became too late to change classes.

One of the things that attracted me to teaching as a career was the fact that it retained some of the most exciting elements of music as a career - creative, social, with a performance aspect - while adding more rewarding and frankly reliable elements - a state paycheck with state benefits, professional opportunities, and oh right, the chance to positively impact the lives of children. I think it is my background in those first elements that has made my career shift relatively smooth and painless. When I was a record store owner, I learned that if we wanted to be able to pay our bills every month, we needed to adapt to the slippery, evasive needs of our clientele. Perhaps more importantly, as a performer I learned how to negotiate a hostile bar crowd who has not come to see you play tonight, and is refusing to pay the $3 cover charge required if they want to continue to drink there. You stock the right records, you play the right covers, you contort yourself but don't sell yourself out. If we were saving a cover of Cheap Trick's "Surrender" for an encore, we'd open with it to appease the scowling bikers and hobos hovering around our girlfriends.

My brother, now a Penn State faculty member, followed a similar career trajectory from bar band to classroom. From tot to teen, I admired the rock star side of him, and was honestly perplexed by his passion for education. I remember him saying, after being asked by a confused little brother who had just inherited his vintage, no-longer-used Gretsch Chet Atkins Tennessean, that teaching was just as satisfying as performing. Standing up in front of a class of students, he assured me, was just as rewarding as standing up in front of an audience at a club.

I didn't believe him.

Now that I'm on the rational side of planning a career in the creative arts, I can understand where he is coming from, and yes, it is just as rewarding. Maybe even more so, because you know it matters. Songs are great, and I love nothing more than being told by a complete stranger that my music affected them on a deep level, but what fills me with happiness now is to see a student discover a love for art, or if I'm lucky, discover that they have a valid, even important voice.

That's why I take B's comments as a challenge, and one that I'm ready to win.

The project was Hand Drawings, wherein students practice and apply skills for drawing from life and observation - accurate shading and detail are preferred. Though seemingly simple, it is exactly the kind of project that causes a student like B to shut down. Drawing the human body, especially something as complex as the hand, requires a fair amount of skill and, because of the familiarity of the subject, leaves little room for error. Everyone is familiar with what their hand looks like (it's not like the back of their hand, it IS the back of their hand!), so for a student who feels like she can't draw, it is like being asked to speak Russian or breathe underwater. Most often, a student who doesn't understand will reject the project by either shutting down or becoming defiant. B was feeling defiant.

"Let's take it one step at a time. Now, how do you begin drawing hands?" I say. I had shown them some techniques whereby the artist simplifies an object into geometric shapes.

"I don't care, it's stupid!". She is looking away from me. But I'm still there.

"Well, can I see what you've done so far?"

"I didn't do anything. It's not good, I'm not an artist. God, can't I change classes? Can't I take Creative Writing or music instead?"

She has drawn something, in fact, and I move it closer. She is still looking away, and is very poor at hiding her annoyance with me.

It is a rudimentary mitten-shape hand - the first step in the process of observational drawing through geometric reduction. There are still three steps to go: contour lines for the shape of the fingers and hand, details in the wrinkles and lines, and finally shading.

"OK, well this is actually a good start," I encourage.

"No it's not, it's dumb. God."

"Look, you've only just started. Right, it's not beautiful now - I wouldn't buy this and put it in a frame and hang it on the wall - but you're on the right track. You just have to keep going."

She is looking at the drawing now, not looking away. She is quiet.

"It's like cooking. Do you cook? Well let's say you're making a soup. You melted some butter in a pan, cut up some onions, and then you push the pan away saying, 'I can't make soup'. Well you haven't made soup yet! You're only getting started! Wait til you make the soup and taste it, then you can decide if you can make soup or not. OK?"

She is still looking at the drawing. She has picked up her pencil, and is kind of tickling the paper with her pencil. I move away and keep my distance for the remainder of class, but I keep my eye on her. She will work on her drawing for the rest of period.

At the end of class, she comes up to me with a finished drawing of a hand like her own, holding a pencil. It is crude and simple, but she is beaming.

"Look, what do you think?" she gushes. I praise enthusiastically, it is the freaking Mona Lisa. I give her a verbal pat on the back, saying that I always knew she could do it.

She takes the drawing with her, and will come back periodically throughout the day to show me her progress on the drawing. A little detail added to the knuckles. A change in design to a baby hand holding a rattle, and oh yes, how do you draw a rattle? Some color, some shadow. How do you get the right skin tone?

She hasn't asked to drop my class since.

Foreign tongues

Like much of the southeast, my city is experiencing a explosion in the immigrant population - primarily of Hispanic (especially Mexican) background. As such, I have an influx of students of varying English competency. Last semester these students were all on very high levels, nearly fluent, and required little modification. This semester is a different story. In my second period class there are two boys who speak extremely limited English, to be generous. Their English is worse than my Spanish, which despite my 6 years of study is limited to Mexican restaurant menus, bathroom requests and a Sesame Street guy-in-the-desert vocabulary.

These kids are typically among my hardest working students, not only because they want to learn the material and fulfil their academic responsibility (the strongest work ethics in the building, if I may generalize), but they are also struggling to overcome a tough language barrier. It is not classified as such, but it is nothing other than a disability - an impediment to learning more dramatic than dyslexia. Fortunately, my job is easier than other teachers because mine is essentially a visual discipline, and I routinely model techniques and processes before students ever begin. An ELL (English language learner) student can follow along with my demonstrations to understand concepts. I couldn't imagine being a chemistry teacher and putting volatile chemicals into the hands of a student who can't understand a verbal warning (I picture chemistry teachers miming explosions with big hand gestures, saying "Boom!").

In second period, I am explaining my techniques to the whole class - in English, of course - with clear demonstrations, then I will take the ELL students aside and ask, "Do you understand?... um, Comprenedes?". They will nod politely, but it is clear they haven't the foggiest notion what to do. I've started bringing a Spanish/English dictionary to school, and I will slog through a clumsy translation of the assignment, flipping pages as I go: "Um, Dibujar... la (objects, what's the word for...) que es la palabra para "objects"... objetas, objetos con su lapiz, y... dibujar... la... (shadows, shadows... here it is) sombra. Dibujar la sombra. Si?" They nod, correct my pronunciation a bit, and continue to draw according to my visual demonstration.

I need to develop a basic Spanish proficiency if I am to properly serve this growing population, but I also need to discern when it is helpful to speak their native tongue, and when it is necessary to help them speak English. My projects, though visual art projects, often have written responses that ask students to reflect on their challenges and successes. Is it good to encourage these students to write a more sophisticated response in their native tongue (which I can have another student or teacher translate for me), or is it better to make them struggle with the foreign tongue? Does it promote or enforce some sort of assimilation for a student who may only be in the United States temporarily? When does adaptation end and assimilation begin? Is it my responsibility to know the difference? Is this overthinking for a high-school art teacher? Are there ways for us to incorporate their culture into our artwork so that we may learn from them without exploiting/exoticizing their experience? We are told to do so in our teacher education programs, but rarely shown how.

One of my most talented students - the one and only student in the school's new IB Visual Art program (a point of pride for a later post) - is also in this classroom at the same time. She is quite proficient in high school Spanish, has noticed these students struggling and has begun translating for me during instruction. I have been impressed with her ability to identify the need and attempt to help without being asked or made to oblige. She has done so because she can, and I know that she respects the ELL students and especially admires their culture, because I can see its influence in her artwork.

Not surprisingly, they have taken notice of her, too. I happened to notice that she wrote them a note explaining the assignment in Spanish, which she passed to them so they could understand what they were asked to do. The note came back with the following response:

"Tienes boyfrent?"

A little guidance

I learned quite a bit about the inner-workings of our school in the past weeks. I spent some time with our guidance counselors to discuss the issues raised in my last entry - namely, that students are placed in my class against their will ("dumped", a reactionary teacher would say) when a different placement may suit them better. The issue is more complicated than that, naturally. It seems there are across-the-board problems with the master schedule involving a sort of bottle-necking of students during 2nd and 3rd period. Classes are overcrowded throughout the building, and available electives are few. Students with gaps in their schedule may only have a choice between Art and ROTC (which would you choose?). And typically there are students who don't know where they want to be when they're signing up for classes - until they get there and realize that ain't it.

Still, I had a few students who were defiantly opposed to learning anything about art (?) and were desperate to switch classes. I went to guidance and advocated for a different placement for these students, expecting to be politely shown the door. On the contrary, the counselors were understanding and immediately accommodating. They actually changed two student schedules while I was there. This sort of thing is completely unprecedented - "Don't even bother going to guidance", other teachers warned me, "That won't get you anywhere." These teachers would probably be the types to storm in and slap their roster down on a counselor's desk demanding satisfaction. Instead, I approached them in a friendly way, as colleagues, and got immediate results. I was even able to express concerns about class size and shoot the breeze about the value of art education in general. This is not to say that my challenges expressed earlier are solved - I am still working to promote engagement and quell the drift toward entropy, always will - but it's nice to know that the powers that be are at least nominally sympathetic.

So it's hard to be a guidance counselor, I suppose. Especially at a school with the organizational horrors of ours. And hokey as it sounds, it seems people are just plain ol' people if you treat them nice. The saying about flies and the vinegar and honey may be true.

Now, what to do with those students who weren't able to change my class? (And there's quite a few of them!). Should I grade them on their ability to ignore me and sleep, or can you make a semester out of hand turkeys?