I'm going to share one of these family sayings with you, and I want you to promise to never share it with anyone else, for it is near and dear to my heart.
I worked for my grandfather, who was a maintenance director, for a summer as a high school student. There were many times where we had to fix plumbing issues, and many of these issues were rather large. My job would "always" be to dig in the dirt or dig up the cement to find the shutoff valve, normally somewhere on property where some contractor buried it without letting anyone know. Oftentimes, I would have to dig by myself. And like any high school student, I would ask every so often out of curiosity, "Am I digging in the right spot?"
Even though I felt that the question was very simple and justified, my grandfather didn't always feel as I did. Sometimes, when I asked he would look up at me. Sometimes, he would keep talking to the tenant. But, when he did respond, it was normally very philosophical and thought-provoking.
Of the response, I have one solidified in my memory. He said, "You know wot? Shutup and dig."
So guess what? I shut my mouth, I dug, and Ifound the valve.
Nobel worthy I tell you...
Flash forward 15 years later, and I'm now a PhD candidate in English. When I ask a question, the Professor gives me 40 pages to read to answer my question. My thesis defense lasted nearly 4 hours, and it started with 2 questions, and I actually forgot at some points what we were talking about. What are the 40 pages, and why the 4 hours? Well some call it theory.
Some people call it BS, but either way it's an elaborate explanation/a justification.
What's funny is that, when I started teaching, I had a choice. I had spent nearly 6 years in graduate school. I could easily explain the beginnings of rhetoric, the theoretical basis for my writing instruction or the social barriers that make writing unfair for particular groups.
But you know what?
My grandpa rules out in the end. Okay so I don't tell them to "shutup" (maybe I said it once), but the point is the same. You have to experience things first, and sometimes you just have to do it. The explanation doesn't make the work go away. AND, the explanation is NOT the learning. It's the experience that's the learning. We'll go back and create meaning from the experience, but there's no sense in reflecting if there's nothing to reflect on.
Here's my metonym. I feel that this pic exemplifies what I do (of course in a much gentler way) with my students. They have to dig a trench and only a trench. It's a small task, it's not fun, but it has a larger goal. If I share too much of the larger goal, then everyone's going to second guess why we have to dig the trench.
They cannot see that the end product will be this:
Maybe seeing the end product will help them after they complete it the first time. But there's no sense in sharing too much with them if they've never done it before.
I think creating experiences for students is an integral component of reflection and learning. I think that's what separates me from my PhD candidate colleages, who have all published and have performed lofty studies for the University. But they no get it. They can talk about the experience, they can analyze it, but I know that my classes focus on creating it.
On a side note, I was very impressed by the garden, and I know how much work all of that required. I apologize if I joked around a bit too much during the exercise.
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