Monday morning

Thinking about things: placing words upon the page for remembering

Dresden

Frauenkirche

Une semaine en Allemagne

by Gerald Michel

This lovely drawing brings to mind the schematica I sometimes create in the early morning at my desk to documenrt on paper how it is I see my thoughts for the day. Of course my word sketches are done with my blue fountain pen and one of my Mirado Black Warrior pencils and sometimes a bit of fine line lilac highlighting where I deem necessary. These maps, I as have come to call them, are filled with flourishes: underlines and stars and encircled numbers and boxes sketched around promising words and phrases. I might, for example, work on an idea I have for my teaching. Or as I did just last night, devise a chart for my Salon II & III classes that includes participants' names, class dates and bookkeeping information, and lists and lists of ideas and themes and texts for considering. With this notemaking practice, I can both think and keep track of that thinking. Once recorded, my thoughts and the weight I have given them on the page make for an image for re-collecting my words and ideas whenever I need them.

This morning I have been working on a horizontal charting for my graduate course that begins today. In this case, I need horizontal framing to represent time and to enact the notion of over time. All learning, as you know, takes time and is recursive: the individual always always moves forward as she makes sense of each of her encounters with others. She will, of course, have to endure a few missteps, moments of aloneness, and sometimes even an abrupt fall. Over time, though, she will hopefully notice and analyze and interpret and think even more and endure and understand what has transpired and how she sees herself and her world anew.

This morning's schemata making will help me conjure up what I have in mind for my students today and across the course this summer. I will add to it as need be. It is a mapping of opportunities and possibilities for teaching and learning. It will end up attached to my annotated syllabus [also marked up with blue pen notations everywhere] I will have ready when I teach.

What follows is an excerpt from one of my eighth grade students' comments about “the mapping” she did in my English class. This girl's ideas and imagery make me happy.

The map we write and record really relaxes my mind. It is a way of getting all of my thought and feelings out on paper. Sometimes I feel like my mind can’t hold much more and I have to relieve it. Doing maps is my way of relaxing. Have your read the 4^th Harry Potter book? Well, Dumbledore has a bowl called a pensieve where he relieves his memory, and maps are like my pensieve. I can always replay things (look on the map) and find trends and patterns very easily.

Megan 2001