The Bosporus Star

1. Teach in the Interstices

This might not work with really young or stupid kids, or if they’ve already been permanently damaged by a philistine upbringing, but it’s worth a try.

Kids love to get you off topic and they are never more attentive than when they've succeeded in deflecting you onto a digression. These occasions are utterly prime for teaching them something valuable, so you should always have something ready. For example, you could teach them a word like "interstices."

Write the word on the board and ask if anyone knows what it means.

Then draw a something like a railway line with a terminus at both ends e.g.,

O ++++++++ O

Explain how the Os can be any origin and destination be it a scrambled and unscrambled Rubik's Cube or the first and last pages of a book. Paraphrase the following or if you are truly inarticulate simply read the following:

“What’s most obvious, what everyone pays most attention to, are the two endpoints. But where you’ll most likely find something new and unexpected is in the interval, or interstice (In TER stiss). You can find treasure sometimes, when you slow down the process on the way to the destination.

Or, take travel. Let’s say, for the sake of the discussion, what lies between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Anyone can write a coffee table book about these two large bodies of water, but who has searched for stories from the in-between? There might be nothing of interest there, but if you’re aware there might be, then you’ve got your lights on and you'll miss less, as a rule."

Here’s something else to have ready for them instead of say, popping in a DVD: draw two cats with their tails knotted slung over a clothesline. If you can’t draw, read this:

“Take two cats and tie their tails together, then throw them over a clothesline. The cats will claw each other to pieces.”

Then challenge the students to figure out the metaphor, its application to real life. They probably won’t get it, but they will always be game. You can leave it for them to come back someday when they’ve figured it out, or you can read this: “The two cats have no reason to be angry at each other, but they are in pain. So they lash out at what’s closest to them. Remember this the next time someone is being rude or hostile to you, because it’s very possible they are having a very bad day or perhaps even have some growth pressing a nerve painfully somewhere in their body. Factor that in, and you will always have an extra layer of circumspection (S.A.T. word!) to insulate you from the world’s retards. By the way, if you ever do this to two cats you a retard.” (The word retard, is an opportunity to teach subtext. Still, if it gets back to the Deans you will have problems.)

2. The Big Duh

How problematic it would be if you were exactly the same person in class and at home. I noticed how at the Christmas party at Goldman Sachs, the first-year associates couldn’t wait to change into jeans and casual dress and show everyone how fun-loving and un-loathsome they were really. Your work persona is necessarily different from whom you really are, but being able to calibrate the differences gives you control over your effects. Epistemology (thinking about thinking) is a great word to know because it is exactly about self-knowledge. Once you’re aware of the term you are able to decide what to think about. Everything before is like, "The Big Duh." Similarly, being aware of your persona, work or otherwise, enables you to make adjustments, almost like how a playwright can tinker with a character. The trick is to step back and see yourself as one character in a play unfolding around you. Watching yourself in action, hearing the lines you've allowed your teacherly self, gives you the distance to make him/her more/less imperious, serious, casual, humorous, spontaneous, etc. It’s important to have control over your script, be aware how predictable you may have become, or realize, for instance, that you’ve never told a joke to your students and worse, are seen as unlikely to tell one, ever, in the span of years preceding your last day in the classroom.

3. Be On Their Side