I often ask my students how they want to be known. It’s a helpful question. <\/p>\n
Yesterday one of my brilliant peers built his staff portfolio around a quote from August Wilson: <\/p>\n
“Now don’t you go through life worrying about whether somebody like you or not! You best be makin’ sure that they’re doin’ right by you!<\/strong> You understand what I’m sayin’?” <\/p>\n (I don’t have the script in front of me; this is from the interwebs, will check accuracy later) <\/p>\n The inquiry I highlighted in the middle, “am I doing right by people ?”, is one I think I’ll start using in student conversations. How is our community doing right by you? How am I doing right by you? How am I falling down?” What does it mean if we’re trying to right by you? <\/p>\n Two, and this is from a memoir I deeply appreciated, Mark Slouka’s Nobody’s Son<\/em>: <\/p>\n “What’s the takeaway?”<\/strong> my neighbor’s always asking his kids whenever they run into something harder than they are.<\/em><\/p>\n I love Slouka’s writing — ordered all of his novels from the Free Library once I finished this book but this inquiry — what’s the takeaway — will become another question I hope to start asking regularly. It’s much better than “what have we learned?” or “what will you do differently?” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I often ask my students how they want to be known. It’s a helpful question. Yesterday one of my brilliant peers built his staff portfolio around a quote from August Wilson: “Now don’t you go through life worrying about whether somebody like you or not! You best be makin’ sure that they’re doin’ right by … Continue reading Two more questions<\/span>