Brown Nosing Revisited

I am drinking coffee in a Carmel living room bigger than any apartment I have ever lived in. Behind me, in the kitchen that I just walked through when entering the house, (I was not encouraged to use the front door), the coffeemaker looks like it belongs in a modern art museum.  You can see the ocean from the living room windows, but there is also an Olympic size swimming pool in back of the house down a stone stairway. 

I am here, in a family's vacation house, in the last August days before school begins, to interview for a job tutoring a junior high school student. He is about to begin freshman year in a highly competitive Silicon Valley high school, and he needs some help with the transition.
If hired, I will be the English reading and writing tutor. But his Mom is also worried about her kid's attitude.
"My kid hates brown nosing," she says, as two labradoodle dogs nestle at her feet.
"He's a very genuine person--but not all his classmates are. He won't suck up to a teacher or a coach that he does not like. If he is going to keep his grades up, at the very least, he needs to stay on the good side of his teachers."

"I can work with him on this," I say confidently, wondering how many brown noser contractors have worked in this home.

I reassure the Mom that her kid is very bright with a high E.Q. (and he is, really)--but now I am brown nosing, too.

(These red things below are backpack emojis)

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The wood floor is cool under my bare feet--I have been asked to remove my shoes, but not offered slippers. It is a warm summer day at the family's summer house in Carmel and the air conditioning is on--while earlier in the day, some miles north in Menlo Park, my husband and I considered whether it is hot enough to chill the air and spend the energy and the dollars. (We decide it isn't.)

I consider telling the Mom to invite the teachers down to the summer house for some coffee or a swim. They could choose between the ocean and the pool.
If the Mom actually made the invitation, would that be brown nosing on her part?

I think that the interview has gone well. On the drive home, as I pass farm workers in the fields of Salinas,I seriously think about how I would advise this student.

When I get home, I begin what I hope will be a thoughtful e-mail about brown nosing
I don't send it because I don't even have the gig yet--the family will get back to me.

I also don't send it because right in the first paragraph, as my mind roams free, the note evolves or devolves (is that a word?) into social satire rather than a helpful correspondence. If I do get the tutoring job, I will head towards the light and send my best altruistic thoughts about cordial student/teacher communications and developing mutual respect if not agreement. Someday the kid will thank me in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech. 

A week later, I learn that I did not get the job. If you know me, you know that I do not have a poker face, so maybe it was a raised eyebrow that did me in during the interview. I guess that the student is better off. I guess I'm better off, too. Still, I  saved that snarky draft.  So here goes:

Dear __________:

In the next few weeks we may begin working together reviewing your English assignments. But today I want to talk about another topic--getting along with your teachers while keeping your self respect. Your Mom tells me that you hate the idea of brown nosing. And based upon what I have observed about your life so far, you may never have the need. (I am snarky right there in the first paragraph.)
Take a look at the photo of the mug 

I could  advise you to bring the mug to every class.

You could find out the teacher’s favorite drink and fill the mug with the preferred beverage.

You could bring personalized mugs: They make mugs that say: I love my biology teacher; I love my math teacher.

But it’s probably not a good idea.

For one thing, it will look like brown nosing. 
That's because it is.

And brown nosing shows a lack of integrity—as integrity is defined in this green box.




(Your Mom also shared that you are a visual learner, particularly responsive to the color green)

But there are two qualities that you can show that can help you to get along with teachers, without compromising your values. And I know what those two things are, because not only am I a teacher, I am the daughter of a teacher, a cousin of three teachers--four if you count Cousin Max before he became a lawyer, and a friend to more teachers and professors than you can count.

We talk to each other. We won't ever mention you by name--we are sworn to confidentiality.  It is in our code of honor. Besides, our conversations are mostly about us not you. But brown nosing will now become one of our "issues."

But back to how you can get along with your teachers. What are those two qualities you need to show?

1)RESPECT

2)RESPECT

If you are lucky, you have a natural respect for the teacher standing or sitting before you. But maybe you don’t. Maybe you think that the teacher is doing a terrible job. Maybe the teacher IS doing a terrible job. The good news is that you don’t even have to speak to show respect.  Instead, you can show respect with body language and a few nonverbal actions. Here are some suggestions:

1) LOOK AT THE TEACHER—MAKE EYE CONTACT

Teachers want to think that you are paying attention.  Maybe you even are paying attention. Listening to someone, whether you agree or not, and whether they are boring or not, is one important way to show respect. If you agree with something that the teacher is saying, you can even go so far as to nod your head. Once!  Keep nodding your head all through class and you will be brown nosing. Or the school may call in a drug counselor.
Trigger alert: If you nod your head, also be prepared for the teacher to call you out. “Jason, I see you agree! Can YOU tell us why the Handmaid's Tale mirrors today's dystopic society?”

If you are going to hate answering questions like these, just stick to the eye contact.

The book Study Strategies Made Easy: A Practical Plan for School Success, has another suggestion if you are particularly bored or sleepy. If eye contact is too much for you, just (and I quote) : "Point your nose in the direction of where the teacher is standing."

3)LOOK LIKE YOU ARE READY TO WORK

Have your materials out on the desk and turn off your phone, unless you need it for class. Don’t sprawl your legs and plop with your head down on the desk. Try not to yawn. Pretend to look interested. This will serve you well later in life at the companies you own, the auction houses you attend, on Skype, in your Tinder photo and at the start of in-person hookups.

4) HAND IN ASSIGNMENTS ON-TIME OR EARLY. 
This will help you when you serve on the board of directors of  either the DeYoung Museum ora nonprofit or venture backed startup.

5)AVOID SOCIALIZING/TEXTING WITH FRIENDS WHILE THE TEACHER IS SPEAKING.  If you absolutely must get a message or send one (and we all do sometimes), be very low key about it and wait for a break or a lull. If you have voice recognition on your phone, learn to speak without moving your lips. In the old days this was called ventriloquism and people would pay money to see other people speak this way.

Maybe you know all of these strategies already.

Maybe you read this and are sorry that you will never get back those last few minutes of your  life.
No matter how you feel, write back and say—thank you, Lauren! That way I can forward the note to your Mom and other potential clients.

You could also write me  a brief note and tell me what was helpful and/or how it was helpful. Or ask a relevant question that you really want to know the answer to. Don’t make up a question just to ask it. Oh what the hell--make up a question.The  questions show that you actually read the essay. At least that's what the PhDs  who do educational assessment say. They also get paid more than me, which is really unfair because I have to do all the work, and all they get to do is, well, judge.

I look forward to working with you. Really, I do.

Yours truly,
Lauren John


       

Dog Whistles--Do You Hear What I Hear?

Decades ago, when I was in my early twenties and working in the library of a conservative accounting firm, my boss used to consistently call me "creative".

"What a creative approach!" she would say when I found a faster, but initially messier, way to update looseleaf binders. (This was before online data storage)
"Lauren is one of our most creative librarians," I would overhear her telling upper management as they gathered in her glass cubicle.
At the time, I thought it was a compliment.
Now I know that it was the kiss of death.

At a firm where everyone observed the dress code of blue suits and white shirts and conformity ruled, the word "CREATIVE" was code for non-conformist, or even troublemaker.   The creativity wasn't bad enough to get me fired, because I got the work done on time and had a high number of billable hours. But it certainly wasn't going to get me promoted.

Now that I work more with words than with numbers, I am far more sensitive to how adjectives are used and not used in the workplace and beyond. Creative is still a charged word--admired by many in Silicon Valley startups, but still suspect for others in larger organizations of all kinds.  

So when my boss at the accounting firm called me creative, she was doing what is known as "dog whistling." Now you may already know what this means, but the term "dog whistling" was unfamiliar to me, until I heard it four times on Tuesday within the span of an hour, on both CNN and Fox News.  (Yes--I watch both.) I now know that the term "dog whistling" has been around for a long time, and there are even dissertations on it. But, it was and is a new term for me.

Taking a guess, I thought that it meant beckoning a group of dogs to your side to either  to protect you or actively attack an aggressor or to simply celebrate as in the song/sports anthem "Who Let the Dogs Out?"   I thought that dog whistles, as when whistled by humans, were LOUD!

But, as I soon learned, an actual dog whistle is silent. Humans can't hear it and respond. Only dogs can pick up the frequency. Applied to politics, a "dog whistle" is a secret message that only some groups will truly understand. It often involves code words or phrases.

Need some examples?

I have only learned recently from friends who have lived in the Southern United States, that when Susan says about Helen, "Well, bless her heart", Susan thinks that Helen is misguided, crazy, naive, inexperienced or maybe even evil.

My friend Rachel, who lived in Raleigh, North Carolina, offers some examples:
"That was the first time she ever made a peach cobbler, bless her heart."
Meaning: The cobbler was lousy

How could she have known that her  gambler boyfriend would run off with all her money, bless her heart.
Meaning: How stupid could she be? Everyone knew that guy was a crook with a problem.

Wouldn't you think, though, that a woman saying "bless her heart," in reference to a friend truly wished to confer empathy in the form of a blessing.

Having lived in New York, Boston, and Silicon Valley, "East coast style" and "West coast style" mean very specific things to my husband and me.  When we say that someone has an "east coast" personality or text this to each other (we could even tweet this three word code if we tweeted)--the words are far from neutral--and we are not merely talking about geography or regional accent.  East coast style might mean someone more formal, someone who dresses up for business meetings, someone more impressed by an Ivy League education or, dare we say it, someone more articulate. Anyone old enough to remember the term, "Get me a Philadelphia lawyer?"
"West coast style" might mean someone who wears Hawaiian shirts even though they do not work at Trader Joe's or someone in a polyamorous relationship or someone who wishes that they were.

When we label our acquaintances with this coastal shorthand are we "dog whistling?"
Absolutely!

So let's look at "dog whistling" in politics.

Republicans may say, for example, that they want to make environmental protection regulations a state issue. This could be a dog whistle meaning that they will refuse to pass these laws on a federal level. And in fact, it could mean that no way in hell are they going to block oil companies from drilling.  That "state issue" could be shorthand for "Drill Baby Drill!"

When President Obama visited San Francisco and referred to guns and religion voters--it was a failed attempt at dog whistling--his disdain for gun rights advocates and evangelical Christians soon became loud and clear.

When Donald Trump spoke of "two sides" being responsible for the Charlottesville tragedy-the KKK thought it was a silent message of support and its leader David Duke applauded Trump.  Trump's spokespeople on the other hand, said, no way--Trump abhors racism and violence. That's where the "dog whistling term" came up on both CNN and Fox-was Trump supporting the actions of the white supremacists? Was there a secret or not so secret message of support to what Trump termed "the fine people" amongst them?The whistle became a bit more audible when Trump came out loud and clear with the message that he thought that the left was just as violent as the right. 

Dog whistling is not a new technique. It's just, at least to me, a new term for a time tested technique. But the messages are coming at us so quickly and furiously that we end up like, well, dogs, spinning in circles.

Instead, we need to slow down, sit, stay, perk up our ears and pay close attention.

Meet Guest Blogger Caroline Zhang and Her Parakeets Budgie and Puff

Author Caroline Zhang at home in Palo Alto. 

Caroline Zhang is in the process of writing a novel about her two pet parakeets Budgie and Puff. Her working title is: Adventures of Budgie and Puff.

I met nine-year-old Caroline, who attends Palo Verde Elementary School in Palo Alto, when I became her English tutor last fall.  At some point she will start her own blog with some help and supervision from her Mom.  But for now, I offered her a guest spot on my own blog. Here Caroline writes about the inspiration behind her upcoming book.  She wrote and organized this essay on her own. I checked the spelling and grammar and took the author photo on my i-phone. Caroline's Mom photographed the parakeets.
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Ever since I got my parakeets, everything is brighter.  My parakeets are named Budgie and Puff.  The two birds are great friends to me and to each other.  They are fun to be with and very unique.  I have also observed them and I found some cool features that make up their personalities.

Budgie, a blue and white bird, is very adventurous and daring.  When I first got Budgie, I would use millet to lure Budgie to eat from my hand.  Budgie would cautiously step forward  and peck at the millet, even though she was still scared of me.  Budgie loves millet and loves to eat. You can lure Budgie with food all the time!  Surprisingly, Budgie is not fat at all.  I think that's because the millet is healthy and not a junk food.  Sometimes, while Budgie eats, she allows me to pet her.  

Puff, instead, eyed me as if I were a cat, ready to pounce on her.  Even now, Puff never lets me pet her, and she is sometimes even shy to come eat from my hand.  I think Puff really thinks things through, instead of charging at things blindly the way Budgie does.  Puff is also very acrobatic, she can climb the bars of the cage to get anywhere. On the other hand, Budgie is rather clumsy.  She often falls and lands awkwardly and she never climbs the cage bars, unless to get millet.

Budgie and Puff happily eating birdseed.

Budgie is also very determined.  Once I left a sprig of millet on the top of the cage, and Budgie climbed upside down to reach the millet and eat it.          

When I play the piano, Budgie and Puff will chirp along.  Budgie will chirp loudly and clearly, while Puff will chirp quietly, in an accompaniment to Budgie's singing.

One day, I realized that Budgie and Puff could be the perfect characters in an adventure story, because Budgie and Puff  show teamwork, which can be the key thing this adventure!  Overall, they do seem to help each other, bringing over some millet. Sometimes it looks like they are giving each other advice.  With the teamwork and different personalities, they make a great pair!



I noticed that Budgie could be the "brawn" and Puff could be the brain in a crazy adventure. That's how my novel, Adventures of Budgie and Puff came to be.  

If you are interested in Budgie and Puff, the book will come out in 2016! 
Enjoy!

Still eating...

About the Author

Caroline Zhang was born in California and she is now nine

years old. Caroline enjoys writing and she has a love for nature.

Caroline believes that nature is very important and that it should stay the way it is. We need to protect nature and animals. Speaking of animals, Caroline currently lives with her beloved parakeets, Budgie and Puff.

Death by Pastrami-- In Seventeen Short Bites

In 1955, an English major just out of the University of Michigan was forced to go into the family business, making pajamas in New York City's garment center.

Leonard S. Bernstein wanted to be a writer. But his Dad was ill and Leonard was asked to step in and save Candlestick Pajamas. Sixty years later, the Brooklyn-born Bernstein is back to his first professional passion-- writing short stories from his home in Westbury, Long Island. Now his kids are running the company--with a few new personnel policies.  One is that the sewing machine operators no longer take the subway to work from lower Manhattan, Spanish Harlem and Brooklyn. Now, the Bernstein kids visit them three times a year--in China.

Death by Pastrami is fiction--I guess you could call it historical fiction. Here are seventeen short stories--most based in the Garment Center of yore. Bernstein tells a Fordham University college radio interviewer on WFUV that any of the things that he writes about could have really happened back in Garment's Glory Days----the 1950s through the 1990s.
(You can hear the interview here) 

But there is a lot of magical realism and fantasy in the vein of Isaac Bashevis Singer--as in the title story, where a funeral salesman named Fleishman haunts Jewish delis, seeking future customers who will die of heart attacks.

Here's the hook: 
"Anyone eating a pastrami sandwich in a New York delicatessen is taking his life in his own hands. The smoked pastrami, piled six inches high, defies any digestive system short of a Bengal tiger. The fat content is enough to shut off the arterial system for a month. Blood has as much chance of reaching the heart as a car has of getting through the Lincoln Tunnel on Thanksgiving Day...So instead of camping out at the Blue Horizons Senior Citizen's Home, Fleishman headed for the Criterion Deli, figuring that if people are not dying on the spot they can't have long to go."

There is a story about a beautiful and elegant young Puerto Rican lace stitcher, Elena, a catalyst for both lust and respect in a factory foreman. The story, fittingly is called, "At Home I Would Have Been A Princess."

And there are tales of partnerships gone sour, bar room wagers, and a ragman who steals underwear.

And what of the rags themselves?  The leftover scraps on the garment cutting room floor?
Says Bernstein:
The rags would be sold for paper pulp, eventually recycling themselves on to the front pages of the New York Times. I always had the notion that the very rags that were lying carelessly in the cartons would soon appear before my eyes as a James Reston column.

I am going to buy ten copies of this book to give to friends who remember the time and place that Bernstein writes about.  My uncles "worked garment". Uncle Hy sold beads, Uncle Dave was a presser. Grandpa Willie supervised police and military uniforms.  George's Mom was an office manager at Smith Monograms.

People who remember when the apparel industry was known as the Garment Center--and Seventh Avenue was, well, Seventh Avenue, not Fashion Avenue--will enjoy the collection for the nostalgic value.
People who walk through the area on their way to and from Penn Station might want it for reading during the commute.
Those who love Jewish American fiction will enjoy it too.

Not sure who else this will especially appeal to, but I first learned about the collection from a report by Maureen Corrigan, the book reviewer for National Public Radio.
You can read/hear it here

Heard any great proverbs lately?

Precepts or maxims are of great weight; and a few useful ones at hand do more toward a happy life than whole volumes that we know not where to find--Seneca

If you want to learn fast about a culture--or a family--pay close attention to the proverbs handed down from generation to generation. If you are a middle school or high school student, pay very close attention to the proverbs you hear from your elders. You can learn a whole lot about a culture by the proverbs that it shares with kids.

Proverbs are words to live by, inspirational sentences, or taglines of well known legends or fables. They often indicate collective wisdom rather than individual experience. Seneca aside, we generally don't know who authored our proverbs.

Here are some beloved proverbs from my own childhood:

THE EARLY BIRD CATCHES THE WORM

NEVER DO HALF A FAVOR

YOU CAN"T DANCE AT TWO PARTIES  (meaning you can't be in two places at one time--even if you want to be)

I am rediscovering the conversational and literary value of proverbs as I teach English as a second language to middle school kids.  Overall, young adult literature is teeming with proverbs. And proverbs, as you can already see from my own examples, are great conversational ice-breakers.

Which brings us to the  dead chicken that scared the monkey.
And a Mexican proverb
Because it all started last semester when my Reading Club for middle school kids who speak Mandarin as a first language began reading the novel Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan.

Click here for the Scholastic Readers Guide

If you are keeping up with our reading, you are already familiar with this riches to rags story about the adventures and misadventures of Esperanza-- the thirteen year old daughter of a wealthy Mexican landowner. When her Dad is killed by bandits and a mysterious fire destroys her ranch, she flees Mexico to become a fruit picker in California. But her timing couldn't be worse. She arrives just after the Dustbowl of the 1930s.

The book is filled with proverbs like: HE WHO FAILS TODAY MAY RISE TOMORROW.
Which we will discuss at length in class next week.
Even the name Esperanza is symbolic. It is the Spanish word for HOPE!

Last semester I told my student readers:
"None of us are really sure how proverbs--well known wise sayings--began. But every country and every culture seems to have them. Some may be serious and some may be funny. Do you know any proverbs?"

And ALL OF THE STUDENTS--ALL OF THEM--recite in Mandarin

 杀鸡儆猴 (shā jī jǐng hóu)

which means:

KILL THE CHICKEN TO SCARE THE MONKEY!

Killing the chicken to scare the monkey-- a classic Chinese proverb

Are you familiar with this proverb, as well?

Of course, if you know the tale, then you already know that the Mandarin proverb is there to serve as a warning.

You make an example of the chicken to get the monkey to behave.

Why do you want the monkey to behave?

Well it ties to a folktale (chéngyǔ) in which a street entertainer has a performing monkey.

Here is the tale--from the Web site That's Mandarin: Learn English in China.

There once was a street entertainer who attracted large crowds with his dancing monkey. Whenever he played the drums, the monkey danced to the rhythm, helping his master earn lots of money. Yet the monkey soon grew tired of this work, and one day refused to dance for his master. In order to force his monkey into compliance, the master brought a live chicken to the monkey and killed it right before his eyes. The monkey got the message and resumed dancing, knowing that if he stopped, he would suffer the same fate.

You may already be familiar with this theme which is also expressed in popular young adult fiction like The Hunger Games and Divergent and even The Giver.

And perhaps we'll have more discussion about these books in another class. For now, we need to get back to California and Esperanza rising during the Great Depression.

Last semester, one thirteen year girl asked, "Why didn't the monkey just run away?"

Answered another twelve year old boy:

"That's what would happen with an American monkey!"

Do you have a favorite saying or proverb that your family has shared with you?
If so, please share it in a response to this blog.
Don't have a proverb in mind?
Check out some wise sayings from a collection called 365 Days of Wonder: Mr Browne's Book of Precepts by R.J. Palacio
Ms. Palacio is that author of the best selling young adult novel--Wonder.

And keep in mind that I use 365 Days of Wonder in my ESLwriting tutorials-the precepts/maxims serve as great essay prompts.