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Gabcast! RE 5532 #2

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Gabcast! RE 5532 #2

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On Multiple Perspectives

I often have my undergraduate students problem-solve by working together to propose multiple solutions to any given problem (e.g., how can you teach a child to understand Concept of a Word, digraphs, letter-sound relationships, and so on). My underlying belief is that any given problem has a potentially unlimited number of solutions bound only by time, will, creativity, externally imposed constraints, and other resources.

My goals are to build collaborative problem-solving skills in my students, help them understand that most problems have many solutions, and that they have some control over many of the problems they will face as teachers. This is particularly important today when the federal government is telling schools that only solutions that have been derived by particular methods are valid means of teaching (see, e.g., NCLB, the National Reading Panel Report, RTI, and the like).

The following poem is what got me started thinking about the importance of multiple perspectives in our current Age of Unreason:

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
Wallace Stevens

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

I have intentionally never read what others, especially critics, think these verses mean. I prefer to continue puzzling over the meanings, reflecting on how the verses play out at different times in my life.