Task 1: What’s in My Bag?

Behold, the contents of my school bag – that is, all the stuff I tote back and forth between school and home. This stuff is important to me… well… some of it is just plain useful, some of it is for comfort, and, some of it is to alleviate anxiety.

Hover your mouse over the different items in my bag – click the links to explore details.

But, is stuff just stuff? Materialistic ideals aside, our stuff says a lot about us. Ellie Brown’s (2010-2012) BAG art project featuring images of people with the content of their bags “gifted to the viewer by the subject as a willing participant” captures our private “organizational habits, vanities, occupations, and preoccupations” (Brown). This project connects viewer and subject intimately, giving us a glimpse of the person inside the external visual. James D. Houston (1974) uses a similar technique in his personal narrative “Elegy Written at the County Junkyard”. Houston sets this powerful memoir at the county junkyard, where he captures the character of his deceased father while tossing all of his junk. But it’s not junk to Houston and the slow process of going through his fathers’ things is therapeutic, is part of his morning process. All these “ragtaggle bits of this and that he touched, stacked, stored, useless to anyone but [his father]” (p. 301) act as vehicles for flashback as both Houston and the reader view glimpses of the man his father used to be.

I love using this narrative at the beginning of the year with my English 12 students as we explore personal writing, symbolism, flashback, and perspective. I ask students to imagine that someone else is going through their stuff (in their locker, bedroom, car, backpack, etc.)

• What items would this person find?
• What do these items say about you?
• What stories about you would this person recall?

Every year I am impressed by (and the students are proud of) the writing that comes from this creative thinking exercise and Houston’s model text:

“What am I going to do with this little girl? She stares at me from the ripped jeans bunched at the bottom corner of the closet and the one-eyed stuffed bunny, faded to a no-longer-creamy beige, dangling from the top.”

anonymous grade 12 student

Ok, back to me and my stuff. Now I find myself thinking about what I “choose to hold on to” (Brown) and what this says about me. I’m actually shocked that I don’t have any paperclips lingering at the very bottom of the pockets. I think that is because it’s September, the beginning of the year as far as teachers are concerned, and, therefore, my bag is relatively clean and focused — a reflection of myself post summer holiday? I think this would have been a much more telling activity if I were to explore the contents of my bag in June, pre-summer-cleansing. There certainly would have been more snacks and “ragtaggle bits of this and that” (Houston, p. 301).

I can see that I hold on to the past and spend time preparing for the future (or at least my anxiety does). The fact that I feel the need to be prepared, as Crozier’s (2007) poem elaborates through the metaphor of “socks” (1), is an indication that I clearly need to be in control. This I both accept and own as an integral part of myself. I admit that I could easily leave my phone at home, but would feel naked if I didn’t have my bag, a book, or a snack. I think this emphasizes my privilege — that I can prevent discomfort with socks and tooth floss and band-aids — that I can carry with me technology to connect with the world through dynamic texts.

Reflection

Making the image map of my “bag” for this post took me longer than I expected. Because I’m working with the free version of WordPress (and the same goes for UBCblogs through WordPress – I checked), I am not able to install plugins. This left me with HTML and finding free image map making apps online to create the code. After trying a number of different apps and watching too many videos, the only one that I found that gave an accurate map also limited the size of the image to 100KB. While I liked the experience provided by Image Map Generator, the result was inaccurate (the coordinates shifted somehow). Thanks to a video tutorial by WayLay Designs, I was able to find an app that worked – MobileFish – even though I ended up having to do it twice (note to self: copy code into a word document just in case WordPress decides to truncate it…)

As I was arranging the items for my photograph, and then tagging them (and adding links), I noticed that . . .

1. I have more Logitech tech than I realized
2. I carry around more band-aids, lotions, lip balms, and tooth floss than I could actually use
3. I am never without at least one writing tool
4. I don’t know where my keys are

Text Technologies

My bag is an eclectic mix of text technologies, from the hard-cover novel, notebook, stickynotes, pencils, gel pens, and well-loved brush markers to my keyboard, mouse, dual iPads, and apple pencils. As a text-monger (my new favourite archaic adjective from the OED that I’m trying to revive with a positive connotation) I find I surround myself with text technologies and take solace in knowing I have a notebook and pencil, or a novel, or my iPad with me. Even if I don’t have a bag with me, I often have a pencil behind my ear or in my hair. I can’t attend a meeting without something to write on or with. Scratch that. I can attend the meeting, but I won’t actually be there.

Scribbling, doodling, sketching, writing, taking notes – all help me capture moments, focus on oral texts that would otherwise be fleeting, and anchor me to thoughts, ideas, environments, and people. 15 years ago, when I was at the beginning of my teaching career, my bag would have held much more paper, folders of student work for assessment, paper-based teacher planners (yes, plural) rather than my two iPads which, armed with goodnotes, noteability, onenote, nebo, audible, and Libby are my planner, reader, notebook and with access to far more than my old planners were capable. The evolution of my journaling with the advent of the Apple pencil has changed (and yet not changed) the way I interact with text. The tactile experience of pen to paper is important to me, and until two years ago I was quite resistant to e-readers and digital notebooks because I couldn’t bare to lose the textual feel of words on paper. Now, with paper-like films, and responsive technology, I can have the tactile experience I need while extending my love for stationary to dynamic digital spaces. This has extended to my physical space at school in which I have endeavored to run a paperless classroom, blending our physical textual space with an online LMS, digital class notebooks and e-assignment submission. Come to think about it, maybe that’s why there are no paperclips hiding in the crevices of my bag – they’ve become obsolete in my push to become paperless.

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My Textual Evolution

I value TEXT.

Text is a currency that shapes culture, brings life to ideas, and empowers our voices. Margaret Atwood indicates that “a word after a word after a word is power” (2019) and Ray Bradbury notes that “a book is a loaded gun” (1967, p. 56 ). But text is more than just words and books. As a high school English teacher, it’s clear that my career choice reflects the value I place on words and literacy. I use the word “text” daily in my classroom, not just to refer to words and books – it’s more than that. Often my students (grades 10-12) enter our learning space with two thoughts on the word “text”:

1. as a verb
2. in connection to their “textbooks”

In class I speak of text as a word that encompasses all that is the language arts: reading, writing, speaking, listening, viewing, and representing. It takes time for students to latch on to using “text” in this way and release the notion of “authority” that the word “textbook” holds. We talk about perspective, representation, art, and interpretation. Textuality, as Scholes (1992) points out is “a metaphor that can be used or abused” (p. 153). Akin to Bradbury and Atwood’s metaphors, Scholes emphasizes the power of text and Postman (1992) extends that to writing technology “whose good or harm depends on the uses made of it” (p. 5). What I found interesting is his extension of this idea that “we can ‘make sense’ of things only by establishing our own connections within the network of textuality that enables our thinking and perceiving in the first place” (p. 153). This reminds me of a quote I put on my course outlines and use to prompt discussion at the beginning of the school year:

“If you cannot be the master of your language, you must be its slave. If you cannot examine your thoughts, you have no choice but to think them, however silly they may be.”

Richard Michell (N.D.)

This is at the core of my teaching in New Media and English studies (as well as this website). It’s about thinking critically and developing skills in the interpretation and use of text and text technologies. This connects to my nonconformist nature and belief in the power of our voices. As an educator I seek for and create opportunities and experiences for students to find their voices. This is one of the reasons that Juan Ramón Jiménez’s phrase (below) is significant to me, in both my professional and personal spheres. This rings true when looking through my stuff. I surround myself with various kinds of text and tools for creating text, both digital and traditional, because I need to hold the power of words close. Textile. Like a security blanket.

“If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.”

Juan Ramón Jiménez (Epigraph of Bradbury, 1953).

References

Atwood, M. (2019). A Word after a Word after a Word is Power. N. Lang and Peter Raymont (dir). IDFA.

Bradbury, R. (1967). Fahrenheit 451. Ballentine Books, New York.

Brown, E. (2018). Ellie Brown Photography and Artworks. Retrieved July 12, 2019, from Ellie Brown Photography and Artworks website: http://www.elliebrown.com/

Crozier, L. (2007). “Packing for the Future.” The blue hour of the day: Selected poems. McClelland & Stewart, Penguin Random House Canada Ltd. Retrieved September 9, 2021 from Poetry in Voice website: https://www.poetryinvoice.com/poems/packing-future-instructions

Houston, J. D. (1974). “Elegy Written at the County Junkyard.” In Bruce Emra (Ed), Coming of age: Literature about youth and adolescence (2). pp 300-304. National Textbook Company, 1999.

Jiménez, J. R. (n.d.) “Epigraph” from Bradbury R. (1953) Fahrenheit 451. Ballentine Books, New York.

Mitchell, R. (n.d.) “Richard Mitchell Quotes”. Retrieved on September 9, 2021 from quotefancy website: https://quotefancy.com/richard-mitchell-quotes

Postman, Neil. (1992). Technopoly : The surrender of culture to technology. New York :Knopf. Retrieved on September 9 from Google Books, website: https://books.google.ca/books?id=gYrIVidSiLIC&lpg=PT32&pg=PT11#v=onepage&q&f=false

Scholes, R. (1992). Cononicity and textuality. Introduction to scholarship in modern languages and literacies, 2nd ed. Gibaldi J. (ed). New York: Modern Languages Association of America, pp. 138 – 158.

Waylay Designs. (2012, May 29). Tutorial: How to Create Image Maps for WordPress. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p6ABTA5gRY