From The Week magazine, July 24, 2009:

Bad week for:

Carelessness, after more than one-fifth of business executives contacted for a survey said that a single typo on a resume or cover letter would cost an applicant the job. Common errors executives found included, "I'm attacking my resume for you" and "Dear Sir or Madman."

Hire me or at least get a wordsmithy friend of yours to look over your resume AND your cover letter before you send it. 

In fact, if you are a habitually bad speller, investing some money in customized tutoring, or having a standing account with a proofreader, is money very well spent. I can provide both services for you. Even if you get that job, please note there is a 20% chance that your boss will be extremely aggravated by your poor spelling when it keeps coming up.

Here to serve...

An innocent exaggeration to impress a friend, perhaps, but a rumor like this can destroy my credibility as a tutor or writing coach. As soon as I heard it I sought out key people on that campus in an effort to kill the rumor, to set the record straight, to accurately describe how I help the high school students I am tutoring.

A tutor does work within some tricky constraints. The reason we are hired is to help a person receive better grades, and to the extent that a person's work improves under our care, we are praised... or sometimes accused.  Who really "did the work"? Parents, take note. You face the same pitfalls.*

There are three ways any teacher can respond when their student is stuck: Give them the answer, Provoke the answer, or Require the answer.

Giving the answer is appropriate when you are introducing new facts, new concepts, new processes.  It can also be appropriate when you are teaching via reminding, repeating the same key info so that it cuts a groove into their mind and settles there.  It is obviously not appropriate when you are assessing their mastery.

Provoking the answer is appropriate when you are reviewing things they are familiar with but have not yet mastered.  It forces their mind to work, to make connections, to discover or rediscover a fact, act, or insight "on their own" to some degree, although you serve as the mental midwife to bring that thought to life in them. This is a far more sophisticated and powerful teaching strategy than simply giving the answer, but it requires a basic familiarity with the material, otherwise it simply provokes frustration rather than realization.

Requiring the answer is simply assessment. This is the test. Do you know it? Can you do it? Do you grasp the correlations, implications, and subtleties at last? Done well, this gives both the student and the teacher a clear understanding of what has been mastered, what is yet shaky, and what was missed, so that the learning process can begin again in the most effective possible way.

From a tutor's perspective, we want to get past "Giving answers" as quickly as possible, to move on to "Provoking answers" and "Requiring answers".  If we are not the primary teacher for the student, we assume they have been given the information already but need help either analyzing or synthesizing it: taking it apart to understand what exactly was taught, and putting it back together in their own words and in various contexts to establish their mastery of it.

Even so, if in the process of Provoking and Requiring we realize that key facts, acts or concepts have been missed, then in order to move on, we must give them that information. Sometimes we must stop and drill that necessary information into them (a good tutor or teacher will have several creative ways to do this) before we can move on with more sophisticated instruction.

In the process, especially if we are working with less mature clients, the learner will sometimes feel the tutor is "giving them the answers" to their homework.  In a way, this can be true: if they are unable to remember or discover those facts, processes or insights required to complete their homework, then either their teacher, their tutor, or their parent must remind them of those facts, review those processes, and lead them by the hand to those insights... or allow them to fail.

Which in itself can be a valuable learning experience.

*...especially homeschooling parents.

This school year has been Wordsmith Writing Coaches' best yet! Here are two success stories:

First, high school freshman Chaemin Kim (a Wordsmith client since November 2009) earned the Pilgrim School ESOL Department's "Most Improved" award for her dramatic improvement in English over the course of this school year. Her folks hired us to stave off academic disaster, and we like to think we played a significant part in her turn-around. I must say that she worked very hard with us, too-- there is no substitute for hard work, as even the best tutor cannot make you do what you will not do. Congratulations, Chaemin!

Just as Chaemin was preparing for her last exams of ninth grade, Mrs. Vilma Enriquez-Haass (a Wordsmith client since 2004) was putting the final touches on her doctoral dissertation! It has been a long hard road for Vilma to craft such a complete and complex argument in a language that trails after Spanish and German in her life, but she has done it. Vilma is the first doctoral student whom we have coached through the entire process, from writing her quals all the way to the final version of her dissertation. She has overcome formidable obstacles and challenges over the past six years, and we are humbled and inspired by her determination to pull the pieces together again each time her doctoral hopes fell apart. It has been a privilege to have walked with her all this way.

Now we are rooting for a successful defense of her dissertation just a few days from now. Any client whom we coach through a significant portion of dissertation development, we will help with their dissertation defense prep for free, and Vilma more than qualifies for that!

If you want Wordsmith tutors and coaches to help you achieve the sort of success that Chaemin and Vilma now enjoy, call me at 323-363-4417 to set up an appointment. Initial consultation is free. Visit our website at WordsmithWritingCoaches.com and "write better, right now!"

Los Angeles ought to be one of the most bike-friendly cities in the world. It is relatively flat, relatively laid-back, has wonderful weather and a strong health-and-fitness vibe. As a city, Los Angeles spreads out instead of towering up, so one rarely needs to hoist a bike up stairs or stand it on its tail in elevators or search for it in dank parking garages-- though one will end up riding a few more miles because of this sprawl, they are pretty easy miles.

Except that for decades the City of Los Angeles has simply forgotten and ignored bicyclists, and the streets & traffic flows show it. City officials seem to think that there are only three kinds of bicyclists: college students who ought to stay near campus, inner city kids who ought to stay in their neighborhoods, and athletes who ought to stay on their training trails along the beach or in some imaginary place that must certainly exist for them somewhere. Anyone trying to get across town on a bicycle must be either a nutcase or a homeless nutcase, and the City certainly has no responsibility to make life easier for those folks, who really ought to get a car or pay bus fare or stay in their bike-ghetto (whether that is the 'hood or the campus or the parks & beaches).

But there have been signs of progress in recent years, and next month (June 2010!), a step forward that will directly benefit me as a bike commuter: Sharrows!

A "sharrow is a "share-the-lane arrow", kind of like a bike lane within an automobile lane, which does not need to be avoided by car traffic unless there is actually a bicycle riding there... but when there is a cyclist in that lane, it gives a visual mandate to drivers to give that cyclist some room-- and whether a cyclist is present or not, it lets motorists know to expect them. It reminds motorists that cyclists belong on the street, in the flow of traffic, not on the sidewalk.

Beginning in June 2010, the City of Los Angeles will begin painting sharrows in several areas of the city where cyclists and motorists have had some trouble sharing lanes: East Hollywood, Koreatown, University Park/USC (my neighborhood!), Reseda, Holmby Hills, and Venice. Not the entire city, but a very good representative sampling, and I might personally benefit from the sharrows in University Park and in Koreatown, where I have two faithful clients.

I hope to volunteer as a sharrow-calibration rider in the University Park neighborhood next week-- if I do, I'll let you know how it goes. And by September or October I'll let you know if sharrows have made any difference in my experience as a bike commuter in the City of Los Automobiles!

Today, April 16 of 2010, Glenn Gritzner pled "no contest" to a class 1 misdemeanor charge of property damage... and "stipulated" to the facts of the case, which at one point qualified as a felony hit-and-run incident endangering life and limb of a bicyclist who was riding responsibly.

"No contest"? Oh, I beg to differ. Gritzner and the cyclist he hit are indeed in a serious "contest". The criminal case has been closed, but there is a civil suit pending.

It did not have to be this way.

Looking back over the old posts about this incident, it just kills me that Glenn Gritzner and Roadblock could have been allies in this cause (note Ron Milam's comment, #42)-- except that in an unwise moment Glenn became the kind of perpetrator he usually would have condemned. Baser instincts (for self-preservation) prevailed: he fled the scene, he locked down his social media, he monitored this blog & possibly other social media where he was being criticized and picked apart, he lawyered up carefully. He looked out for himself and distanced himself from his victim, multiple times and in multiple ways. Now Gritzner and Roadblock are pitted against each other in the gladiatorial ring we ironically refer to as "court".

Imagine how differently things would have played out if Glenn had:

a) maintained wisdom and vigilance that night. Just another car whooshing quietly past an anonymous bicyclist. No harm, no foul, no opportunity for growth. End of story. Actually, no story is begun between them at all.

b) hit Roadblock, but then stopped to render aid-- to apologize-- to use his silver Jaguar's hazard lights to warn other late night traffic around the scene of the accident, protecting Roadblock from further danger. Imagine Gritzner reassuring Roadblock that legitimate medical bills would be paid, that Roadblock need not worry-- there will be an insurance claim if necessary, and Gritzner has his own money too, if that's what it takes to repair the damage he's just done to another human. Imagine Roadblock's adrenalin-pumped and fear-edged anger venting at Gritzner, emptying and ebbing as Gritzner accepts it and validates it and stays right there with him anyway, because it's the right thing to do. Because it's the human thing to do. Humanity begets humanity.

Imagine Gritzner visiting Roadblock in the hospital early that morning to make sure he's okay. Roadblock thanks Gritzner for his decency, for his remorse and genuine care. It's easy to forgive a guy like that. And when a man you nearly killed can forgive you and shake your hand, your soul can breathe again. It's easy to like a guy like that.

Imagine the posts on TheAmateurEnthusiast and BikesideLA and LAStreetsblog in the days and weeks following!

There would be kudos and praise for both parties, and chatter about how the world needs more people like Glenn Gritzner. It is probable that, having done such an awful thing-- then done your best to make it right-- then discovered a cool guy like Roadblock on the receiving end-- I can see Gritzner & Roadblock getting into some deep talks, finding a common bond in keeping cyclists safe.

I would go to hear them speak, tell the story of the accident and how they dealt with it and what came of it later (with Roadblock on the bike-activist side and Gritzner on the local-politics-and-business side, you KNOW something new would be born from their discussions!). I would buy their book. I would wear their rubber bracelet and talk to people about them and what they embody, what the world would be like if we followed their lead.

But there will be no book. No positive, collaborative, "dang-that's-amazing" book anyway.

Gritzner's blog will go on its breezy superficial way, and the bike blogs will go on decrying the danger of hit-and-run incidents, injuries and deaths. Those most likely to harm us will more studiously ignore our warnings, and those most likely to be harmed will get angrier & angrier. I hope the CVC will be reformed somehow.

But more than simply passing & enforcing laws, painting sharrows and pouring bike paths, I hope we will be more truly human to one another.

It's not enough-- has never been enough-- to just make a few phone calls, read a press release, and bang out the story. Good journalists spend a lot of time going to parties and meetings and conferences, hoping to meet the right people... they spend a lot of time digging up background information and trying to check facts for accuracy... they spend a lot of time driving and walking and ringing doorbells and going through security checkpoints and shaking hands so they can personally meet and talk with people of all kinds who might make newsworthy stories, events or perspectives, or who are affected by those things.

But in the 21st Century, the journalist/blogger/freelance writer has another tool, amazingly helpful and simple and powerful... and you can be part of it.

This tool is called HARO, an acronym for Help A Reporter Out. It is basically a site and an email distribution list run by marketing guru Peter Shankman, and today is only its second anniversary of existence.

If you have ever wanted a peek (just a peek-- there's much to newsrooms and freelance writing that you won't see from here) behind the journalistic curtain, sign up and see what it's like. You may eventually find yourself interviewed or quoted in an article, book, TV or radio show, but please stick to the ground rules, always. There are only five (er, nine?) of them. You can always unsubscribe when you're tired of it. I'm not tired of it yet!

"Get sourced, get quoted, get famous: http://helpareporter.com"

It feels like just a month ago that I first heard "According To Him" on the radio, a song by Orianthi. It struck me when I first heard it --- gut wrenching.

Then a few weeks ago, there was a knock on our door fairly late one night. Kathryn and I had put the younger kids to bed already, Nathaniel was deep in a writing trance in the library, and we were just about to collapse into bed ourselves, so I had to take a breath & remind myself of how Jesus welcomed interruptions before I opened the door.

It was Marion, a young teen who has friends along our block and who had visited us with them in the past. I was surprised to see her up so late, and equally surprised to see her alone. She asked if she could come in and talk.

Over warm cocoa she sketched the outlines of her story for us: arguments at home with her mom and stepdad, then this afternoon being with the wrong friends at the wrong time and getting detained as a group for shoplifting. After some questioning the police had let Marion go, convinced that Marion had not been responsible for the theft, but Marion still did not want to face her mother's wrath... there is more to the story, but the bottom line is that she wanted to use our phone to call her dad, and wait for him at our house. We allowed that. I was resigned to an even later night than I had hoped, and tried to turn the conversation toward spiritual things & toward relational wisdom.

Another knock, sooner than we expected: it was not Marion's dad who showed up but her mom and stepdad, with two police officers! Marion's dad had called them to let them know where Marion was. As we had known, there was another side to the story: Marion had been missing for hours, and under the circumstances, her folks were afraid she had run away with more dramatic intentions.

It began as a fairly tense confrontation, but simmered down to several different shifting conversations as the police got the statements they needed for their records and each party had their say with us and with each other.

Marion's mother gave us a lot of very helpful context to the whole situation, unflattering facts that Marion had conveniently edited out... facts which Marion would have liked to truly edit out of her life, I sensed. The whole truth is always good to know, it leads to wiser decisions. But Marion's mother mixed the "whole truth" with so many negative assumptions and was quick to paint Marion as a juvenile delinquent and a lazy wretch. Such paint is very difficult to remove, unfortunately, and I am afraid it puts great pressure on Marion to live down to those low expectations-- exactly the opposite of the effect her mother desired. Marion so obviously hungered for words of grace, from her father, from us, from the police officers, but especially from her mother... and her mother utterly withheld those words of grace, words of hope for the future. Orianthi's song played like a phantom soundtrack in my mind, as the mother's relentless accusations rolled on.

I haven't heard back from Marion, or her mother, or her stepfather since then. Like an idiot I forgot to get their contact info, and I have only the vaguest notion of where they live, so I can't get hold of them on my own initiative. But I wish I could reach them through the radio and make this song come alive to them, as both a rebuke and a corrective encouragement.

And I would add just one thing: Orianthi, and perhaps Marion too, leaves out a third and most important voice which is also speaking to her and about her, in love: the voice of God.

According to HIM, who is Marion, and how precious is she?

Marion, while your mom and stepdad listen to Orianthi's song, you listen to God's. He speaks, He sings, He loves, He has much to tell you if you will have ears to hear...

Much has been made over the past year about angry confrontations between motorists and bicyclists, as some folks try to cast it as a war for street rights. That's making a mountain out of a molehill... but most mountain-caliber political issues began as festering molehills, so it's worth taking a look at the issue.

This article by Bob Mionske, at Bicycling.com, is the best overview I have seen in years and a terrific primer on the issue.

If you drive, or ride, you ought to read this article and become familiar with the various issues at stake. Please weigh in on the side of sanity and courtesy, when you drive, when you ride, and when you write. Most of us do the first; I hope more of us will do the second; and many of us must also do the third if we want to keep this issue a mere molehill.

...or, if this grows mountainous, that the mountain eventually defends the right of cyclists to the road, even as it educates everyone as to what those rights... and responsibilities... are.

Can you ride a bike? How about a unicycle (all you Mudders out there)? Ever tried doing a trackstand-- balancing on a bicycle while at a standstill? Granted, that's a lot easier to do when you have a "fixie", a bicycle with a fixed rear axle that lets you pedal both forwards and backwards, but means you have no gears and no freewheel (no ability to coast while holding the pedals still).

Once you have mastered a trackstand, try it on a trampoline.

While jumping.

These guys have waaay too much practice:

I am in awe. Awe.

Kudos to Car Free Days and Bike Commuters for posting this video, and to the performers for giving me another reason for deepest humility as I behold, and enjoy, their mastery.

Dean Sharp is back to blogging! Perhaps his example will help me get back into the habit myself. It is well worth reading his take on why he will never be homeless.

It is great to hear Dean say so eloquently what I have been trying to say in clumsy fits and starts for 15 years. Many years ago I grew my beard out to biblical proportions (actually aiming for a ZZTop look) and spend significant time with a variety of homeless folks, trying to rescue them from addiction and, well, homelessness. It was soon obvious to me that a dearth of relationships-- and an inability to form or maintain close relationships, for varied reasons-- is the root of every chronically homeless person's plight.

Since then I have contrasted this with the obvious un-homelessness of several people who, by fate or by design, were without a place to stay for significant lengths of time.

One fellow suffered from cerebral palsy and hydrocephaly, but he had so many friends that he managed to "couch-surf" for more than a year before a UCP apartment opened up for him. And this despite his hosts (including us) having to help him dress and undress and even help him in the shower. Because he had friendships strong enough to share those burdens gladly, and many enough to spread the burden between us all so none of us got "burned out" caring for him.

In contrast, another fellow "went homeless" for one calendar year in order to better understand and empathize with those living that lifestyle. He found it very difficult to do so in an authentic way because his friends kept checking on him and helping him out! At last he had to cut himself off for several months and intentionally "go missing" in order to feel "homeless" in any real way, despite living under an overpass for weeks and eating out of dumpsters. This from a person TRYING to "be homeless"-- he knew, and his genuinely homeless acquaintances knew, that it wasn't real until those close healthy relationships were severed (at least temporarily and artificially).

Makes me wonder how many well-housed, well-insured, well-fed, fully-employed people feel "homeless" in the deepest sense: living without really belonging, without a band-of-brothers or any tribe to claim them as its own...