From Sloppy Sam to Dr. Emanuel: What Really Makes Students Learn

“Virtually no one can hand write 125 words per minute for 90 minutes.”

That’s a quote from an article by Ezekiel Emanuel (Rahm and Ari’s brother) in Thursday’s New York Times. The article discusses his decision to ban cellphones and laptops from his classroom at the University of Pennsylvania. His justification is that while a student may be able to speed type an entire lecture into their device, no one can do the same while writing by hand. Thus, the student must mentally process the lecture in real time to take adequate notes. The result is a deeper understanding of the material, leading to better learning.

I agree with Dr. Emanuel’s philosophy, but while he sees handwritten notes as a guarantee of deeper engagement, my own experience as a student showed that it doesn’t always work. In fact, it is what the worst teacher in my Chicago Public School education required his students to do!

I attended Sullivan High School in Rogers Park, Class of 1972. In those days, long before it earned a reputation as a “newcomer center,” Sullivan was a highly regarded high school serving a predominantly middle-class population. We had many fine educators, but sadly, not all our teachers reached a level of excellence.

Like all incoming freshmen, I was required to take a course called Early World History. My teacher, Sam, was an unkempt man, probably in his late fifties. Sloppy Sam’s classes never varied.

“Take out your notebooks,” he would say a moment after the bell rang to begin the period. He would begin to recite, and our only task was to capture every word. “Roman numeral II, Part B, subpart iv, Causes of Peloponnesian War,” he would drone. Thirty pens scribbled his outline into thirty spiral-bound notebooks, careful that every subheading and every detail was correct.

On a Friday before the end of each grading quarter, we would turn in our notebooks. The following Monday, we would have them back again, graded, any omissions noted, and the lecture cycle would resume.

And as Dr. Emanuel would suggest, no mental processing of Early World History was taking place.

I have had other poor teachers — the computer science instructor who needed the class to teach her computer science, the Hebrew teacher who thought teaching meant terrorizing his students. Fortunately, their number pales compared to the wonderful teachers and professors I have learned from.

I have never forgotten Sloppy Sam; it’s the causes of the Peloponnesian War that still befuddle me. While Emanuel may be right about banning devices in the classroom, it is not how you take your notes; it is the skill and passion of the instructor that makes learning come alive.

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A neighborhood walk turns into a lesson in friendship, concern, and resilience.

I’m usually a solo walker. Along with our labradoodle, Cooper, I cover two to four miles a day, looping around our neighborhood and greeting neighbors and their dogs. Sometimes Barb joins us, and if the day feels glorious, I’ll treat Cooper to a drive to a nearby park, where we can climb the sledding hill as part of our route.

Last week, two friends, Jack and Greg, invited me to join their Wednesday walk. I did a quick loop with Cooper, then drove with them to an access point on the Des Plaines River Trail. Caps on, sunscreen applied, water bottles in hand, we set out into the warm midweek sun.

The wide gravel trail wound through shady woods, alive with walkers, joggers, bikers—and the occasional pile of horse manure. We talked about family, sports, and old jobs as the miles slipped by. When my watch told us we’d hit three miles, we turned and headed back.

Walking three abreast through the forest reminded me of Stand By Me, the 1985 film where four boys trek along the railroad tracks in search of a body. We could have been their senior counterparts, though our only quest was exercise and camaraderie.

Near the parking lot, almost six miles in, Greg suddenly asked Jack if he was okay. Jack said yes—then crumpled to the gravel, flat on his back. His face was pale, but he was breathing and had a pulse.

In that moment, the doctor you want at your side is not a retired pathologist like me. Fortunately, Greg’s long career was in anesthesiology. He quickly sized up Jack’s condition: dehydration. Together, we eased Jack upright, and before long, he was sipping water, color returning to his cheeks.

We walked slowly to the car. Jack bounced back quickly and insisted we keep to our lunch plans. I checked in the next day, and he was fine.

Yesterday I heard Bob Stroud play Ben E. King’s Stand by Me on his Rock’n’Roll Roots radio program. It brought me back to the movie, to our walk, and to standing with Jack as he recovered.

We didn’t need a body at the end of our walk—friendship, concern, and relief were more than enough.

The play’s the thing.

Are you a regular reader of mine? Do you remember my unsuccessful foray into playwrighting? Two years ago, I wrote a two-act play, a dialogue-heavy drama. A part-time dramaturge I know polished it and sent the shining version to a theater producer he has worked with. The producer was dismissive, the golf season was starting, and after writing a blog post about the experience, the play went into the purgatory of an archived Word file.

Until this week, when two unrelated circumstances have joined to give me the push I need to revisit that dusty file.

First came a notification from a Facebook playwriting group. A Chicago theater company was advertising a new play competition for previously unpublished works. The submission process was easy and online, and unlike many other competitions, no entry fee was required. This seemed like an opportunity for a neophyte like me.

A few days later, I was listening to an audiobook of a thoroughly awful novel. It was a murder mystery-psychological thriller dripping with misplaced metaphors and even sillier similes. Despite the poor prose and not knowing or caring “who did it,” I listened day after day.

My patience was rewarded when I heard one of the characters, an elderly, dying mystery writer, say to his daughter, “We should talk.” SPOILER ALERT: Those words are a key line of dialogue in my play.

I have decided I cannot ignore two signals, both pointing me in the same direction. I want to get in.

I’ve located an early draft of the play, a draft from before the dramaturge held sway. While I appreciate his help, I want to be where the characters still feel like my own. This is where I am beginning.

I’m carefully reviewing the producer’s comments and reflecting on the few bits he thought worked well and the roughly 95% he thought didn’t work at all. I’m creating new scenes and new relationships. I am eliminating clunky dialogue. I’m keeping that “we should talk” line, but I’m giving it greater impact.

It’s a blast waking up my old characters, working and molding them in their own images, as they whisper to me what they need to do and say. I love them all, even the more despicable ones.

The deadline for submission is August 31. A countdown clock on the theater company’s website tells me that as of now, I have nineteen days and fifteen hours of prep time left.

Do I anticipate winning the contest? It’s a long shot. But I’m giving it a try. Because, as one of my more optimistic characters says, “You can never run out of hope.”

Stories from the parking lot and beyond.

If you use Reddit, you may be familiar with a Subreddit called “Am I The Asshole?” Contributors describe real-life situations they’ve faced and ask the internet to judge: Were they in the wrong? The respondents can concur that the original writer is the greatest jackass of all time, or let them off the hook with a gentle “You did no wrong.”

I consider myself a pretty decent guy. I don’t cheat at games, I appreciate everyone’s cooking, and since I don’t expect perfection from the people around me, I usually don’t badger them if they fail to meet even my limited expectations. But three incidents in the last week have got me wondering, am I the asshole?

Incident #1: I was picking up Cooper from his Monday Doggie Daycare experience in Wheeling. The facility has limited parking, with only two legal parking spots, as well as one space for disabled drivers. When I began my turn into the lot, I saw that the regulation spots were both taken. Knowing that the drivers and their dogs would be out shortly, I braked and waited in the single driving lane. A car driven by an able-bodied teenager zoomed by me on the left, almost sideswiping my car, and pulled into the disabled driver spot.

Once we were both inside the daycare building, waiting for our dogs, I told him, not too politely, that I didn’t appreciate his driving maneuver and that the spot was reserved for people who needed it, not impatient teenagers. Am I the Asshole?

Incident #2: I pulled into a parking spot in the sprawling parking lot at Woodman’s Market. As I left my car, I was approached by a woman pushing a packed shopping cart. She wanted me to pull my car back out so that she could wheel her shopping cart through the parking space to her car, a few spaces to my right. Rather than backing out, a risky maneuver in the always crowded lot, I showed her that less than 10 feet to my right was the wide, very well-marked, pedestrian lane, perfectly suited for her purpose.

She gave me an angry look, but I didn’t back down, and I didn’t back out. Am I the Asshole?

Incident #3: Barb and I were doing our weekly shopping at the Sunset Foods Store in Northbrook. The deli case was on our right as we waited to place my usual order of lunch meat. A woman in a motorized shopping cart came speeding toward us, a mere foot from the counter. The look on her face made clear her impatience with us as we scrambled to get out of her way.

Twenty minutes later, we saw the same woman maneuvering back and forth in her attempt to get the mobile cart into the checkout lane. She was muttering loudly, clearly frustrated. I knew I should help her, but our previous encounter had left a bitter taste in my mouth. I stayed in my checkout lane until store personnel assisted her a moment later. Am I the Asshole?

So, readers, what do you think? Three decisions on my part to either not help out or not turn the other cheek. Am I the asshole?

Spoiler alert—I don’t think I am!

It’s less than I think!

If you are a Facebook user, have you noticed and interacted with Meta AI, the virtual assistant that occasionally pops up in your Facebook feed, summarizing or explaining posts? Most days, I ignore it—I would rather read actual comments than have my device explain them to me. But on Wednesday, Meta’s little rainbow circle symbol on my post caught my attention.

“More about the author’s work,” read the flag.

“OK,” I thought. “I’m game for that. Let’s see what Facebook and Meta AI have to say about me.”

I imagined the link would whisk me away to a glowing summary of my hundreds of blog posts. I envisioned a detailed review of my family, my career, civic service, and my travels, and how it all came together in my prose. I was even hoping there might be mention of my two favorite quotes, Alec Trebeck’s “wrong again, Les,” and my golfing buddy’s “nice shot, Les.”

Simply put, I anticipated that Meta AI would create the equivalent of a Wikipedia page, all about me, something that has long been missing from the digital world. I understood that, as with all AI products, there might be some hallucinations—it might brag about my major league baseball career or my lunar landing—but those were minor errors I was willing to accept.

I clicked the link, eager for a big payoff. I didn’t get it. Rather than a Wikipedia page, I got the equivalent of a book jacket review:

From this post, we can infer that Les Raff’s writing style is personal, reflective, and humorous. He shares his personal experiences, such as his encounters with COVID-19 and vaccinations, in a lighthearted and relatable way.

It’s not what I expected, and yes, I felt let down by the skimpy AI analysis. But I shouldn’t complain too much. The remarks do capture what I try to do most of the time when I sit down at my desktop and chat with you (only my Trump rants are not quite so light-hearted).

So I’ll get over my disappointment and keep writing. Maybe someday a real human will write my Wikipedia page in the future, and I will be overjoyed—even if it skips centerfield and doesn’t fly me to the moon!