"Who are only undefeated/ Because we have gone on trying;" --T.S. Eliot, The Dry Salvages

Time is viscous, like motor oil or petroleum jelly, a real sticky bog. It slows you down, makes your limbs tense up and tire, and eventually you sink. You just stick and whither up and crack. Maybe, if you're lucky, something comes along to unseat you, and you can drift back. That usually takes time, though. My wife left yesterday on a plane for Ireland; I saw her off, waved, hopefully a bit sadly, and returned to what was once our apartment. Today, I'm driving to Rockport, Massachusetts along Route 495. It's five thirty in the morning. I'm alone. I am attempting to retreat against the flow, to release myself from the sensation of sticking.

My name is Kyle Matthews. Right now I'm the closest to truly screwed up I've ever been, and I've been close. Through all the years of study I've subjected my brain to, through all of the literary theory that I was said to be disenfranchised from, through all of the literature classes that destroyed my love of literature, through the hit and miss that masqueraded as my marriage, this is the end result: sappy, romantic gestures; a throwing of oneself against the piers, a dashing against the rocks and thankful stupor.

Sure, the coast is nice in March. It's like a birthday present, right? I mean, April first is my birthday. Consider it pampering. Yeah, right. She left me one week before my thirtieth birthday to dance, to follow her art, to drink stout with some Irish choreographer who gets off on leather and artsy Americans. I'm scrambling to salvage something, anything, to put a piece together where it belongs, to make some viable connection to the past ten years, to validate that it still happened, that it still meant something. Right now that's the best I can hope for. Right now that's more than I can hope for.

I teach. I teach English literature, writing theory, sexual innuendo, political theory, colonialism, post-colonialism, Caribbean literature, Native American literature, African literature, Asian literature, Indo-European language development, Feminist literature, and, in my spare time, the dynamics of relationships and failing marriages. I plan to offer a course in the fall called "How to Let Your Decade Long Marriage Decline to the Point of Departure." I have to work on the title, though, a bit too long. I whine sometimes. I expect too much sometimes. I like my job, to a degree, sometimes. Today I could teach my graduate students the concept of fragmentation and its implications on history, my history. Lately, though, I’ve been theorizing on the dynamics of stickiness. Thank god I have sick time.

I'm rarely wrong about things. Nobody stumps me at Jeopardy. I can name every monarch in the long line of English kings and queens, can tell you about the Industrial Revolution, Naturalism, and the Corn Revolt. Caitlin once got me with a stumper about ballet, but you would expect her to know that crap; it was her specialty. I have a particular affinity for nineteenth century novels, and, if George Eliot was sipping a gin and tonic at the University Club after graduation, I would more than likely hit on her. Maybe I'd score. Maybe I'd go home alone. Maybe I'd try again.

I'm five eleven and one half, one hundred and seventy lean pounds, am horrible at basketball and sports in general, even golf, and can't help but feel embarrassed in some masculine, patriarchal, white guy way about that. Brown eyes. Brown hair, bangs, no gray yet. Average build, although I've lost that elasticity that once inhabited my belt line, and that too is getting stuck in the muck. I'm no great lover. My penis is average length and width, I guess. None of my five partners has complained, but I wouldn't vouch for their honesty in all cases. I have no children.

Despite the appearance of smugness, I am simply listing myself. It is one of the basic tenets of any course I teach at the State University: list the traits as they appear, then sort them out. In a sort of post-deconstructive way the listing is reassuring, almost comforting. It validates me as the author of this text. It allows me to inventory the fragments of my life, to try to pull together a whole from this mess. At the very least the construction and deconstruction of my life allows me to pass the time as I drive. Is this myopic? Narcissistic? Who cares? It's what I do.

Caitlin and I honeymooned in Rockport. The Cape Ann Bed and Breakfast on Pleasant Street. It is now my destination. To be exact, I am planning on returning to the room that was our nuptial suite. Sort of like returning to the scene of the crime to retrace the bloody footprints. I suppose that it's weird to be doing this, to return, but, really, where else was there to go? Boston looms ahead to the right like a specter on the horizon, the sun peeking out from behind the squat hills that flank the road. My Nissan hums along, constant companion that it is. A good car is like that, you know? Keep it oiled and gassed and it will take you to the ocean. My wife, now, was different. Oil and gas her and she runs off with Michael Fucking O'Brien and the dancing Irishmen. The essential difference between women and cars, there. The cars don't leave you for better drivers.

The crack about the dancing Irishmen was uncalled for; I would be soundly criticized for my lack of sensitivity if I muttered that crack in a faculty meeting. I would be written up, reprimanded, and stigmatized for my thoughtless attack on the innocent ethnic group that simply wanted to coexist with me. My articles would be pored over for innate references to anti-Celtic sentiment, and, if one could be found, that too would be published. My thesis, scholarly dinosaur that it is, would most decidedly be used as proof of my long standing dislike of Irish authors, as it consists of a look at George Eliot and Jane Austen, decidedly not Irish authors. In the end, I would fall to the Thought Police, confess my sins, scream a bloody "No Micks Need Write" at my Disciplinary Meeting, be relegated to teaching five sections of Freshman Composition, and be treated as the utter fool that I really am. Justice, in most cases, is blind.

Of course that would never happen, I'm much too careful. As I round the curve of 495 and head north up 128 I begin to suspect that this maybe wasn't my most brilliant decision.


At seven a.m. I am through the brunt of the drive. Behind me are Swampscott, Lynn, Salem, and Gloucester. Ahead, just beyond the rotary is Rockport. I haven't really thought much about this area for some time. Sure, Caitlin and I talked about the honeymoon from time to time, but that was really just couple talk. It was the "do you remember that restaurant we ate at on our honeymoon" talk, or "do you remember the time we went skinny dipping at Front Street beach and you flashed that family?" type of talk. It was what we did, and it only lasted a few months after the event. The talk slipped away behind our careers, and we lost it.

Caitlin jumped into dancing with a fervor. She took classes at the University, riding a free tuition waver because of my assistantship. She swam in the pool, danced in the shows, and graduated with an M.F.A in Dance. I finished a Ph.D. in Nineteenth Century Literature, settled into a cozy adjuncting gig which, after three years, became tenure-track, and we were set. The problem was that she got sick of dancing in tiny, chicken shit recitals. I got tired of her complaining. We both just collapsed in on our own lives, shut the other person out. Ours was a quiet house. In the end, I suppose I should have seen it coming.

Mike O'Brien was a visiting instructor of dance who flipped into our lives just after our fifth anniversary. He came from the University of Chicago, and carried a lecherous reputation to accompany his major accomplishments. He had choreographed on Broadway, won a couple of Tony's, and had been floating rumors about starting a traveling review of modern dance. I was somewhat suspicious of his intentions when he selected Caitlin to be the lead in his production of "Celtic Oaks" that fall. I mean, she was good, but not that good.

The fall was a blur, really. She was caught up in rehearsals, I got caught up in an article, ironically enough, on the love triangle in Adam Bede. She spent a lot of time in the theater, I was in the library. I'm not really sure that she slept with him then, although I have my suspicions. I never pinned her down to it. Like Adam, I was oblivious.

At the performance she glowed. The press foamed at the mouth to talk with her. There was even talk of Broadway, with O'Brien's help. I couldn't help feel a bit jealous. I was no stranger to the rejection letters that had been gracing my door. As I pull into the Rockport town limits, a sharp left off the highway past rows of white clapboard Victorian homes, the anger of it all suddenly wells up inside of me. I can't help but feel the heat, see red. After all, I'm the hurt party here. I jam the Nissan into fourth gear as I round the sweep of Park Street, disregarding the stop sign and befuddled couple out for an early morning jog. Through the light fog that floats over Rockport I am in good shape to become a motorized murderer, vehicular manslaughter clamoring in my mind. As I careen through town, though, I see no other victims.

The penultimate street on my journey, Dove Street, yawns black and slick, like a gash, as the ocean fog swirls. From above, sweeping down the hill like an archangel, is a pair of headlights. The twin beams belong to a mini-van, a Dodge or Plymouth ( I always mix them up). The thought hits me that it would make for a spectacular view, the two vehicles colliding on an early Friday morning, right in front of the old Edgar Allen Poe Inn, beside the foot path to Back Street Wharf, sight of innumerable deep sea fishing excursions and seedy, greasy, fried fish dinners at Alta Joe's Fish Restaurant. The crash would reverberate over the moaning surf, the flames would cascade down the street, perhaps even engulfing the entrance to Bearskin Neck, the once fishing village now shopping emporium perched on a rocky, quarter mile slip of land jutting out into the Atlantic. The carnage would be spectacular, a tribute to the chaos theory that is currently my life, and I would be through. Message signed, sent, and delivered.

Of course, the thought of the family that most certainly inhabits the mini-van pops into mind, the harried parents and two jawing toddlers excited about a day at he beach, unaware of the harbinger of death that floats a mere three seconds due east of them, and I have to let the van pass, unmolested. I can stomach the loss of my own life, but not others, not innocents. That's the problem with suicide bombers. The cause just doesn't quite justify the act. I'm not that righteous; she only left me, she didn't kill me. I downshift and ease up the hill.

Pleasant Street is just as I remember it, the rows of Victorian houses pinned neatly into their postage stamp yards by the wrought iron, spear headed fences. The fog hasn't stretched up this far, and has contented itself with pooling slightly lower on the hill, as if the ocean's fog is somewhat like the ocean's tide, and the high ebb has reached its peak. It reeks of Melvillian simplicity. Give me an ocean, a whale, and you've got a party. The B & B is slightly half the way down the street, just above School Street. Its high ceilinged porch and enormous red front door stand in the brilliant, glaring morning sun as I pull into the parking lot.

At seven-forty five a.m. I'm not sure anyone will be up to greet me, but I'm not really here for the company. As I gain the porch, it is somewhat calming to look down the hill, past the homes and Inns, past the Episcopal church's enormous bell tower, past the shops of Bearskin Neck, to the ocean. The mist is over the water, over Bearskin Neck, over Dove Street, but is evacuating quickly to sea, soon to be burnt off. It will be hot today. The view would have been perfect, except that I am reminded that across the ocean, in just the direction I am looking, my wife is dawdling with a transplanted Chicagoian. It's funny how quickly that thought could change my mood.

The porch is just as I remembered it: wicker settee with ancient white wicker rockers, hanging baskets brimming with red, purple, and pink impatiens and phlox, side tables of deep mahogany laced with moisture rings from errant glasses left to bake in the afternoon sun. The trellis at the far end of the porch is covered with creeping rose vines, in the summer a deep red, but now a deep salt encrusted green. A black and white cat lazes on the railing, eyes me as I approach, and stretches its back in an arc of anticipated contact. Its claws dig into the railing as I rub my hand down its soft spine. After two strokes it tenses, finished with my attention, jumps down into the yard and moves noiselessly around to the back of the house.

The sun hits the door in full brightness, invigorating last year's paint which, although still very sharp and neat, has begun to fade. The New England winters are fierce; nothing new can stay. Caitlin and I had spent one whole evening of our honeymoon talking to the Inn Keeper, Dennis Lewes, about the horrible winter of 1978, how the hurricane had come in and slammed the Motif #1, how Bearskin Neck had flooded. It was Dennis who had said the line about nothing new, all shiny and warm, and a bit philosophic, after half a bottle of cognac. He had staggered off to bed, and Caitlin and I had remained on the porch, watching the lights, drinking our wine, and, later, when all of the guests were present, accounted for, and snug in their rooms, making love on the wicker settee. It seemed symbolic to throw our love making in the face of the Atlantic, that equalizing and destructive force. You can do things like that in arrogance and passion. No one in their right mind does that type of thing if they think about it . I'm past romantic gestures, now. I ring the bell and walk in through the unlocked door.


The hall is fettered with shadow as I tip toe in, the porthole windows casting strong beams of morning light against the bottom stairs. To the right, in a deeply recessed alcove, a radiator sits littered with brochures. On the back of one is the smiling face of Dennis Lewes, looking like a slightly older version of Richard Dreyfuss, graying and receding hair not at all impairing his million dollar smile. It is nice to see he has weathered the winters well. The rest of the hall is awash in the deep greens and reds of the rug, a tastefully ornate Victorian style of spears and swirls. A coat rack sits empty at the entrance to the dining room, where the animated voices of lodgers can be heard in hushed undertones. It is the standard scene in many B&B's, a simple case of etiquette, where the first early risers politely attempt to control their ebullience for the upcoming day by choking their words back with continental breakfasts of imported coffee and home made pastry. It is from such this constrained and joyous setting that the voice of Dennis Lewes emanates.

Dennis, as I mentioned, looks like Richard Dreyfuss. He is the same height and build, although Caitlin and I disagreed on this point, she saying he was a bit thinner and I going the opposite because I really felt it, and not for the sake of argument. His hair is thinner and grayer, but, other than the few lines around his eyes when he smiles, he is the same man. "Good morning," he says to me, raising the carafe of tar black coffee he has been pouring into the anxious mug of a portly guest, "can I help you?"

I tell him who I am, although he is obviously struggling to remember. "I was here ten years ago, with my wife, on our honeymoon. Her name was Caitlin. We stayed in Room One."

"Oh, yes," he says, his smiling eyes brightening at the appearance of remembrance, "a nice looking couple you were, at that. Looking for a room?" He is the consummate salesman, for I remember clearly watching the same light appear in his eyes when Caitlin and I were breakfasting in the very seats occupied by the slightly overweight couple before me. He confessed later, high on brandy, that he had not remembered the couple that had sashayed into this dining room, but that good acting was the key to successful business. Caitlin had agreed, and they had gone off on a tangent about the theater, we finding out that Dennis was a theater major in college, and was active in the local community theater group.

"Yes. Room One, if it's available. I'll only need it one night." He pauses, eyes tracing the cornice work along the ceiling, deep in thought for the briefest second, and then hits me with that eye brightening gleam.

"Well, the Sandlers are leaving today, and they're in Room One. They're just finishing up a two week honeymoon with us! I have new lodgers coming in tomorrow. You can have it if you can vacate tomorrow. It won't be ready until three this afternoon, though."

"That's fine, " I say, happy to have gotten in, "I have some things to do in town, anyway."

"Great! We'll see you two this afternoon, then."

"I'm alone, thanks," I mutter, and then, as if to wipe the smiles from the newlywed Sandler's full and butter greased cheeks, "She left me to screw an Irish dancer. Go figure. Don't put too much faith in those vows." As I cavalierly grab a piece of banana bread, I gauge their hushed reactions. It has the appropriate effect, for Sandler's face goes blank, and the brand new Mrs. Sandler drops her corn muffin into her coffee, splattering droplets along the white linen tablecloth. Dennis tries to apologize, to them or me, the gleam in his eyes seamlessly transferred to the eyes of worried concern, but I turn and leave. As I make the hall's buttery warmth, it dawns on me that that was a pretty crappy thing to say to honeymooners. Oh well, I don't need their pity. Best they get a reality check before they go off to reinvent the paradigmatic happy marriage, anyway. Its been deconstructed by millions before Caitlin and I took our crack at it, and, although we did a pretty neat job of breaking it apart, it certainly won't be the last time it will be broken.

Lewes is self consciously polite as he takes my name and charge card for the reservation. He doesn't offer much in conversation, and the Sandlers have resumed their post-breakfast muffled discussion in the dining room. They have had enough of the lunatic that has invaded their breakfast table and vaguely threatened their newly found syncopation. They'll probably decide to clear me from their mental palates by skirting out of town as soon as possible. No matter. I have to chuckle as I step out onto the porch, Lewes shuffling back into the kitchen for a fresh pot of coffee, and the fully realized morning hits me square in the face.

I have decided to go shopping.


Bearskin Neck awakens early, rising with the tide. Some early visitors wander the thin streets, looking at the closed shops. I'm one of them. They're mostly geriatric, retirees out for a major power walk before breakfast. After all, it's nearly eight. The shops apparently aren't on season yet, but some of the artisans are strolling in, tool kits and paints tucked under arms. One of the carpenters staggers by lugging a new chair. I give him a hand with his door. He eyes me suspiciously, but utters "Thanks," nonetheless. The March sun is blasting against the ocean. It is pristine, shiny, and utterly lonely.

Tom Sherves waddles down the street, canvases and paint box balanced precariously against ribs and arms and belly. In ten years he hasn't really changed a bit. He doesn't look the part of the watercolor artist responsible for the brightly colored acrylics and somber watercolors dangling in his shop window. He has the gait and glint of a children's book illustrator, with his shock of white hair and bulging gut. His blue and green crew neck sweater seems a bit small, but his faded blue jeans and worn deck shoes all add to the overall image.

As he approaches the door, I watch him struggle with his keys from my vantage point on the bench overlooking Front Street bay. The Motif #1, lobster shack extraordinaire, gleams in the morning sun. The Rockport Apple, a tour sloop, sighs against its mooring. Sea birds circle overhead. Shouts emanate from the Lobster Mart, and a bloody aproned man dumps a bucket of shrimp over a tub of crushed ice. Further up the street, the door to the fudge shop is opened, a sales woman places a mannequined T-shirt emblazoned with the Rockport Fudge slogan in the doorway. The morning is just loaded with the promise of the sale. I am here to satisfy it.

Tom has the door open by the time I get up and stretch. He, as I mentioned, is exactly like I remember him. Caitlin and I visited Tom on the second day of our honeymoon, and she fell deeply, extravagantly in love with a small pair of water colors he did of a lighthouse overlooking the ocean. One tiny painting was of the lighthouse, done up in bright red and blue, the second an ocean scene stretched out in green, blue, and maroon. It was rather pretty. It was rather costly. The eighty dollars per painting was a bit steep, but Tom explained that he was doing well and in high demand. They were new paintings, as well, and you had to pay for an original. At least that was what Caitlin explained to me as we wandered away that day. You had to pay for the newness of it, the experience. We debated those paintings for a week, each day making a pilgrimage out the Sherves' Paint Shack to ogle the pair in the window. Each day we discussed our poverty. In the end, on our last day, we bought one of the paintings, leaving it up to the fates to return the second to its mate. Here I am.

As I approach the shop I glance in the window. He still hangs pictures but, to my chagrin, the lighthouse combo is absent from view. It was ten years ago. Other paintings play out across the glass canvas, though. Briar roses and fishing boats, the Motif #1 awash in sunlight, couples dancing on a moonlit beach: Tom has taken a romantic turn in his decade of painting. Caitlin would have loved these.

The inside of the shop is cluttered. Sherves' perch is a high stool situated in front of a big bay window overlooking the greasy, fishing boat cluttered bay. A paint spattered easel blocks his view of one half of the small shop, and rows of paints, jars, rags, and a decrepit Mr. Coffee line the shelf to the painter's right. It is a set up for an artist. The shop is peppered with sporadically hung paintings, some huge, some tiny, all revolving around the local, tourist theme. In the center, a rack of postcards showing great European paintings separates the room into its two sides, a buffer between sides of Tom's apparent sell out. I wonder if Caitlin will send me a postcard from Ireland. Hey Ky, doing fine, pursuing my dream, having great sex, glad you're not here- Cait.

I am close to leaving when Sherves notices me. "Can I help you?" he mutters, the sleep still in his voice. He has been making coffee, his back to me, and he appears somewhat startled at the prospect of handling a customer before the coffee brews.

"Yes," I say, intent on trying to find the name of the painting in the caverns of my memory, "I'm looking for a watercolor of the ocean. It was done ten years ago. My wife and I bought its twin, a lighthouse, when we were here on our honeymoon."

He bustles around the shop as I'm talking, mumbling incoherently to himself. "You'll have to forgive me, but I was very much into pairs at that stage of my career. In the late eighties I must have painted hundreds of lighthouse combos. I don't have any left, not even prints, but I do have some of these ocean scenes you might want to match for your wife." He points to a section of wall containing maybe fifteen miniature paintings. They are carefully positioned to give the effect of combination, the colors playing off of each other in a swirl of coherent cacophony. I am delighted that they appear to be postmodern efforts at describing the old archetype of Neptune's home.

I don't mention this to Tom, though, and he seems disoriented at my silence. Normally patrons are all too willing to chat; I, too, once was willing to chat, when I had my wife with me. She was so open, engaging. The painting we did buy was only purchased after a series of twenty minute discussions, one every time we entered the shop to ogle the merchandise, about the local fishing history and Sherves' attachment to it. On the first encounter Cait found out he was retired from the local high school, an art teacher making good on his dream of commercial success. The second time he described a locals only beach that would be perfect, and turned out to be, for honeymooners. The third, and final, was on Tom's attachment to the Motif #1, that he had helped in the 1979 rebuilding of the shack after the horrible winter. Caitlin glowed as he went on and on, soaking in the local color, reveling in the gem she had unearthed from the rural New England soil. She was able to connect. "Was your wife a red head?" Sherves asks, wiping his glasses with a handkerchief.

I smile. "No, a blonde. Short, a dancer. Cute smile." I'm not sure why I throw the last piece of the inventory in. I, of course, could go deeper. I could say that her eyes were hazel, that she liked to wear her hair in a ponytail until O'Brien made her cut it short in a Page Boy for his play, and that she adored making love in public, just out of the view of others, yet hovering on the edge, the margins of perception. I could say that before she became a vegetarian she really liked a good steak, that she pretended to like sea food so as to fit in in small coastal tourist spots, that she secretly stuffed pieces of shrimp into her napkin to feed the village strays, and that, on the night we purchased a Tom Sherves original we ran back to the inn, replaced the house oil of a whaling scene with the tiny lighthouse painting, and pretended that we were screwing in our very own bedroom. I could say this all. I don't. "It was a long time ago."

"Yes it was. I could have swore I remembered you with a red head in here. I guess I shouldn't say that too loud, eh? I wouldn't want to land you in hot water." He smiles as he says this, looking around for my better half.

"Don't worry, she'd have to have pretty good ears to hear you where she is." I say this with no trace of bitterness or irony, although Sherves picks up on one of these and watches his next step.

"Oh, she's not here?" he mutters.

I'm tempted to say that she's dead, just to see him flail around, but that would be almost as harsh as earlier causing the greased up Sandlers to choke on their corn muffins. I'm not really that bad a guy. I let him off with honesty. "She's in Ireland rehearsing a show. I figured I would try to complete our set." Pseudo-honesty, at least.

"How nice," he's relieved that I don't lance him with the bitterness he probably can sense just underneath my skin, and gratefully accepts the opening to scurry back to his easel, "Just let me know when you're ready."

The thought strikes me that I don't really know why I am here, that all of the effort could simply be a running away from the hurt. It doesn't take a psychologist to see that a man who loses his wife is going to be pretty screwed up, but to return to the scene of his honeymoon? It sounds like I'm just beating myself up. Or is there more?

Out Tom Sherves' side window a sea gull has lighted, clawing the rope entwined stump of one of the dock piers. It sits only a moment, lets fly with a call to its associates, and, just as fast, leaves, as if dropping below the pier to the sea. It is a sign.

The painting I choose is the most subdued of the bunch I can find in the PostModernist wing of the shop. It is fractured, full of overlapping colors, white spaces, and brush strokes. It is not a watercolor, but an acrylic. Abrupt, glossy, glaring. It matches our life together now. It's also cheap, a mere twenty dollars. Tom must not be in such demand now. He smiles as he cashes me out, happy to make a sale just as the Mr. Coffee finishes, unaware of the true meaning behind this reunion. He doesn't even remember me.

It's nine thirty by the time I get to the beach.


Rocky Point beach is a small slip of sand sandwiched behind a row of condos and rental vacation houses. Immense sand dunes shelter the beach from view, a tiny planked path notched between two of the bigger sand hills marks its only entrance and exit. Fingers of piled rock extend out into the ocean marking the beach’s boundaries in the sea. These eventually slip below the hard gray surface, and the horizon becomes unbroken. This was the honeymoon beach that ten years ago my wife and I dubbed make out beach. It's funny, sitting on the sand this morning, to think that this secluded spot, the perfect spot for an open air romp, was actually too subtle for Caitlin. It was too sheltered and private, as if it had been set up for just that purpose. She preferred the Inn porch.

We made it to this beach on our second day, just at sunset. We had staggered out after dinner at the E.A. Poe, shining with too much wine, and walked the mile to the beach hand in hand. Weaving through the tiny village's side streets, eyeing the picket fences and rose gardens, soaking in the late afternoon breeze from the ocean, it all made sense. We were full of hope and promise. We sat and watched the sky go black that night, watched like voyeurs as the couples rolled up underneath each other, spied on the stars and the moon. That night we slipped back to Pleasant Street like thieves, thrilled with our secret find.

We went back every night, never to have sex but just to soak in the essence of the place, to feel the gritty presence of sand and water and margin. Now I'm here in March of the year she has left me, a second Tom Sherves original in tow, in the harsh, angled sunlight, searching for a connection.

Why am I here? What has brought me to this place? Caitlin? It must be Caitlin, after all. She is the impetus for this journey. She sat in the passenger side of the Nissan yesterday, crying, dabbing at her eyes with a wadded up tissue, as the planes roared over us. "You don't have to go," I muttered, "Things will work out here." I think that's the crap I said. I mean, she's leaving me, and all I can say is things will work out! It's almost as if I don't deserve her, because I didn't have the balls to call her back. I just watched her walk through the terminal doors, her tiny frame hunched over by the enormous suitcase that she was dragging behind her, our suitcase. I have to give her credit, though it still makes no sense to me. She followed her dream, followed it right to another country. I'm sitting on an empty beach trying to put it all together. I can almost feel the vicious, sticking sensation of time locking me in place.

In what seems like a flash it begins. Behind the backdrop of the rolling tide and incessant sea gulls something begins to rise in me, unidentifiable just yet, but there. It's like the kernel of an idea, a bit of a connection, the hair length section of connected synapse trying to entwine a coherent thought. Through my murky, tired mind, it feels like anger.

Yes, anger. And now it takes a form, infantile, shifting, plasmic. The first face is O'Brien's. It burns behind my retinas, dances out in front of the sun, and then fades. Lewes pops up, smirking behind his coffee carafe, as do the obese, slick Sandlers. They just giggle as they hunch together, a bloated union. Tom Sherves comes next, the missing companion watercolor in his hand. He is grinning, motioning me out to the sea. Then he is gone. Then they are all gone, and Caitlin appears. It's just her face, light, indefinable, but present. And then she, too, fades. I'm digging into the sand, scooping mounds of the stuff, trying to squeeze it into glass. Little trenches form in the spaces where my hands work. My eyes itch with water and sand.

I teach this stuff, right? The stuff of literature, the human comedy, the human drama. I can tell you how Dorothea felt when Ladislaw left, can talk for hours about Adam and Hetty and Dinah, but I can't figure it out myself. I can't deconstruct the texts of my own life, put them into focus, sharpen them. And it pisses me off.

I remember then, the image slashing into my consciousness with the speed of a razor, a clue to this all. Only a clue, certainly not a reason, but a clue that helps shed some light on why I am here. She was packing; must have been Sunday night, then. She was sobbing, letting it all well up from her abdomen in these huge, wracking sobs. She was tossing a Guess sweatshirt, pink, frayed, into the case, and I was sipping a cup of coffee at the beaten down desk in our bedroom that I use for a study.

I was grading papers, a series of essays on Austen, and really enjoying the sharpness of the responses I was levying against my smart ass graduate students. I had just finished Joel Chandler's illiterate look at Pride and Prejudice when I heard the scraping. I turned to find Cait perched on a chair by the far wall, the chair tilting, her small fingers wrapped around the dusty frame of our one, true Tom Sherves original watercolor. The lighthouse shimmered in the bedroom's half light, and, for a split second, they were framed there above the bed. Cait pinned at an impossible angle, defying gravity as she hung out over the bed, the painting resisting the pull of its owner, the one who lusted for it, pined over it, on those sticky days now a decade ago.

And then it let loose. The frame splintered under Cait's weight, breaking off and sending toothpick sized shards along our quilt. She dropped like a stone, straight down, onto the bed. She seemed to be human, then, a real thing, spawled out on the mattress and trying to recover. She was up in an instant, grace recovered, veneer intact, and placing the damaged painting in her case. A large piece of the painting, the part with the lighthouse’s light, was next to her on the bed. I didn’t move or offer to get it; I just pointed. She looked from the piece to me, then placed it in her bag. Then she started crying again, only now she was really crying, letting it all out. She looked at me, water in streaks down her face, for an instant.

I hesitated. I paused as I rose to look at her, study the face, the eyes, the stained little cheeks. In an instant the hurt, hope, disappointment, joy, pain coalesced in her face, played itself out on the screen of her eyes. I knew I wasn't supposed to be there. I stopped. She looked sort of glad that I didn't move, then. She spun, wiping her eyes, and resumed the task of loading her life into a beaten and ripped suitcase, the case we had shared ten years ago on our honeymoon. And I had sat back down. Life resumed.

The beach has gotten chilly, the wind whipping itself up as I've sat here pondering. I am still alone, of course, but the occasional traffic noise drifts down from the street behind the dunes. I have dug neat little moats around me as I have been clutching at the sand, and now I am running out of room, making my perch too small. Gooey and stiff, I have hardened in, settled, the frame of reference blurred. Bits of sand are rolling into the trench. Pretty soon the whole thing will collapse. I get up and step outside of the ring.

The ocean is flat, a thin gray line extending to nowhere. Little rolling breakers toss about the water's edge, the only break in the incessant sameness. But the water does go somewhere. It goes to her. Out there, beyond the rocks and gulls and Bearskin Neck, is Caitlin. Somewhere, dancing or eating or screwing, is my wife. I grab the Sherves as I rise and stalk to the water, taking the ocean in a handful of quick, long strides, moving towards her.

I'm up to my knees before I know it, the frigid water soaking into my jeans. The coldness of the water stops me, forces me to hesitate. What am I doing? Where am I going? The force of the moment pushes me out. Don't think, react. Pure thought in motion, resolve as deep as any character that graced a nineteenth century novel, I press on. This is, after all, real life, and I have made a connection.

The water encompasses my waist by the time I have to stop again. There is a sharp pain in my groin, but the lower legs have gone pretty much numb. As I go deeper the ocean floor gradually recedes, beckoning, like it invites the scads of summer swimmers and ocean players to enter and be refreshed. It is a much more shrill voice that calls me now.

Armpits now, and I am forced to carry the Sherves above my head. The icy water undulates under my chin, caressing and swaying. I am on frozen pins at this point, my legs and waist gone. If I trip, I am sure I will go down and never get up. Is that what I want? Is that the connection, here? I stop. It's not a pause, but a full stop. I didn't notice the tears before, but, chin deep in the cold Atlantic, I am crying. The ocean, when you're in it, is far from calm. The tug of the undertow is constant, a pressure so elemental that it would seem right to follow its pull, allow yourself to succumb to its call. There are rocks and bits of debris on the ocean floor, but the water is too gray to see through. God knows what else is hidden down there, what sleek creatures live and eat and die within the water's embrace. Despite my frozen legs, I can't help but notice the sensation of life in the water, the bigness of it all. And I lose my resolve.

Let her dance. Let her screw her artsy boyfriend until she's blue in the face. She'll be back. Or perhaps not. Maybe she'll walk into the ocean herself, overwrought with the enormity of her decision, pained at the loss of me and our life of pristine uniformity. Maybe. As I begin to send my legs the signal to return to the beach and the warmth of March sand I remember the Sherves suspended above my head. It sags in its brown paper bag, flecks of wet spots adorning the surface. I did come to get this, to fill the hole left when she pulled down the original, to put up another lighthouse. There are no more lighthouses.

There is also no more anger. It has all left. Gathering all of the strength I can while my hands are over my head, I swing the Sherves out into the atmosphere, it's brown outline pinned against the steel sky for an instant before it disappears with a plunk below the ocean's face. Satisfied, I turn and begin the frozen trek back to the beach.

the following is an excerpt...

"What would you do if you hit the lottery?"

Marcus had said it as he was coming out of the Bonfare store, scratching one of those instant lottery tickets. We all piled back into the van thinking, Marcus grabbing shotgun next to Slim, Jimmy and I in the back. Slim was finishing off a beer, and Jimmy was lighting a cigarette next to me. Marcus was busy scratching another ticket with his black thumbnail when Slim started the van up. We limped down Liberty Avenue in Slim's beat up, yellow van- we called it "the school bus"- and stopped at the town park. The swimming pool was Heeney's main summer attraction, and the young girls ran and lounged and squealed while we stopped and ate our lunch. I opened my bag and began to eat my roast beef sandwich, like I had every day since coming to work on the railroad in May. "Damn, man. Look at her." It was Marcus. He was notorious for being the Heeney ladies' man. All ages, all the time. Even as far back as high school, when I was in high school; he was notorious even then. "Davey-boy, who is that?"

"You mean you don't know?" said Jimmy, bits of mayonnaise clinging to his too long mustache. "I thought you knew all the young things in Heeney, babe. She's got to be fifteen, sixteen; perfect for you." He laughed, and his ripe, red face turned white with the exertion of the chuckle.

"Screw you, man. Davey, who is she?"

My stomach always flipped when Marcus looked at me like that. I could almost see the teenaged girls in his bed, so cool because he had taken them. I strained to see the white bikinied girl, but she was too far from the van. I shrugged and took a bite of my sandwich. "I don't know."

"C'mon man. College ain't screwed up your eyes, has it? You gotta know who she is."

I looked at Marcus, who was squinting in the direction of the pool. "I don't know. I can't see her."

"Damn!" Marcus said, throwing his sandwich wrapper out of the van. Slim laughed and popped another beer. Jimmy pulled a drag from his cigarette and smiled. The mayo still clung to his mustache.

I had always loved this time in Heeney. The summers were hot, and the girls always wore those shorts that crept up a bit too high on their thighs. My buddies and I would cruise Heeney and Colmart, and even Mear's Lake. If we had the extra flow, we'd cruise across the bridge and hit Raven's Falls, just to check out the action. But that was before college, and working during the summer.

"I can't believe you couldn't see her, man. She was fine."

"Christ, Marco, she was sixteen, tops." It was Slim, fixing those glazed, red eyes on Marcus in between sips. "You can do better."

Marcus eyed him, looked deep into his face the way Marcus did when he was searching you out, and shrugged. I saw Marcus do that to a girl in town, and she melted, right there. Granted, she was in my sister's sophomore class. He turned his eyes to me and said, "But hey, enough about the chickees. No one said what they would do if they hit the lottery. C'mon man, who's got an answer? Davey-boy? Jimmy?"

The little man next to me smiled and blew a stream of smoke into the younger man's browned face. Marcus coughed and reared back. "Screw you man. You're an asshole."

"I know what I'd do," said Slim, burping and cracking a beer. We all turned to him, Marcus quickly jerking his head back and forth from the van to the pool area, Jimmy lighting a new cigarette.

"Yeah, what'd you do, Slim?" said Jimmy, smiling.

"C'mon man." said Marcus.

Slim sipped his beer and then set it on the dashboard, propping it between the window and the vinyl surface of the dash. He had a long face with a droopy rust colored mustache, and he always smelled like a beer. I hated working near him in the morning because the smell of the booze leaking through his pores when he sweated made my stomach turn. He burped again and smiled. "If I won the lottery I would buy Sandy's fuckin' Bar and Grill and name it that!" he said, easing back against the steering wheel. We all laughed. Slim was a fixture at Sandy's, sitting at the end of the bar every night, drinking beer until he was nearly blind, staggering home; it was a routine. Jimmy was Slim's best friend, and told me often about Slim's turbulent marriage. Jimmy liked to talk when nobody else was around, when just him and I would stack used up ties in the back of the Heeney yard. Davis, our foreman, would only come around once every couple of hours, so we had lots of time to talk.

Read it all here.

the following is an excerpt...

You know he's going to talk about it. You know it from the moment he pulls away from the curb, leaving your modest, split level ranch behind. You know it with a certainty that hangs over you like the muggy haze of the July morning that has slicked up your back, and has dampened your arms. He's early, as usual, and in the ten years that you've worked with him you are finally prepared early enough to be waiting. You slide your travel mug into the cup holder, the sleek metal bullet of coffee that will serve as your lifeline on the trek to Syracuse, and ease the seat back. Two hours. You can do it.

"Good morning" he grumbles, loosening his tie against his Ford's feeble air conditioning. His shirtsleeves are rolled up to his elbows, and his suit coat is in the back, draped over his brief case and an empty car seat. A bright red puppet peeks out from the coat's arm, a Sesame Street doll, you think, the one that giggles. Your oldest son would have wanted the doll, too, when he was younger, but now he's too old. The oldest girl, a junior higher, begged for the doll at Christmas, but you held firm: too old for things like that. She understood, you think.

"Morning," you offer back, not convincingly, even to you. You hate these meetings, these drives, these inevitable talks about her. Stew is your regional coordinator, you his district manager. You are in charge of ten sales reps, he is in charge of you and two others like you. You are low on the pecking order, being the newest manager, and must deal with Stew at least twice a year. The other two pull rank every time and beg out of the bi-annual sales meeting, but you suspect that Stew likes your sympathetic ear, at the very least that’s what the others think, and that is reason enough to be hauled off to middle New York. You know he'll bring up Stephanie. It has been three years since his divorce. It was devastating to him. You heard all about it. You always do.

As you watch Stew navigate the Thruway tollbooth you wonder how he made it to the spot he's in. He's in his late thirties, balding, not as saggy in the middle as most, though, and possessing of a seemingly unprecedented lack of initiative. He seems never to finish a project, at least the ones you're privy to, but has a mean streak that never fails to encompass you when things go poorly. If his interactions with his ex-wife were anything like the interactions he has with you, it's little mystery why he's a divorcée.

Stephanie and Stew were married right after you started working with Stew; you were the rookie sales rep and Stew was the latest district manager. The wedding was a grand affair, the president of the company even showed up for the reception. Stew and Steph, as they cloyingly referred to themselves, were the hit of the company social scene. For a few years they seemed happy. They threw a housewarming party the September after they were married. You always seem to remember how close they clung to each other then, slipping in and out of the shadows of their back yard. They were always hugging each other, or kissing each other, or walking loop armed through the crowd. At that point you had been married for seven years, your boy was five, and your girl was one. You rarely made it out to parties. You rarely made physical contact in public, hell, in private for that matter. You rarely spoke to each other. It was a hard year. You remember that at the party the two of you put on the mask of being happy, not as happy as Stew and Steph, but happy nonetheless.

When it turned ugly, it came in quick shots. He was dark, blustery, spouting off at anyone who crossed him. She stopped coming to functions. Before long he stopped talking about her at all.

"Ready for today?" Stew asks, shooting a rapid sidelong glance at you. He's flustered with the lane shifts and construction that dot the Thruway now in the summer season. Inevitably, he compares the drive in July to the drive during the winter, which always ends up sounding the same.

"Yeah, I'm set," you reply, trying to appear interested in the new bridge going up ahead. Workers scurry over the steel planks that cover the expanse of the road, riveting, nailing, hammering; forging a new pass over the span. You think this is real work, substantial work, work that leaves behind a record of its passing. Often, the mental work you do leaves you empty. Sales are sales, numbers on a page. You never really feel the cold edge of a sale. Never drive the rivet home. "I was able to do the cost projections like you asked, but the totals were a bit screwy. Are you sure Jerry was on the mark with his numbers?"

"Jerry's an asshole." Stew and Jerry haven't been friends since the divorce. You know that, prior to the big fall out, Jerry and his wife were tight with Stew and Steph, but when the shit hit the fan, Jerry had a somewhat sympathetic angle for Steph. Stew never liked him after that. It didn't take Jerry long to transfer out, but the intimacies of a small company left plenty of room for interaction. None of it was good. "He probably overestimated again, just to bring down our end. I'll check it out before you go on."

"Nice bridge, huh?" You bait Stew when you get bored, and, as always, he bites. It passes the time. He sucks in air over his teeth, readying for his assault.

Read it all here.

May 1, 2002

As long as educational institutions have measured student progress, there has been, as a direct result of such quantifiable outcomes, the need to remediate those students who failed to make the grade. This movement has taken on many forms over the years; whether it was learning labs, remedial classes, tracking students into homogeneous groupings, or forced tutelage, the field of education has always found it an imperative to help those who show a need for such help.

With the rise of the standards movement after the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983, there has been increased pressure on schools to guarantee that all students achieve certain levels of success. These prescribed levels of success have varied according to state, but, in New York, the bar has been set at a high level through the administration and data collection mechanisms that surround the "newly" modified New York State Regents Exam program, a series of criterion based exit exams that can be labeled "high stakes." Also, at this time the state eliminated the state's Regents Competency Test in English, a minimum competency exam (MCE) designed for students who had failed to successfully pass the Regents exam in English. As a result of these changes, a whole population of students in need of remediation had seemingly been abandoned.

But with higher standards comes the need for an integrated system of remediation that recognizes the necessity of helping students who have failed to succeed on these assessments. New York has not failed to take up this challenge. The State Education Department has mandated a remediation framework that, in many ways, is responsive to the needs of low achieving students, but is (perhaps necessarily) vague in defining its depth and breadth. The essential keys to any remediation program rest in that program's emphasis, both theoretically and pedagogically, on the student's mastery of material that reflects the standards in question. What follows, then, is an attempt to "unframe" New York State's constrained prescriptions for remediation (Academic Intervention Services, or AIS) by acknowledging the more urgent goal of creating a remediation program that looks beyond passing rates and mastery cut points, and returning the focus to a formative pedagogy that highlights the student first as a whole learner. In short, the idea is to expand the established parameters set down by the State Department of Education by unframing them, in an effort to look beyond the simple causal loop of test, fail, remediate, retest; once this is done, AIS can become something more than just a vehicle used to ratchet up test scores.

A true AIS program is one that deepens student understanding of the skills and practices necessary for not only success on exit exams, but also for success at mastering the skills imbedded in the standards themselves. In short, AIS in English should reinforce the writing, speaking, reading, and thinking skills necessary for success once the student leaves the world of high school. The problem, it appears, is to translate the policy into a viable, successful program that meets these needs. The answer to this problem hinges on the English department's flexibility and openness to new and experimental pedagogical delivery systems.

According to New York Deputy Commissioner of Education James Kadamus, the definition of AIS, as outlined in his "Guidelines for Implementing Academic Intervention Services" memo of January 2000, is a series of "services designed to help students achieve the learning standards in English language arts and mathematics in grades K-12 and social studies and science in grades 4-12."(1¬) The memo goes on to prescribe a two-pronged approach to the implementation of AIS that includes additional instruction in the subject area and the inclusion of student support services that "address barriers to student progress" (Kadamus 1). Focusing primarily on the former point will allow for a deeper discussion of pedagogy, as the latter addresses items such as attendance, health, family, and nutrition-related issues. While important, of a more immediate concern to English educators is the latter, additional subject matter instruction, as this is the field these educators can directly impact. In fact, the concept of additional subject matter instruction can be looked at as the philosophical and pedagogical lynch pins that drive the AIS machine, and each of these center on the definition of remediation.

In order to successfully implement an AIS framework, it is necessary to define the terms of the structures that will support the framework. Some of those basic elements include, but aren't limited to, entrance criteria, exit criteria, reporting structures, and multiple assessments. Each of these items is alluded to in the Kadamus memo, sometimes with depth, but it seems that the State's message is that these bits of housekeeping can be left up to the individual districts. Each district will set and reset entrance and exit points based on cohort data, and reporting structures and varying assessments are strictly a matter of district preference. The true focus, then, must be centered on ways of making the AIS program effective, which is also left up to individual district discretion. The push, then, is to develop successful remediation strategies within the framework established by the state.

In response to this implicit push, it becomes necessary to investigate what makes such strategies effective. Manuela McCusker outlines fifteen key ingredients to a successful developmental reading/writing program on the community college level that can be adopted in a secondary setting as well. Five of her ideas that bear looking at are the ideas of knowing incoming students, developing pedagogical structures that utilize multiple learning systems, employing cross-curricular or collaborative efforts among faculty, having flexible testing/completion strategies, and connecting remediation to the students' content area (McCusker 2-5). These five elements will be used as the focus of the "unframing" strategy that will be outlined below, but, before approaching that, it is important to also recognize potential stumbling blocks that could have detrimental effects on a fledgling AIS program.

The problems that could face an AIS program range from the pedantic to the psychological. Basic problems such as class size, staffing, and scheduling are all given strict account in the Kadamus memo, but, if not looked at closely, could lead to a myriad of union and faculty-related concerns. Class overloads, improperly certified staff, and over-stressed faculty and student schedules all can lead to the breakdown of the AIS program, on both the level of student success and the level of student support of the program. An improperly articulated vision and objectives can also be a major obstacle in the sustenance of a winning AIS program. As Senge, et. al. point out, despite the best intentions, a poorly communicated program can lead to trouble. Once dialogue breaks down and "as the teachers close their doors," Senge states, "morale and innovation decline along with communication" (92). Administrative failures such as these can lead to the disenfranchisement of major stakeholders, inevitably leading to program failure.

While these issues are important, and shouldn't be overlooked in an overall discussion of AIS, there are also deeper implications to any remediation program that serve to separate, or, as an extreme, alienate, a segment of any cohort group. One such concern is the emotional effect on the students within the remediation course. Maxwell states that stand-alone remedial courses "have negative effects on students' attitudes and expectations,…lower their self-concepts, and make it more difficult for them to shed the image of being at-risk students"(qtd. in McCusker 3). With this in mind, then, it becomes essential to implement an AIS course structure that recognizes the affective impacts, as well as the pedagogical impacts, of instruction on students.

Thus, the mandates framed by the New York State Education Department must be unframed in order to encompass other, important aspects of student learning. The "unframing" of AIS is based on four major concepts that are tested and successful within the world of education. It is important to note that these four elements encompass McCusker's five elements of successful remediation programs, but also expand on them. The elements are: basing AIS on the Constructivist approach to learning, employing cross-curricular strategies in an effort to maximize student comprehension of "the big picture," employing technology and multiple intelligences strategies as a means of diversifying learning systems, and developing student-centered curricula that recognize the inherent drive for success within each student. By incorporating these four concepts into an AIS structure, the English department serves to not only sharpen pedagogy with an eye on student success, but also serves to increase student satisfaction and, therefore, effort.

Constructivist learning is the first element that needs to be included in an effective AIS program. Simply put, Constructivism "refers to the idea that learners construct knowledge for themselves," and that learning is an active process that is social in nature, contextual, and involves the use of language in constructing knowledge (http://www.artinsed.com/teachingarts/Pedag/Dewey.html). In fact, "without a base of acquired knowledge children lack the intellectual scaffolding to understand what they see around them or to integrate new information into their understanding" (Finn 147). As applied to AIS, it becomes an imperative that basic Constructivist principles are adopted as the core of the program's learning theory. For, a behaviorist approach, the opposite of Constructivism, focuses on the mastery of little parts of the more complex task as its core belief. This runs akin to a traditional drill and practice approach that would fall short of fully explaining the whole picture of the standards and exam tasks.

The Constructivist approach is best outlined by Brown, Collins, and Duguid in an article devoted to situated cognition. They state, in an interesting example that focuses on a math lesson in algorithms, that by embedding the task in a familiar activity (situating) that students recognize their prior knowledge as a scaffolding device from which to build. The example then goes on to discuss various methods of approaching the problem, followed by the students own generation of solution paths (Brown, Collins, Duguid). This example is illustrative of what Constructivist thinking can do for the AIS classroom, for, by following these ideas, the onus of the learning falls back on the student, thereby allowing that student to develop a deeper understanding of the standards and the task at hand.

In essence, the program should be highly formative, as Stephen North suggests when he says that writing center programs, like AIS programs, should be "highly individualized and contextualized" (qtd. in Law 106). A typical situation in AIS, for example, could be a student's weakness in reading comprehension that results in a score of 2 or lower on the Regents Exam's Task Three. Following the above method of situated learning, the AIS instructor would relate the task back to prior assignments learned in the student's regular English class, a quiz or test that utilized reading comprehension, for example. Discussion would follow, then, as to how to deconstruct the question and how to figure out a response strategy. Lastly, the student would attempt to rewrite the question with the new understanding of the process in mind, thereby generating his/her own solution path. Initially, then, AIS should take as its charge the need to first identify and strengthen weaknesses in the individual student's learning lexicon.

A second component of an effective AIS program is one that is not mentioned in the Kadamus memo. Cross-curricular strategies within the AIS classroom can only serve to strengthen the conceptual understanding of the inclusiveness of writing and learning that most students, especially remediation students, lack. According to Robert Reising, "good writers, like good writing habits, are formed outside the English language arts classroom as speedily and readily as they are inside that classroom" (71). The focus on school learning that emulates real world situations seems to bear this up, as well. Natural parallels exist between the skills assessed on the English regents and those measured on the various Social Studies exams. Fewer such parallels exist between English and the other core required AIS disciplines, math and science. It would seem, then, that coordinating AIS for both disciplines would be a positive and beneficial linkage, both pedagogically and administratively. On one level, similar skills are being addressed and strengthened, and, on another level, the demands on teacher schedules and faculty time commitments lessen.

Research into cross-curricular pairings has not been extensive, but the information found is heartening. Anecdotal success stories on the practitioner level abound, and can be used in conjunction with the recorded studies found. McCusker lists three studies that focused on this type of pairing, one by J.E. Olson and two by N.E. Commander and B.D. Smith, all at either the two or four year college level. All three studies resulted in successful outcomes. Of the Commander and Smith study conducted at California State University, McCusker states that this type of learning is so important because "cross-curricular learning can result in reinforcement, application, and relevancy" (97). While these studies were all conducted on the collegiate level, the needs they meet are the same needs that are present within a secondary school situation. There is very little difference between remedial college freshmen and remedial high school seniors and juniors. In short, through this and practitioner data, it is apparent that this type of learning can be successful in the high school AIS classroom, and should be employed.

A third element of a successful AIS program is the previously mentioned use of technology and multiple intelligences as the vehicles for McCusker's employment of multiple learning systems. These technology-based systems range from the basic, off-line variety to complex, asynchronous and synchronous web-based learning venues. But whatever their flavor, these systems add a dimension to AIS that functions well with the before mentioned Constructivist learning theory. For technology allows for a structuring and storing of information that enhances parent as well as student access to student generated work and progress indicators in a timelier and more efficient manner. It also makes the tracking and dissemination of information on an administrative level much easier, as teachers and administrators can conference via email or chat rooms about their AIS students.

A basic example of technology is that of the word processor. The inclusion of word processing software in an AIS plan is, perhaps, the most basic of all building blocks, but also the most important. The skills that arise from the daily working with the software complement the four ELA standards, for students are intertwining technology skills and strategies with personal approaches to writing. Utilized for text generation, "the word processor can be an effective tool in helping students to learn about narrative and expository text structure (description, sequence, comparison, cause and effect, problem solution patterns)"(Sponder 18). From this point, an AIS student can move on to some of the other technology-based systems that will allow for a more expansive treatment of multiple intelligences.

More complex technology-based delivery systems afford an AIS program some advantages that traditional remediation programs cannot. First, utilizing the Internet in pedagogy, whether it be simply maintaining student communication via email or having students participate in a real-time online chat, allows the instructor to break the traditional classroom paradigm, a construct that can be confrontational or trust inhibiting in some at-risk students. Online venues tend to encourage "communities…based largely on trust among students and instructors"(Poole 167), therefore leading to deeper engagement with the instructor and his/her content material. Ludlow goes as far as to suggest that "the relative anonymity and greater time for reflection of asynchronous delivery systems may improve participation and critical thinking" (26).

Online systems allow for a more sophisticated exchange of ideas, both between student and teacher and between student and student. One of the prime reasons for using an online venue is that students can work collaboratively on projects, either as peer editors or as co-authors of an assignment. "Unlike the exchange of printed paper-- highly vulnerable to unplanned student absences and lost papers-- these files remain permanent records for the writer, his or her peer reviewer, and the instructor" (Benson 62). Online systems also allow for the publication of student work, which increases student pride and conscientiousness. Such technology driven systems are strong in their own right, but, when used in conjunction with Constructivist principles and cross-curricular scheduling, they can become incredibly powerful.

The last element of an effective AIS program is one that has been highlighted throughout the discussion of the previous three elements. The focus of any student-centered curriculum is the student's learning, which is the cornerstone of Constructivist theory of learning. By turning the focus away from drill and practice, and turning it to the construction of knowledge based on past learning, the AIS system outlined here does, indeed, keep the student foregrounded in the instructional paradigm. Cross-curricular activities as possibly seen in combined English-Social Studies AIS classes mirror real-world, or authentic, activities that challenge students to pull from both fields of knowledge. By allowing students to develop their own solution strategies to problems ranging across the two disciplines, these students will surely build knowledge based on work that currently is seen as mutually (or peripherally, at best) exclusive. Lastly, the use of both synchronous and asynchronous technology serves to again redirect focus on the learner's construction of knowledge, as opposed to the instructor's conveyance of such knowledge. Perhaps, then, to say that student-centered learning is a distinct element of this AIS plan is to deny the very intertwined nature of the previous three elements; it would be best to say that this focus is the natural result of three strongly student-centered concepts.

New York State's mandated Academic Intervention Services plan is now in place. It is up to districts to look at their own plan and to answer some hard questions. The most pressing question, one that should be asked even before the preliminary scheduling of students and faculty takes place, is what is the overall objective of the AIS program. Is it to drill and practice? To apply a quick fix? Or is it to support and strengthen the students who have shown that they need assistance? The answers to those questions directly influence the direction an AIS program takes, but also speak to a deeper, philosophical commitment to students. AIS can be a fix-it shop, but it can also be something much more. Stephen North's proclamation for writing centers holds true for AIS as well when he states that "our job is to produce better writers, not better writing" (qtd. in Law 107). This, in the final estimation, is really what it should be all about.


Works Cited

Benson, Angela, and Elizabeth Wright. "Pedagogy and Policy in the Age of the Wired Professor." T.H.E. Journal. 27.4 (1999): 60-62.

Brown, J.S., et al. "Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning." 2002. Columbia University. 15 April 2002. .

"Constructivist Learning Theory." 15 April 2002.

Finn, Charles E. Jr., and Kanstoroom. "State Academic Standards." Brookings Papers on Education Policy. Diane Ravitch, ed. Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2001: 131-179.

Kadamus, James A. Guidelines for Implementing Academic Intervention Services. Albany: The State of New York State Education Department, 2000.

Law, Joe, and Christina Murphy. "Formative Assessment and the Paradigms of Writing Center Practice." The Clearing House. 71 (1997): 106-8.

Ludlow, Barbara L., and Michael C. Duff. "Distance Education and Tomorrow's Schools." Phi Delta Kappa Fastbacks. 439 (1998): 7-55.

McCusker, Manuela. "Effective Elements of Developmental Reading and Writing Programs." Community College Review. 27.2 (1999): 93-105.

Poole, Dawn M. "Student Participation in a Discussion-Oriented Online Course: A Case Study." Journal of Research on Computing in Education. 33.2 (2000): 162-77.

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