April 2008 Archives

I am confident we have no reason to teach what we cannot do. A professor has no business talking extensively on a subject he or she knows nothing about. Likewise a writing teacher shouldn't be teaching writing if he or she can't put a sentence together.

By the time most instructors finish their master's degrees and set about teaching, each has come up with a style of writing that carried that writer through school. Maybe someone pours a glass of Scotch and sets it on the windowsill with a cigarette. Then she writes all night and won't touch the goodies until she's done 5,000 words. Or maybe the writer writes a draft each day and rewrites every morning, but never on a Sunday. Maybe one writer revises as he writes, or writes it all in a 23-hour marathon.

The point is that most writing teachers have a system. We can do as well as teach. We know how good writing gets written. Especially by the time we are working on advanced degrees.

That said, this assignment in Missouri State's practicum--the "Writing What We Teach" assignment from English 603, practicum--helps and hurts instructors. It helps because it draws attention to the process of writing again, things we have internalized. It turns writing inside out, and gives us empathy for students. But it is also a chore, and it does destroy some of the mysticism about writing.

It takes off, as Hemingway said, "Whatever butterflies have on their wings." It dissects the magic. And although we gain empathy, we are forced to drag out all of our secrets and then use them, somehow, to find a way to teach our students. But don't most of us do that already? Maybe I'm wrong, but I think we do.

I think the problem is this: The assignment didn't force us to do anything differently. Speaking for myself, this is how I teach anyway. I tell my students about how I write, how others have written, and so on. We talk about the messy process--a buzzword for a long time now in composition classrooms--and we revise and rewrite and generally draft together. I write all the time anyway. In a very fundamental way, I am always writing what I teach.

I would guess that there are not a few students who, for example, write textual analyses in their advanced literature classes--Shakespeare and Chaucer, etc. So do we really need to do it again?

If anything, the "Writing What We Teach" assignment in our practicum helps us to be mindful, understanding, and empathetic. Everyone needs to be reminded of a student's plight sometimes. But we live a student's life, too. We lead double lives.

In conclusion, I can't say I will use this assignment when I teach my class. It hasn't modified my views on how to teach, what to lecture on, etc. (my pedagogy). This isn't a reflection on the assignment, of course, but simply an observation. Using my own writing process as an example for students--or as a way to understand students, or whatever--is just a side effect of the way I have always taught.

Last weekend I flew to Boston, via Providence and Chicago, and I met Sarah in Rhode Island. Then we took the train across the bay and met my friend Andrew Jackson at the South Station. Drew attends the Boston Conservatory; he's a classical composer. From there it was a mad dash to a community theatre, where Erica Spyres, Drew's girlfriend, was debuting in her first East Coast show. The play was called The Mystery of Edwin Drood, loosely based on the unfinished Charles Dickens novel of the same name. Sarah and I had a wonderful time, we all left together, and we ate Malaysian food at a restaurant near Erica and Drew's apartment.

Boston is an old city. Every building, including the apartment building, seems as if it was built between 1636 and 1942. Cathedrals and graveyards with crumbling headstones are sprinkled among the fast food chains, mega-bookstores, and office buildings. On Saturday we walked. We saw the graves of John Hancock, Ben Franklin's parents, Paul Revere, and Rev. John Winthrop (the true author of The City on the Hill speech). We ate sushi for lunch and walked down to the harbor where the fog was rolling in.

Saturday night we took the green and red trains to Harvard Square. I bought a sweatshirt with the Harvard name and colors. Sarah got a shirt, too. When the rain started in we ducked into a rare bookstore. The basement was stacked with books, and a Russian poster in the window promised potential. Drew spoted a rare autographed photo of a famous Canadian composer ($8,500). The owner of the store was Russian and he said, "It's very rare," when Drew gasped a little. I bought a first edition of The Short Stories of Anton Chekov ($19.95) published by the Modern Library and another book by Chekov's student, the first Russian to win the Nobel Prize for literature ($1.95). The second book was called The Gentleman From San Francisco & Other Stories. I couldn't resist! After that we had a wonderful seafood dinner and a beer.

Erica arrived home late from her second performance of Edwin Drood and Drew cooked her a heap of bacon. We were all exhausted from the walking during the day. Sarah and I had to get up early, find a ride to Providence, and fly out at 10:00 am or so. Drew called some of his friends, who pleasantly agreed to drive us up. We were very, very grateful, because it was that or an hour-long cab ride. So the friend, whose name was Matt, drove us into Rhode Island and we flew out. I can't wait to visit again next spring, when Drew and I will present our opera based on the final hours of life Rasputin spent (with his murderers). Maybe we'll run the Boston marathon, too... Maybe.