edited by Beth Parfitt

from instructors in the Emerson College First–Year Writing Program

a collection of voices

Teachers on Writing and Writers on Teaching

Teachers on Writingand

Writers on Teaching

a collection of voices from

instructors in the Emerson College

First–Year Writing Program

fywp

Property of the First–Year Writing Program.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored

in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any

means without written permission from the First–Year

Writing Program at Emerson College.

Cover and book design by Lauren Picard

Typeset by Lauren Picard

Summer 2011

Teachers on Writingand

Writers on Teaching

a collection of voices from

instructors in the Emerson College

First–Year Writing Program

edited by Beth Parfitt

a publication of the First–Year Writing ProgramBoston

Foreword

Greg Nichols, Reflections on Grad Life: A Self–Interview about Writing and Teaching at Emerson College

Amanda Jimenez, Zodiac Signs

Ben Lobpries, With Our Powers Combined...

Kat Gonso, Varying Authority Roles of the University Tutors in the High School Writing Center

Linwood Rumney

Sarah Ehrich, I Didn’t Know I was Doing That

Julia Grove

Kristina Kopić, To Write or Why to Write, That Is the Question—From Existential Meltdowns to Teaching Pedagogy

Peter Rosati, An Interview with First–Year Writing Instructor, Molly McGillicuddy

Emily Neeves

Aaron Block, iChing

1

5

9

11

13

16

17

20

21

27

34

35

Contents

Sebastian Stockman, Provisional Authority, Limited Influence: The Calderwood Fellow in the Snowden Classroom

Curtis Perdue

Laura Campagna, Discussing Race in the Classroom: Negotiating Identity and Power

Ben Lobpries, On Preparedness

Lauren Picard

Linwood Rumney

Molly McGillicuddy, Sentimentality

Contributors’ Notes

Acknowledgments

37

40

41

45

46

48

49

53

55

Contents (Cont’d)

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

1

I’m writing this introduction from an office on the 12th floor of the Emerson College Ansin Building, a building where many in-cluded in this anthology take classes, teach classes, and occa-sionally nap by the windows when they think no one is looking. My space is small, shaped like a slice of pizza, and holds seven years of teaching documents—some borrowed, some new. It has a door that closes, many bookshelves where I can stack my treasures, and chairs for others to join me. Though some may call it small, I call it my own, and I can safely say I’m exactly where I want to be:

Working as a teacher and a writer, teaching writing, in a tiny slice of Boston.

Like many young professionals trying to figure out the mean-ing of the term “career,” I lived my twenty–something years with something of an identity crisis. From the day I stepped off Boston Common and through the Ansin Building’s heavy glass doors, I was determined to take graduate writing classes by day, write stories by night and in two and a half years, somehow turn myself into a writer. This was the dream, right? You go to gradu-ate school, someone gives you the magic formula, and after just a few semesters they let you cross the stage wearing one those of colorful hoods that not even the PhDs know how to drape. But when you’re twenty–three, a year is an eternity and just a few semesters later I found myself in the reverse position: teach-ing classes by day, taking classes by night, and writing in the Starbucks down the street while I attempted to suck down a tall

Foreword

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

2 skim latte and ponder what I was supposed to tell people when they inquired: What is it that you do?

I’m a writer—no, I’m a teacher—actually, I’m a writing teacher?

To give you some personal history (because nonfiction MFAs always will), I’ve always had trouble with the concept of labels. Back in kindergarten my parents forced me to conquer the spell-ing in my four syllable name, “Elizabeth,” instead of using my familial nickname “Beth,” which I’d come to consider the norm. Their well-intended plan worked for a year, but revenge struck early when my first-grade classmates coined me “Liz,” a nick-name my mother would have preferred outlawed. Pretty soon I was Elizabeth to my teachers, Beth to my brothers, and Liz to all my new best friends. Suddenly I had multiple audiences and multiple roles to play, and it took years to reconcile how to in-troduce myself in various social circles, let alone consider which title should become my official pen name.

This is probably why I had such difficulty coming to terms with the many labels I was juggling in the professional world. The more invested I became in teaching, the more it became a part of my writing. The more I used it in my writing, the better I un-derstood that the identity crisis I’d concocted didn’t really stem from my parents ill will at all (thank you cathartic memoir work-shops), but rather from a deep–seated desire to make everyone happy. The students, the teachers, and myself. Once I stopped trying to compartmentalize my life, I figured out how easy it was to embrace each piece of the whole.

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

3

It took many years of meticulous assignment design, painstak-ing student comments, and reflective personal essays, but at this point I think I can finally accept that embracing a home as a teacher has turned me into a writer. It may be too late to fix my split personality, but it’s never too late to discover the power of a home. For me, when I can write, I’m at home.

Yet my story is only one in this collection of writing from teach-ers in the First–Year Writing Program. The pieces here are one part reflection, one part entertainment, one part therapy, with a generous sprinkling of magic, not so unlike a few graduate writing workshops we’ve all attended. Greg sets the tone with a laid–back conversation, Molly plays verbal hardball with a stu-dent she admires, Tina examines a hot issue with psychological and existential flair, and Aaron keys it all up to the soundtrack of his world—just to name a few. Glancing at the lineup now, it’s everything I’d expect from a bunch of writers, sitting around a table, talking about teaching.

The instructors in our program, many included here, are among the most passionate, talented and just plain fun people I know (check out the Haikus inside). They are also excellent teachers and writers. With that in mind, this anthology is meant to cel-ebrate the many roles we all play and the writing that is inspired by a hard day at the office—or for most of us, an early Monday morning, in a tiny windowless classroom, with a group of 18 stu-dents all very far from home, staring expectantly at you, waiting for the magic to begin.

—Beth Parfitt

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

4

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

5

What genres are you interested in?

I came to Emerson exclusively writing fic-tion. Well no, that’s not quite right. I wrote emails and post–it notes and sappy love letters, which usually weren’t fiction (may-be the love letters, a bit). But I fancied myself a fiction writer first and foremost. Since coming to Emerson I’ve discovered the joy of nonfiction; both creative and scholarly, to draw a worthless distinction.

Describe your writing habits. Do you keep a schedule?

For a long time (a few years) I had a 1000 word per day schedule. It was a great way to make myself sit down, get started, and then stay with it long enough to get over that 600 word slump. In the last couple

years—pretty much since I got to Emer-son—I’ve switched to more of a deadline driven schedule. I make sure to always have at least one big project in the works (not hard with a thesis looming) and a few smaller projects that generally wind up getting abandoned or absorbed into oth-er things. Sometimes the deadlines come from classes, though more often they’re self–imposed.

I have a lot of guilt when I feel I’m not writing enough. That’s especially true when I find I’m making excuses not to write. Teaching, academic pursuits, set-ting myself up for the big “next step” in life—these are all things I care about and should spend time on, but not to the exclusion of my writing. Of course that might not be the best way to phrase it, since teaching and academics aren’t al-

Reflections on Grad Life: A Self–Interview about Writing and Teaching at Emerson College

by Greg Nichols

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

6

ways separate from my creative writing. It’s odd how they tend to overlap, how the fruits of one randomly get devoured by another. My creative writing has certainly changed with the introduction of comp/rhet and pedagogical theory. Maybe not stylistically, but I’m much more aware of politics of representation, of the power language has. My pedagogical interests have made me a more careful writer.

Why did you decide to attend the WLP Graduate Program at Emerson?

They let me in, which was a big draw. I think Boston had a lot to do with it; I want-ed to be in a new city and I wanted to live back east and I’m a big fan of brick build-ings. I was apprehensive about the size of the program and apprehensive about the funding (I was lucky to get an assistant-ship, but it still didn’t cover tuition). I came from a big undergrad university; looking back I think I often felt overwhelmed, lost in a sea of people and personalities and professors who didn’t know my name. I was scared to repeat that in grad school.

What ended up happening, though, is I became super motivated once I made the decision to enroll. I said, “well, if it’s going to be Emerson, I’m going to get my nose in everything they have to offer.” And I’m proud to say I’ve done that. And though it may not have been what I was think-ing from the beginning, I’ve retroactively come to believe that WLP is probably the best program in the country for me at this particular moment in my life—there are amazing resources and amazing opportu-nities, and, importantly, none of them are going to be spoon fed to you. It’s made

me go after things, and I think I’m a better writer and student because of it.

What’s happening after graduation? How do you think your degree will help and/or hinder you professionally?

More grad school. I’m pretty thrilled about comp/rhet. That’s another thing that just sort of jumped on top of me at the right moment in my life. As for the MFA, I can’t think of better preparation (both strategically—in terms of getting accepted—and practically). On a strate-gic level, our program (FYWP) is like some kind of awesome incubator of comp/rhet superheroes. I’ll have conference experi-ence, research experience, teaching ex-perience, and professional development knowledge coming out of this—to say nothing of my newfound and solidly in-stilled belief that writing can change the world. I’ve had a healthy dose of theory in a few directed studies and lit classes.

At the same time, I’ve pursued things I thought were entirely un–academic, strictly creative, and those have turned into the most amazing research opportu-nities—things I’d like to write an academ-ic thesis about. So yeah, I think the MFA, combined with FYWP, has helped a ton.

Have you taken WR600: Teaching First–Year Writing? Why or Why not?

Wait … am I allowed to take it again?

I did take it, and the sole reason was to get a teaching gig. That said, I fell in love with pedagogy and composition along

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

7

the way. I also became a better academic writer, which was unexpected but really helpful. I’ve had great classes at Emerson. WR600 has probably been the best.

Why did you choose to apply as a grad-uate student teacher?

At first it was for a little bit of money and so I could get a teaching job elsewhere after graduation. Through WR600, I defi-nitely started to see teaching more as an opportunity in itself, a chance to put into practice a whole bunch of ideas and theo-ries and hunches—both my own and oth-ers’. WR600 made me really appreciate the political, social, and ethical aspects of teaching. It also made me want to be part of a cool–looking community. In an inse-cure way, I definitely wanted to be “on the inside.”

How has taking WR600 and/or teach-ing affected your writing or writing habits?

Both have made me much more careful about language and representation. I feel like a switch flipped at some point dur-ing WR600. I started to see language as a way to represent reality. I started to see how people use language to exclude, to divide, to discriminate—all those socio-political touchstones—and also to build beautiful versions of the world. So I’m using language in a different, more con-scientious way, and I’m also playing with language, using it to build characters and skew expectations. By learning how to teach texts, how to teach students to get inside texts, I’ve also come to appre-

ciate structure. I dug it before, don’t get me wrong, but now I feel like it has such importance to the meaning of a text—al-most as much as the language itself.

How has your writing informed your teaching? Are there any exercises, projects, ideas, or readings that have crossed over from your practices as a writer or your studies as a graduate student into your own classroom?

I think so far this has happened on a sub-ject/topic basis. I’m definitely teaching things that I have a creative interest in. I find that I let myself delve more deeply into a subject I want to teach by also get-ting some creative play out of it.

On the other hand, I let myself go to town on creative research because I find ways to build assignments and class discus-sions out of it. I’ve also borrowed several exercises from my own creative writing teachers—particular interview exercises and association exercises and freewrites on various topics.

Are there any practices, exercises, or ideas that have crossed over from your classroom into your own practice as a writer?

Definitely the careful attention to struc-ture. The idea that every word and every paragraph and every section say some-thing and do something, and that what they say and do adds to and is a part of a larger text. So maybe not specific exercis-es, but certainly a carefulness, an aware-ness of rhetorical technique.

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

8

What have you learned about yourself as a writer through teaching?

I think mostly I’ve learned that I’m ac-countable as a writer. If I’m telling stu-dents they’ve got to pay attention to the details, they’ve got to use language and technique precisely, they’ve got to ac-count for the big picture, then I need to hold myself to that as well. I write some frivolous stuff, don’t get me wrong, but I have a better feel for why it’s frivolous, and I don’t let myself get away with short-

cuts or easy outs. Grading 50 papers riddled with clichés, and grading them hard, makes you think twice about using clichés. Telling someone to back up, to analyze how an essay hangs together, will make you much more conscious of what happens between the opening scene and the final paragraph of your own work.

So I’m more conscious of the process of writing, of the responsibility of the writer, and of the different moves and techniques that make a piece of writing effective.

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

9

“True power comes from dexterity, not from within us.”—Marcell Murray, Aquarius

Nathalie walked into classwearing beads in her hair,plastic bangles. She satin the middle of the table,small behind the whitetable top of collegeclassrooms. She lookedlike a gypsy: eclectic,waiting for the next unknownto walk in the door,inquire about their sign. Heaven

walks in second, all smiles. Nathalie asks,“what’s your sign?” before we ask“what’s your name?” Heaven responds—”I’m a libra, why?”The assessment was quick;I almost missed the instant wide eyed

Zodiac Signsby Amanda Jimenez

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

10

possession that passed over Nathalie’s face.(I imagined her bangles making noiseas she picked up her hand,pointed a finger to Heaven)—

“Yeah, I can see that. Libra’s are creativeand smart and all about balance.I like the way that leopard scarf matcheswith your yellow shoes. Very libra.”

Students kept swimming into the classto find seats next to strangersuntil Nathalie asked, “what’s your sign?”and universal judgements were madeand we all laughed. Is this notwhat we we’re here foron these five Saturday mornings?To call out our stereotypes,make jokes of assumptions,read the signs, persuade directionand write our own destinies?

We spent those six weeksin unprecedented unity,and learned to help each otherread the stars with our own eyes.

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

11

My friend Maire and I have become something of a duo around campus. We get coffee together, work out together (sometimes while wearing matching out-fits), crash each other’s office hours, and occasionally even teach class together. During an informal IT session with our mentor and fashion icon Beth Parfitt, Maire and I began our usual banter, which amused Beth to the point that she sug-gested we “take our show on the road.”

This quickly evolved into a conversa-tion about how the two of us should com-bine our WR101 classes, and the following is what transpired between 8:30—9:45 am on Friday, October 15th, 2010:

We staged an informal meet and greet between our two 101 sections in a con-ference room in Piano Row. After help-ing themselves to juice and coffee and

doughnuts, students gathered around tables based on groupings created in advance, and as they traded names and backstories, we drew a wheel of discus-sion topics on the board. We encouraged them to spend a few minutes on each topic and to use their time together as a brainstorming session for their upcoming writing assignments.

Since Maire’s class was forwarding Glo-ria Anzaldua and my class was forward-ing Arlie Russell Hochschild, we had to get creative in devising topics that were broad enough to be applicable to both.

Once the brainstorming was under-way, the two of us made the rounds, join-ing each group just long enough to put in our two cents; however, what we didn’t reveal to the students until later was that, while I was attempting to effectively for-ward ideas and information within the

With Our Powers Combined...by Ben Lobpries

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

12

contexts of their conversations, Maire was demonstrating how to ineffectively enter into discourse.

Both classes had been assigned Jo-seph Harris’s chapter on Forwarding as that day’s reading, but despite his ref-erence to the dinner party analogy, in which you enter into discourse much the same way you would join a conversation already underway at a social event, none of them seemed to make the connection. Nor were they able to detect the motives behind Maire’s abrupt and disconcerting assertions, which often stopped the con-versation dead in its tracks. After having them reflect on the dynamics at work in their groups and the effects of Maire’s and my presence, we turned their atten-

tion to that day’s homework, and the light bulbs slowly began to go off.

While I’m not certain they took full advantage of the opportunity to brain-storm, they did seem to enjoy the inter-active illustration of Unit 2’s key concept. My students in particular had begun to anticipate their classroom activities in a way that was breeding complacency, so if nothing else, it was a good point in the semester to shove them out of their com-fort zones and make them engage with a new group of peers.

Plus, for the rest of the semester, if I caught them asserting underdeveloped opinions, I was able to say, “Hey...You’re being a Maire.”

“Don’t be a Maire.”

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

13

What makes The Snowden Writing Center unique is not only its sisterhood with near–by Emerson College, but also its commitment to community. Tutors are integral to the school’s population. Contrary to other Writing Centers, tutors aren’t confined to the physical space of the Writing Center, a drab room tucked away behind the library; rather, we are constantly entering the classroom. This integral nature means that tutors wear multiple hats, including academic sup-port, mentor, authority figure, peer, col-league, and researcher.

In–class tutoring varies, depending on teacher demand, from pulling students out of English class to work privately on an essay about the villains of A Raisin in the Sun to helping students practice lines for theatre class to functioning as an in–class roaming advisor for students working on

essays, stories, or research projects. I must admit that during the first sev-

eral weeks as a tutor at Snowden, I was hesitant about this third approach. The concept of going to the student, rather than the student coming to the tutor seemed backwards, foreign. However, I quickly noted the benefits of this unique technique. Classes at Snowden are large, making it impossible for teachers to give each student the individual attention he/she needs. By entering the classroom, tu-tors become an organic part of the space. Over time, I became comfortable negoti-ating the physical classroom.

Likewise, I believe that students also began to find comfort in my presence, looking to me as an ambassador between teacher and student. Often, students feel comfortable asking tutors questions that they find too intimidating to ask teach-

Varying Authority Roles of the University Tutors in the High School Writing Center

by Kat Gonso

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

14

ers, or too embarrassed to ask in front of an entire class of peers. Tutors don’t dole out the grade, making us much less intimidating. By being in the classroom, we make our presence known and read-ily available. Often, I wonder how many students would have been too nervous or uncomfortable—or perhaps unaware of the service—to come into the Writing Center for help if they hadn’t already met a tutor during class.

Through these atypical tutoring meth-ods, Snowden tutors become an active part of everyday student life. Each time I walk into the school, teachers, students, and even the headmaster toss me a hello. Many students ask me about my daily as-signments, when I will be around for af-ter–school tutoring, and even questions about my life outside of Snowden. Ev-eryone knows everyone. At first I thought this communal, informal approach might take away some of my authority as tutor. However, I was presented with the exact opposite outcome. I find that the informal communal nature of the Writing Center allows our work to transcend classroom walls and act as a foundation, a constant, for work being done throughout the school.

Many of our students don’t just need academic support. They also need per-sonal support. Too many to count com-mute into the city from rough areas like Dorchester and Roxbury Crossing. Tutors provide another sounding board for aca-demic and personal troubles.

For example, in January of 2010, one student was shot and killed directly out-side of his home. I can’t tell you how many students paused during a tutoring session, mid–sentence, to ask me how I felt about the situation or to express what

they’d been thinking about the tragedy. One student peered over at me dur-ing the middle of writing a paper about Albert Einstein and said, “You know his brother saw it all happen, Kat. He’s a real funny guy. Always laughing. I don’t think he’ll be so fun anymore.”

I’m not saying that tutors should be counselors. In fact, entering that role would be dangerous territory. What do you report? What do you say? How do you react? Rather than taking on the ad-ditional role as counselor, I’m calling out for our presence in the school to give the students extra support. Often the rela-tionships fostered between student and tutor is less distant than those between student and teacher. While we are in a position of power, that position is less threatening than the ultimate authority of the grade–giving teacher.

I’ve also found that each tutor partici-pates in the community in a unique way. For example, Kelly works well with quiet students, the students that don’t possess the self–esteem to take ownership over their ideas. One exciting event occurred when Snowden graduate and Northeast-ern University freshman, Victoria, swung by the Writing Center for some help on a paper about perspective for her freshman writing seminar. Ever adaptable, Kelly was excited to help, and together, they spent over two hours revising the draft. Another Emerson tutor, Ben, has found a connec-tion with another student through con-sistent one–on–one sessions designed to foster reading compression. As this particular student lacks enthusiasm, Ben tried a unique tactic. Together, he and the student read and analyzed Tim Sale’s collection of comics, Tales of the Batman.

In a similar fashion, I established an

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

15

on–going weekly session with Sarah, a senior with a learning disorder striving for graduation and college acceptance. Sar-ah and I worked well together. We’re both loud and spunky. We like to get off topic and talk about boys and her trip to Spain, and that’s okay. Of course, we still get the work done. Throughout the Spring ’09 semester, I helped Sarah research feminist studies as a lens into Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. I’ve worked with Sarah one–on–one and in class. It was exciting to see her revise her college essays and dive into her se-nior project. However, near the end of the semester Sarah contracted a severe case of senioritis; she began skipping and fail-ing classes. She also began missing our weekly tutoring session.

Here’s where the role as a Calder-wood fellow gets tricky. Unlike at Emer-son, where I’m the teacher, I don’t have the authority to intervene in Sarah’s case. I watched as her behavior affected her academic progress. Existing within the nebulous roles of tutor, mentor, and au-thority figures put me in an awkward po-sition. What can I, as a tutor, do when a student begins to fall behind academical-ly? I can tell her teachers. Tell the direc-tor of the Writing Center. But what about emotionally? How close can you get with-out overstepping your boundaries? Re-

garding Sarah’s situation, I informed Paul, the Writing Center Director of her missed sessions and odd behavior, and hoped for the best. Though it was hard for me not to get too involved in Sarah’s situation (over the weeks, I’d grown invested in her prog-ress), it was important for me to step back and examine exactly which role I needed to be inhibiting at that time, for Sarah’s sake. She didn’t need a friend. And, in a lot of ways, at that point she didn’t need a tutor. Rather, she needed a larger author-ity that I wasn’t necessarily in the position to provide.

What this situation illustrates is the tutor’s ambiguous, occasionally frustrat-ing role in the school. So, what does it mean to be a “tutor”? How can we ful-fill this role to the best of our capabilities while the other satellite roles compete for our attention? Lastly, which are the right roles to fill, and when? In order to maintain my authority as a tutor, I had to be careful not to become too involved in Sarah’s personal life. Though difficult at times, I focused my energies on the task at hand, which was writing her senior pa-per on Hurston. Although the course of action may not always be clear, the roles of our job sometimes blurry, I believe that through the act of simply being aware of and acknowledging these juggling roles, we can become better tutors.

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

16

Describe your writing habits. Do you keep a schedule?After struggling to figure out a writing schedule for two semesters of working as an adjunct at two different colleges, I finally found one that works for me. Three days a week I get up at 4:30 am to write, and I try to fit in writing on the weekends when I can swing it. Getting up so early works for me because it is the only time of the day when I can sit down at my desk without letting other responsi-bilities come between me and my writing.

Why did you choose to apply as a graduate student teacher? I worked in an office environment for a few years, but it didn’t suit me. While teaching as an adjunct definitely has some drawbacks, most notably salary and the yearly scramble for health insurance, it demands that I am creative and intellectually engaged in ways that were actively discouraged in other jobs I’ve had.

—Linwood Rumney, Poet and Instructor in FYWP

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

17

I didn’t learn how to write in school. My development as a writer happened outside of the classroom—where I had parents and older siblings who acted as sounding boards for my ideas and as edi-tors of my drafts. Their involvement en-couraged me to reflect on how I thought and wrote. With their support, I learned how to brainstorm freely and at length before I set to writing. My father, who has an astonishing ability to organize infor-mation, taught me how to reverse outline and determine the logical ordering of my thoughts. Now as an educator, I realize the individual attention I received from my family taught me how to tackle writing.

Over the past five years, I have worked as a writing tutor for a range of students—college and graduate students and urban and suburban high schoolers. You’d think that I’d mostly see differences across the

groups, but there is something striking they have in common: most students I meet need help understanding their own writing process, and almost none of them have had the individual attention that fa-cilitates this kind of reflection.

Writing is elusive and frequently diffi-cult. It is a complex process, presenting challenges every step of the way—from initial brainstorming to final edits. Be-cause each student has a unique set of strengths, weaknesses, talents, interests and insecurities, it is difficult for an educa-tor to quickly assess their students’ needs in writing instruction. Individualized con-versations offer an educator the opportu-nity to better understand her students as writers and to encourage her students to reflect on their own writing method.

Talking about the writing process (ap-proaches to brainstorming, drafting, revis-

I Didn’t Know I was Doing Thatby Sarah Ehrich

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

18

ing, editing) is empowering. As students begin to understand themselves as writ-ers (and thinkers), they gain agency and authority over their work and become more motivated and committed to im-proving.

While I’ve known this intuitively, it be-came clear as day when I tutored Alice.

Alice is seventeen and a freshman in high school. I met her one afternoon in a basement classroom with no windows. I didn’t ask how she had fallen so far be-hind or how she decided to earn extra credits in the afterschool program where I tutor, but I know other students in her position tend to have experienced a lack of individual attention both at home and at school.

Alice met our task with reluctance: she had to write a story. “I don’t like making stuff up,” she said, when I asked why she didn’t want to do the assignment. I sus-pected she didn’t know where to begin.

So that’s where we started.“Is there a story you know and like?” I

asked. She paused. “We read The Giver in

class. I liked that.”With what she knew and liked as our

launching pad, we discussed the basic el-ements of The Giver. She required guid-ance, but offered answers and became the most effusive when talking about the characters. I made sure to point that out to her.

“So,” I said after, “How do you start your story?”

“Um… With characters?” “Sounds good.” We came up with characters, which

led to setting and conflict. While Alice still wasn’t particularly excited, she did pick up her pencil.

And then something glorious hap-pened: Alice sat beside me and wrote without lifting her pencil for five minutes! This in itself was an accomplishment. Then it got even better. Alice showed me her draft and there was much to talk about.

The paper between us, I told her, “Al-ice, this is good. See how you have this short sentence after three long ones? You created emphasis.” I pointed to the spe-cific place on the page, showing her what I meant.

“Oh,” she responded, “I didn’t know I was doing that.”

I didn’t know I was doing that. The phrase hit me over the head. Of course she didn’t know; probably no one had pointed it out to her and asked her to think about it.

Once Alice understood something concrete about the way she writes, she wanted to learn more. We discussed the places where she found herself stuck and those where the words flowed. When ini-tially Alice concentrated on picking pol-ish from her nails, now she was engaged both in writing and talking about writing.

Writing was no longer a mystery she couldn’t solve—it was a set of skills she could hone by capitalizing on her strengths and tackling her weaknesses. Before leaving, she asked two questions that make teachers want to teach more:

“Will you be here tomorrow? Can we work on this some more?”

As a tutor, I have the luxury of focus-ing on the individual student—discover-ing the way she thinks and how she ap-proaches writing. Through exploratory and reflective conversation, the student discovers that writing is a set of skills and individualized methods that can be prac-ticed and honed.

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

19

My tutorial sessions don’t always end as perfectly as it did with Alice (nor do they always begin with such difficulty). And it will take time and practice for Al-ice to gain the skills she needs in writing to catch up. But my experience tutoring

writing has been that talking with a stu-dent about her individual process helps her feel like a writer with a method. It gives her the confidence and the motiva-tion to keep at it.

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

20

What have you learned about yourself as a writer through teaching?What’s happening after graduation? How do you think your degree will help and/or hinder you professionally?I’m headed to an English Lit doctoral program after graduation, so my publishing degree may not be the most applicable, but my time as part of the FYWP has ruined me (in a very good way!) for anything else. The book editing dreams that brought me to Emerson have long since been replaced by those of college teaching.

—Julia Grove, Publishing, Instructor in FYWP

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

21

The call–for–writing to which this essay is responding states the following in its prompt: “As members of this department, instructors in the FYWP straddle the line between teaching and writing with im-measurable skill and flair…and also [with] the occasional existential breakdown.”

When Beth Parfitt read this passage to us at our end–of–semester FYWP faculty meeting, she paused after the existential breakdown, grinned in my direction and said, “a shout-out to Tina!” And I, without missing a beat, raised my hand to wave to the sentiment, or I might have raised my fist—victory–style. But either way, I responded as if to say present! at roll–call and to admit that I was guilty as charged: during my first year of teaching writing composition, I had approximately three existential breakdowns.

In many ways an existential breakdown

is a very invisible and very viral ailment. I found myself entrusted with a classroom of WR101 students and at first glance everything seemed to be going remark-ably smoothly. The students were quite intelligent and informed on basic world affairs—perhaps I just had low expecta-tions of them, but I was pleasantly sur-prised when they brought up the conflict between Israel and Palestine as an exam-ple of current events in addition to Lady Gaga’s latest music video. On top of that, they also managed to follow directions reasonably well, did their homework on WebCT, and stopped talking out of order when I told them to.

It felt as if I’d been entrusted with some magic power to summon a roomful of young people three times a week and make them listen to me and talk about whatever I proposed we talk about that

To Write or Why to Write, That Is the Question—From Existential Meltdowns to Teaching Pedagogy

by Kristina Kopić

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

22

week. At that first glance, nothing was wrong.

But at the same time, the whole situ-ation didn’t feel right to me. I kept won-dering so what? which was the question my students were supposed to answer in their meaningful essay endings. So what if they were mostly paying attention and maintaining basic courtesy and personal hygiene? Why did this matter? Where was I going with them? What was I trying to teach them? As the term existential break-down suggests, I was, at the root of it all, breaking down existence—my existence as a teacher and a writer—taking it apart like a watch.

Ultimately my aspiration was more or less the same as almost any other teach-er’s in our program; I wanted my students to become sensible, critically–thinking human beings and citizens. But once I had reached that conclusion, once I’d tak-en the watch apart and saw all the cogs and springs, I wasn’t quite so sure how to fit them back together into an apparatus that was supposed to tell me what time it was. Here I hope to chart the process of this breaking down, freaking out and then finally finding some stability in myself as a writer–teacher.

As it turned out, there was a discon-nect between me and my students. While the vast majority of them seemed to be relatively ahistorical freshmen who were taking four other classes and having a pri-orities list on which “writing” was placed in alphabetical order, I was voluntarily an MFA candidate in fiction. In short, we didn’t really see eye–to–eye when it came to the necessity and value of writing. And the fact that I didn’t have a clue really, what on earth I was doing (in general, but especially) in the classroom didn’t really

help this disconnect. How exactly could I tell my students that this class, which they are swearing they should have AP–ed out of, was actually beneficial for their devel-opment as a sensible, critically–thinking human being and citizen?

The way I saw it (or rather the way Adri-enne Rich puts it far more eloquently than I could): as writers, we work “in a medium which can be, has been, used as an instru-ment of trivialization and deceit, not to mention colonization and humiliation,… But the [writer] can re–fuse the language given to him or her, bend and torque it into an instrument for connection instead of dominance and apartheid” (Rich xvi). So there I was, myself trying to figure out how to build some level of skill within this complex medium called language and I found myself freaking out because, wasn’t I also supposed to teach students how to gain more control over this torquing and bending?

If you right now are thinking that to view language, and our work as writers, through such a grand and poetic lens is entirely intimidating to the point of pa-ralysis, I concede that you have a point. I also grant without contest that this phi-losophy of language as the medium that shakes and moves all of world history might not be the best approach when try-ing to teach writing to a dozen homesick 18–year–olds. I grant all this, but my exis-tential problem was that it is precisely this intimidating, challenging potential power in language that draws me to writing—the fact that it’s an art as well as a craft and is nearly infinite in its reach.

I simply didn’t feel like I was teaching writing if I was unable to make my students see the power of language. If I couldn’t show them why writing is important then

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

23

how could I show my readers that my writ-ing is important? I was torn, so, to cope, I brought my griefs and doubts to my men-toring group (where Beth had the dubi-ous fortune of being my mentor).

There, for about a year, I would slouch in a chair speaking in paragraphs of in-complete sentences with strands of my hair defying gravity—the exact opposite of the calm, confident and cool teacher (complete with ripped jeans, flip flops and sunglasses on my head) that I was in front of the classroom. But most impor-tantly, while slouching I would also listen to Greg and Emily (my fellow group mem-bers) talking about their doubts and trou-bles. It was this sharing of experiences, the frequent bouncing around of ideas via e–mail and over lunches that finally made me realize that the primary discon-nect wasn’t necessarily that the students actively didn’t care about writing, but rather that that wasn’t why they were tak-ing the class.

Namely, while I wanted to teach writ-ing, most of my students didn’t so much want to learn to write as they wanted to get an “A” in the class—and if any learn-ing happened to occur, it seemed to be a side–effect, a sort of means to their end. Why it took me a year to figure this out, I don’t know—after all that was also how I treated all my general education classes in college—but once I realized their mindset, my mission had become to redirect my students’ reason for being in the class.

My new goal in teaching was to steer students away from wanting the grade and toward a better grasp on composing their thoughts. And indeed it worked, but only to a certain degree. They were now producing neat, even well–composed, lifeless essays that they then locked away

in a drawer (more often than not without the coveted “A”) and forgot about. This bothered me for a couple of reasons.

On the one hand it’s grossly boring to read and grade essays written because of, and for, the teacher, on the other, I just feel that my students were missing the point—the so what?—when they produce such writing. In his introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2008, Sal-man Rushdie laments a similar problem with the editorial selection process he ex-perienced:

There were so many stories that were well observed, well crafted, full of well-honed phrases; so many rhyth-mic, allusive, technically sophisticated stories that knew when to leave mat-ters unresolved and when it was right to bring events to a dramatic climax; so many stories that had everything one could wish for in a story … except for the sense that it had to be writ-ten, that it was necessary (emphasis mine). This was what I had expected and perhaps feared: a widespread, humorless, bloodless competence (Rushdie xiv-xv).

Granted, I’m not grooming my students to enter the ranks of the Best American College Composition Essays (if such a publication exists, I’d like to know of it) but I don’t want them to turn out merely competent. I want them to be engaged, to be interested, to be vested in their thoughts and words. After all, wasn’t this the whole point of what Lloyd Bitzer was talking about when he spoke of rhetorical situations and exigence?

For me, this urgency is the bridge be-tween creative writing and composition, indeed the convergence point of all writ-ing. For writing to even have a chance to

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

24

ever be good, there needs to be a need for it—craft comes after exigence, prac-tice after purpose. Once students knew why they wanted to write an essay, my work in helping them with the composi-tion became almost easy.

In order to implement my new ap-proach to teaching, I used the work of Simon Sinek, an author and leadership expert. In his talk on How Great Leaders Inspire Action, he presents a theory of communication that he calls the Golden Circles approach (Sinek). The gist is that most people communicate ineffectively because they first tell others what they’re doing (for example, repairing a car), then how they’re doing it (by replacing the ig-nition coil) and only then why they’re do-ing it (to drive across five states and visit the love of one’s life). Sinek goes on to say that to communicate effectively, we have to invert the order of these steps: first ex-plain why we’re doing something so that people are motivated to bear with us and be on board and only once they’re on board and are inspired to listen to more, should we go on with how we intend to do it and what we intend to do.

By now I’ve had plenty of opportu-nity to be convinced by this method—students indeed tend to listen better if I anchor the lesson in a larger framework that has clear reasons. For example, when we discuss the role universities play in society, they tend to be more on board about having to take college composi-tion. Even just thinking of my brief car example above, I find myself much more likely to stop and listen to someone who says, hey, I’m really in love and would like to visit him/her, wanna help me out? than I do to someone who says, hey, I’m repair-ing a car, wanna help me out?

But for those of you who are into car repairs, Sinek has some very striking anal-yses of the communication strategies of successful leaders who’ve changed his-tory, and it turns out they indeed follow the Golden Circles approach of why–how–what. Like he says, there is a reason why Martin Luther King didn’t make the “I Have A Plan” speech, but the “I Have a Dream” speech (Sinek). I’ve come to ac-cept that if I want an engaged classroom, it’s my job to first inspire the students.

The first time I tried tackling this inspi-ration process through the “why” ques-tion was in WR101 while covering Harris’s coming to terms. I had my students do a free–write that said to forget about what Harris says coming to terms means and just to think of the phrase as they know it and of some things they had to come to terms with. The subsequent discussion was filled with everything ranging from winning the lottery, to moving away from home for the first time, to parents’ divorc-es, to deaths in the family.

After we had a long list up on the board for everyone to see, I asked them to do another free–write and this time to explain why we had to come to terms with these things. The words they offered this round were fewer and included, “to un-derstand,” “to cope,” “to move on,” and “to forgive.” And each time they gave me a reason as to why they had to come to terms with things, I asked why it was im-portant to do that—so for example, why understand? Why cope? And so on. I was inducing a mini, controlled existential break-down in them, if you will.

The result of this cascading question-ing was that the students, usually eager to have their opinions heard, grew in-creasingly more quiet and stumped. We

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

25

had begun with the “why” being under-standing what another person is saying and by the end, we were proposing that we needed to come to terms with texts to gain an understanding of how this world functions and how we exist in its many contexts. I was exuberant that our discus-sion had come that far. I recapped it for everyone and when I was done gestur-ing wildly, I realized the room had gone completely quiet. This lasted a good ten seconds until one of my acting students broke the silence by crossing his eyes and making an explosion sound effect, his hands indicating the trajectory of a splat-tering, blown up brain. We all laughed at that, but the silence encroached again—not the empty, bored kind, but a contem-plative quiet. Looking around the room, I knew that at least for that moment, I had them where I wanted them—at the edge of their comfort zone—and their heads were still on their shoulders to boot.

Harris’s coming to terms wasn’t just a trite piece of jargon to be forgotten any-more, but an actual tool for accessing this civilization we’ve created and this world we live in. In that brief moment they were beginning to understand that the reason they were sitting in their desks and writ-ing essays was to acquire more tools to access, understand, connect to and may-be even change this world. They’d come face–to–face with the so what of that re-quired WR101 class.

Since becoming conscious of this method of communicating, I’ve structured my semesters around it. In the very begin-ning, on the very first day if time permits, I ask them to free–write in response to my favorite question of all: what is school for? Usually I follow that up with ques-tions about what academia means and

what rhetoric is and in this way we open up a discussion. Instead of offering them a context from composition theory or tell-ing them why I write, I make them bring their own thoughts to the table because, after all, they’ll have to be composing their thoughts, not mine. Since I had to figure out what I’m doing as their teacher, I only find it fair to make them figure out what they’re doing there as my students, what they wish to get out of the class. In essence I make them come to terms with the “why” and then help them out with the “how” and the “what.”

Maybe as I gain more experience I’ll be-come more adept at helping them access and construct their reasons, but mean-while I try to facilitate the matter by hav-ing the students turn in brief contracts at the beginning of the semester. Here they list their personal goals for the class and that contract—together with our aware-ness of how college composition fits into the larger scope of school and academia and isn’t a fluke hoop they have to jump through—serves as our framework, our lens, for the rest of the semester. And for all intents and purposes, this lens meets the same standards of writing that Rich and Rushdie put forth—the students begin to understand it as a means of responding to, and engaging with, the world and they begin to understand that that’s what I ex-pect of them. Voila! My existential crisis is resolved (or perhaps more accurately, it’s subverted into a teaching tool), my identi-ties of writer and teacher are in harmony and I’m producing critically–thinking, in-spired, driven students. Or am I?

It of course doesn’t always work. Al-though I feel that using personal exigence and the Golden Circles communication is so far the best teaching approach I’ve

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

26

Works Cited

Rich, Adrienne. The Fact of a Doorframe—Select-ed Poems 1950-2001. New York, NY: W.W. Nor-ton & Company, 2002.

Rushdie, Salman. The Best American Short Stories 2008. Ed. Salman Rushdie. Series Ed. Heidi Pitlor. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2008.

Sinek, Simon. “How Great Leaders Inspire Action.” TEDTalks. May 2009. Web. 14 Jan. 2011. www.ted.com

found for myself, it still doesn’t always reach all the students. But I find that it does reach most of them most of the time and equally as important, it frankly helps me understand the so what? of what I’m working toward. It makes me feel like I’m practicing what I’m preaching, or rather writing the way I’m teaching. It’s not per-

fect, but it’s working and for that feat, I stay indebted to all my mentors and men-toring groups for their guidance and pa-tience and for being there for me through the why, the how, the what and every oth-er conceivable question I brought to our FYWP table.

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

27

PETER: Ever since you bested me in our weekly race around the Boston Common, I have been itching to get back at you. Here is my chance to stump you with my wit. You asked me to ask you some ques-tions about teaching, and that I will do.

Be warned...

Like a steak that’s red in the middle I’m perfectly prepared. Like a flag that’s red in the middle, I’m Japan. And like a book that’s red in the middle, I’m one of those novels based of the movie which has pic-tures from the film in the center and peo-ple flip straight to those glossy pages to gawk over their favorite movie star.

The point is, don’t anticipate my ques-tioning to be easy as pie, unless that pie is Sicilian Easter Pie which was voted by

users on Yahoo Answers as the hardest pie to make.

My first question is why. Why give me a chance to make you look like a fool in publication? How did this idea come to you, this, have a student ask me questions instead of the other way around. I must say, it’s rather clever. You are, after all, a worthy opponent.

MOLLY: Well, Peter, like an origami crane, the reason that I asked you to ask ques-tions of me is many–fold.

When I began this project, I started writ-ing a more conventional essay, and I wrote a lot of sentences. Sentences such as, “I love teaching,” or “Teaching is great because it involves students learning,” or “In pedagological terms of collaborative

An Interview with First–Year Writing Instructor, Molly McGillicuddy

by First–Year Student, Peter Rosati

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

28

learning and discourse community en-trance such as to promote the rhetorical situations arising when students are en-gaged in the active practice of recursively reflecting on the fact that…” As you can see, the problem was my words were fall-ing flat or slipping into a downward spiral of jargon and nonsense. So I stopped my-self. And I thought.

And thought.

And then I realized that what was missing were the reasons why I love teaching. This brought about the following montage set to a Cat Stevens song: A student raising his hand, asks a question. Two students look quizzically at what a peer has said, then each raises a hand to contribute their own thought. A group of eager first–year students presents an example of a text to the class. In the middle of a heated de-bate—three students are talking at once, four more hands are raised, and several students are taking notes furiously. A stu-dent reads her peer review and nods her head in agreement with the assessment.

It may not be Spielberg–worthy, but it was the montage of our WR101 class. And when I thought about our class, and what about that teaching experience I wanted to reflect on in writing, it didn’t seem to make sense to do that without a) the stu-dents and b) collaboration. Thus, the gen-esis of my idea—I will collaborate with my students.

I wanted a student voice to be a part of this. I realized that having your contribu-tions would help me to think more criti-cally about my experience, would deepen what I had to say, and would get me to

examine topics I might not have looked at if I were flying solo. Because that’s how collaboration works!

So, I’m glad there are no hard feelings after I smoked you in the race and was named “The Common Dominator.” I know now that wrapping myself in Christmas tree-lights and dancing on top of the Park St. Station was a form of excessive celebra-tion and I’m sorry for taking it so far, but I’m happy we’ve moved past all that and can commence with the interview…

Grammar and Conventions. In high school, when I missed points on essays, it was nearly always because of some spell-ing errors or the occasional muffed gram-mar. How do you view the relationship between grammar and ideas?

To answer this question, it’s best that I turn to my guru, Winnie the Pooh, as he says, “My spelling is Wobbly. It’s good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places.” Often students’ spelling and grammar wobble a little bit, but the content present in their writing is as sure–footed as a slug (slugs have only one foot, a low center of gravity, and ap-pear to be very stable, at least in my opin-ion as someone with minimal knowledge regarding slugs and other mollusks).

I am, above all else, concerned with the content in writing. The very beautiful thing about writing—it’s almost so beau-tiful that you could cry each time you thought about it, if that weren’t such a melodramatic reaction—is that writing grants us the power to express our ideas. Thus, those of us with the ability to write are very, very lucky. So, if a student is ear-

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

29

nestly expressing his ideas, but the gram-mar is “wobbly,” I can absolutely look beyond this. As a teacher, I think it’s my responsibility to recognize the voice of each student, and so, if this voice is that of a Puerto Rican immigrant with little practice in written English, a dyslexic stu-dent, or a student with a mindwhirringsofastitdoesn’tslowdownforgrammarletalonespelling, then it is my job not to say, “this is wrong,” but instead, to work with what is there. And what is there are ideas, and every student has ideas that I am eager to engage with.

Is there a point at which conventional errors take away from the ideas an essay is trying to convey?

Rarely.

I worked for a year in a school in Belize and there, I listened to and read an eng-lish that was about as far from any written or spoken english I’d ever been exposed to. But when Esteban said to me “Miz Molly dat buoy dun gun nock mi de hed an’ I dun drop down, man!”, it didn’t take but a moment for me to understand that another boy had hit Esteban in the head and as a result, Esteban had fallen. I attri-bute my understanding of this not to my ability to speak Belizean Kriol, but rather to the fact that we’re humans. Maybe, without some common language it would be hard for two people to discuss the finer nuances of the mutability of time in Mrs. Dalloway, but at the core of who we are as humans, I believe that there is very little that actually inhibits communication.

That being said, I do understand that not everyone shares my free–flowin’ views on

language, and that there is a hierarchy at play. As you may remember, Peter, many students in our WR101 class, in our dis-cussions of language said that the reality is an applicant for a job, let’s say, couldn’t submit a resume riddled with grammati-cal errors and expect to get hired. So, while I see it as my primary responsibility to foster the ideas of my students and to get them grappling with complex issues that will hopefully illuminate fresh ideas in them, I probably wouldn’t be doing my job very well if I never made a student aware of a recurring grammar issue.

In other words, when I’m working with that student for whom Standard English does not come easily, I will point out a mistake in subject–verb agreement, for example. I try to do this in a way so as not to over-shadow all that is going well in the writ-ing (the ideas, the effort, the unique sur-prises that each writer brings). So, along with some guidance to bring awareness to grammar, will I be constantly asking them questions to deepen the content or high–fiving them when they latch onto something brilliant? You bet your sweet bippy I will.

Do you knock down a grade over con-ventional errors even if the ideas are A+ quality?

I would only consider this if the errors were occurring due to laziness (and this is easy to spot). As I’ve said, our power to write is a gift. Our education is something we are privileged to have. I do understand when students have “off–days” or pass in assignments that don’t quite meet my (or their!) expectations—I’ve been there, who hasn’t?—but it unleashes a beastly side

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

30

of me when I see that students have the ability to perform, but don’t care about their learning. I think I expect a lot of my students because I see a lot in them. So if they’re perpetually slacking off, then I’m not so forgiving. Luckily, so many of my students don’t fall into this category, but instead do new and wondrous things ev-ery day that make me want to hive–five some more (I love high–fiving, but gen-erally don’t do it in class, lest a student doesn’t see it coming and gets slapped in the face, resulting in my permanent dis-missal from the institution).

Before we move on, all this talk about grammar has got me thinking about how much I love the Oxford comma. I was really sorry to see that little guy get kicked to the curb. I, for one, still use it and proudly proclaim myself an Oxford Comma Revivalist.

Very good then. Moving on. I declare engaging discussions to be one of the most important parts of any class and I am fairly certain you would back me up in that declaration. How do you feel about going off topic, though? I mean, if the dis-cussion is about potatoes and we get off into a heated debate about onions, is that okay? They’re both roots, right?

No, onions are indeed roots, but pota-toes are classified as tubers. Thus, po-tatoes are a stem vegetable not a root vegetable, as tubers are merely a thick-ening of the stem. Yes, the part that we eat does grow underground (one qualifi-cation for a root veggie), but the potato itself is not part of the root system (the other qualification to be both root and veg) the same way a carrot or a parsnip

is (these are both taproots). And perhaps you didn’t know this, but potatoes and to-matoes are in the same family! The Smiths —lovely folks, you should meet them. No, I kid—I of course mean family of plants. Yes, those starchy tubers are related to those juicy fruits good for saucing. And, back in the day, long before Facebook, or electricity, or Keith Richards, folks thought that tomatoes were poisonous. Can you believe it? Still today, some people who practice a macro–biotic diet won’t eat to-matoes because of their high acidity. Per-sonally, I love tomatoes and eat them like apples. My favorite are cherry tomatoes —Sungolds to be precise—but I also love Brandy Wines, Pink Beauties, and Moun-tain Spring. I worked on a farm this sum-mer. Go Green! Al Gore is not lying.

I think I see your point. But I’ll ask again. What about if the discussion is about potatoes and we somehow find ourselves arguing about the order of the hand placements in the macarena dance? (is four maca shoulder or side?) Macare-na and potatoes do not relate. Macaroni and potatoes, maybe. The elbow or eye debate. Alas, you get my point. At what point must a discussion be wrangled back to order, even if the comments are blis-tering hot fireballs of insight? Even if the discussion is strong, should it stay directly in the intended focus?

First, your earlier declaration is correct. I thrive on class discussion, both as a teach-er and as a student. I find it impossible to sit in a classroom as a student and not contribute. It’s like my brain starts itching or something. There are people who like to hear themselves talk; I am not one of these people (I don’t find my own voice

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

31

all that melodious), but often I am the first to speak in a classroom of my peers. Usu-ally it is because something has sparked my interest enough that I feel provoked to share my idea. Sometimes I don’t quite know what I’m saying until it is coming out of my mouth (a treat for my classmates, I’m sure).

But always, my hope is that everyone will come with me. It’s like I’m a little explorer with a walking stick and binoculars and I’m saying, “Come on guys, this way!” And sometimes my classmates look askance and mumble, “I say, Nigel, she wants us to follow her, but all I see is scrubby jungle.” Then there comes the second person to pipe up, and before long, everyone is contributing, and usually saying much more insightful things than I, and Nigel has found a boatload of gold in all that scrubby jungle, and that’s dialogue. And that’s inspiring. To be in another room with people sharing ideas—cool.

But I haven’t answered your question yet, have I, Peter? Well, I guess that was all the background to say that almost all discus-sion will be fruitful. The times it won’t be are when students aren’t engaged, and generally, they’re not engaged if they’re not interested in what they’re discuss-ing. So, if the discussion veers from my expectations into territory that ultimate-ly my students find more stimulating, I don’t think it would be very productive if I steered it back to some rigid prescription I have for the class. I like to tell students to write what they’re interested in, and in the same way, I think it only makes sense to discuss what they’re interested in.

That being said, if the conversation is go-

ing in circles or has strayed so far from where we originally started that it will not be of benefit to students when they go to complete an assignment, then I would be doing students a disservice not to step in and get the conversation back on track. Sometimes though, even when I know the conversation is no longer deal-ing with compelling questions or has just gotten a little silly, I will let a conversation go off the path, pretend it’s Thoreau for a stretch, just because I believe this allows students some liberty. And they deserve this. It’s not my class; it’s ours, and the more students show their personalities and engage with one another in a way that is fun for them, I believe the better a class will come together as a community. To continue with class discussion, how appropriate is it for a teacher to step in? I mean, you teachers are older and wiser than us students. You’ve seen more of the world. You’ve passed slow moving trucks, deserving students, and kidney stones alike. You’ve loved, lusted, and lost. You’ve grappled with concepts of politics, invest-ing, taxes, and the finer points of bocce ball. You must be bursting with thoughts and comments to add to our discussions, insight from your way of life.

When can you illuminate our minds with your thoughts? How much should you say? How much is too much? I mean, you can’t just keep silent, we want to know what you think. It’s a matter of having a better relationship with a teacher, knowing how they feel. If a teacher never says a word, it seems what we’re discussing doesn’t re-ally matter, but if they say too much and dominate, we don’t get a chance to think for ourselves. What do you say?

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

32

Wow. This is a great series of questions which I will surely fail to answer as elo-quently, or even as adequately, as I would have hoped.

But I’ll try. As a bocce ball connoisseur and one who suffers from Brain Itch, as mentioned above, it sometimes requires great restraint just to keep my big yap shut. But I grow acutely aware of when I’m talking too much and my brain starts going, “ohgod,ohgod,ohgod,shutup,shutup,shutup…” and the reason it starts this freak–out is because I don’t much care what I have to say. I really care about what you have to say. Or, maybe more accu-rately, I care about what I have to say, but I care more about what you have to say in response to what I have said. Right.

It’s like I’m that little explorer again, and maybe you’re Nigel, and I’m going, “Look! It’s a ruby–crested thingamagoo!” And then you/Nigel say, “My gosh, a ru-by–crested thingamagoo! Why, I say, that is thrilling. I’ve never seen one of those before!” And so for me, as the teacher–explorer, I’m excited because something I have said has exposed something to you, or got you to think in a new way, or may-be put a tiny chink in your thought pro-cess that causes you to re–examine your worldview (whoa!). But then you/Nigel says, “Look! Molly! Over here it’s ” And I leave this part blank because I’m forever astounded at the ideas that my students bring to the table. I’m left slack–jawed, peering through my binoculars, saying, “My gosh, a . That is a wonderment…”

And that is freakin’ cool, right?—to work with people who astound me so. Well, I

love it. So to get back more precisely to the question you’ve lobbed me, when I do insert me voice, I try to do it in a way that promotes yours (and Nigel’s). I ask a lot of questions. I hope that questions not only validate what students have contributed, but also will get them thinking about and questioning what they themselves have said, hopefully always adding complexity and depth. Hey, if it worked for Socrates, I’m not about to knock it.

WR101 was your first time teaching a college level class and my first time tak-ing a college level writing class. Now that you’ve got one semester under your belt, was it what you expected? I know the single semester pointed out some of my strengths and weaknesses as a student (high school and college are very differ-ent). Do you think you’ve learned any-thing about yourself as a teacher?

Oh yes, I learned quite a bit about myself as a teacher. Every day I learned some-thing. I learned so many things that per-haps it is best that I list them. I’ll title the list “Things I Learned.”

Things I Learned1) I will always be learning.2) It is not always easy to learn.3) Teaching is fun, but it is not easy.4) If I spend twelve hours commenting on student work, my hand will be very tired.5) If I write personal emails to all my students in response to their reflec- tions on Unit 1, after I return from four hours of my own class, and stay up until 3am doing this, fueled only by Trader Joe’s chocolate chip cookies, I will be very, very tired.

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

33

6) I can’t teach beyond what I know.7) It helps to have a friend in the same boat.8) It helps if that friend is named Ben and will accompany you to the gym, look at you after class and tell you your outfit is cute (for you), will co–teach a class with you, will also be tired, stressed, and overwhelmed but encouraging. 9) My students will not like everything I like.10) I knew I was a goofball, but I think I might be stranger than I thought.11) 8:30am can seem very, very early.12) Students are capable of so much and will surprise me with their tal- ent, ideas, and creativity consistently.13) It’s okay to make mistakes. It’s okay for my students to make mistakes, and it’s okay for me to make mis- takes.14) I learn more from my students than anyone else. Here I will require a list within a list: a. No matter what you might ex- pect the end product of an as- signment to look like, students

can always find a way to do some- thing unexpected. b. Students (and everyone I would postulate) don’t always know all that they know. c. Energy is contagious. d. A rudimentary synopsis of the rules and mechanics of Quid- ditch e. A sense of togetherness and a joint purpose can make each piece of work more meaningful f. Technology and current pop cul- ture. (Those were the days I aged about forty years right in the classroom) g. Students want to be heard and have something to say. h. I’m learning as I’m near finishing this list, that all the reflection that I had WR101 do was actually really hard. To answer “What did you learn?” is not easy! i. When you really like a class, it’s hard to say goodbye to them.15) Teaching—I can’t imagine doing anything else.

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

34

How has your writing informed your teaching? Are there any exer-cises, projects, ideas, or readings that have crossed over from your practices as a writer or your studies as a graduate student into your own classroom?I think the most obvious way my own writing and graduate student experiences has influenced my teaching is through peer review. For my WR121 class, I tried workshopping students’ essays once. I put them in groups and they all had to discuss one person’s work at a time, and the writer just had to be silent and listen to the discussion. I think it went fairly well, and the students, when I asked them about it afterward, said they enjoyed it, and felt like they got better feedback then they did from the peer review cycles of WR101.

—Emily Neeves, Fiction Writer and Instructor in FYWP

Describe your writing habits. Do you keep a schedule?I write in cycles. For a week or two I’ll be on a roll, writing every free moment I get. And then the wave will break, and for a little bit I won’t be able to get anything good down on the page. I’m working on train-ing myself better so that happens less often.

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

35

As any adjunct writing teacher knows, the future is like an endless burlap bag of itchy uncertainty. Sure, you’re doing ok this semester with your four classes and a plum committee spot, but what will tomorrow bring? Let’s face it, the sword of Damocles is dangling just over all our cubicles, and all it takes is one awkward elevator ride or overheard insensitive joke away from scouring HigherEdJobs for an-other gig. In fact, I’m surprised more of us don’t take solace in the ambiguously comforting arms of astrology, coin–op fortune tellers, or my personal favorite the I Ching.

From what I can gather (my limited re-search is restricted to comic books and a Wikipedia article) the I Ching is an an-cient Chinese divination system that uses any of several different casting methods

to create random patterns, then interpret those patterns via a text or oracle to de-termine the significance of events or pre-dict the future. Anyone with the text and some straw, dice, coins, or even discard-ed barbecue ribs can cast a hexagram and unlock the mysteries of time and fate. It’s like a Ouija board, but harder for your older brother to sabotage it and make it seem like your dead grandfather is calling you a dorkface.

But this is 2011, and we all live life by the tweet. We barely have enough time to teach our classes, read and grade essays, and update our Facebook statuses with sassy comments about how little time we have; who has time to bother with dice or bones or turtle shells. If we want to inter-pret the present and see into the future, it must be done on the go.

iChingby Aaron Block

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

36

Right now you’re probably already down-loading an I Ching app for your handheld device of choice, but there’s an easier path. The iTunes shuffle function creates its own randomized patterns. And you don’t need any special text or oracle to interpret your castings; anyone with a basic familiarity with pop music can read into the playlist patterns for deeper sig-nificance and advice.

So I will use this intersection of modern technology and ancient custom to answer the following question: Will I be a suc-cessful writing teacher in the future?

Shuffle is on. Here we go.

Track 1: “U Got The Look” — PrinceThe implication of this selection is clear: the iChing predicts I will be wearing lots of tweed and sweater vests in the future. I’m ok with that.

Track 2: “Beginning to See the Light” —the Velvet UndergroundAhh, it seems some great insight or re-alization is in my future. Maybe the kind of realization that leads to publication, academic celebrity speaking tours, and a popular Twitter feed. Or perhaps the “light” in this scenario is the promise of a full–time position. Anyway you cut it, that spells success. iChing, you’re speaking my language.

Track 3: “Rockit” — Herbie HancockYes, exactly. I will continue to “rock it” in the future. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Track 4: “Disorder” — Joy DivisionHuh. Ok, ok…that’s fine. I mean, no future is perfect right? And you can’t squeeze blood from a turnip—sometimes cha-os and disorganization is just a lifestyle choice. Sure, my syllabus can change at a moment’s notice, and maybe I have six different stacks of essays and proposals collecting dust and occasional footprints on my floor, but that doesn’t make me a less effective teacher, does it? You know, now that I think about it, maybe iChing is trying to tell me that I will grow to accept my messiness, that I will own it and make it an asset. Yes…that must be it.

Track 5: “Teen Age Riot” — Sonic Youth Am I at least the one inspiring them to riot and tear down a system designed ei-ther to turn them into instruments of op-pression or deaden their instinct to react to such oppression? Or is this the kind of riot that starts with a question that I just can’t answer? Because that’s like a drop of blood in the shark tank. Within minutes they’ll have turned over the desks, shred-ded their assignments, and used their lap-tops to record an elaborate music video parody, with lots of clever choreography and costume changes, that encourages the first-year writing classes of the world to seize the means of education. This isn’t looking good.

Track 6: “I Wanna Be Sedated” — the RamonesWell, now you’re just being mean.

Next time I’ll just stick with dice and turtle shells.

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

37

It was my first shift as a Calderwood Writing Fellow at Snowden International High School. A fellow tutor and I were sent to the English Language Arts class-room of one Ms. S., who mostly teaches remedial classes.

The class was beginning a unit on mem-oir, writing “a first–person story about something that actually happened.”

We worked with the students to pick out two of the 10 stories they’d brainstormed the day before; then we helped them be-gin to think about adding detail and other touches that might help turn those inci-dents into actual stories. There were only 12 students or so, but they were raucous, moving around the room and talking over one another, etc. However, the students did enjoy talking about themselves, and some even had what seemed to be an in-tuitive grasp of narrative.

Jermaine, for instance, wrote about September 24, 2001. He was seven. His mom was braiding his hair. Then she went upstairs. Then her friend came over. Then they had to go to the hospital. They wait-ed around for a long time. Then the doc-tor came out and said “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Devoid of detail, maybe, but packing a wallop, the story left me feeling ener-gized about my new gig. These kids had something to say, and I would help them say it.

Six weeks later, they were still writing memoirs.

I’d been in Ms. S’s class two or three times a week since I’d started at Snowden, and every time, we worked on the same writing assignment. From selecting de-tails we worked on first drafts, then on revisions, then, for some kids, starting

Provisional Authority, Limited Influence: The Calderwood Fellow in the Snowden Classroom

by Sebastian Stockman

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

38

over completely because they forgot their drafts at home, or hadn’t been to school in 10 days, or who knows why.

The day before the memoirs were “due,” Angel and I built from scratch a not–bad little story about the time, in Lowell, when he was called upon to pitch for his team on no rest and with no warn-ing and ended up throwing a no–hitter. It was good, and possibly true, and at the end of the period he had a memoir to turn in the next day. Of course, it was just one story; Ms. S. had assigned two.

An observer, or a reader, might ask: what in the world were you doing for six weeks?

The obvious answers are “not much” and “not enough,” but I can’t take all the blame.

Part of the problem is the weirdly fluid authoritative positions the other Calder-wood Fellows and I occupy at Snowden, especially when we go into the classroom. If a student comes to the writing center of her own accord, the Fellow who helps the student has a pretty obvious authority: the student is asking for help and the tu-tor can reasonably expect her to at least consider suggestions.

When a teacher requests classroom help, however, the Fellow’s position is a little more muddled. Ideally, we’ll move around the room helping kids individu-ally on specific problems in their essays in fifteen– or twenty–minute bursts, while the teacher helps other kids. In practice, we are part taskmaster, part buddy and, if things go well, part tutor.

Before he can be a tutor, the Fellow in the classroom has to be something of an enforcer, trying to make sure the students are working on the assignment which the Fellow has been summoned to the class-

room to help with. In order to do that, the Fellow has to be assertive in a way he has neither earned nor necessarily wants.

Let’s say, easing into my role as task-master, I ask gently, “Is that what you’re supposed to be working on?”

The student—let’s call him Kyle—says “No.”

What then? My authority over Kyle, if it exists, is only limited and provisional. My authority, such as it is, lasts only until the bell, and the one real move I have is to appeal to Ms. S. and her actual author-ity, which extends at least throughout the school day. If I do that, however—if I say, “Ms. S.? Kyle does not seem to want to work on his memoir”—then I have turned myself into a tattletale, not someone who can be trusted, and therefore, not some-one who can be a very effective writing tutor.

Any authority I try to assert is neces-sarily a negative authority: “you should not do what you’re doing, you should do this instead.” Furthermore, my exercise of this illusory authority—appealing to the teacher—erases it.

The other approach is to buddy up to the student, to present yourself as less akin to a teacher and something closer to an older friend. The hope with this strat-egy is to coax the student into working on the assignment, with the tutor alongside as friendly advice–dispenser.

The pitfall here is familiar to anyone who has ceded a little too much authority in a classroom.

Somewhere in the middle of our six–week memoir sojourn, another Fellow and I were in Ms. S’s classroom, with a group of three or four boys, trying the buddy approach. Eric, the other Fellow, was talk-ing to the kids about hip hop artists they

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

39

liked. Not knowing much hip hop, I found myself talking to Frankie about his job. Then he asked about mine.

“What do you guys do?” “This is one of my jobs,” I said. “We’re

grad students over at Emerson.”Kyle overheard us.“Yo, how much do you guys make?”Eric and I made eye contact, and I de-

murred.“Don’t worry about it,” I said.“Yo,” Kyle said to the others. “I bet

they don’t even make minimum wage!”Snickers all around.If a student thinks you’re making less

than he does at his after–school job, you’re in trouble.

In Ms. S.’s class, the students who did the assignment easily were bored, while the students who needed the most help were recalcitrant. Meanwhile, I also found myself once a week in Mr. T’s class of five English as Second Language students. In a switch, Mr. T, usually a Spanish teacher, looked to me for authority. He had origi-nally assigned his students a research pa-per, but had “refined” that assignment down to an essay on the assigned read-ing and then, finally, to a report on the book of their choosing.

He asked me if I thought this was ap-propriate. Having not even met the class yet, I said it sounded all right to me.

The students were reading Alice in Wonderland, A Day No Pigs Would Die, a Walter Dean Myers book, and then there

was James.“James is… reading Moby–Dick,” said

Mr. T, his tone of encouragement turning into one of skepticism. “I’ve told him to get the Cliff Notes, so he can do the re-port, but he doesn’t do it.”

A little later I quizzed James on The Whale. He said he was a hundred pages in, and he offered what I thought sound-ed like a fairly accurate, if not astute, syn-opsis/analysis:

“They’re on Nantucket right now,” James said. And then, a little later, “The captain is crazy.”

Towards the end of class I pulled Mr. T aside.

“I think he knows what’s going on in the book,” I said. “He’s actually reading it.”

“Yeah, but he’s never going to finish it,” Mr. T. said.

So? I thought. Whence this urgency? When there’s a “regular” class full of kids spending six weeks on four-paragraph narratives, what’s the harm in giving one ESL kid the whole semester—the whole school year, even—to read Moby–Dick?

Had I been in charge, I might have moved the goalposts for each student, tailoring the required final product to his or her level of interest and ability.

This, of course, was not within my purview, and so I was left with gentle prodding—of students and teachers—babysitting, and biding my time for the occasional chance at writing instruction.

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

40

How has taking WR600 and/or teaching affected your writing or writing habits?Taking WR600/teaching WR101 and 121 has greatly affected the way I approach contructing an argument (whether that argument is in a poem, a book review, or a lecture) and the process of revision. I no longer feel restricted by and/or tied to a first draft. There is a sense of freedom in knowing I can manipulate, transform, and adjust what I’ve written. Since most freshman arrive having been beaten over the head with standardized writing tests in which they construct an essay in a single–sitting, I think it is important to stress the idea that writing is recursive, that it begs to be broken and rebuilt.

—Curtis Perdue, Poet and Instructor in FYWP

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

41

The question of where power resides in the classroom is complex, and one which educators concerned with social justice grapple with daily. Teachers are authority figures, meting out assignments, critique, and grades that have personal, profes-sional, and economic consequences. Many students have adversarial relation-ships with teachers for this reason, and often resent the power wielded over their lives. In the university setting where stu-dents and families pay thousands of dol-lars each year, and may incur considerable debt for their degree, there are expecta-tions about quality that must be satisfied. Instructor’s performance is evaluated by students, which can be seen as an eve-ning of the playing field, proof that power doesn’t reside in just one place, and may shift throughout the semester.

This issue of how to navigate power

dynamics in the classroom is urgent con-sidering that many white people come to understand how systems of privilege and oppression operate in society through exposure to academic discourse. Fur-thermore, college may be the first time white students are asked to engage with and think critically about these important issues. For some students the ideas they are exposed to may go against the values of their family and communities of origin.

As an instructor in the First Year Writ-ing Program (FYWP) at Emerson College I sought to awaken the desire to think criti-cally in my students because I believed it would inspire better papers and active class participation. But of equal impor-tance, I believed it would change how they interacted with the larger world and make them more thoughtful, democratic citizens. As an undergraduate Women’s

Discussing Race in the Classroom: Negotiating Identity and Power

by Laura Campagna

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

42

Studies major, learning how racism, sex-ism, classism, and homophobia work to-gether to create to a privileged class was a vivid and formative experience. Reflect-ing on how discrimination negatively im-pacted my life inspired me to cultivate critical analysis skills, which served me well academically. The discoveries I made were so powerful that after graduation I went to work for a series of human rights organizations, and my education never stopped.

While teaching Introduction to Col-lege Writing, a general education re-quirement, I struggled with how to begin these conversations with my students, many of whom hail from the upper class. I was lucky that my first teaching position was at a progressive institution where dis-cussions on racism were not just allowed or tolerated but encouraged. But if the purpose of the course was to provide a foundation in writing skills, how and why might discussions about race enter the classroom. The logical point of entry was the texts.

From the required anthology I select-ed an excerpt from The Autobiography of Malcolm X, “Nobody Mean More to Me than You and the Future Life of Wil-lie Jordan” by June Jordan, and “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” by Gloria Anzald-ua. Themes of white supremacy, racism, literacy, and language ran through all the texts, but I could choose to ignore these motifs if I wished. I could pretend they were abstract, touch upon them lightly, and walk away. As a white woman I have never lost a loved one to police brutality or been silenced in my homeland because of a language barrier. I did not have to as-sign the label of racism to these issues, but I believed that students would not be

able to adequately engage with the text otherwise. I was aware that the manner in which these issues were introduced would determine whether students felt comfort-able engaging publicly with them.

It was my hope that by speaking open-ly and frankly about racism my students could use this language as an entry point to explore complex issues within the texts. However, the result was that I aligned my-self and the power of my authority with the values of the author.

Discussions about race are often un-comfortable and frequently volatile, most people sense this even if they have not experienced it. As an educator my prior-ity was to create a safe space for my stu-dents to learn. I worried about subjecting the few people of color in my class to a conversation in which ignorant and hurt-ful things would most likely be shared. On the other hand, I was also fearful of open-ing up a can of worms in the conscious-ness of the white students that would not be adequately dissected.

Ultimately I decided that these is-sues needed to be addressed because anything less would be a failure to edu-cate my students to the best of my abil-ity. To share with them the ideas that had made college so worthwhile for me, and to humbly offer up the path of discovery that lead me to many unhappy truths, but also greater consciousness and purpose. There was also an obligation I felt to do justice to the texts and their authors.

As it turned out much of my hypoth-esizing about how and when was unnec-essary. During a time at the beginning of class designated as a comment-free space, a student chose to read a home-work reflection linking Malcolm X to Hit-ler. The loose connection was that Mal-

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

43

colm X used speech to inspire people to convert to Islam, just as Hitler used lan-guage to encourage anti–Semitism. The purpose of a comment–free space was to provide a neutral zone in a classroom that frequently critiqued student work, and in which many students were shy and hesi-tant to talk. When she read the paper I was unsure of the correct way to respond because of competing priorities. The ac-tivist in me wanted to interrogate why she was equating being Muslim with being a Nazis, the educator in me worried about the effect her words with have on the oth-er students, and the writer within feared that condemning her work would have a chilling effect on free speech.

It was a snap decision, but I made a small comment about her ideas being controversial, and later tried to address the concepts broadly in a larger discus-sion. At the end of the day I felt like I had failed on all fronts.

A colleague’s positive experience teaching the Invisible Backpack of White Privilege by Peggy McIntosh inspired me to assign the text to my students soon af-ter that encounter. In the essay, McIntosh breaks down how the abstract concept of privilege concretely benefits white people’s lives. I paired the reading with a poem about growing up mestiza by An-zaldua, and asked the students to analyze how the two were related.

That Friday we had a class discussion unlike any other. There was no need for me to prompt or even call on people to speak, students came in fired up and roar-ing to go. Hands went up immediately and the student who wrote the piece on Malcolm X didn’t even wait to be called on. She said that the essay made her so angry she almost cried. It felt as if McIn-

tosh was insulting her family and must be a horrible person to write such lies. Oth-ers said it seemed McIntosh wanted them to feel guilty for being white, that she was accusing them of being racist simply be-cause of their skin color.

Finally a brave student raised her hand and disagreed. She said that McIntosh was pointing out true things about so-ciety not because she wanted them to feel bad but to raise awareness. Other students chimed in and said they were glad McIntosh made them realize things they had never considered about being white. These comments prompted more response, and a hard, intense, and heat-ed discussion followed. Anger was di-rected towards me for assigning such a text. I was glad that I had paired it with the poem and used the concept of the borderlands for context. The framework of a composition class allowed us to pull back a little, and everyone gave McIntosh credit for her rhetorical strategy.

The experience was draining, and I was unsure how students would incorporate the ideas into future work or if they would abandon them completely. On Monday I was quite surprised when the same an-gry student referenced McIntosh and white privilege when discussing the life of Cesar Chavez. His family was swindled out of their land by white prospectors in Arizona during the Great Depression, an injustice the student attributed to white supremacy. The connection was her own, and was evidence of her critically engag-ing with and borrowing from the text she had initially so abhorred. It made our dif-ficult conversation seem like just another part of the larger discussion taking place over the course of the semester. Another step in the learning process.

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

44

The experience raised many questions that I have continued to grapple with: How does one tease out what is at play when students react in a hostile manner towards texts written by a person–of–col-or, woman, queer person, or anyone else from a marginalized community whose voice has been traditionally silenced by academia and society? Regardless of whether the author (as an individual or as a member of a social class) has power in society, does the authority of the universi-ty privilege the author’s voice above that of the student reacting to it? At a panel discussing politics in writing workshops at the Association of Writers and Writing Professionals 2011 Conference I asked for guidance in more effectively facilitating these types of discussion. The speakers replied that if a student’s thinking moved, if they were in a different place at the end of the semester than the beginning, then

the class was a success. Success is hard to measure. Just as it is

impossible to quantify intellectual growth or conduct a cost/benefit analysis of stu-dent development vs alienation in regards to discussions on racism. I agree with the panelist that any progress is good. Perhaps in order to engage students in discussions about where power resides outside the classroom we must establish how it operates within the sphere we are inhabiting. My plan for the future is to lay a foundation before introducing chal-lenging texts by exploring perceptions of where power resides inside the classroom in relation to race, gender, class, age, ect. It is my hope that students will recognize themselves as powerful agents, and be more willing to take on the difficult work of deconstructing society in order to see what kind of a better world we can build together.

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

45

is that kid asleep?should i wake him up or not?he’ll figure it out.

O. M. G. no way.did i leave my prompt at home?what now? um . . . free write!

On Preparednessby Ben Lobpries

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

46

Why did you decide to attend the WLP Graduate Program at Emerson?Like Greg said, letting me in was a big draw. I originally had applied because I am from the area and at the idealistic age of sixteen, when my friends and I would meander through the Common on warm summer days, I fancied my-self attending school in the tall buildings that defined my native landscape. I was living and working in Syracuse, NY, when I heard back from Emerson. Over lunch, my previous undergraduate writing instructor and mentor from SU, Eileen Schell, encouraged me to attend Emerson to both further de-velop my craft and have the opportunity to work with John Trimbur. Eileen knew I had dreams of teaching writing in a higher ed classroom (and pub-lishing fiction, and exploring graphic design), so I trusted her word when she said Emerson was a good fit for me. (Thanks Professor Schell!)

How has your writing informed your teaching? Are there any exercises, projects, ideas, or readings that have crossed over from your practices as a writer or your studies as a graduate student into your own classroom?One of my main focuses in teaching WR101 and “The Short Story: Lens on Life,” an EmersonWRITES fiction class, was collaborative learning within a writing community. For me, a major factor in my decision to pursue an MFA in Fiction was regaining access to a workshop environment and a writing community. But my students were not as eager to share their work and provide feedback as I had imagined they might be. Twice this past semester, I found myself giving an impromptu lecture on the importance of learning how to effectively give and effectively receive constructive critism. This latter process I called the Kübler–Ross Picard–Adapted 5 Stages of Ac-ceptance. It goes as follows:

1. Denial (shutting down or merely spacing out during workshop/peer review—if you can’t hear the feedback, it isn’t happening). 2. Anger (lashing out or brushing off a peer’s comments, usually because you are still counting on your fingers and toes the flaws you found in their essay/story). 3. Bargaining (despite the group’s insistance that a character/claim really isn’t working, you decide to cut sections of your story/essay that are actually working in order for the genius of that “flawed” component to be fully appreciated by these crazy people). 4. Depression (self explanatory for most writers). 5. Acceptance (realizing that the suggestions and comments you receive from peers are just that—someone else’s ideas; you still have worth as a person and as a writer, but listening to and learning from your peers may help you grow as both). For the most part, students responded well to the Five Stages (and a few even ad-mitted at which stage they were stuck). I’m still working out the kinks for this model, but I have big plans for it. Conference paper, anyone?

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

47

Are there any practices, exercises, or ideas that have crossed over from your classroom into your own practice as a writer?A recent trend in my fiction is a rebellion against Freitag’s Triangle. In writing a craft commentary for a graduate class, I decided that adhering strictly to Freitag’s Triangle (with the establishment of a current state of affairs, an inciting incident, rising action, a climax, and a resolution that leaves our characters in a different place from where they started) risks producing stories too caught up in the “what” and “how.” I wanted to write stories that explore “why.” Here’s how something is, but this story can help you understand why. The exploration of “why” became crucial in my classroom. When reading Philip Gefter’s essay on fact versus fiction in iconic images, we weren’t concerned with how photoshop alters images or what techniques are used to stage photographs—we discussed why this is a good or bad practice, why the meaning of the photo-graph changed, and what that new meaning was. The “why” be-came the central line of intellectual inquiry.

What have you learned about yourself as a writer through teaching?I’ve learned many things about myself as a person through teaching, but one thing that I did learn about myself as a writer is that I am stubborn and protective of my work. Or at least I was—I would convince myself that every element in my first draft was crucial to the story’s self–actualization, and so adding lots and lots of new elements to explain the original ele-ments was the best way to fix it. Now that I’m telling students that it is okay to “let go” of something they really like in their work, to shelf a great idea or paragraph that doesn’t quite fit in favor of developing and deep-ening the “heart” of the piece (to save that idea or paragraph for its own paper—and to then actually write that paper), to realize that it is okay to come away from a revision with only a few sentences remaining from the original draft that were expanded into a whole new essay, I find myself “letting go” when working on my own stories. I’m not sure if this liberation in my fiction was what influenced my teaching style or if it’s the other way around—maybe the one–on–one pep talks I gave my students during our conferences began to rub off on my own writing practices.

—Lauren Picard, Fiction Writer and Instructor in FYWP and EW

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

48

Are there any practices, exercises, or ideas that have crossed over from your classroom into your own practice as a writer?As a student I was often skeptical of free writing. As a teacher, I have seen how successful they can be in helping students generate ideas and removing the pressures of writing in response to an assignment. Consequently, free writing has become a regular part of my writing practice as a way of allowing my mind to wander and to reduce the stress induced by the call to write something I might call a poem.

What have you learned about yourself as a writer through teaching?Through teaching I have discovered that it is important for writers to re-main engaged in a variety of genres and fields of knowledge. There is an unfortunate tendency for writers to specialize in the one or two genres that interest them to the exclusion of all else; however, this approach refuses to engage genres as the porous, interdisciplinary artifacts they are, which ultimately reduces genre to form while treating knowledge as somehow distinct and isolated from the means used to communicate it. Teaching First–Year Writing in particular allows me to cast a large net of intellectual and creative interests.

—Linwood Rumney, Poet and Instructor in FYWP

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

49

I’m a happy person, but I don’t think of myself as sentimental. Mushiness makes me a little queasy. I think with fondness about my childhood, but don’t over–ro-manticize it. When I see couples rubbing noses in at the train–stop, I don’t think it’s adorable; I want to throw my coffee at them. In college, a friend forced me to watch The Notebook and yelled at me during the final credits because I wasn’t crying. I’m not a sentimental person. But when it comes to education, I am a down-right sap.

It is for this reason that I’ve often avoided writing about it. Sometimes I still giggle a little bit at the idea of calling my-self a writer because it gives me the same sensation as putting my dad’s brown shoes on when I was small and clomping around the kitchen while he made pan-cakes as big as the pan, or sneaking into

my mother’s closet and slipping on a silky dress that still smelled of her perfume. You know, I feel silly.

But this is what I want to do. This is what I went to school for—writing. And so if I do know one thing, I know I don’t want to write trite or clichéd things, things that would get me beat–up on the Writing Playground (like recess for writers—imag-ine Joyce Carol Oates on the monkey bars!), things that would make Hemingway sock me in the nose. And it just so hap-pens that I know more than just that one thing. I also know that along with writing, the other thing that I can’t picture myself not doing is teaching. From the moment I stepped in front of a classroom of expect-ant faces, I knew it was what I wanted to do.

Right now it’s looking like I know six things: I’m not sentimental, I don’t like

Sentimentalityby Molly McGillicuddy

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

50

sentimental writing, I’m new at this writ-ing thing and don’t want to be consid-ered a sentimental writer, next to writing teaching is my greatest passion, thinking of education makes me sentimental, and therefore, I should avoid writing about ed-ucation because it leads to sentimental-ity (seven things—I’m scared of Heming-way’s ghost). Alright, so we’re set. Surely I can write a cogent piece of prose about teaching, thoroughly analyze my role as an educator, filter my own experience as a new teacher of freshmen composi-tion through the writing theory I recently slogged through in my grad class.

But really if I wanted to avoid writing a sentimental essay about education I picked exactly the wrong time to sit down and write it. Yesterday was the final ex-amination period, my last meeting with my very first section of WR101, Writing Comp. I guess it doesn’t really take an ex-pert psychological analyst to discern that perhaps I didn’t want to avoid writing a sentimental essay.

But if we were to enlist said psychoan-alyst, he would probably stroke his beard, puff on his pipe, and while I lay back on his burgundy leather couch, tell me that my true motives were presenting themselves quite apparently if I was choosing to write this essay on a day when I was so filled with love and pride for my students. And when I pushed myself bolt–upright on the couch and protested, “But doctor, I’m not sentimental! I didn’t even cry during The Notebook!” He would probably look at me askance and tell me that that didn’t really matter, now did it? I would consider throwing his marble bust of Freud at his head and stammer, “But doctor, surely you’re mistaken. I love writing and want to be considered a serious writer. So why

would I set myself up to write something dripping with sacchariney sweetness?” At this point, the doctor would be softly chortling to himself and my thoughts of hurling Freud’s effigy at his bald head would be growing more real with each Jungian chuckle, but finally he would stop and say, “You tell me.”

And then I would have my answer: I love teaching. I really, really, really do. And so there is nothing I could write that would be truthful if it somehow masked my unabashed love of education.

Education holds an esteemed place in my family. Both of my parents are edu-cators. My mom taught special needs to third, fourth, and fifth graders for thirty-five years. I remember her school bags —canvas tote–bags from LLBean or ones with pictures of apples on them given to her by students, all of them defying phys-ics by bearing the weight of her books, reports, and binders. Her classroom smelled like Cheese–Nips and books and when I picture her in it, she is bent close to a student as he taps out the syllables he is reading, and my mom’s head nods with the cadence of his voice.

My dad taught and coached for many years before he started working in admin-istration. When I was nine, he began as an assistant principal in the inner–city of Lowell. I remember him doing research about gangs, and thought he was go-ing to get shot in school. But the stories I remember him telling are rarely about school violence, they’re about a girl who moved from Cambodia in the seventh grade, and by eighth played Juliet in the school production, or a chubby boy on the track team, who when he was coming in last place did not have to finish alone

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

51

because his entire team joined him on the track to run the last lap with him.

So, perhaps it is because my own par-ents are two of the best, most dedicated, and compassionate teachers I know that I get so sentimental about education. I think about teaching, and teachers I’ve had, and students in my classes and sud-denly, I’m right there with Robin Williams standing on my desk letting out my bar-baric yawp.

This was how I felt this fall semester. Of course there were times when I was stressed out or tired of writing comments on students’ essays. I’m not trying to ap-pear like some Mother–Theresa–Robin–Williams hybrid. But for all the hard work —the hours spent preparing, the confer-ences, the late nights grading papers with only a package of Oreos and four hours of sleep fueling me, or the evenings at yoga, when my teacher prompted us to “envi-sion someone to whom you must offer compassion” and the face smiling back from my third–eye would be one of my student’s—for all of that—class discus-sions, student comments, and the im-provement in my students’ writing, only inspired me to work harder.

I feel I should probably consult my psychoanalyst again.

“Doctor, it seems more and more, that my entire life is wrapped up in teach-ing. Why does this feel like the best and worst possible thing? How am I supposed to negotiate my life as a serious writer when I spend fourteen hours of my week-end commenting on essays? And how is it even possible that I can put aside my own work for the sake of spending time on my students’? Or while I’m heating up leftovers or brushing my teeth, why am thinking about how some eighteen–year–

old might refine his thesis?” The doctor will rub his beard and cast a glance over at the marble bust of Freud. He’ll cough. He’ll drum his fingertips on his desk and puff on his pipe. I’ll ask again, “Doctor?” He’ll drum his fingertips on Freud’s cra-nium.

Since my faux psychoanalyst was ap-parently useless, I decided I needed to find some answers for myself. I do a lot of my thinking on my walk to the train–sta-tion, so I asked myself some hard–hitting questions on the mile walk in the cold. I thought about my life as a writer and my life as a teacher and how I could reconcile the two.

I had visions about my brilliant short story collection. The one for which I will receive much praise and lauding. The book cover is a happy yellow with a quirky illustration I did myself. The prose is spar-kling. It is the same one Dave Eggers will read, clap me on the back, and say, “That was certainly some staggering genius.” Really though, writing for me is not about the fame or praise, (of course, that would be nice; I’m not saying that wouldn’t be nice), but this is not my ultimate aspira-tion. Instead, my call to write stems from a need to get my ideas out. These images are buzzing through my brain and I like to find a home for them on a page. I walked along thinking about this.

And then I thought about where my desire to teach comes from. Then, be-cause I like to imagine impossible sce-narios, I thought what if someone were to put a gun to my head and said, “Hey, because I have a gun to your head and am in a position to make impossible de-mands—writing or teaching?—pick one!” I stopped walking right where I was be-cause the answer came to me so quickly.

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

52

I started walking again because I looked a little bit like an idiot, stopping like that on a freezing December afternoon blink-ing with wonder at what my mind had just done. I picked up my pace a little and thought, I just chose teaching.

Teaching.I picked teaching over writing. And the

reason I give, at least today, is that while writing gives me a venue to express my ideas, teaching gives me a community. Writing can mean isolation, late nights, waking up looking pasty and hungover, and in the end, really unsure if anyone even “gets” the ideas which were at times agony to put into words on the page.

But teaching, I toss an idea into the room and my students are like cats paw-ing at it, batting it around the room. Ex-cept they’re smart, clever, creative cats (like Aristocats?). They dazzle me with their ability to come up with newer, fresh-er ideas. And they’re confused, amazed, awakened, just–waking–up, engaged, enraged, conflicted, achieving, inspired, tired, independent, open–minded, di-vided, thinking, beings. So when I toss that idea out to them, it doesn’t matter as much if they “get” it, because it isn’t just quietly absorbed and tucked away. They wrestle with it, the claw at it, they bat it with their tails, they pounce on top of it. And in the end, the idea isn’t mine anymore. It belongs to all of us in the classroom because they have added to it and expanded it in ways I didn’t foresee. The idea has sparked them to think about things they didn’t expect and so in turn their thinking has expanded in ways they didn’t foresee. It is this sharing, collabo-

rating, and joining of thought that makes teaching so special for me.

During my final exam period my stu-dents presented their final projects—a rap, a scripted video, two documentaries, a magazine article inspired by the first Seventeen magazine from 1944, a gui-tar and vocal medley, a traditional essay, even a puppet show. The whole two hours I sat in awe of what my students had cre-ated. And during those moments I wasn’t thinking about my own writing, I was car-ried away by what they were doing. The class ended in a spontaneous group hug. I almost cried. We’d gone over the final exam period by fifteen minutes and none of my students noticed. We were all gath-ered in the center of room 523, arms on each others’ shoulders saying, thank you.

I am a sentimental fool who walks out of her classroom beaming because her students were so engaged in a dia-logue about language and identity. I’m the blathering idiot who can’t stop herself from recounting stories from class at par-ties. My close friends know all of my stu-dents’ names. Yesterday, I had lunch with a friend, I told her about our last class and then how I couldn’t stop myself from smil-ing afterward as I walked down Boylston Street and passersby were taken aback. My friend said, “You probably looked like you were in love.” And then I had this im-age of myself with a blue cluster of birds flitting over my head, the sun shining, I’m dancing down the street, kicking up my heels and twirling around lampposts. This image didn’t feel that far off from reality.

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

53

Aaron Block teaches college writing at Emerson College and Boston Architectural College. He enjoys root beer, roller coasters, and cartoons. When he grows up he wants to be a superhero.

Laura Campagna received her BA in Women’s Studies from Antioch College. She just completed her master’s thesis, a collection of short stories, and graduated with her MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College in May 2011.

Sarah Ehrich is pursuing her MFA in poetry from Emerson College. She tutors at the Snowden International School and Emerson’s WARC and is an instructor with EmersonWrites.

Kat Gonso is a composition instructor at Emerson College and Bentley University. Currently, Kat is the Writing Center Coordinator at Snowden International High School, a Boston Public School located in Copley Square.

Amanda Jimenez is originally from Newark, New Jersey and has lived in Boston for three years. She is currently in her third year of her MFA in poetry and hopes to teach once she graduates.

Kristina Kopić has switched nine schools, seven cities, four countries and two continents before graduating from high school. She has received a B.S. in Psychology and a B.A. in English from the University of Central Florida and has just recently completed her MFA in Fiction at Emerson College. Her biggest aspiration is to change the American education system. Preferably in her lifetime.

Ben Lobpries is a playwright, actor, and would–be novelist. Since he’ll probably never get to deliver a speech at the Academy Awards, he’d like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the employers and professions that have in no way prepared him for his position here at Emerson: Oscar Isberian Rugs (Oriental rug sales representative), Gethsemane Gardening Center (horticulture enthusiast), GayMart Chicago (best not go into that one), and that t–shirt factory in Dallas where he pulled hot shirts off a conveyer belt for $8/hr. Without these experiences, his CV would be far less entertaining.

Contributors’ Notes

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

54

Contributors’ Notes (Cont’d)

Molly McGillicuddy is pretty tuckered out after all this teaching and writing, but would like to thank everyone in the FYWP community for leading her to some of her most inspired and rewarding moments of this past year. And she must extend a huge thank you to Peter Rosati for conducting in the interview seen in this anthology. Peter is one of the fourteen students in her fall class who made it one–oh–wonderful. Please check out his blog—www.petersbelly.com—and also his novella, Friedrich & Squash!

A transplant from California, Greg Nichols came to Emerson to study fiction. He then discovered (and fell in love with) creative nonfiction. After a moment of earth shattering uncertainty, he made the leap (and filed the application) to study that crazy genre. When he began teaching and found he loved that as well, Greg worried that he’d again have to choose his allegiance. It was thrilling beyond words, then, when he figured out that that wasn’t the case at all—that teaching and writing were as compatible as toast and jam.

Sebastian Stockman received his MFA from Emerson College in May 2011.He lives and writes in Cambridge, Mass. with his wife and child. (Thatis, he lives with them; he doesn’t write with them so much).

Te

ac

he

rs

on

Wr

iTin

g a

nd

Wr

iTe

rs

on

Te

ac

hin

g

55

Acknowledgments

A special thanks to John Trimbur, Tamera Marko, and Steve Himmer for their support on this project; to all of the instructors of the First–Year Writing Program and EmersonWRITES, and Calderwood Fellows for their dedication and passion; and to the students who make all of this worth it.

fywp