I’m going to try an exercise today in English 101/Section 10.

In previous classes (for previous courses) I’ve done things like play Jenga (analogies TBA), arm wrestle (to illustrate dialectic), role-play a Greek tragedy (to flesh out the human condition), and lastly I’ve hurled a hard boiled egg into the throng of a crowed lecture hall.   “Poetry differs from prose,” I proclaim with this latter demonstration… “Everything is coming at you — and potentially it’s going to be messy.”

You may, of course, call that a gimmick, or the hobgoblin of an inexperienced college professor’s tortured mind, but I love to see the bodies scatter, while others cover and duck.

And yet, with Tuesday’s educational schtick, my hope is to play things a little more close-to-the-vest.   The exercise will consist of a free-writing response to five poems and will hopefully allow the students (ages 18 to 20) the opportunity to resonate with an image.  An image or two…  I’ll let you know how it goes.   My thinking is that many of these first-generation freshmen have never encountered the likes of Denise Levertov, Gary Snyder, Sharon Olds, William Stafford and Anne Sexton, and that some of their word-explosions might shower down body-parts into the blend-in style of dormitory prose.

You see, thus far, we’ve muddled through one Essay Exam and assorted supportive gigs in which I’ve asked them to harangue the system in which they’re all clamoring to become a cog.  How to write a thesis statement... How to identify key words, indexical concepts, supportive evidence… This is the standard fare of what every incoming neophyte should learn about academe.   Later in the quarter, we’ll marshall our skills of mimicry in the service of a Persuasive Essay.   Whoopee!   Potential research foci may include The Decline of the Hipster In What Used To Be Pop-Culture, The Resurgence of Dallas and Other ’80′s Nighttime Dramas and Snooki:  The Femme Fatale of A Post 2001 Generation.   And, for all the fantastic insights these papers may elucidate, I’m not expecting that the full-throated ‘second naiveté’ of Paul Ricoeur has caught up with the budding intellects.   That is to say, I trust the wounded hearts of these students more than I do the reductions of rationalism we often require them to make.

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Every once in a while, when I’m wading through the endless shallow sea of student writing that constitutes most of my life during certain times of year, I stumble upon something that surprises me. Something that makes me glad.

Here are some of the remarkable things that I’ve found while wading:

1. An expository essay on how to cook, cut, and sell meth. Among the helpful tips: a paragraph on how to not get caught. The trick, it seems, is never to tell anybody your name, never to sell to anybody you know personally. Also, it helps to own a business in the industrial district that refinishes bathtubs. The smell of the chemicals used to re-enamel the tubs hides the smell of the chemicals used to cook the meth. Read more »

As an early Christmas gift to myself, I ordered a copy of Of a Monstrous Child. It’s self-described as an anthology of writing relationships, with mentors* introducing the work of their mentees and vice versa (and it features Bark’s own Sam Ligon).

Three days ago, I finally started reading it.

I’m not very far yet—only through the first duo of introductions and stories, but this is largely because I spend most of my time with this book flipping through it. I glance through the introductions, looking for connections and observations, but then, when I start to read—really read—I let the book fall, let the pages close. Anthologies can be explored in any order, of course, but for this first read, I want to experience it in the way the editors thought best.

I met with a fellow faculty member yesterday to discuss a freelance writing course we may end up teaching together this summer, and our discussion eventually turned to the idea of mentorship. We talked about our experiences in our MFA programs (and before, in undergrad), talked about the ways the faculty helped us over stumbling blocks, the ways they saw and encouraged our strengths. We talked about times we hadn’t been challenged enough. Read more »

ME: Here’s what the writer is doing.

Student who paid attention in high school English: I disagree.

ME: You’re wrong. Here’s why. [NOTE, in case my tenure committee is reading this: I say this very kindly, taking advantage of a teachable moment, making sure that the student understands that his/her participation is valued and feels both validated and enlightened.]

STUDENT: My HS English teacher said there are no wrong answers about literature as long as you can defend your ideas.

ME: Your HS English teacher was wrong. Read more »

People who knew me well had, I think, some very real concerns about my suitability for a teaching position. They weren’t worried that I would be a poor teacher (I was apparently much more concerned with this possibility than were my overly-cheerleader-like friends and family). No, instead the concern was that I would be too much of a pushover.

I’ve always been uncomfortable displaying anger. I listen to all telemarketers. I’ve never hung up on anyone. I don’t send mean text messages. And I certainly struggle with face-to-face encounters, always erring to the side of politeness and self-effacement, instead choosing to turn the blame and anger inward. On the one hand, it’s nice because I’m not someone who’s drawn to angry outbursts that I regret later. On the other hand, I have a hard time sticking up for myself in situations where I have every right to be angry.

For example, two months ago, my xbox broke. Long story short (because it’s a crazy long story), Microsoft screwed up majorly handling my repair and a series of phone calls afterward, dealing with my repair and replacement xbox. The end result was that their mistake cost me money and over twenty hours of my life. I’ve called them probably two dozen times, and despite the fact that they refuse to compensate me in any way (or even give me my money back), I have yet to raise my voice at anyone; you see, I feel bad even though their the ones screwing up at every turn. Read more »

This past week, I was offered and accepted a position teaching writing at Michigan State University. So obviously I’ve spent the past four days looking at syllabi and reading the course textbook. But mostly I’ve been thinking: what did my writing teachers do to both give me knowledge and inspire passion? What projects was I assigned that I enjoyed doing?

In tenth grade, our first assignment was to write a sort of writer’s autobiography, to assess our strengths and weaknesses as writers. Like an idiot, I included a line that basically said I was awesome. My teacher wrote one word next to my claim: “Really?” That was the first time I really realized that I had a lot to learn, because it was the first time my writing knowledge had been challenged. I still react this way, and now make sure that my readers don’t sugar coat their feedback. I just want it straight; my feelings are less important.

During my sixth year of college, I took a graduate-level English class at the invitation of the professor. Our final project was to create a graduate-level project on one of our books. That was pretty much our assignment. My professor, who knew I was applying to MFA programs, encouraged me to use my creative writing skills in the paper, and I ended up writing a creative research paper where I mimicked Carole Maso’s Ava, a lyric novel that plays with truth, has an unreliable narrator, and no paragraphs. (This is probably the reason I really enjoyed writing the imitation pieces in grad school—I got to play.)

I always loved these hybrid assignments, and I’ve been brainstorming ways to introduce them in my own class. How does social media relate to communication? How is truth malleable? How can creative writing enter the research-writing classroom? How can I introduce writing assignments that get the students to respond as if to a community of peers, from a real desire to contribute to the dialogue, rather than simply because they want to pass the class?

Strangely, looking back at the first of my two examples here (or perhaps because of it), the assignment I’ve probably responded the most negatively to over the years has been that of the writer’s autobiography. It has always felt pretentious to me, because it feels so limiting, as if I’m supposed to make an inventory of what I’ve done and what I’ve learned up to this point but which leaves no room for the fact that I don’t think I know much definitively, because the day I stop learning through my writing is probably the day I stop writing altogether.

So what assignments/teaching styles did you respond to? What did you appreciate in your various writing class, and what made you go crazy? Help a new professor out.

A year after my graduation, I’m still in Michigan, still working for the State government, still espousing my big dreams: of working for a literary journal, or becoming a literary agent, of working at an independent press, of getting another advanced degree and teaching. (I think part of my problem is indecision. Another is massive student loan debt.) These are all paths I can take (hypothetically), and with which I would be most pleased.

At first I put this all on hold because it just wasn’t realistic (so said I) to move to a new city with a low-paying job and an unspeakable monthly loan payment. Plus, Michigan came with free rent, a nearby literary community that was easy to break into (hi, Ann Arbor!), and tickets to Spartan football games. A year, I said, then I’ll do something new.

And I am planning something new—it’s just not anything that was already on my list. Instead, I’ve decided to spend a year in France* teaching English. Well, technically it’s nine months, but my visa will be for a year. If my application is accepted, I’ll leave a year from this September. I’m young, I thought. If I don’t do something like this now, while my entire life is pretty much unattached, when will I do it?

Of course, I don’t know that much about teaching English to non-native speakers. I’ve done some tutoring to very advanced speakers before, but never to kids (8 to 18 years). But I figure an interest in language, in saying things, can only help. Plus, I’ll only be working 12 hours per week while there, so hypothetically I could come home with a finished book, or at least a bunch of new stories. And then I’ll get on to that list of mine.

* For anyone who is now saying, “How awesome!” a working knowledge of French is required for this program. But there are similar programs in (I think) Italy, Spain, and Austria, for Italian, Spanish, and German speakers. Also, Finland offers a program where you don’t need any language knowledge. Just English.

One of my favorite books

I was headed into hour eleven of a fourteen hour day last week when I decided that what my developmental writing class needed was a little poetry. After all, I fed them Ray Bradbury’s “All Summer in a Day” the week before, and they ate it up like Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day. In other words, they loved it. I read the story aloud, and when I got to the last sentence– “They unlocked the door, and even more slowly, let Margot out.” –I heard a student in the back of the room whisper, This is gonna be awesome. So there I was a week later in my closet of an office reeling from that little bit of encouragement and searching for a poem that would provoke them to similar states of excitement. That’s when I remembered the final section of Adrienne Rich’s poem “An Atlas of the Difficult World”  in the book by the same title. In a rush, I looked it up online and read it for the umpteenth time, and then the craziest thing happened. I started weeping, like really crying my eyes out like a dumb ol’ baby. I was tired, yes, and stressed out, yes that too, but it was something else, too. That poem was the most beautiful thing I’d experienced in weeks. I was looking for direction, and there it was telling me who I was and how I felt. And by the time I got to the last sentence– “I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else / left to read / there where you have landed, stripped as you are.” –I had the eeriest feeling that Adrienne Rich had been residing in my brain all these years. Yes, this is why I read and write poetry, because there is nothing else left that will bring me back to life after all the countless external forces have sucked me dry. Thank you, Ms. Rich. I’ll be sharing this poem with my students in a couple weeks. I’ll let you know how it goes.

What poem, story, or novel revives you this way?

Five minutes ago I went onto iTunes and bought Love the Way you Lie, Eminem’s duet with Rihanna about domestic violence. I’ve spent the last few weeks flipping through the radio stations in my car hoping to come across this song, resisting the temptation to buy it, because something feels sort of wrong about buying a song whose average listener is probably too young to drive. But I’m trying to get past this idea of having a guilty pleasure—if I enjoy something I enjoy it, end of story—so I bought it. And now I’m telling the Internet, which I guess is some sort of step two on this road to guilty pleasure recovery.

But anyway, this song has had me (and many others) thinking. For those that don’t know, last year Rihanna was involved in a very public episode of domestic violence with her then-boyfriend Chris Brown. She was attacked, her pictures leaked to the media, and then months of scrutiny followed, during which no few voices wondered what she had done to deserve it, because clearly, she must have deserved it. Anyway, I won’t go into the many details of the months that followed, of the back and forth in the situation and their relationship; there’s Google for that. It died down eventually, but then word broke that she was doing this duet with Eminem, and it all came back to the surface.

Though many do question whether or not Rihanna should have done such a song, I see no reason to condemn her decision to use her voice in this way, to tell this story. The concern I have seen repeated in feminist circles, however, is whether or not the song actually does make a statement against domestic violence, and whether or not the song’s main audience is mature enough to get any anti-violence argument or whether they will only see domestic violence as sexy and glorified. However, this discussion leaves out one very important factor, and ultimately sets out to control the parameters of Rihanna’s art based on what others prescribe to her as her social views. Read more »

After a year of leisure, I’ll soon start teaching full time again. I took unpaid leave to finish my MFA and although that wasn’t exactly “time off” my hours were spent concentrating only on me: my writing, my projects, my submission, my homework, my classes. Soon, I’ll be back in my teacher role where it is always all about the students, as it should be. Read more »