Originally, I added a few lines from a prose poem at the end of the compilation of reader responses to our queries about the questions teachers ask students. I wasn’t sure; the content fit, but ...
Every day of the past year or so seems to echo the refrain of “unprecedented.”
It’s been a time both slow and fast, boring and frantic. I also used the time to reflect on my work ...
Recently I’ve undertaken a new learning project: identifying the trees in the woods around my home. I’ve lived among trees for most of my life and feel a special affinity toward them, but I can’t ...
In more than a decade of teaching Romeo and Juliet at my small liberal arts college, I’d never had a student walk through class wearing only a towel. Then again, I’d never taught Shakespeare during ...
“Storms come and go fast. When the downpour reaches the ground, the water runs away quickly—little gets into the ground. Drizzle offers a different image—fine, slow, silent, and yet penetrating. Drizzle soaks into the ground. ...
Like birthdays, anniversaries are occasions for reflection, and as I approach the fifth anniversary of my teaching career, I find that my thoughts are drawn to the things that I did badly. Here’s a list ...
Graham Broad’s piece reminded me of a short critique John Kenneth Galbraith did of his teaching: “How I Could Have Done Much Better.” The honesty of both is courageous and refreshing. Most of us were ...
Having never viewed myself as an expert and periodically believed I’m an imposter just waiting to be found out, I went a long time without worrying about the so-called curse of knowledge. I couldn’t possibly ...
It is time to bid farewell to a career I have loved for so long that it now seems entirely too short. Reflecting on 42 years of teaching and some of my missteps, I share ...
Think of the last time you had a masterfully planned class session fall completely flat. If you have been teaching for more than a week, you’ve been there. How did you react? Did you blame ...
Originally, I added a few lines from a prose poem at the end of the compilation of reader responses to our queries about the questions teachers ask students. I wasn’t sure; the content fit, but it was poetry. My excellent editor called it a “swerve,” an aptly chosen word that describes quick movements in unexpected directions. Swerves are risky, unsettling experiences. Poetry rarely appears in academic writing, even informal writing like a column on teaching and learning. We decided to delete the poetic ending.
It was another poem, “Awakening” by Suzanne Le-May Sheffield, that motivated me to include the prose poem lines. Suzanne’s poem was recently published in Teaching & Learning Inquiry, a peer-reviewed scholarship of teaching and learning journal. Her poem explores how the academy affects our humanity. In a commentary that follows, Suzanne recounts her feelings about sharing the poem and the feedback she received upon submitting it. It’s a fascinating account that reflects how the academy struggles to deal with affective ways of knowing.
The dominant orientation to teaching remains the intellectual one. Instructional expertise rests firmly and comfortably on content knowledge. Nonetheless, most of us have learned that we cannot power a teaching career with the intellect alone. Despite this recognition, we struggle to find academic venues where we can write and speak freely about how teaching touches, draws on, and yes, even embraces our humanity.
Our long attempts to gain recognition for teaching have birthed and grown a scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL), an accomplishment that merits celebration. SoTL work has expanded the reach and improved the quality of the pedagogical journals that exist in virtually every field, with some crossing disciplinary and international boundaries. Rising publication standards now include blind peer reviews and detailed editorial requirements that eliminate all but the best submissions. Robust research reports advances in our knowledge of teaching and learning. Instructional innovations are examined and assessed empirically.
Even so, if you ask faculty about favorite articles, the best things read on teaching and learning, research articles do not top their lists or mine. Rather, we reference personal narratives, the first-person accounts and analyses of significant teaching experiences—articles that explore what teachers aspire to accomplish beyond content knowledge (Husted, 2001), that fess up to mistakes and failures (Cohen, 2009), that shake up long-held assumptions (Tanner, 2011), and that describe “edgy” feelings about a teaching life (Walck, 1997).
The first newsletter on teaching that I edited contained different kinds of articles—summaries of research, resources on different teaching topics, short essays, accounts of experiences with particular teaching strategies, and interviews with master teachers. Any leftover space I filled with pithy quotes on teaching and learning. In my first reader survey, I asked faculty to rank the various kinds of articles. To my amazement, those quotations topped the list. Apparently, they filled a personal need in addition to occupying empty space.
I’m not expecting our academic journals to start publishing poetry or adding quotations, but I do wish there was greater openness to work that delves into what’s depicted as the “softer” side of teaching. That thinking demeans a part of teaching just as robust as the acquisition of complex content. There’s no emotional fluff involved in the hard mental effort it takes to critically dissect a teaching experience or narrate the account of a difficult discovery on the road to teaching excellence. “Disturbing the still surface of deep waters makes us fully human,” Suzanne writes in “Awakening.”
Poetry packs more punch than prose. It can make you swerve, stop suddenly, and feel something unexpected. The editors of Teaching with Fire (2003) asked high school and college teachers to select a poem that held meaning for them as teachers. The poems appear on one page; opposite, teachers reveal the reasons behind their choices. Every time I look at the book, I am dazzled and delighted by what teaching is for others and what it has been for me.
We need to touch the soul of teaching more often, and “Awakening” explains how:
Let’s welcome different, varied, messy stories, Take risks, share moments of struggle, Be bold and courageous, personal and vulnerable, Create, transform, reflect, perform, See beauty and tragedy, Accepting our humanity in the academy.
References
Cohan, M. (2009). Bad apple: The social production and subsequent reeducation of a bad teacher. Change, 41(6), 32–36. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20696191
