Where Do English Teachers Come From?

He's the one in the middle

When you look at your college English teacher, you may just see a teacher, and you assume they always were one. But many of them had a previous life. Each discipline seems to attract certain types of people; for example, coaches end up teaching high school math. When you were in high school, you never saw the coach teaching English, did you?

up in the ivory tower

One thing that particularly strikes me are the people who are drawn to academic life after time with the sacred. At the University of Texas at Austin there are two ex-priests, and a jolly ex-nun, perhaps relieved to be back in the world again. She's interested in the secret society that Shakespeare allegedly belonged to. Priests and nuns? If you think about it, it makes sense. The life of a college professor can be pretty quiet and contemplative if you want it to be.

A graduate student who was hoping for a professor's life, was in the army previously, and he is the person who wrote the jingle "Be all that you can be, join the army." Which the army still uses to this day. (He was not given royalties, only a paycheck.) He was using those same skills now, to write his dissertation on Chaucer.

'Tugboat New Orleans'
Marsha Baldwin

The English Department once boasted of a professor who was a founding member of the Velvet Underground, Sterling Morrison- and he'd even been a tugboat captain. His specialty was Medieval Studies. He left UT after a few years to return to music, but has since passed away.

My own background is not so exciting, I've worked in my share of restaurants and bookstores and was even a bicycle messenger for one day; but my main jobs have always been attached to a college, be it in the office, the library or the classroom- pretty much what you'd expect from an English teacher, I'm afraid.

Mmm Delicious

(Honoré Daumier)

Frequently  a teacher gets a lesson when she is supposed to be giving the lesson. This happened once while my class was examining the "White Lie."

A class I taught at the nontraditional college was Interpersonal Communications, which takes things everyone knows intuitively about how people communicate, and makes it objective and scientific.

So, there were charts like Message triangles and Feedback loops. A simple conversation was broken down into components of Context, Interference, Utility . . . etc. The students were learning to objectively analyze communication in their daily lives.

The result was supposed to be greater self-awareness and personal improvement. We had many class discussions where we took a concept from the textbook and discussed actual situations they could remember or imagine.

So we were discussing the White Lie, when is it appropriate or not, according to Situation, Context, Relationship, etc. and especially what the Stakes were- a calculation of what would be gained or lost.

Interpersonal Communications
made simple

Someone came up with the example of what to do when you don't like someone's cooking. Everyone agreed that if the person was close enough to you, it would be to everyone's advantage to tell the truth.

A hand rose up in the back. It was Manuel from Mexico. "I don't," he said.
"What don't you do?" I asked.
"When  my wife cooks," said Manuel, "I always say "Mmm delicious, honey."
The class giggled.
"Even if you don't like it?"
"Of course," he said as if it was obvious.
"What if it's too salty?"
"I eat it."
"But what if she thinks you like it, so she cooks it again?
"I say Mmm delicious, honey."
"Manuel, how long have you been married?"
"Ten years."
I turn to the class. "A lesson for a successful marriage," I say.
A lesson quite over and beyond the one I had in mind.

An Apple for the Teacher

falling apples, link

We're all familiar with the apple for the teacher, waiting for her on the desk all polished and shiny. Someone was trying to get into her good graces, perhaps Tom Sawyer, hoping his attention would reflect on his treatment, on his grade. It's an old-fashioned image, but the problem remains with us: is it ok to give it to her?

TRAPPED

Girl at Gate
.
State Library & Archive of Florida
1885-1910

While I was teaching Composition at the four-year non-traditional college, one particular woman was having an unusual difficulty. She never spoke in class. I had only assigned light papers with quick topics, and her writing was confused and confusing. I began to wonder if she was stupid.

Then came the first major paper. She asked to speak to me alone. She tried to describe to me what her paper was going to be about, but she was almost incoherent. She spoke in phrases that did not connect to each other but piled up.

NOT GUILTY!!

I taught at a non-traditional four-year college where most students were black. I taught a course in Logic and Argumentation that had for its textbook a rigorous approach to logic, heavily weighted towards the courtroom.

By lucky coincidence, the course coincided with a huge court case in the media. It was every teacher's dream. It was like teaching a class with a Lab component. We could watch the arguments unfold as we study proper argumentation and logic. And the court case was-- OJ Simpson.

The 'One Girl' Effect

schoolboys 1945
Note the girls are separate 
around the corner

I once taught English classes in a place where the student body would have been almost all-male, had they not offered a "secretarial science" program for the purpose of women attending. Still, I often had classes with no women in them at all, or only one or two. It was a two-year "technical college," the type offering certificates in technical skills such as electronics and repair.

The boys tended to be in their late teens and early twenties, often fresh from high school. Very few did well in English; nor did they work very hard at it. They were there because it was a requirement. There was something particularly boyish about them, and I suspect it was quite a bit like teaching high school.

Just Tell Me the Answer!: the Socratic Method

Socrates condemned to drink hemlock:
Is this where the Socratic Method leads?

The Death of Socrates

1787 Jacques Louis David: World History Archive/Alamy 

Teaching and tutoring are not supposed to be lecturing. Students have to speak up in discussion. Supposedly a good teacher/tutor uses the Socratic Method of questioning, in which the tutor asks a series of questions, nudging the student in a certain direction until the student figures out the answer herself.

But in this method, the more the student talks, the more she feels like she is dominating the discussion. Once a student of mine became very upset because she said she didn't come to a tutor to have to do the work by herself. Basically she was thinking "Why are we paying so much money if I'm doing all the talking. We should be paying the teacher to teach me."

String of Pearls

I worked in the tutoring center at Cooper Union, a world-renowned scholarship school with only three majors: Art, Architecture and Engineering. Thus our students fell into three highly distinct types.

The Engineers tended to be foreign and had trouble with saying what they meant, grammar and sentence structure. The Architecture students never came- in all my years there, I saw only one. His mind was a blend of art and science and he had very little trouble with writing.

Then there were the Art students. They presented a very odd style.

The Art student writing style, reflecting the Art student mind and logic, was so creative that I never wanted to change it. Really I hated the thought of taming a creative, associative mind to be like everybody else.

In the Garage (Grad School)

Writing on the rain

For my Master's Degree thesis I evaluated the academic writing of a student at the University of Texas at Austin. He was someone I used to chat with when I worked in the library, and he'd told me that he taught himself to write. I thought that might make an interesting thesis topic and asked to see some of his college papers. They were highly unusual and I saw immediately he was not the typical student.

I had no idea what to make of such strange writing. It was not academic yet it was highly insightful. And it was fun to read! It was a whole different way of relating to the world and a different way of understanding information. It was like he was speaking a different language entirely from what students are taught to use to succeed in college. If he was unwilling or unable to use the standard academic way, should he be penalized?

Turning Point (Grading Papers)

grade book

For the first few years that I was a teacher and tutor, I gave every student the benefit of a doubt. I accepted their weak work and their excuses, feeling that nothing could be done about it, that I didn't have the right to complain, and most of all, I was afraid to be mean because I wanted my students to like me.

I Can't Tell Anyone Else

A teacher is in a strange position. To a young student, she is an authority figure, a surrogate parent, an older friend or aunt. Just as in psychotherapy, strange projections result. The Narration Essay is tricky. Who is it aimed at? Most students feel the audience is their teacher. Students often write about the most important events in their lives in the Narration Essay, and thus form a bond with the audience, their teacher.

Students will sometimes confide in a teacher things they would never tell their friends. "I never told anyone this, but I feel I can trust you," is how it often begins. One time it was even "You're the only white person I've ever trusted," simply in being her teacher. Sometimes it's something they work out with you through their writing; sometimes it's simply that they confide in you.

Enthusiasm (Grammar)

When I was a tutor at Nassau Community College, a student came in whose professor wanted her to work on grammar and sentence structure. Normally I prefer to focus on the paper itself, but this was what he wanted.

Romeo and Juliet word cloud
http://coolcardsblog.blogspot.com/

I showed the student the different ways that sentence parts and clauses can be fitted together. After each example it was like a light bulb going on. "Oh, cool!" she said every time, for coordinated sentences "Cool!", subordination, "Cool!", for all the various subordinating conjunctions, "Cool! Cool!"

Obviously grammar had seemed to her- as to most people- a tricky, pointless subject, and I was showing her the beauty of how things fit together like puzzle pieces. Next we looked at possessives, and the rules suddenly made sense, "Oh, cool!" We looked at modifiers and it clicked- "Cool!" Everything was Cool!

She floated out of the room, buoyed by her enthusiasm. She assured me she was going to read more grammar at home. I doubt the excitement would carry her for so long. It was probably a temporary elation.

Coaxing the Deer (College Entrance Essays)

I was introduced to a woman who was in distress because her son Lawrence was supposed to begin writing the essays for his college applications, but he had dug in his heels- he did not to write a personal essay about himself. He was tremendously bright, went to the city's premier high school, and was eligible for the very best colleges, but how to pass this hurdle? I agreed to try.

girl feeding deer, bronze c 1925, Herzbach & Wied

He wouldn't listen to what his mother asked him to do, but when we met I saw that he was at least listening to me. He was highly sensitive and his mind felt every nuance of another person. It was like trying to entice a nervous deer, extending an open hand and not breathing, hoping it won't bolt. His eyes still showed caution, but he was listening.

Sophistication (Special Needs)

I tutor a Down Syndrome girl named Connie who is exceedingly bright. I was teaching Connie to read. For her 14th birthday I was browsing a botanical gardens gift shop and saw this book, Sky Tree. The text was approximately a level higher than she could read. It showed a tree through all the seasons, in lovely paintings, with text personifying the tree's feelings. For example in the winter the tree feels lonely because the birds have gone.

Would Connie enjoy the story? Nothing happens, except the seasons and the lives of the tree and the animals, the way that nature changes such as the water freezes over. I was sure she would be bored. No people, no action, no storyline really. Pictures that were almost exactly alike except for season changes. But I bought it and as soon as she saw it she was delighted.

The Most Dangerous Profession

Oliver Twist picks his first pocket.
Even a thief has steady work.

Tutoring is the most dangerous profession. Even a thief has steady work, but a tutor is subject to the whims of other people, governments and budgeting. If she works for a family privately, they can cancel at any time. Maybe the student only needs temporary help, or a parent loses a job, or takes on a larger expense and can no longer afford the tutor. A tutor's schedule can change from week to week.

If she works for an agency, as do many special-needs tutors, her hours are up for review every year and the government can slice funding and overnight she is dismissed. If her special-needs client is a child, by 21 the child will age out of the system. If she works for a school, her hours are up for review every semester (three times a year) and they can cut hours, even to the point of elimination overnight. She must constantly be on the lookout for other work.

Even the best tutor may have a bad day, or make one mistake, and her tutoring quality may not be quite up to par just once. A family can judge her on that one day and assume she is a bad tutor and fire her. In fact the entire session can be perfect except for one small oversight, and the family will judge her on that.

In this, a tutor is like a heart surgeon, the President, or the guy at the controls of a nuclear power plant. She has to perform at top form and is constantly in danger of suddenly losing her livelihood overnight.

Tutors do not get served notice. What seems like a solid edifice of employment can crumble at any moment, even without warning.

Thanks That's All I Needed (Reading Comprehension)

When I was a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, I worked in the English Department Writing Lab as a tutor. One day a young student came in, thunked his heavy first-year Literature textbook down onto the desk, sat down and opened it. If I may venture to say so, he was an Asian young man majoring in Engineering.

BLOOD WEDDING

"What's a symbol" he asked me in a no-nonsense voice.
I looked at the reading selection. It was a play I had never read before. I didn't even know the plot. I was nervous- how could I help him without knowing anything about it?

When faced with the impossible, a tutor always continues, with the hopes that "something will turn up." And turn up it did, right in the opening lines.

The play was Blood Wedding by Lorca. Here are the first few lines:

BRIDEGROOM: (entering) Mother.

MOTHER: What?

BRIDEGROOM: I’m off.

MOTHER: Where to?

BRIDEGROOM: To the vineyard (He makes as if to leave)

MOTHER: Wait.

BRIDEGROOM: What is it?

MOTHER: Your lunch, my son.

BRIDEGROOM: Never mind. I’ll eat grapes. Give me a knife.


Do you see the symbol?!

The dialogue continues in a way that makes the symbol much more obvious. Not to mention the title! But the only thing I needed was that knife.

I said, "Is someone going to die at the end?" He said yes. Then I pointed out the lines. "Well," I said, "See that knife?" Yes, he nodded. I concluded: "In the beginning, he's only using it for his breakfast. But someone is going to die by the end- that's a symbol."

I had no time to say any more. He reacted like lightening had hit. He popped up like a jack in the box, slamming shut the book as he rose, and tossing it in his bookbag. "Thank you" he said as he headed out the door. I guess that was all he needed.

This is from one of the recommendations I received from professors while tutoring there:
". . . Eve has an instinctive feeling for diagnosing writing weaknesses and finding a means to eradicate them. Perhaps because she is such an attentive listener, she got to the bottom of many student problems that had eluded me. . . In my experience, she is the single best Writing Lab staff member that I have come across."

Special Needs: LEORA'S LETTER

Here is the letter that Leora wrote with me.

Leroa was a 21 year old young lady with Down Syndrome. Leora's parents wanted her to write a letter to the people in her community who sponsor her, who help cover the expenses for the special schooling and residence, and even my tutoring! Leora was to tell them what she is accomplishing, and to thank them for making it possible. This letter is the finest work that Leora did with me. She was 21 at the time. It took a few months.

HOW LEORA WROTE THE LETTER WITH ME

Dear Friends,

Thank you so much for raising money for my school and for my Residence. You are really good people. You help me grow and be stronger. I also see you for Shabbos and holidays. I really enjoy your company and your hospitality. Thank you people for doing so much for me.

When I first met you I was really depressed. I didn't have any friends to talk to and hang out with me. I wasn't able to fit in. I didn't have self-confidence because I needed help to speak. It was really hard for me to figure stuff out. I wasn't able to speak for myself. I didn't trust people. I was afraid to talk because I was afraid people would make fun of me.

Special Needs: How Leora Wrote Her Letter with me

I have been tutoring a special-needs child for six years, who has grown into a lovely young lady. Leora has Down Syndrome and when I first met her, age 16, she was unable to answer a yes or no question, or understand the concept of 1+1.

I had never met a child as mentally challenged as Leora was, and frankly, I have to admit that I had questions along the lines of, what IS inside her? How limited is this person? How much can be elicited? Does she think like us? Is she capable of the same depth of ideas? The same depth of understanding of life? The same complexity of emotions?

I have to admit that when I first began working with Leora I was doubtful as to how much was possible. That was at 16. But Leora was going to a special-needs school. They have methods of training the brain, building step upon step, with special exercises and activities to build skills for each brain activity, such as for example right and left frontal lobe thinking such as lateral thinking, inference, and reasoning, categorization; expressive, receptive and pragmatic language and so on- tools to build the brain. By the time Leora was 21, it seems that she was ready to show what she could do.

credit: scrapbooker-writingupastorm

My role in Leora's life is to tutor her in writing letters. She can't always express herself clearly and I elicit what's inside. I began the letter not expecting much- and I was to have a very humbling experience. The finest work Leora did was a letter she wrote with me, which took a few months to write.

THE LETTER ITSELF IS IN THE PREVIOUS POST,

and you will see what I mean. Not only did it turn out that Leora is capable of sophisticated emotion, but she excels in it. It took us a lot of effort, "pulling it out of her." But what a joyous surprised for us when it did emerge.