Friday, June 15, 2007

Back to My Basics--The Heart of Teaching

When I started teaching English Composition to Freshmen over four years ago now, I didn't know much about teaching. I was thinking about this recently. I thought how my getting dunked in the waters of teaching could be compared to my experiences dating as a teenager.

I think my main objective on dates then (especially with guys whom I loved, like Ken Hannah) was not to make a complete fool of myself. But while on dates, it seems some megawatt spotlight is always shining down illuminating each little time you mess things up.

One time while at the drive-in, I remember cuddling close to Ken Hannah while we sat in his cream colored Cutlass Supreme with square headlights. Lord only knows what movie was showing. I do remember we were in the front seat. I was such the prude.

That night Ken was wearing, get this, a black fishnet shirt--OK this is the seventies and these shirts were in style, I promise. My head was resting on Ken's shoulder and chest. When I tried to move my head, I was aware that my earring and consequently my ear were attached to his fish netting.

While making out with Ken Hannah, I'd caught my earring in one of those tiny triangles of his shirt. I was embarrassed. I felt like I did when I'd stuck my tongue inside the freezer to lick up fallen juices from Koolaid Popsicles I was putting in the fridge and my tongue had gotten frozen there.

Ken and I fumbled around trying to untangle me like I was some cod on a fishing line or something. Once separated from each other, I think we were hesitant to hug or touch anymore that night for fear of being permanently attached. I'm sure I never thought about just taking the earring off.

Another time of dating firsts was when I accidentally left my pants unzipped while on a double date with Ken Hannah and my best friend, JoAnn, and her boyfriend Jim. I recount that experience in my first blog entry on this site (On Leopard Print Panties and Writing) so I won't tell that story again.

In those early dating days, it didn't seem to matter what I did it still came out beyond awkward. That's how it was my first year of teaching as well.

The first semester I taught I had late night classes. My last class ended at 10:45 p.m. One night in that late class, one of my students kept looking at me kind of funny while I was in the middle of discussing Eudora Welty's essay from One Writer's Beginnings.

I thought a grandaddy long legs was on my head or something. I gave this student, Carey, a guy, a quizzical expression, and he mouthed some initials to me. I don't even remember the initials now. I didn't have a clue what he was talking about, so I kept staring at him trying to figure out what he was saying.

Finally he just said it out loud--trying not to be too loud--but loud enough that I heard. "Your pants are unzipped."

"Oh." I got it immediately, zipped my gold brushed jeans up and laughed. I told Carey thanks and told the class that I figured it was good I had gotten these embarrassing events over with early during my teaching career so I didn't have to keep anticipating something like this happening.

Since then other things have happened in class. As a teacher who tries to write and read out loud along with the class, I've had moments of unexpected tears when I've read my words to them. I've had times when I've said the wrong thing or revealed too much.

Many times I have completely forgotten what I was going to say--my mind for some reason empties of all thought--I am standing in front of 25 sets of eyes looking for some wisdom and guidance on writing and I don't even have wisdom and guidance about how I got to the classroom. These moments I usually recover from pretty quickly by saying I'm old (fifty) or gave some of my brains away when I had children, etc., etc.

Last week, however, I had a new chink in my forgetting moments during class. Room 68, a computer room in the English Building is always hot, hotter and hottest. This summer it has been almost unbearable. My students' cheeks are red. I notice this lack of concentration look as if we are all sitting in a steam room rather than a classroom. No deodorant that I choose works under this much pressure and heat. Add to this hotness and sweat and lack of connection the fact that I forget what I am going to say.

Well, it's not like I forget. I have notes. I've read the material time and time again. But you see, I'm not a from the book teacher. I'm a from the heart teacher. When I start looking at a textbook to try to teach, my inner wiring gets crossed and begins to misfire and I can't begin to see much less say the next coherent note on my pad.

I have to excuse my sweating self from class. "You all I'm sorry but I've just got to take a minute." I say that to the kids after an eternal 45 seconds of me not being able to pull it back together.

I need air and hallway space and coolness on my face that hot rooms don't provide. I leave the room. I am sweating like 23 pigs. I've never left the classroom because I can't remember something.

But I do.

I clomp my sandals down the hall while I breathe deeply the soothing air in the hallways, sip some water from the fountain, take some more deep breaths and walk back into class knowing I cannot teach from my notes.

I return to my tried and true teaching method--speaking from my heart. And it works. Of course it does. When you are acting from a space of truth in your heart things always work.

I had tried to use notes and a more formal lecture to please some "other" people, but it didn't work for me, would never work for me. Well it might work for me if my students like expanded moments of silence during one hour and fifteen minutes of class. But since this is a class of writing, of language, of words, I feel many glitches in my presentation might seem a little weird.

I make it through the class even though I wouldn't put a blue ribbon on my teacher wall for this particular night. Hey, at least I come back in the room and don't run out into the dark night never to be heard from again.

On the drive home, I try to get on to myself for forgetting, for being human, for not always doing things perfectly. Something in me won't take the rap. Something in me knows it isn't about forgetting how to teach my students in class, it is more of forgetting who I am as a teacher, as a woman, as my true self.

As soon as I step off the block of Karen Shelnutt and try to edge onto the block of another teacher who uses notes and lectures with ease, I give up the gift I have of teaching from the heart. I know it. I knew it when I had 32 pages of notes in front of me and I know it as I type this now.

I can't pretend to be what I am not. When I do Spirit interrupts with something--unzipped pants, awkward silences, blistering hot classrooms. The silence I experienced last week in class was really a gift of Spirit saying, "Hey sister, shift gears. You are way off course. Go down the hall. Drink some water. Tell your heart you're sorry for not including her. Then go back in and do it the way you know how."

No comments: