When Students Rock Your Face Off

There's no better feeling for a teacher than when you grade a stack of papers and says, "Yes. They got it. And man they got it good." Not only does this make you feel like you're not a worthless teacher, but, most of all, it gives you a sense that you taught something that mattered to someone, that by teaching you helped a handful of people gain a better understanding not only about writing, but about themselves.

While reading through student reflection and analysis papers of the flash fiction I had them write, I felt like, at times, I was reading the general principles about writing that I believe in. As follows are some key moments that made me smile.

"Using scenes, a writer attempts to make readers forget they are reading and the writer wants the reader to live in the story." (AMEN, SISTER)

"In conclusion to the fiction and poetry units, I feel as though I can freely write and that writing is a way of relieving many thoughts. In a certain sense, I would consider creative writing as an unusual form of therapy, a therapy that helps the soul by getting your thoughts out onto paper instead of barricading them inside, where they do nothing but harm. " (AMEN,BROTHER)

"The best point I can make is that if you are not emotionally into your work, how can you expect your reader to put their own emotion into it? I learned that no matter if it's a short poem or long story, if is factual or fiction, have some feeling to it or else the writing will just be words on paper. As writers, we want to go beyond that." (AMEN, BROTHER).

"If your characters are not solid then your piece will falter." (AMEN, SISTER)

These quotes come from different essays and I think each one is good evidence that by teaching the craft of writing you can teach people about themselves. I really fucking enjoy the fact that these four quotes are so direct about crucial writing elements. And I really, really fucking enjoy the fact that these were written by Intro to Creative writing students.

I'll be the first to admit that a lot of things went wrong in my Intro class, which were entirely my fault. The first day was a complete nightmare because, in all of my wisdom, I decided to teach about every element of poetry in an hour and forty-five minutes. It was a complete crash and burn first day. Recently I had a conference with a student who told me that on the first day almost everybody in the part of the room where he was sitting were looking up classes to take instead of mine while I was up there yucking along. That student also told me he was flat out freaked-out by how I walked in and just started lecturing. That same student said the general reaction after class was "What the fuck just happened?" I'm lucky that people showed up the second day after my grand-fuck up. Dan witnessed this go down and witnessed the recovery attempt on day two. Dan took notes just like everybody else. I swear those people, especially Dan, looked like they had serious hand cramps.

Then I chil-laxed. I came into the class on day one and threw all my babies in the deep end. On day two I came in as the life guard. Looking back, I have no idea why no one dropped the course. The only insight I have is from the same student who told me about how people were looking up new classes. He said he came to class and others kept coming to class because they all wanted to see what was going to happen next. That student said he was pretty convinced I was kind of (he was nice by saying kind of) a wacky guy who paced a lot and tugged his beard a lot when he was thinking. That student said he was pretty sure the reason why everybody stayed in the class was because anything from "I want you to realize that this is important to your life" to "Gimme a damn break" could come out of my mouth at any moment.

In a conference with a different student she said she didn't like the first week of class one bit and the only reason why she didn't drop after the first week was because on the second day I came in and explained that I was sorry for throwing everyone into the deep end, but I did it out of respect to their intelligence. She said she felt challenged every class after that but felt like she was being challenged not by a teacher who always wanted to be right, but a teacher believed the students could handle being pushed to think hard.

And I did make those people think hard and work hard. Too hard at first. Way too hard actually. As I teacher, I make the assumptions that every student can get it, that every student is smart enough to operate at a high level of critical thinking and that it is my job to clearly articulate that they can and also give them the skills how to do so. Ultimately, I respect their intelligences.

One of my teaching pet-peeves is when I hear a teacher saying "Oh, these students just can't handle thinking on an advanced level." There might be some truth to that, but most times when hearing stuff like that I think, "No, that's not the case. Not at all. The issues isn't with how the students can think. This issue is with if you can clearly teach novices complex tasks and complex ways of thinking." I know that is arrogant of me to say that because it assumes I think I can teach novices these things. Well, I'm trying to get there no matter the crashes, the burns, and the stiches. This semester of teaching gave me a lot of wounds and scars, but they were self inflicted. At the end of the day though, I think the class I taught mattered to these people more than just a grade because when I presented them with the challenge of writing something that mattered to themselves in the fiction unit, no body backed down. Everybody took it seriously and everybody wrote their reflections seriously. And that is enough to make to sleep well at night.