Like so much else in the world, we were disappointed that the Covid-19 pandemic kept us from celebrating Issue 20 of Glassworks in person as per usual with a reading at the Rowan University Art Gallery. However, I was so proud of my interns for pushing me to curate a virtual reading including inviting authors to read their own work. Between the author submissions and the editors, we recorded about half of the pieces published in Issue 20 and shared the videos on social media.

You can also access them all on our website - please enjoy!
http://www.rowanglassworks.org/video.html

Today's post is a reblog from a former classmate of mine, Kristin, with whom I studied creative writing and literature at Roosevelt University during graduate school. She is a fellow English teacher, and her words spoke volumes to me earlier this week. I find it particularly interesting that even though I teach in New Jersey and Philadelphia, and Kristin teaches in Nairobi, Kenya, our experiences are much the same. I think the rest of the post speaks for itself. You can find Kristin's full blog here: http://wordslikenets.blogspot.com

Sometimes there's something that you want to say. And then you remember that you have a blog. And then you feel passionately ashamed for how you ignore your blog. But then you think about all those months when you didn't have something to say, and it seems impossible for you to have written any more blog posts than you have. And then you come to terms with your writing self and realize that people will still love you (although they may not forgive you for continuing in this personal-reflection-only-thinly-disguised-by-the-second-person). You decide that you have an "occasional" blog, which not only means that you are allowed to post only "occasionally" but that you are allowed to wait until you have an occasion, a reason, something to say. Like now.

I teach an online college English class. As a part of this course, students read Langston Hughes’ poem “Harlem.” The students are then asked to answer this question: Sometimes this poem is entitled "Dream Deferred."  Which title do you think is more appropriate and why?

A majority of students invariably choose the title “Dream Deferred” over the title “Harlem.” This is partly because this is an introduction to literature course and many of my students are more interested in completing the assignment to get the gen-ed credit than they are in actually thinking deeply about poetry. Within about five seconds, they see the connection between the deferred dream of the title and the similes of the poem (indeed, the first line of the poem even asks “What happens to a dream deferred?”). This strange geographical reference would take more work to parse. What was an obvious cultural reference to Hughes' contemporaries mystifies, and many students seem willing to give up on whatever isn’t immediately understandable (sigh). However, there are also a set of students who do think carefully about their answers, even googling “Harlem” to figure out the connection, and yet still end up writing something like this:

            “Dream Deferred” is better because it’s more universal and can apply to everyone.

I have to admit that this answer drives me crazy (and not just for the logical conundrum of something being "more universal"). And yet, I understand why the student--even the thinking student--might write it. A poem that more people can relate to must of course be a more powerful poem. And a poem with a more general title will be a poem that more people can relate to, right?

Not exactly. I'm reminded of Emily Dickinson, who writes about poetry as “spreading wide my narrow hands.” Can’t you just see her in her white dress, alone in her room, with her arms flung wide? Her experience was narrow (like everyone’s, limited as she was to being just one person), and yet, based on her enduring popularity alone, her poetry also spreads wide. Not because she focused on the universal but because she embraced her narrow life so fully.

I want to bark this truth into my students' faces like an over-eager golden retriever, and I often have to give my own collar a good yank in order not to scare anyone. With good writing it is specificity, not generality, that creates emotion and connection. It is the very fact that something specific is happening to someone that is not you that allows you to feel most fully what you ought.

The fact is Hughes’ poem is so much more powerful because it isn’t about all deferred dreams everywhere. The power comes from experiencing Hughes' ideas and emotions, not from eclipsing them with our own. The goal in poetry and fiction isn’t to relate an experience as universal (mostly that bit is built in and doesn’t need a lot of attention) but as real. It’s not two sides of a scale--increase specificity and decrease universality. It’s more like a tree--the more effort you put in to stretching out each branch, to growing in each leaf, the more people can find shade underneath. 

After a much needed 6-ish week break, I'm stepping back into the classroom tomorrow to meet a group of incoming freshman and to attempt in 5 weeks to prepare them for the rigors of college-level reading and writing. This week's Huffington Post article on teaching is so clear a reminder of the struggles of this occupation. Because the bottom line is, you can only do so much in the short time you're given. And it's not a 9-5 job; it's an every-spare-moment job. And some students just aren't ready for the material you need to throw at them.

Just a snippet of Peter Greene's brilliant metaphor:

I'm very pleased to announce the publication of Issue 8 of Glassworks Magazine. Working with the student editors on this through Rowan University's Master of Arts in Writing program was a joy, and what a beautiful issue we've put together.

Visit our website here: http://rowanglassworks.org

and

View the full issue online here: http://issuu.com/glassworksmagazine

Yes! I'm thrilled to see this article in The Atlantic about Why Teaching Poetry Is So Important. On a whim a few weeks ago, I threw some complex poems at my Writer's Mind class, a course for upperclassmen majoring in writing. The focus of the course isn't necessarily literature, but on how the mind of a writer functions, the rhetorical choices a writers makes and the elements and tools available to him or her. The class focuses on the process of writing, on being aware of and overcoming writer's block, and learning to articulate why certain decisions have been made in writing and revising. The kind of writing we practice is really up to the instructor, which makes this an exciting class to teach.

I wanted my students to practice writing about themselves, in particular, writing about the darker parts of themselves they generally don't share. The theory behind this is that if they can write about those dark, secret things, they can write about anything without fear or hesitation. At the last minute, I realized there could be no better way to approach this than through poetry. So in the 30 minutes before class, I threw out my initial plan and printed out copies of Sylvia Plath, Charles Bukowski, Billy Collins, and Sharon Olds, and hoped my students would be open to poetry. The results have exceeded my expectations.

After two class periods thoughtfully discussing not only the meaning and emotion behind these poems, but also the imagery, sounds, structure, and symbolism, my students wrote their own "shadow poems". They are blowing me away. We are workshopping them anonymously as a whole class, and while it is taking far longer than I planned, the conversations are insightful and exciting. Several students have asked if we can just keep doing this for the rest of the semester. The poems are intense, the feedback is constructive, and the revisions are promising. I am getting to know my students more deeply through this community building activity, and the techniques we are practicing will spill over into their other writing as well. While only a handful of the students in the class consider themselves creative writers, and even less poets (there are several education majors in the group) they are opening up and growing as writers and as people in new ways because of poetry.

As Andrew Simmons describes in his article:
"Poetry enables teachers to teach their students how to write, read, and understand any text. Poetry can give students a healthy outlet for surging emotions. Reading original poetry aloud in class can foster trust and empathy in the classroom community, while also emphasizing speaking and listening skills that are often neglected... Teachers should produce literature lovers as well as keen critics, striking a balance between teaching writing, grammar, and analytical strategies and then also helping students to see that literature should be mystifying. It should resist easy interpretation and beg for return visits. Poetry serves this purpose perfectly."

The proof is right in front of me in this group of students. I couldn't agree more.
Check out the full article here: Why Teaching Poetry Is So Important

This article, and this quote in particular, perfectly sums up why I believe what I teach, writing and literature, provides students some of the most important skills they will gain in college.

"If you really think about learning, there are some master disciplines which unlock all the others.  They are philosophy, history, mathematics, language (reading/writing), and science (mainly mastery of the scientific method).  These disciplines form the core of learning and comprise the engine of its expression.  The student who gains proficiency in these areas will maintain, for virtually the rest of his/her life, the capacity to learn new things and to organize those new things within the context of the older things.  The learning that takes place in these areas does not really expire.  It does not become dated.  It is a fund that maintains its value.  The same is not necessarily true of knowledge gained in professional programs."

read the full article here: "This College Professor has a Message for Liberal Arts Majors," The Federlist

Apparently my blog is turning into a collection of article links about education. I promise I'll post something of my own now and then.

Buzzfeed may not be the most reliable of sources, but this is an interesting graphic produced by Online-PhD-Program.org discussing the problem of adjuncts in the university setting. Unlike some of the adjuncts described here, I've been fortunate enough as an adjunct to scrape together a 35k+ salary every year... But mostly this is because I teach twice the full time load, including summers, plus tutoring and advising every chance I get. I've also worked in coffee shops, taught dance classes, and done tutoring lower than the college level. After 7 years of adjuncting, I finally landed a 3/4 time job, but that means I still have to adjunct and don't get health insurance, pension (though I will be eligible for this later), paid sick/maternity leave, or professional development funding.

Most people would ask why people still adjunct if the pay and benefits are so abysmal. I don't know about others, but I continue to do it because I love teaching. I don't try to find a teaching job outside of the college setting because while I have a masters degree in my field, I'm not certified to teach, and the stability for teachers isn't much better than for professors. Additionally, this is what I've worked for. I worked hard for multiple degrees in English so that I could teach on the college level, but opportunities for professors have decreased so drastically since I began I couldn't have possibly known what I was in for. Now that I'm here, I can't imagine being happy doing anything else.

In some ways, the hardships of being an adjunct means those who are still teaching really do it for the right reasons - because they love it. For the students. This is a good thing, certainly. The problem is that the number of classes and/or extra jobs an adjunct needs to take on to make a living wage means that we have less time to give to each student who comes into our classrooms. I try to give my students as much time an attention as I can, but teaching 6 classes, sometimes spread out across 4 campuses means a lot of time spent in the car, time prepping for classes, time grading. All this means less time in my office being available for students, less time emailing them, less time writing detailed comments on their work. THIS is the real tragedy. Students with adjuncts for professors are learning from qualified, intelligent, passionate instructors... who just don't have as much time and energy to give them as they should.

While I seem to be transitioning out of the adjunct phrase of my career, some professors never do. I'm one of the lucky ones, though I'm still at an in-between, not quite at that coveted full-time, tenure-track position. I hope wherever my career takes me, I'll always remember how hard I worked as an adjunct, how underpaid and underappreciated I often felt, and I hope that I'll see a dramatic change within my lifetime so that those just starting out don't always have to scrape by the way I have.

Check out the graph here: "Everyone Loses When We Underpay Adjunct Professors"

Last semester, I wrote a recommendation letter for a former student who later told me she was admitted to Temple University. She thanked me a million times for the letter, and said reading it even made her mom cry. (I didn't know it was THAT great! I was just being honest; she was a joy of a student.)

Today I found out another former student was just accepted to St. Joseph University and Chestnut Hill College, both wonderful, small schools in the Philadelphia area.

In the midst of all the students who I see withdraw, repeat courses, struggle, scrape by, or walk away because of personal situations, it's so refreshing to celebrate the success of students who truly deserve it. I hope I had a small part in that.

To wrap up the semester, I usually ask my students to write in response to a handful of self-reflective questions and then share aloud. Today, I asked my Composition I students to respond instead in essay form to this question:

What is the value of writing and how do you feel better prepared as a writer because of this course?

Their responses are invigorating, insightful, and literally bring tears to my eyes and give me hope for the future:

• In today's high tech and modern society, it seems that the written word is a lost art. Something that used to be highly valued a little more than a century ago is now something that is taken for granted.
• Writing is very important not only in education, but also in many other fields. According to me, the main purpose in writing is that we learn, explore new ideas, and think very critically.
• Anyone can learn to write well if they practice enough. All it requires is knowing the basics and applying yourself. Sometimes it can be disheartening seeing all of your mistakes pointed out in editing, but this is what helped me overall. It's not an overnight process, but now I have confidence when I write as opposed to just throwing words on a paper.
• I can now begin to really understand writing papers and expressing myself through writing. Writing is thinking.
• I believe teachers are doing their jobs in molding our minds to think about things we've never thought about before and broaden our horizons to be more educated adults... This class has opened my eyes to a new world of writing. It's made me think there's way more to it than just scribbling on paper.
• I believe that the purpose of writing is to convey your thoughts, ideas, and perspectives on the world and specific subjects. With the written word, you can express any emotion whether positive, negative, or neutral. You can provide a view, no matter how farfetched or logical. With text, you can do whatever you want; it's the ultimate freedom... The true beauty of writing though is that is can be shared, and with that sharing comes new ideas, new perspectives, more knowledge, and a greater understanding of people and the world.
• One thing I've learned in this class is that I've been given the chance to write about things that maybe I didn't have the courage to  say before. I have learned to make what I write meaningful. Writing is not just a boring obligation for me anymore. Now it is a way I can express myself like I never have before.
• There is no escaping writing; it is everywhere, but instead, you can find the value and purpose of it. Writing is an art. It is giving yourself a voice. Writing is fearless. It is a way of communicating. Writing is so much bigger than people believe. It is so much bigger than I used to believe.