Jessica Rosevear

Wondering how to deal with tweeting teens in the classroom?  Check out my new article, “Cell Phone Dos and Don’ts,” in this month’s Instructor magazine.  Thanks to everyone who gave me time for interviews!

Today, I was thumbing through Catherine Bowman’s book of poetry, The Plath Cabinet, and stumbled across this poem:

Things to Do, 1953

See Gordy.  Marty.  Vanity Fair tea,

Golden Bough subcommittee, Holy Grail settee,

New Yorker tease, Vogue tea, Atlantic rejectee.

Write T, shorthand Ts, Mademoiselle teas,

shock T., Marty?  Tennis party.

It’s a list of things to do, ranging from the glamorous to the mundane to the unpleasant.  There are ups and downs on this to do list, just like in real life.  However, the repetition of the sound “tee” throughout the poem adds a certain playfulness to every single item on the list. 

It’s a great lesson to learn:  no matter what happens in our days, whether it’s good or bad, our attitudes shape the way we view our lives.  Do we humbly accept the good, take the bad with a grain of salt, find joy in the every day?  Doing so may enhance our lives more than we ever imagined.

I found this uplifting quote from Andre Dubus while poking around Writer’s Digest’s Promptly blog.  Today it hits home.

“Don’t quit. It’s very easy to quit during the first 10 years. Nobody cares whether you write or not, and it’s very hard to write when nobody cares one way or the other. You can’t get fired if you don’t write, and most of the time you don’t get rewarded if you do. But don’t quit.” —ANDRE DUBUS, 1988

There are a few writers out there that completely fascinate me–not just because of the quality of their writing, but also their lives and what they have to say about writing.  Curtis Sittenfeld, author of novels Prep, The Man of My Dreams, and American Wife, tops my list.  I loved her first two novels and her third is waiting on my bookshelf for the next break from school. 

As a speaker, Sittenfeld is incredibly articulate without the slightest hint of pretention.  She also happened to teach high school English, which doubles my respect and admiration for her.  I was researching author interviews tonight to show my creative writing class and stumbled across this interview with Sittenfeld.  She has a lot of interesting and relevant things to say about the craft, her experience at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and the joys of writing.  She also talks about the advantage of writing from the perspective of outsiders, which has got my wheels turning with ideas for shaping–and sharpening–characters in my next book.  Sittenfeld is an inspiration to keep on writing and keep on learning.

My first class starts at 7:50 AM every day.  I’m not exactly a morning person, so some mornings it takes a little extra effort–or coffee–for me to kick into teacher mode.  Today, though, I didn’t have to work that hard.  My first period sophomores finished reading 1984 over the long weekend, and today we were going to talk about the ending. 

As the kids filtered into the classroom and I started taking attendance before the late bell rang, I overheard one boy say to another, “Hey, what’d you think of the ending?”

Jackpot!  My ears lit on fire, straining to hear the two boys over the chatter of the other kids.  Were they talking about a movie they saw over the weekend?  The end of a hockey game?  Or–my heart lept–could they possibly be talking about the ending of 1984?  Before class begins?  When most kids are usually scurrying to finish homework for other classes or do last minute studying for a test later in the day?

Acknowledgment from me would destroy the dynamic between the boys.  I became Jane Goodall, busying myself with checking my attendance and pretending to ignore the students’ banter, while my senses focused entirely on the voices of the two boys.

“I saw it coming,” the second boy replied.  “Remember when Winston said his biggest fear is rats earlier in the book?  I totally saw it coming.”

Yes!!  They were talking about the book!  About their predictions and reactions to the end of the story!  And class hadn’t even started yet! 

Eventually, the bell rang, the pledge was recited, and class began.  The smile on my face as I sat in our group discussion circle was ten times bigger than it had been when I first walked into the room ten minutes before. 

In teaching, there are few joys greater than seeing students absorbing themselves in class material on their own time and of their own free will.  Today, it was better than coffee.

Sick of the hype surrounding Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series?  The Onion has the antidote.

I joined a gym over the weekend.  Today I was jogging on the treadmill when I saw a student that we’ll call X.  I’ve never had X as a student, but I know her from the hallways of the school–she’s made herself famous in all the wrong ways.  I often wonder what it would take to get her to realize her behavior is completely inappropriate.  She’s a chronic violator of school rules.  I’ve caught her texting in the hall, wearing her hood, loitering during class periods, cursing loudly, and worst of all, freely calling out homophobic slurs at her peers.  As a result, when I see X in school, I’m inclined to turn and walk the other way. 

Unfortunately, today I was on the treadmill and had nowhere to look but straight ahead and curse my fate as X invaded my new hangout.  Soon later, an adult joined X on the mats.  I noticed them circulating the gym throughout my run on the treadmill.  It looked like a personal training session; the adult would model a move and X would follow. 

I began to realize that this was an adult that was shaping X in a physical sense.  X was being reached by an adult who was helping her improve.  I couldn’t help but think that maybe there was a bigger lesson here:  maybe “impossible-to-reach” kids might not be so unreachable after all.  I wondered what an English teacher like me could learn from a personal trainer, a coach–anyone who is in the business of reaching out and helping someone else to improve, in any sense. 

My juniors are reading The Crucible, and today we discussed the moment when Deputy Governor Danforth mistakenly says that people are only all good or all evil.  We talked about how Danforth is wrong–how even though John Proctor is the hero of the story, the fact that he’s the voice of reason amidst the hysteria of Salem does not cancel out the fact that he cheated on his wife with a younger girl.  And even though Abigail Williams seems entirely evil–I have one student who has proclaimed his distaste for her nearly every day we’ve been reading the play–can’t we understand that what she’s doing might stem from the fact that she saw her parents murdered in front of her face and that she was taken advantage of by a much older man and then promptly tossed aside? 

We aren’t all good or all evil, as I preached today to my juniors but really only digested after my jog ended.  This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be held accountable for what we do.  But understanding this human truth might help us reach those who seem unreachable, help us understand someone who seems like a one-dimensional villain.  Then, maybe we could keep walking forward instead of walking–or jogging–the other way.

My friend Eileen recently gave me a fantastic Rick Moody article from The Atlantic about writers, mentors, and writing classes.  He talks about his amazing experience in a class with Angela Carter and his less-than-amazing experience in his MFA writing classes at Columbia.  He has a lot of fascinating commentary on writing courses, but one of the most inspiring paragraphs for me runs thus:

“What would happen if we understood the workshop to be not tidy and orderly but large, unpredictable, and uncertain?  What if long monologues about German metaphysics could sit right beside arguments from the stylebook of Flannery O’Connor?  What if the worst story of the semester were subjected to a half hour of sentence-diagramming exercises?  What if no one turned in a story for three weeks, and all you did was sit around talking about the ugliest kid you knew in childhood, or the worst job you ever had?  What if all you did in class was assignments?  What if you rewrote one sentence all semester?  What if everyone got a chance to be the instructor, and everyone got a chance to be the student?  Then, I think, we’d be getting somewhere.”

When I found out I’d be teaching creative writing in addition to my regular English classes this year, I was elated and terrified.  The chance to share my passion for writing and help students develop their own talents and love of writing seemed too good to be true.  But, like Rick Moody, I’ve had my share of terrific and terrible writing teachers.  One teacher I had was so inspiring that after class ended at 9:45 PM, I would drive back from New York to my New Jersey apartment and then write for another hour.  I’ve had other teachers who have told me, directly or indirectly, that they didn’t care about my work or my life as a writer, and, on the worst nights, l’d leave class never wanting to write again. 

So when I was given the assignment of teaching Introduction to Creative Writing, above all, I wanted to be like the teachers who had me running home to write after every class.  It’s been a year of trial and error–I started the year rigidly structured and slowly adapted the course to meet the interests of my students, allowing their work and focus to help guide the way I build our class.  And, if I may be so bold to say so, it’s working out well so far.

I like Moody’s “what if” theory because it suggests that there is no one formula for a great class.  I think the best teaching can happen when a teacher thinks “what if?”  What if I invite my students to make a movie instead of write a paper?  What if I have a social studies teacher give a guest lecture on communism in my class when we read The Crucible?  What if I teach a new book this year?  What if the students engage in a literary online discussion forum?  Teaching doesn’t have to be about learning the rules, the formula, the concrete “how to” of the profession–at least not all the time.  Sometimes, getting creative and thinking about the “what ifs” is what makes a class great.