I have been teaching English at BYU for over twenty years, focusing on creative writing for more than half of that time. As I contemplate fall semester in my new identity as a BLOGGER, I have been thinking about the conversations we teachers have with our students. Some might label the conversations lectures or lesson plans, but I always aim for an exchange\u00e2\u20ac\u201ca luxury not all departments can afford. (I have no idea if Chris Grant could hold a conversation with me about math, though I doubt it\u00e2\u20ac\u201csimply because I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t speak the language.) Since I married one of my professors, I have some unusual insights about relationships and academia.
\nBruce is brilliant. He is far better-read than I am, though I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m more fun. Our department told him when he was a single, 34-year-old professor that he would need to get married in order to keep his job. The university told me I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d get free tuition if I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d just marry a professor. So Bruce and I really invented the win\/win scenario before Covey even coined the phrase. But then we were two very insecure, smart people and we were MARRIED. On our honeymoon, we had our first fight\u00e2\u20ac\u201cabout an odd interpretation of King Lear. And then we had to build our marriage. Bruce was accustomed to lecturing, and did it well. But lecturing does not go over well in the bedroom, and before long I let him know that the podium was not invited into our bed, and also that I was now his WIFE, not his student, and was his equal in every way. (I would not include that confession on Bruce\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s behalf if the situation hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t improved vastly.) Of course, I brought my own set of problems. I have no difficulty articulating anything, and am quite capable using my tongue to cut someone in half unless I control the impulse. I believe Bruce still has some scars. A Baptist minister once told me, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Sarcasm has no place in a Christian marriage\u00e2\u20ac?\u00e2\u20ac\u201csomething I have come to believe, even though I have not always lived up to it. (Does sarcasm have a place on a Christian blog?)
\nAs we look towards the upcoming semester and I think about yet another group of eager faces, I realize how soft Bruce and I have become\u00e2\u20ac\u201cand not just in our aging bodies. We are nearing the empty nest phase of our life. Bruce has moved from giving Harvard-inspired, 300-page reading assignments (to be done within a week) to a much more reasonable pace. More importantly, he has become the department ombudsman, mediating problems between professors and students. I have told him he is a Tzadik\u00e2\u20ac\u201ca righteous man, because he shows such mercy and compassion to both sides. He is a peacemaker. As for me, I have moved from being a slightly sarcastic single woman to being a quieter (though not terribly quiet), married grandmother, who loves her students as though they were her children but who tries to treat them as respectable peers. Bruce and I both have increased in love and understanding in all of our many contexts, and we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re still growing.
\nI believe that love is at the heart of good teaching (and good blogging?). Sadly, so many in academia have learned the falsehood that a true academic must intimidate not only with stance but with vocabulary\u00e2\u20ac\u201cliberally peppered with the appropriate, often incomprehensible jargon. Teachers become almost vengeful as they catch students at plagiarism or let them know what pitiful little posers they are. But the great Teacher did no such thing. I thoroughly enjoy being in a field where I get to do what Jesus did: tell good stories. I love the fact that my students also write essays, and that they sometimes address issues and events they have never felt comfortable addressing\u00e2\u20ac\u201ceverything from doubts to depression, from loss of a parent to hope in a romance, from coming out of the closet to preparing for a mission. My job is to open the space for them to write candidly. If I am arrogant, contemptuous, etc., the space closes and the students will likely resort to long, jargonesque sentences that attempt to impress the teacher rather than communicate an idea or an experience. Fear of failure translates into long quotations from secondary sources. If, on the other hand, I can create a free space in my classroom, if I can empower my students with responses to their work that go beyond correcting grammar, if I can lead them to their real teachers\u00e2\u20ac\u201cthe writers themselves, not the textbooks\u00e2\u20ac\u201c, if I can excite them about the possibilities of writing through my own passion for it, and if I can hold good conversations with them, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m doing my job. And then I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll give them grades and forget their names…(The second part comes with age, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m afraid.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have been teaching English at BYU for over twenty years, focusing on creative writing for more than half of that time. As I contemplate fall semester in my new identity as a BLOGGER, I have been thinking about the conversations we teachers have with our students. Some might label the conversations lectures or lesson plans, but I always aim for an exchange\u00e2\u20ac\u201ca luxury not all departments can afford. (I have no idea if Chris Grant could hold a conversation with me about math, though I doubt it\u00e2\u20ac\u201csimply because I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t speak the language.) Since I married one of my professors, I have some unusual insights about relationships and academia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}