PEDAGOGY

 

So when you study pedagogy, you are supposedly studying the method and practice of teaching...

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If you attend Western Washington University or another university and continue on an academically driven creative writing path, I believe that is what you will study and practice, if you are lucky, as I was, to receive one of the Teaching Assistant positions available to Masters degree students, via a competitive application process. T.A.s receive a stipend for their tuition and are paid to teach one English 101 (or similar level) class a quarter during their Masters's work; they also must take a class in Pedagogy from the composition director. However, my experience in the Pedagogy class was different than what I expected.

 

My questions about form and function in this class, that are questions regarding “the methods and practice of teaching,” were unexpectedly laughed off by my peers and the friendly professor alike. I felt like I was missing some joke, as our small class of T.A.s carried on to discuss the “theoretical concepts” part with our professor. I love philosophy and the discussion thereof, but I just really needed to know how to run a composition classroom full of actual students. I had no teacher training as yet; I had hoped this class was going to be it! Nope. Hence, I was trained in what I call the Lion's Den of English 101, in which T. A.s are thrown into a classroom of young people expecting their money's worth, and then must teach according to what Professor Bill Smith called the Chaos Theory of teaching English. (Apologies to Bill! We were just on different planets.)

 

His explanation, which has stayed with me regarding the teaching of writing, goes something like this (totally paraphrasing the concept):

When students come to us to learn the practice of writing at the college level, it will necessarily be a practice. Most, or at least many, students coming from high school will not “be there” yet in terms of the writing fluency that is required in revised and even polished writing required for their various classes. The best thing we can do for them is to push them out of their comfort zones, to push them to stop critiquing thoughts that are actually firing up the word flow, to not censor or delete content before it's had a chance to be examined at another time by the writer herself. We must encourage them to go into the chaos, and generate material that they can then mine for ideas, form, and shape into communications (via stories and poems, in Creative Writing). They will come out with better writers after having grappled with both their generative phases and their revision phases and will have benefited from working with their own writing demons.

 

So that is where my original number 1 for my pedagogy because it was the one and only orange and white lifesaver ring thrown at me as I bobbed in the ocean of tousle-headed young students a little over a decade younger than I:

 

"Teach people to keep generating their ideas, and to not censor or critique themselves during this process (or, as little as possible)."

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Of course, I did survive being a T.A. at WWU. I went on to teach at Northwest Indian College on the Lummi Tribal Reservation, where I further had my educational philosophy, attitudes, and methods turned on their heads—how could I not? I was on Coast Salish land; I was the minority learning when I set foot in that college, still trying to figure out how to teach, but now with a whole new audience. When I was hired at Whatcom Community College, working at the two schools overlapped for a quarter or two, but it was too tough. I embraced a full load as an adjunct at WCC and said goodbye to my part-time job at NWIC, a goodbye that in this case was a powerful Lummi graduation ceremony. What I would say I took from my experience there, pedagogically:

 

"Remember that your students' cultures and an organized system of education may in some way be at odds; don't expect them to adapt themselves to your instruction; adapt your instruction to meet their needs. And also, being allowed to share in your students' cultures is a privilege. Be aware. Respect."

 

After NWIC, I began my twenty-one-year career at WCC, which I am actually wrapping up this quarter. I have learned to teach by teaching, by hook and crook, by the seat of my pants, and by tireless invention and reinvention. I have learned from colleagues and office mates (thank you, Debbie Seabury), from mishaps and auspicious coincidence, from books I love (thank you, Steve Kowit) from poets and writers far and near and students and the phenomenal world and dreams. This is the gift of being a creative writer, whether a student or teacher or passerby. Everyone and everything is your teacher and muse. So, as a Buddhist mind training slogan says, don't forget to

 

“Be grateful to everyone.”

 

From the generation-phase based teacher-writer lessons of my day (represented by people like Peter Elbow within academia, Natalie Goldberg outside of it), writers eventually must circle back around, go back to their writing and work on it again and again, so as a teacher I encourage and teach re-seeing (re-visioning), rethinking, reflecting, returning to re-craft and rework original drafts to allow students to move ever closer to cohesively and creatively writing their stories and poems. They also take the incredible leap of sharing their writing with others and offering their thoughts on other students' writing to their peers. This part of the pedagogy is something like:

 

"Teach students to care about their writing and the writing of others through Peer Workshops and Revision."

 

FYI, the bread and butter of most English instructors' careers at the community college and probably even entry-level university is teaching English Composition, especially for adjunct professors. I completely lucked into being able to teach creative writing. Okay, not completely, I did earn a Bachelors's and then a Master's degree in Creative Writing, but was hired to teach Technical Writing and Composition. Also, I was not exactly mailing out and publishing a lot of my writing. I wheedled and needled, and Jeff Klausman (thank you, Jeff!) allowed me to teach my first Creative Writing class. From there, I was allowed to teach it at least once a year; eventually, I had the opportunity to create an online Creative Writing class and be the first to teach it regularly. For the last three years, I have exclusively taught online Creative Writing at WCC.

 

Back when I went to WCC and WWU, there was a world pandemic, too: the HIV/AIDs crisis.

My then twelve-year-old son, who has a blood clotting disorder, was infected with HIV early on (before it even had its proper name), from blood products used to treat his hemophilia. He will be forty-five in July, HIV undetectable due to modern pharmaceuticals. Most other people we knew with hemophilia in our larger hemophilia community did not have this outcome, making this time period very difficult, full of grieving, scary, surreal, and challenging. I also had a six-year-old and a freshly second ex-husband, was going to school full time and working on WWU campus, either Work-Study or my T.A. position. I combined my work pay with minimal student loans and the then-generous financial aid and lower tuition of the times and government low-income assistance, such as subsidized housing. (Thank you Bellingham Housing Authority.) This time period, during which I cried in every single one of my professors' during one quarter, some of them more than once, illustrates just a tidbit the life lessons there, which influence an important part of my pedagogy, tempered by the kindness of my professors, peers, and family.

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Have a beating heart.

 

Thanks for reading my story!

Ms. Donna Rushing, M.A.