Teacher as_____
Teacher as_____
by jason jordan
1. Teacher as Entertainer
You are a college student, and it’s the first day of your Creative Writing class. The professor enters the room looking more like a student, with his long curly hair, T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers, than a teacher. He looks pretty young for a professor, you think. He sets his folders on the roundtable, opens a book, and begins to read a passage about working as an ice cream truck driver. No one knows each other, so this development is awkward, but strangely enjoyable. This event inspires you to write something other people will like.
2. Teacher as Mediator
One of your best friends continues to rave about the movie adaptation of the Michael Chabon novel Wonder Boys. It takes place in Pittsburgh, where Chabon spent some of his childhood, and you watch the film before you have any idea you will one day move there. It’s the workshop scene that’s most striking. Students attack James Leer’s piece – and him even – while Professor Grady Tripp does little to mediate the situation, except stress that the comments be constructive. He should’ve gotten more involved, you think. Your memory is fuzzy, though, and it obscures the details, yet you still recall the movie’s ending, which sucked. Grady Tripp says, Nobody teaches a writer anything. You disagree with this statement. Grady Tripp also says, You tell ‘em what you know. You tell ‘em to find their voice and stay with it.
3. Teacher as Motivator
Your professor co-hosts a local reading series, and eventually, after you attend several performances, encourages you to read work of your own in front of 10 or 20 people. This builds your self-confidence, and helps you become comfortable in front of a group of people, which is essential for teaching. You never see any of your professor’s colleagues at the readings. Later, when you actually begin teaching students who pay to take your class, you’ll understand just how important it is to admit when you’re wrong, because it will happen sooner or later.
You are moved when your professor brings to class a Chicago writer’s book that is so entertaining and bursting with substance, yet is also self-published. You realize the value of the D.I.Y. movement. In your professor’s most recent nonfiction book, he says, quote, It’s depressing the way some professors can get so caught up in their subjects that everything contemporary passes them by, end quote.
Two years from then, you will meet this writer, hang out with him, and drink with him when you’re invited on a mini-tour with him and another writer. The Chicago writer is the one people come to see, but you enjoy the crowds nonetheless. There is one great reading, one good one, and one bad one. The bad one is in the town in which you were born. So it goes, Vonnegut might say. Later, you will read with the Chicago writer again in Chicago. He will dress up as a wizard and shout the lyrics to a Black Sabbath song at the top of his lungs. Afterward, you will hang out with him and several other people at a bar. He will ask if you want to attend an art show that night, and you, a little drunk, will put your arm around him and say, Quit trying to kill our fun. He’ll smile, raise his open palms in the air as if you’re robbing him, and say, Hey, I don’t wanna be that guy.
The more you think about it, the more you pose the question: Why should someone else have the say as to whether your writing is read or not? Your professor has several self-published books to his name. Some of your favorite writers have not published anything with a small, medium, or large press. Every writer you know corroborates the idea that it’s difficult to make a living writing things you actually want to write. In fact, it’s downright unlikely you will.
A year later, you will be in Chicago again and meet another writer who’s one of your favorites, except this time, you won’t care for his personality all that much. You will still use both Chicago writers in the English classes you will teach at a small college, but find it interesting that their personalities don’t affect the value of their respective work. This is a lesson in itself, though. Be nice to people. It will only help you if people like you. It will never hinder.
4. Teacher as Guide
Your uncle, who has a rough complexion from working in construction so long, invites you up to his house to talk about your future. Those are his words: Come on up and we’ll talk about your future. He’s held a variety of jobs over the years.
Once you arrive, he sits across from you in the kitchen with a blank notepad in front of the both of you. He has a pencil tucked behind his ear. There are all kinds of jobs out there, he says, and there are places you can go to get books that tell about each job. They’ll tell you how much money you’ll make, what type of degrees you’ll need, and other things. Do you know what a salary cap is? For instance, let’s say you’re a realtor. You don’t have a guaranteed income because you make commission selling houses, and if you don’t sell any houses, you don’t make any money. He draws what you think look like mountains (an ascending line followed by a descending line, and so on) until he reaches a point at which he draws a horizontal line across the rest of the yellow sheet. At some point, he says, in real estate anyway, you’ll hit a plateau where it’s physically impossible for you to make anymore money because you don’t have the time to put the effort in. Whereas, say you’re in a position with room for promotion, there may be no salary cap, so you have to consider that sort of thing, too. Your uncle is a loud person, and enjoys talking a lot. You are the opposite of him. This conversation still manages to last a long time.
However, this same uncle, before you leave for Pittsburgh, will say to you, Don’t let anyone boondoggle you. You have never heard this word. Months later, when you’re trying to read, but your memories keep distracting you, you recall the word. You grab the pocket dictionary on the nightstand, and flip to the Bs. You learn that boondoggle means to deceive. This reaffirms the notion that you have something to learn from everyone.
5. Teacher as Peer
It’s autumn and the weather’s turning cold. You’ve agreed to take part in a writer’s retreat held in a rural area of Kentucky. Your former professor, a mutual friend, and you occupy a cabin for the weekend. There isn’t much to do in Rough River, you guess, except watch TV, drink, go out to eat, drink, write, and drink. It’s a dry county, though, and you didn’t think to bring alcohol, nor did anyone else on the trip. You drive two hours to a town called Whitesville wherein there’s a liquor store/bar called The Black Cat. Here you purchase the smallest bottle of Captain Morgan’s, along with a few miniature bottles of Jägermeister (translation: master hunter).
Several inside jokes will be spawned as a result of the trip, and most of them center on drinking, which prevented you or anyone else from getting much work done. It would be referred to in the future as a drinker’s retreat, or your friend might tell someone else about it, saying, We had a lot of drinking to catch up on. There’s never enough time, you think, and you realize you work best on your own, in solitude. This, too, is how you prepare to teach.
In any case, your professor and you came to appreciate each other’s stories, and view one another as peers instead of student/teacher. You send him some of your stories to critique. He sends you some of his. It’s a give and take relationship, because both stand to benefit.
6. Teacher as Mentor
You have graduated college with a B.A. in English, so it’s time for you to figure out where you want to attend graduate school. You conduct the necessary research about each school, which usually consists of finding answers to the following questions: How much does this school cost annually? How many credit hours are needed to obtain the degree? Do they offer TA positions? How much does it cost to live there? Who teaches there? How much will it cost to apply? Another student you know devises a spreadsheet to keep track of all this information.
Your former professor – several of them, in fact – says he will write a recommendation letter for you, so you take him up on it. He also says he’ll help you write the essay that must accompany every application. The essay is called the Self-Assessment Essay, or the Statement of Purpose, or the Statement of Intent. It ranges anywhere from 300 to 500 words, on the short end of the spectrum, to three to four pages on the long end. You write the first page, and email it to your former professor who writes in his reply, It doesn’t sound like you. You don’t want to come across like this. Also, be as specific as possible. You tailor the essay until it sounds like you, until it sounds like the person reading it will like you.
Your former professor applied to many schools for creative writing, but didn’t get into any of them. Instead, he entered a local rhetoric/composition program where he acquired his M.A., and then his Ph.D. The big creative writing programs are tough to get into, he tells you. It’s good to apply to some smaller schools to make sure you get in somewhere. You take his advice the second year you apply. The first year you apply to five schools – each is located in a big city. This does not go well. When you’re running an errand at your alma mater, you run into another former professor who’s surprised to learn that you didn’t get accepted into any of those programs. This, however, comes from a man who has a doctorate from Stanford.
The second year you apply, you send applications to ten schools, and a few of those schools are small enough that you think you may get in. This proves true. Though you applied to ten, only one accepts you, but it’s a blessing because if two or more had accepted you, you would’ve had a decision to make. You’re glad you didn’t have to choose, and regret that decision down the line. You’re glad to be somewhere doing something, learning something.
In the future, a friend of yours who lives in a suburb of Chicago will be applying to graduate schools. You offer to coach him through the process by editing his Self-Assessment Essay/Statement of Purpose/Statement of Intent, filling him in on how time-consuming, expensive, and asinine the G.R.E. will be, and looking over his creative writing samples. You envision helping others in this same way.
7. Teacher as Competitor
In the writing world there are only so many markets to send your work to, so you begin emailing and mailing pieces to various publications. You know many, if not most, writers engage in this discouraging practice, racking up rejection letters more often than not. A publication accepts a piece from your former professor, but rejects you. Isn’t it strange, you think, how professors/instructors/teachers try to entice others to join the field when it only creates competition for them? You remember a passage of your former professor’s latest book, which states, quote, Mike Smith is asleep on my couch. Mike was a student in the first English 102 course I ever taught, four years ago, and now tomorrow he’s presenting a paper on teaching writing. The academic cycle of life is complete, end quote. You compare this to the female spider devouring the male of the species when the reproductive process is completed, aside from the sexual involvement of course. It’s a Catch-22 regardless, you think, because Americans are reading less than ever. As a result, there are too many writers, and not enough readers. There are too many teachers, and not enough positions. You determine to set yourself apart as much as you can. You will need to.
8. Teacher as Friend
Your former professor moves from Louisville, Kentucky, to Lawrenceville, New Jersey, to accept a tenure position with a university. It’s a small school, but one that is located near Princeton. When you visit him – your friend and you drove almost 800 miles/12.5 hours during the night from Chicago to Lawrenceville – he takes you to the campus of Princeton, where his wife works in an administrative capacity. You look around in a few of the buildings. Many are old, brick, filled with wood, and maybe even just a tad pretentious. Why am I not good enough for this place? you think. An hour later, you stand in front of several of the statues that litter the campus, and have your picture taken in front of the one that depicts a man about to stab another man who is on his knees, but, from one angle, it appears the stabbee is about to give the stabber a blowjob.
On this same trip, although a day after Princeton, you eat at a restaurant called It’s Nutts! This restaurant is located on River Road in Titusville, New Jersey, and is close to where George Washington crossed the Delaware River on December 25, 1776. During lunch, you converse about writing and teaching. You continue to realize that it’s not about being the biggest or being the best. You wonder about how much your friends who are teachers enjoy their jobs, or don’t. They say they do, though, and so you believe them. In the end, perhaps it’s about helping someone else no matter where, what, or how you teach. Maybe it’s about affecting others in a positive way, even if they don’t follow in your footsteps. Statistically, they probably won’t, because teaching is harder than it looks.
Jason Jordan is a writer from New Albany, Indiana, who always says he's from Louisville, Kentucky, because people actually know where that is. His fiction has
appeared in The2ndHand, Pindeldyboz, VerbSap, and many other publications. Jordan is also Editor-in-Chief of the literary magazine decomP. He is currently
in the MFA program at Chatham University, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he is working on his first novel. You can visit him at poweringthedevilscircus.blogspot.com.