Art of teaching

Aug. 26, 2010

Dear Julie,

We named the father Buster, his son Dizzy.

As I feared, the two Jack Russell terriers we agreed to take in and find a home for have made their home with us.

Buster and Dizzy are like toddlers with ADHD, a fact that keeps many sensible people from owning Jack Russell terriers. Preventing them from slipping out when we open a door is a test, and they refuse to be ignored. They want your attention. All of it.

Our dog Lucy, who's 15, and I stare impassively at the whirlwind they create wherever they go. She doesn't have the same kind of energy they do and never did. I'm the same. DC, though, is at home in a tornado of activity. She and Jack Russell terriers are a match.

The start of school this week has felt like a reprieve for me. My office is relatively peaceful and quiet, with only the sounds of the class in the adjoining room. With some professors who use humor the students are laughing in response. With other professors there is only the sound of the professor's voice.

Most of my students this semester are sophomores or juniors and about 20 years old. In dog years they're about the same age as Buster. Not that I equate my students with dogs, but both offer similar challenges: How to engage them well enough to teach them. I also suspect our dogs are smarter than we are. My students might be, too.

At 20 I skipped class often. Cheap tuition and a minor fascination with the ennui of existentialism combined to create in me a slacker attitude ahead of its time. Only a few professors made me want to learn from them. That was no one's fault but mine, but as a teacher myself now I have wondered why some got through to me and others didn't.

My current conclusion is that teachers who engage students operate at the personal level. I see that in Kristin Gill, a second-grade teacher at Blanchard Elementary School. She knows the story of every student in her class. Maybe that's not possible at the college level, but I think there must still be ways to make teaching personal.

One of my college professors, Bob Hamblin, had everyone in the class keep a journal, and he read every word of every one. He also responded to our writing. He wrote at length in my journal about some thoughts I'd had about the Vietnam War. He'd recognized my voice, he said. He helped me realize that writing might be something I could pursue.

Everyone deserves teachers who help foster our own realizations.

I majored in English, the major everyone makes fun of -- even English majors. Most people think an English degree is useless in the real world. But Paul Newman was an English major. So was U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. So was Joe Paterno, the legendary Penn State football coach. Being an English major is a state of mind, a belief that anything is possible. Eventually.

Surely that was my most hopeful hope as I sat in a class while a very learned professor smitten with Middle English recited from "The Canterbury Tales." "Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote/The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,/And bathed every veyne in swich licour/Of which vertu engendred is the flour."

I remember it well.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a former reporter for the Southeast Missourian.