Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Classroom Stories


One morning in the summer of 2006, I was preparing for composition class, thinking about the wonderful stories my students would be sharing during the next few weeks in the semester. A poem began to form in my mind and, as it did, I wrote, making several edits over the next few days. Finally, I submitted the poem, "Disclaimer (for english 015 students)" to Richard Hansen, publisher of "Poems for All," (http://www.sacfreepress.com/poems/) an interesting Sacramento-based publishing company that circulates poems in little chapbooks the size of matchstick covers. Here's my poem:


Disclaimer (for english 015 Students)

You won’t find this in the
course catalog, and it’s not
on the syllabus. But it’s best
to know. If you come into
my english classroom,
you’d better leave (T)ruth
at the door.
For it’s not (T)ruth but
something else we’ll study
this semester. I don’t deal
with (T)ruth in English class.
And I don’t give high marks
for (T)ruth, because I’ve been a
liar all my life.
Don’t come to me with
questions about page
length, number of sources,
or mis-spellings. This is not
the stuff of my classes.
In this room
we write stories.
About love, death, hope,
betrayal, lies and other
broken promises. Don’t bother
telling the dean your professor
tells lies. I’ll deny it. Besides,
it won’t help you much
in this class.
You’ve read my warning, so
if you still want to enter this class,
bring your memories, dreams,
questions. And leave all your
(True) stories
At the door.

The poem is a confession by a college composition instructor, who prefers content over form. Although I do evaluate students' written work on the usual standard requirements for language use and grammar, I tend to respond to the story told in the work they've submitted. That's because, in my opinion, it takes a lot of courage to tell good stories and when the story is good, I see and admire the writer's courage. And, don't take the word truth too literally here. It alludes to the sort of official truths being taught to students who have been overly eager to accept everything told them by authority. Learning is about questioning those truths and tuning into the process of self-discovery. My classroom supports that kind of learning.

But, back to the point about stories. Why would a teacher care about stories? Story often shapes the content of my courses (sometimes, in spite of my efforts to keep it out). Each semester, new students find their way into my classroom, find each other and me and we begin with a typical English class dialogue. That dialogue goes something like this: "How many pages, how many sources, can I use wikipedia as a source?" All important questions, I'll grant you, but not the most important ones.

The really big questions I hope to hear from students are about story. "Can I write this story, How should I write this story? Is this a good story?" When their questions settle down around story, we have a class and a class dialogue. We have the beginning of our class' story.