If all goes well, I will be teaching a course in writing in spring 2014. Through some self-promoting and hustling what I can offer as a writer, I got the go ahead from an administrator. If there are enough registrants for the course, it is on. So I have been giving it a good deal of thought, looking through old workshop formats I had conducted many years ago; exercises I have used in these workshops; essays I might use as formats or models for writing, et al. The prior post on this log, Why I Write, was an attempt to clear my throat as to what I want to accomplish with any workshop. And I will tinker with that blog as new thoughts arise.
The OLLI program is for retirees or semi-retires from 55 and up. I sat in for two sessions in two different courses on writing and was disenchanted with the teaching, structure and philosophy. My intended workshop would be geared to help individuals to express themselves, seek clarity if not awareness, and would be rooted in feelings as well as intellect. I was bored and stultified with what I had experienced and withdrew from both classes. The instructors were not really writers in my eyes. The less said the better.
The essential difficulty here with many of these instructors, I assume, is that they have no experience in teaching. Lecture is the weakest part of teaching unless you can do stand up well. The other problem here is that some if not all of the courses are much too long, which is especially onerous if you are teaching writing. And one course I was in fed into the neediness of people who just want to read their work without critique. The other course was a mélange, and rudderless. Good intentions do not a writing course make.
I also sensed that some individuals just wanted to ventilate without any criticism at all. I may be just blowin in the wind in the belief that students might want to learn the craft and the seriousness of purpose it requires. I may be offering something that might involve much more than they are getting in these two writing courses. I will find out, and if I cannot relate to their needs, so be it.
After decades of writing I really don’t know how to present this course. I sense, rather, the way I want to go, is to work on questions of feeling, of expressing oneself, leaving grammar, syntax, style and all the rest out of it for quite some time. I’d rather motivate and encourage which I believe I am good at. I really don’t know how to go about teaching writing. I do know what is bad teaching about writing which I experienced at OLLI.
I recall an experience I had with another English teacher decades ago. We were talking about teaching an idea or concept and he volunteered that he liked to take parts and pieces and synthesize them for his students, bring them together, conceptualize. I said that I preferred to throw an idea into the air and see what happened, not concerned in arriving at a final question or principle. For me the excitement was in observing what was before me, like a firework display. I could handle the discomfort, the dissonance and I was not in a hurry to reach conclusions, for it was much too much fun to be amid the confusion.
So in my possible workshop I would throw a lot of things at the class, see where it goes, think on my feet, be me, in short. All the while the latent drumbeat would be to get them to produce, to feel, to think, to become somewhat inwardly free, to resist the shoulds and oughts about writing, to work on helping them to decondition themselves, at least for a little while. It is no secret that to fly as an instructor, to soar in the classroom is to have been grounded in that subject.
The core truth of the course is to be free.
I would ask that they all read Krishnamurti’s Think on These Things. I would not teach the book but cite one or two passages, here and there, the hope being that they might draw something from his writings and apply it in class or in their writings. In other words I would throw a lot of things at them: movies; books; plays; psychology and sociology; Rosebud; I would give to them the workings of my mind for them to consider and respond to; my biases; my prejudices; why this short story is fabulous and this not so; I want to create tumult and turmoil at least for ninety minutes. I want to Jerry Lewis them.
The semester has ten sessions to it and presently the classes are about two and a half hours, much too long unless it is pottery or painting. I am concerned about the amount of preparation required and how to sustain interest through variety and diversification. A lot of work has to be done in class as homework is not assigned as a policy so that students would be free of all the appurtenances of grades, attendance, et al which I fine rewarding. At this early time I am sketching in ideas of what to present and how to present it which is no easy task. It is not in my nature to “wing” all this or to pass the time by by having students read this or that to fill up time. Reading one’s work is essential but I don’t want to use this as filler. Consequently I keep asking the gnawing questions of what I want to teach and how to go about that with some craft.
I also fully recognize that the course is me. Every teacher’s course is about the teacher. The old cliché is that you remember the teacher and not what he taught and that is the way it should be. It is in the relationship, as it is in psychotherapy, that learning is created. I will give fully of who I am and that is not a problem for me. I have a strong self. It is through this self I hope to teach my writing course.
I know I have more to say but I’ll stop here.
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